Five minutes with Liz Calder
If only all rich businesspeople were as pleasant as Liz Calder. The world would be a happy place, instead of one filled with boy-wizard apprentices. Calder’s reputation as a publisher is without equal. Not only did she launch the Harry Potter series in 1997 (after becoming co-founder of Bloomsbury in 1986), she also launched the careers of Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje, Julian Barnes and Anita Brookner. She was the first UK publisher to offer John Irving serious support and has also helped to nurture writers as diverse as John Berger, Angela Carter, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Russell Hoban, Anne Michaels, Brian Moore, Ahdaf Soueif, Rupert Thomson, Joanna Trollope and Jeanette Winterson. Now semi-retired, Calder has not given up her love of books. She co-founded the much praised Festa Literária Internacional de Parati in Brazil with her husband, children’s author and editor Louis Baum. Calder was in New Zealand recently to celebrate her 70th birthday with family members and to take part in a British Council event. NZBC caught up with book publishing’s far friendlier equivalent of Minerva McGonagall for a virtual caipirinha, to wish her happy birthday and ask whether books have any kind of future. Read on…
posted by Chris Bell at 2:32 PM
10 Comments:
She certainly sounds like a shrewd publisher and a decent person, but, even collectively, her writers don't compensate for the self-referential stodge that is the writing of Brian Moore.
That may be why you're not a publisher, anonymous; or, if you are one, why you comment anonymously.
Chris
I've tried several times to get an ID, and failed. I'm probably doing something wrong or my computer is playing up.
I'm not a publisher but thank you for asking.
It's just that I've read a bit of Brian Moore.
kiwitoffee
OK, but it's pretty silly of you, even if you don't like Brian Moore's writing, to suggest that however bad it might be it somehow tarnishes the writing of everyone else on the list. Just as it would be to suggest that the presence of Russell Hoban on it would somehow make Michael Ondaatje any better. Point taken?
No, I don't get your point.
Russell Hoban I don't know of. Michael Whatshisname I do, a bit.
The latter chap seems to have made a career out of being the author of In the Skin of a Lion which I enjoyed.
I never said - or, I think, implied - that Moore's writing tarnishes the image of others on the same publisher's list. His writing is bad, in my view, and no amount of good writing from the others (if there is any, I don't know) can compensate for it.
A little bit of Mr Moore goes a long way.
Kiwitoffee
It's still not clear to me how (or why) you expect other writers to compensate for your distaste with regard to one. Millions of people will have bought his novels--not that that is any recommendation for their quality, of course, but a publisher's job is to sell books. Your entire point seems to hang on a personal distate for Moore's writing, and in this context I'm struggling to see the relevance.
Can't a man have a healthy prejudice - in this case against a novelist - these days?
Where would the world of literature be without such bitchiness? I suspect a good deal of fine writing has been created as a result of plain nastiness on somebody's part.
I agree a publisher's job is to sell books. I'm merely making a connection between (at least) one rotten apple in the barrel and the others. Having had a few bites of the rotten one, no amount of half decent apples is going to help, no matter how sweet, juicy or crispy they are.
Kiwitoffee
Let us assume for a moment that Calder or her minions made a mistake with Moore. There's nothing especially wrong about with nasty about one writer but what you're saying is that somehow like a rotten apple he has soured the rest of the barrel.
I find Ondaatje's writing overrated but I would never go as far as to suggest that he doesn't deserve to be on this list simply because I don't like his books.
Have you read Brian Moore? Its almost enough to scare you off reading fiction for ever.
Try the apple thing and you might see what I mean.
For me, Whathisname doesn't really count. He's not so much a writer as a media personality.
Kiwitoffee:
I know what you're trying to say - Moore is less.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home