Under the Sun (62 page)

I met Gillon and Wylie in New York, and the rest followed. The fact that Salman [Rushdie] had decided to do the same thing did not enter into these discussions: they did, however, suggest I call him when I got back to London.

I am, however, very sorry to have misled you on one point. I felt it might be easier to break the news that I had gone to Wylie: this is somewhat inaccurate. I have gone, in fact, to the agency Wylie, Aitken and Stone and since I am based in Europe not the U.S. it will be Gillon who will handle the day to day business. As I explained to Anne [Borchardt] in a letter, my trouble is that, under a somewhat bland mask, I am from my Sotheby's days a rather hard-nosed business pro. Not for nothing did I once draw up a new form of draft contract, revolutionary in its day, which ultimately gave the art auction business a new flexibility. But that's all old stuff.

In the meantime, can I please ask you that this transition be conducted as smoothly and unobtrusively as possible.

with all my love to you, Bruce

Chateau de Seillans | Seillans | France | 26 September 1987

 

An interim p/c collapsing after a very strenuous tour of the US and Canada will be in Seillans chateau de S . . . the whole of Oct, Nov, Dec much love B

Chateau de Seillans | Seillans | France | 29 September 1987

 

Dear Andrew,

I'm a firm believer in the iron fist in the velvet glove. When in doubt, put on a second velvet glove, cheers, Bruce C.

Chateau de Seillans | Seillans | France | 30 September 1987

 

My dear Deborah,

I have investigated the story you told me, and I have to tell you it has a perfectly innocent origin, resulting from a phone call I myself made early last summer. The fact that others spread it around was somewhat less innocent, but let that be . . .

I am sorry. I am sad – but the arrangement I have made with Wylie, Aitken and Stone must stand. I don't want to be put in the position of having to explain myself. Perhaps we should put it down to my ‘incurable restlessness'?
⁸²⁸

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 21 October 1987

 

My dearest Anne-Marie,

A. Thank you for buying it, let alone finishing it. B. for your charming last line. I've been in the wars recently, with an impossible malady picked up in W China – but I'm quite well again

Forgive the haste. I have a mountain of mail to catch up. All my love to you, Bruce

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 22 October 1987

 

Dear Harriet Harvey-Wood,

Of course, I'd be
interested
in coming but I haven't a clue where I'll be next July. What's the latest I can let you know?

Yours ever, Bruce Chatwin

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 22 November 1987

 

Dear Harriet Harvey-Wood,

Forgive me, I can't remember if I've replied to your letter of Oct 27 or not. Ach! The disorganisation! Yes: Do please be in touch around May: then I'll know better how the land lies.

As ever, Bruce Chatwin

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 11 December 1987

 

My dear Murray,

Well, it was good to get a glimpse of you. I agree with you about the London literati: the only possible use I can think of for a spaceship would be to take them out of our orbit – but then more would grow!

Salman and I had a rather thick time of it recently vis-à-vis changing our agent. Tremendous hullabaloo in the press! But it seems to have simmered down now. In the old days, writers – ‘so-called' – were thought to be neurotic, self-obsessed, primadonna-ish people, forever suffering from ‘blocks', emotional problems etc. and agents were calm hard-working people who would sort out their problems. Now the Tables are turned. The ‘writers' simply sit down and write their books and, as an additional burden, have to cope with hopelessly neurotic publicity-seeking agents who think nothing of airing their neuroses, and their business! to the press. However, as I said, it's simmering down, and I, for what it's worth, yesterday, finished a novel. Quite a carry on! The title –
Utz
simple as that! The most that can be said for it is that it was designed as an entertainment to carry me through those rather beleaguered months. Admittedly, it does bear very little relation to anything I've ever done. A kind of Middle European fairy-story – with some savage digs at the art business! We shall see . . .

I had a very odd week in Paris, at a conference for Russian and other dissidents who, regrettably nowadays seem to perform the role of clown for people who wish their anti-Marxist views confirmed. If you think that Mr Gorbachev has things to contend with from the Old Bolshevik Guard, that is nothing to the New Guard. There is in Russia a political ‘secret ' society called Pamiat (which means ‘remembrance '). It has a million signed up members in Moscow alone: and what it wants to remember are the virtues of Russian soil, the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian facial features etc as opposed to slit-eyes, hook noses and other aberrations of human nature. It wants to raise the Russian Church to Khomeini-ite levels of fanaticism, and is, among other things, anti-industrial, anti-nuclear, ecological etc.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger,
⁸³⁰
who went to Russia recently, says that, at a reception, he spoke to a full Russian general at the Kremlin who was wearing on his finger a cameo insignia of Nicholas II with the eagles. Such people think of Stalin as a Jewish-puppet, you must realise. Anyhow, it all puts a new slant on things . . . I'm going to have a go at seeing what I can do to write a Russian novel . . .
⁸³¹

On the other hand, I'm dying to get away to a sunny place where I can swim. I almost went to Madagascar for a magazine. I've always thought I might like Madagascar – and could call in on Zanzibar. But I couldn't get away until the book was done, and now it's the rainy season and I didn't feel like slewing around in red mud.

My love to you and Margaret

And from Elizabeth.

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 7 January 1988

 

Forgive me for being a bit slow in the uptake about
Behind the Wall
.
⁸³²
I was up to my gills in a new book and – well, you know how it is – one reads
nothing
that isn't immediately useful for the work in hand! Absolutely first rate! I know it so much less well than you: but every word rang true. The claustrophobia of that society: also its reserves of wisdom. I have a mildly different ‘take' on Russia, but in China I was with you every step of the way.

