Pursuit: The Memoirs of John Calder

by John Calder

  That summer I had also been in Belgrade. I was already friendly with Alexandar Stefanović, brother of Luba Stefanović, the head of Jugoslavia Publishing House, which had done some printing for me. I liked Luba very much, although his hospitality on top of my workload was killing. I would get up at 4.30 a.m., go to his office, correct proofs and supervise the compositors who were setting books in English for me and drink innumerable cups of Turkish coffee. Then someone would be told to take me to lunch, usually consisting of ćevapčići, smoked fish and other local delicacies with Yugoslav wines – after which, quite ready for a nap, another employee of Jugoslavia Publishing House, who were both publishers and printers, would turn up to give me a tour of war memorials and historic sights. And at night Luba, well rested himself, would take me to dinner and keep me out late; after two hours’ sleep the day would start again.

  Often it was Alex Stefanović who had charge of me during the day. He edited a literary magazine, the best of its kind in Yugoslavia as he assured me, which was subsidised by the state, but he was nevertheless an old royalist with no time for Communist bureaucracy. He still did what he liked, though. He would stride through Belgrade’s public parks with me, loudly denouncing the regime, and once took me into a government building and with a perfunctory knock on the door walked into a minister’s office and introduced me to the minister himself. I forget which one, but it may well have been Foreign Affairs. The man looked with distaste at Alex, but shook my hand and said a few pleasant words.

  One of Alex’s principal complaints was not having a car: “How can a married man ever have an affair without his wife knowing without a car?” It was impossible to get away from neighbours’ prying eyes! I invited Alex to Edinburgh, and he agreed to fund his own passage. After all, he had much to say, knew Yugoslav and European literature and spoke excellent English. He had translated Doctor Zhivago into Serbo-Croat and had brought the book to Feltrinelli in Italy, who thereby had acquired western copyright and was making a fortune out of it. All that Alex ever received from Feltrinelli was a lunch.

  Jim Haynes had recruited both university staff and students, all customers of his bookshop, to do the dozens of small jobs that included meeting the writers as they arrived by plane, train and car, and taking them to their accommodation, which varied from the grandest houses of Edinburgh to hotels of every description.

  On Sunday, 21st August, they all poured in. Jim Haynes had only one major function that day, which was to take the folder of conference papers around to the principal addresses in Central Edinburgh. His recruits, whom I had dubbed the Charles Street Irregulars (his bookshop was on Charles Street) were covering the rest. One of Jim’s calls was the Caledonian Hotel, where the official Yugoslav writer, the one who had been sent at the expense of his government and had been chosen by it – his name featuring importantly in the programme – was staying. Jim never got there. He met a girl he liked on Princes Street on the way, so Šegedin never received his all-important folder, which included the conference programme, details of where to be at what times, invitations to receptions, Edinburgh maps and a timetable of events.

  There was a big party on the Sunday night, given at the large flat of Mrs McPhee, who was revelling at the prospect of meeting all the world’s leading writers in her own home. It was a successful gathering where local Scottish writers dropped their suspicions and mingled happily with others from faraway countries.

  Everybody had a per diem spending allowance, but no one was getting a fee for attendance. I had asked everyone to come to McEwan Hall the next morning at 11.30. There, in one of the large rooms behind the stage, we drank coffee and worked out the day’s format. Malcolm Muggeridge chaired the meeting. “We’ll just go around everyone very briefly and ask ‘How is the novel doing?’ he said. I had worked out a stage format where there would be a chairman, sitting on a kind of dais in the centre, and a different panel of four writers each day, selected to comment on the proceedings from time to time. They would be seated at a table with microphones, and there were two other standing microphones where individual writers, one by one, would make their statements.

  I wanted to mix debate and speeches, and also to make it possible for two writers to confront each other on different sides of the chairman across the stage. As the week progressed, experience made it possible to change and improve these arrangements to get the best dramatic effects. The panel could interrupt, question a speaker and openly discuss a point among themselves. The public would be allowed to come in from time to time, and individual writers, sitting in a body above and behind the chairman, the panel and the speakers at the microphones, could indicate their desire to be heard. It was all very new and untried, but in the event it worked. At that first morning meeting, we decided the order of speakers, starting with Angus Wilson.

  Then there was a buffet lunch with wine in another room, which also served as a conference office. At two o’clock I went to the front of the hall, leaving Muggeridge to lead people in at 2.30. Jim Haynes had organized a number of book stalls with the novels of the writers present that he had been able to obtain, as well as a selection of books from his shop. An amazing sight greeted me. There was a long queue of people waiting to buy tickets. The Festival office, which had never really believed in the event, especially as only a small number of tickets had been sold in advance, had sent only one person to man the box office. Over a thousand were waiting, with more arriving every minute. In addition I had earphones to let which enabled those who had them to hear simultaneous translation between the three languages, and there was also the official programme book to sell at five shillings each.

