Reporter | Dong Ziqi
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Between Genius and Genius presents the literary world centered on the British Faber and Faber publishing houses in the 1920s and 1990s, and includes not only the diary of the publisher Jeffrey Faber, the correspondence with the poet T.S. Eliot, but also the letters of many famous writers related to the Faber publishing house, including James Joyce and William Golding. In these records and discussions, we get a glimpse of how new works are born and what kind of character the writers behind great works are. The Chinese edition of the book was recently published by CITIC Publishing Group.
Between Genius and Genius
Translated by Toby Faber
CITIC Publishing No Boundary invited Joyce in January 2022 and declined Orwell
The man who has guarded Faber For decades is the famous poet T.S. Eliot. When Faber Was founded in 1925, Jeffrey Faber invited T.S. Eliot to serve as a trustee, and with him he stood firm: publishing a bibliography that highlighted some value, if not the most admired value on the market. In the subsequent cooperation, they also had a discussion about the published book list, and Faber believed that a large amount of money should be used to fight for the bibliography, because before the real reputation and foothold, the start-up publishing house could never get the books delivered to the door, and could only eat the bread crumbs left by the big publishing companies. Striking a balance between bestsellers and long-selling books was Faber's publishing strategy, and in order to get a good novel, it was first necessary to pick out the early works that were characteristic of the authors.
T.S. Eliot put a lot of effort into identifying manuscripts and inviting writers. Shortly after becoming Faber's governor, Eliot wrote to F. Scott Fitzgerald, inviting him to submit The Great Gatsby to Faber for publication, which he felt was the most exciting of all the new novels in years, but Fitzgerald wrote back that it had been handed over to other publishers. In a letter to James Joyce, Eliot analyzed the possibility of Ulysses' publication and previewed the new work in the spring of 1930. Joyce also wrote a poem expressing satisfaction with the publishing house, in which he wrote, "Buy a small book from Faber Press, the brown cover, and travel with little Anna Livia..." (Anna Livia is the protagonist of Joyce's previous works published at Faber Press) However, the staff of the publishing house did not read much, which may have displeased James. Later, due to concerns about censorship, Ulysses was not published in The Faber Press.
Junior editor Alan Pringle (right) gives T.S. Elliott (left) proof of the first part of Finnegan's Vigil
For other works, Faber's attitude is less positive. T.S. Eliot had rejected George Orwell's The Fall of Paris and London, and in a 1932 letter to Eric Blair (Orwell's pseudonym), he wrote that the shortcomings of the short work were that it was loosely structured and that French and English were divided into two parts, with no transition in between. Eliot thus lost the opportunity to help Orwell in the early days of his career, and the book was eventually published by Victor Golantz in 1933. More than a decade later, Elliott once again rejected Orwell's Animal Farm, and although he considered it to be a very cleverly handled fable, from the perspective of a publisher, he did not agree with this perspective of criticizing the current situation. W.H. Auden was also rejected by Elliot, who said that he did not dare to agree much with Auden's poems, but was willing to continue to pay attention to its contents, and Auden interpreted Elliot's reply as a "praise attitude".
Eliot's literary opinions continued to play an important role after his retirement, and in a letter to Shemus Heaney (winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature), who was still a newcomer at the time, Eliot's successor quoted Eliot as advising him to make regular appearances in literary journals before publishing poetry collections, such as The New Statesman or Encounter. Because of the importance of the discovery of new works by newcomers, Faber Publishing House also launched the first works of many important writers, such as William Golding's "Lord of the Flies"—a title that the publisher even wrote for the author. Kazuo Ishiguro's debut novel, "The Shadow of the Distant Mountains", was sent to the publishing house in five chapters, expressing interest in listening to the opinions, and then it was successfully published.
The Lord of the Flies is one of 12 books in the Spring/Summer of 1958"
Some of the reading reports in the book are interesting in their own right. A reading report on Paddington Bear (1957) presents dissatisfaction with "funny". Opinions argue that the story of this middle-class family adopting a bear misses the point, and that it is always the bear that is unlucky, and it is difficult to resonate with the reader. The family was all fools, they let a bear who knew nothing about modern conveniences take a bath alone, almost drowned, and lost the bear twice on the subway and in the mall... The conclusion: The best thing about this book is its title.
Milan Kundera showed his "astrological skills" in his letters, and he strictly limited the time frame for revision of the work, because Uranus coincided with his constellations during this time—which also corroborated Kundera's biography that he had been fired from the academy in the 1970s to make a living as an astrologer columnist. Philip Larkin also showed a remarkable personal style in his letters to publishers, where he tried to persuade them to accept Barbara Pym's work, and his passionately stated literary views were more interesting than his peddling strategy—it was a great shame that novels written about ordinary people doing ordinary things could not find a publisher, because this was a legacy left by Jane Austen; compared to "junk spy novels", "junk science fiction novels" and "junk novels about drug addiction leading to mental breakdown", He liked to read stories of people who had never achieved much, who were neither beautiful nor lucky to know how to live to the best of their ability within a limited range. Larkin said, "It is these characters who can see the so-called grand life in the moment of autumn leaves falling and are not worthy of envy." Larkin recounts that literary ideas are so intense that he refuses to do so in public—he refuses the publisher's request and doesn't want to recite his poems in public, because unless one is charismatic, it's better to stay out of the public eye.
Elliott's complaint: Publishing is better than dancing
Elliott wasn't always grateful for Faber's entrustment, and he wrote passionately in the early hours of the morning complaining about too many job responsibilities and poor salaries. The background of the complaint was the opinion of the council that Elliot's business dealings with a dance club had affected normal publishing work. What's worse is that working in a publishing house has to treat countless annoying guys decently, and if you're in a dance club, you can get these unruly people out, and in a publishing house you have to take them to lunch. Dancing or publishing, which act is more eroded and corrupt? Elliot asked negatively. The letter also revealed that he was sometimes forced to participate in book marketing campaigns: He spent the morning in an abandoned church handing himself over to a few "rough young men" in order to make a movie that supposedly wanted more people to buy books. Because this was done at Faber's request, he could "try to ignore the humiliation and physical discomfort."
T.S. Elliot's office at Faber Press Picture taken the day after Elliott's death
Eliot's complaints about the publishing industry continued into the 1950s, when his grim remarks — "If I were an outside investor, but I knew the inside of the publishing industry, I would never have dreamed of putting a penny into the industry" — stabbed Jeffrey Faber. Faber responded that a person who says these words is primarily intended to shock and sting others, and not to represent his true will? He said bitterly that if what Eliot said was true, it would be a "catastrophe" for himself, "you have your own great achievements to look back on slowly (Elliot had already won the Nobel Prize in Literature at that time), and I have nothing but Faber Press." This sentence stung Eliot again, saying that if a man speaks hurtfully, it is because he has been hurt, and he feels that Faber neither understands his "gloomy Calvinist temperament", does not feel how remarkable those achievements are, and does not see his past contributions to Faber publishing house and worries about the future. The more tit-for-tat the two are, the more they are full of the meaning of pushing the heart. Their friendship lasted until the last moments of Faber's life, and Eliot spoke at Faber's funeral, "As a publisher, his heart and mind is to publish good books, and if the books are good enough, it is worth losing money on them." ”
(All images in the text are provided and authorized by CITIC Publishing Group)