E. & I are going on our first proper holiday: to an island off Guadaloupe – for 15 days. As always, Bruce.

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 7 January 1988

 

Dear Howard,

How kind to send the Cormac McCarthys.
⁸³³
I've read
The Orchard Keeper
which is splendid, and am taking
Suttree
with me to the Caribbean next week. Hope we'll meet again soon.

I'm sorry for the scrappy note – I've got a month of correspondence to wade through before lunch. As ever, Bruce.

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | [January 1988]

 

My dearest Susannah,

I haven't been able to raise you on the phone today. Never mind. We're off to Guadaloupe, no less. For a couple of weeks swimming. It's one of the cheapest places to fly to, because it's part of metropolitan France and the fares are subsidised. We're booked to fly back on the 25th, but may, depending on various imponderables, go down to the South of France. I left the car in a garage for repairs on October 15, saying I'd be back the next day – and now look!

Gillon Aitken will have sent over a copy of the
Utz
annotated by Michael Ignatieff. I don't agree with
everything
he says but most of it I do. I jotted down my reactions in the margin and would love it if you'd take a squint.
⁸³⁴

I want to show it, too, to my friend Diana Phipps
⁸³⁵
who is a Czech – and had first hand memories of Prague until 1949 when she and her family left – to Vichy! (except that they went to Paris instead). One of the few facts I have about my model for Utz is that he
did
go annually to Vichy – until 1968.

Much love, B

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 8 January 1988

 

Dear Gillon,

. . . While I'm away can you think over the following.

For the benefit of all concerned, we should get onto paper a formal agreement between ourselves. We have not yet finally agreed on the rates of commission. I'm easy about this. I have always thought that the 20% European sales is a bit stiff, but I would have your guidance on this point. Seeing that Salman [Rusdhie] and I came, as it were, as a package, I wonder if I could have the same terms as him. Or whether we could agree on a flat rate of commission to cover the US, the UK and abroad. As things are going, there may, in the future, be separate agreements with the ex-Commonwealth etc. Anyway, it won't be a problem between us.

The second point is this. Deborah Rogers never made it clear to me the question of the ‘agent of record': in fact, it was the first I'd ever heard of it. Surely we should agree that if, for any reason
either
of us wished to terminate the agreement, then the ‘agency of record' should not continue beyond a fixed term, say, three years or five. To agree this between ourselves would, I feel, give a certain leverage with DR/GB. It is obviously very messy for me to be having to deal with two agencies.
⁸³⁶

As always

Bruce

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 8 February 1988

 

My dear Murray,

So we went to the West Indies for a holiday: I honestly can't spare the time to come your way this winter. Besides, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that, unless someone pays you to go club class, air travel (for more than 3 hours) has already become impossible. We went first to a pair of islands called Les Saintes, off Guadaloupe which are peopled by a very strange clan of mestizo Indian-negro-Breton fishermen. Most striking to look at. Proud, disdainful, not giving one inch to tourists like ourselves: the girls wearing a kind of tutu, the boys with blond hair in rasta-plaits. Nothing happened to interrupt our days of sleeping or taking a boat to the coral reefs except for the ludicrous incident when squatting in the bush I inadvertently let my balls brush against a plant which is the toxic plant of the West Indies.
⁸³⁷
And since we were on our way to Mass, the agony of standing in church was indescribable. I hope you'll forgive my invoking your name as a possible reviewer for the Botany Bay book to the
Los Angeles Times
review section. I didn't feel I could take it in, knowing so little of the history.

Has
The Day of Judgement
by Salvatore Satta come your way? A tremendous evocation of place – the place being the town of Nuoro in Eastern Sardinia. I read it ages ago in French because it's published by my Italian publisher. Also, at the age of 19 I went alone on a walking tour of Eastern Sardinia. It was terrifying to walk at dusk up the main street of Orgolos, the legendary ‘home' of the Sardinian bandit, looking for a bed and having every door slammed in one's face. One pal G[eorge] S[teiner] reviewed it for the
New Yorker
, but I don't think he really got the measure of it. Yes. I've known the Musil
⁸³⁸
for some time. Very marvellous! I may, at any minute, be off to the Sudan on some mildly nefarious business.
⁸³⁹
That is, if I recover from a bad bout of flu (I am recovering!).

I wish I could give up writing, don't you? More and more this book business tempts me into silence. There have been some frightfully funny incidents here: the best is that Virago Press were about to publish as an astonishing new ‘find' a novel by a young Pakistani girl called Rahila Khan
⁸⁴⁰
or something like it, with some quite sexy scenes between Pakistani girls and white boys: all very suitable to bring ‘literature ' to Britain's Asiatic community, all set for a big promotion etc. – when it was discovered that Rahila Khan was an Anglican clergyman in Brighton called the Rev Toby Forward! Great?

Next, at the Whitbread Prize there were 3 categories, the best novel, the best first novel, the best biography. The best book of the 3 was, at the beery businessman's dinner, then judged to be the winner.

The three were:

1. My friend Francis Wyndham who treated the whole affair with wonderful panache.

2. A paraplegic (or something worse) who had overcome his disability to write a book
⁸⁴¹
– and was of course declared the winner.

3. Ian McEwan
⁸⁴²
, who, when given a hard-luck slap on the back by one of the organisers, said: ‘Next year there'll be a man with an iron lung.'

Much love to you both, B & E

The categorisation of his own book troubled Chatwin, who, feeling that he must defend and protect the status of
The Songlines
as a novel, asked Tom Maschler to issue this statement.