  I telephoned the festival to send more helpers and started to organize Jim’s volunteers to desert the book tables in order to sell programmes and let the earphones instead. Jim had to rush to the bank to get more money for floats. Gradually the hall filled up and the writers came onto the platform, watching with interest the different levels of the hall with its 2,300 seats gradually becoming full. It was well after 3.00 p.m. when Malcolm Muggeridge started the proceedings. But the afternoon began well and very soon there were dramatic clashes, one between Angus Wilson and Khushwant Singh, the latter declaring that there was only one kind of love that was valid, which was heterosexual love. This drove Wilson into a frenzy, and soon other homosexual writers were on the attack as well. What no one knew was that Singh had a son at Oxford who was rumoured to be gay, and the father was very unhappy about it.

  Most of this I had to read about in the next day’s papers, because I was still trying to get earphones into the hands of those who wanted them. At about four o’clock, a worried and confused-looking man came in. He had found the hall and the conference, but did not know what to do. It was Šegedin. I took him to a seat on the platform. Alexandar Stefanović was talking just then, in English, about the literary situation in Yugoslavia.

  I went back to the office behind the stage, where Sonia Orwell was still sitting, finishing off the wine, looking more than a little under the weather. She was already exhausted. For a minute or two I listened in to the proceedings in the hall through earphones, which still worked backstage. It was becoming ever livelier as the actor that lies buried in the hearts of so many writers began to emerge, and each played to the public, who were applauding their statements and taking sides. The figures on the platform soon discovered where their constituency lay in that audience and tried to please it. Different parties and rivalries were already forming: Khushwant Singh versus Angus Wilson, Mary McCarthy versus Rebecca West, those who wanted total literary freedom versus those who wanted tight control on copyright, writers from colonial countries against those from countries that had colonized them. The audience were following all the cut and thrust and loving it.

  The first day was meant to end at 5.30, but in view of the late start and the obvious interest in continuing, Muggeridge did not end the session until 6.30. Then Šegedin walked over to Stefanović and attacked him furiou
sly. How dare he talk about the Yugoslav novel before he, the official delegate, had spoken? Was there a plot afoot against him? No one had met him, or told him where to go or what was happening, all in obvious contrast to the other writers present. With a curt “Dobra večer” he strode out, while Alex, waving his arms helplessly, looked worried. It was soon apparent that Šegedin was a man of importance, a diplomat as well as a novelist. He had been the Yugoslav Ambassador in Paris. Also he was a Croat, while Stefanović was a Serb.

  The evening was organized with another party, so having checked that all was going smoothly, I went to the King’s Theatre, just before 7.30, to look for the Yugoslav cultural attaché, whom I knew well. The Ljubljana Opera was performing Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges. An official car drove up, and out came the Yugoslav Ambassador to Britain with a party that included the attaché. I plucked him by the sleeve, and he looked at me coldly. “You have done something terrible,” he said, “and there will be big trouble!’ Then he went in.

  I had much to do that evening, and towards the end of it I tried to find out where the cultural attaché was staying. I tracked him down at midnight. I waited until 7.00 in the morning, then went to the private flat where he was staying and rang the doorbell. He came out in a dressing gown. After abject apologies I told him exactly what had happened and in the end he believed me. It had been thought that the whole mishap was a plot by the CIA or MI5 to discredit and humiliate his country, and the Ambassador was contemplating pulling the opera, the ballet, a symphony orchestra, an art exhibition and other participating artists, including the Drolc Quartet, out of the Festival, which that year focused on Slavic music and art. Finally he told me that he was breakfasting with the Ambassador and Šegedin at 9.30 at the Caledonian Hotel. If I turned up just after 10.00, he would see what he could do.

  I was there at 10.00, had a cup of coffee with them and explained what had happened all over again. The messenger sent to the Caledonian had somehow failed to deliver the folder, which I then gave to Šegedin. That Tuesday was the Scottish day, but I arranged that Šegedin should have the platform to make a statement at the beginning. He told me his wife was a specialist in Adam architecture, and I said that I would arrange a special tour of Adam’s buildings for him the following morning. We broke up amicably.

  The morning newspapers announced a sensation. The conference was on most of the front pages, certainly on the Scottish ones, and there were long reports on inside pages, especially in the Scotsman, where Magnus Magnusson had done us proud. In 1962, subjects such as sex were not discussed in public, and the frankness of the exchanges was headline material. The hall had been nearly full, and we were already the hit and the main talking point of the Festival.

  I had not expected the other writers, except for one or two, to turn up to hear Scottish literature discussed, and had excused them from the morning briefing, but many came to that anyway, and they all came in the afternoon. The format was different: the Scottish writers sat at a long table facing the audience, and the others were on the tiered platforms behind them. David Daiches sat in the middle of the table and chaired the discussion. Around him sat Hugh MacDiarmid, Sydney Goodsir Smith, Edwin Morgan, Naomi Mitchison and, at the very end, Alexander Trocchi.

  On the first day I had put jugs of water and some wine on the table where the panel sat. Jim Haynes, when I was contemplating what to put on the table, suddenly suggested, “What about the wine of the country?” So I put jugs of water and carafes of whisky on the long table. Sydney Goodsir Smith, a good tippler, took full advantage, and by the end of the afternoon he was incoherent.

  Šegedin’s attitude changed that afternoon. As he said afterwards, “I didn’t know you had nationalism in Scotland. I thought it was only Yugoslavia!’ Hugh MacDiarmid launched an all-out attack on everything English, especially the perfidious influence of the English literary establishment on Scottish literature. There were more moderate voices, but the counter-attack came from Trocchi, an expatriate Scot from Glasgow with an Italian name, whom nobody had ever heard of. MacDiarmid was a communist who had been expelled from the Communist Party for nationalism and a Scottish Nationalist who had been expelled from the SNP, then a rather ineffective party of Scottish intellectuals and academics, for communism. As Scotland’s best-known poet he was a natural enemy of Calvinist conformity and middle-class values, but underneath the rugged peasant exterior lurked an old-fashioned, often narrow-minded puritan. Trocchi had lived in Paris, New York and California, advocated and belonged to the hippie lifestyle, and had experimented with every kind of drug. He had given himself a heroin injection just before 2.30. They attacked each other with vehemence, although underneath they were basically on the same side. “I want no uniformity,” said MacDiarmid, defending himself. “Neither do I,” responded Trocchi, “not even a kilt.” MacDiarmid was wearing one.

  Apart from the MacDiarmid-Trocchi exchange, there was much other discussion, but the half-hour transcript that BBC Scotland put out on the radio that evening concentrated on the fireworks, as did the next day’s newspapers, which gave very full coverage to what had been said. But it was not only the Scottish writers who spoke. Many other writers on the platform felt that what was said about Scotland and its literature applied equally to their own situations and, in particular, Erich Fried had much to say, most of it in connection with nationalism and its dangers. He had already made his mark on the Monday and would have much more to say during the coming days. He was one of the emerging stars who the public were getting to know and like. He became a friend of Mary McCarthy, who had her own little coterie which included Niccolò Tucci, an Italian writer whom she had persuaded Sonia to invite. The Scottish day became another international day as Scottish literary problems found their echoes elsewhere.

  There was a big civic reception that night to which all the writers were invited, and I was put at a table where Šegedin was sitting next to the Lord Provost’s secretary, a Mr Murdoch, who seemed to know a great deal about Robert Adam, so he got on well with the Yugoslav writer, who was now in a very good mood. On other days I arranged little dinners for about ten writers at a time, putting together people who had a common language or common interests. So, for instance, we had a pleasant dinner one night with Martin Esslin, Heinrich Ledig-Rowohlt, the Hamburg publisher, Harry Mulisch and one or two others who spoke German. Some of the English writers like L.P. Hartley and J.R. Ackerley had little to say. Others like Jennifer Johnson. Colin MacInnes and Simon Raven intervened occasionally, as did Dame Rebecca West, who had produced a son out of wedlock with H.G. Wells and written books of many different kinds. I personally associated her with the Alger Hiss case, because of her review of Lord Jowitt’s book that had led to its withdrawal, but she had her particular admirers in the audience. Her exchanges with Mary McCarthy bristled with mutual dislike as they scored points off each other, each seeking more applause from their supporters in the hall. Simon Raven asked what all the talk was about. Surely writers were interested in money, not principles, and that was why they wrote. Certainly it was only money that made him write. As the days passed, Norman Mailer became more expansive and took a greater part: he too wanted to hear his words greeted with applause.

  Malcolm Muggeridge left on the Tuesday. He and Sonia had been lodged in a large flat I had rented on Circus Place, and his motive from the start had been to get Sonia into bed. But she was not interested in Malcolm that way, so he took umbrage and left. Angus Wilson more or less took over his function as conference chairman, but at that point I was waking every morning at five o’clock with new ideas and daily changing the format, which by the third day had two panels of commentators that dialogued both between members of their own panel and across the stage to the other one. We now had two microphones on stands for single speakers and three roving ones in the audience, which remained at capacity right up to the last day.

  From the third day we were giving the audience a real show. The two panels argued with each o
ther and with the speakers, who were called to the microphone. The third day was about “commitment”: should a writer be serving a cause or only his own talent? The debate was heated, and the third-world countries came into their own, attacking the colonial powers which were still hanging on to their dominance wherever they could. Black writers from Africa and the Caribbean were especially forceful. This would surprise no one several decades later, but it was very new then. Alan Paton had been invited, but had been unable to obtain a visa to leave South Africa. His telegram of protest was read out to the hall and greeted rapturously.

  On the fourth day, the subject was censorship. Malcolm Muggeridge had wanted it to be the first day’s subject, but I intended the debates to build up to a logical climax. Almost all the panel, naturally enough, were against censorship in general, but Rebecca West and Khushwant Singh were for it – on their own terms, of course. The exchanges between Mary McCarthy and Rebecca West were the sharpest yet. Maurice Girodias turned up for that day only, and he pointed out how ridiculous censorship can be. Norman Mailer had a lot to say – so did Erich Fried, and nearly everyone managed to get their oar in, even if only for a soundbite. But the highlight was Henry Miller, long banned in Britain and still the subject of prosecutions in different American cities and states, all of them being fought by Barney Rosset at great cost. Barney had published Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn the previous year and was not only fighting state prosecutions, but suing pirate editions that were appearing after nearly every victory he won in a local court.