The Life of Margaret Laurence

by James King

  It seems to me to be the only really true thing I have ever written—this because it is the only thing written entirely from the inside, with the kind of knowledge that one can only have of one’s own people, who are, as the Muslims say about Allah, as close to you as your own neck vein. I do not know why I had so many doubts about HAGAR, initially—possibly because I wasn’t sure I could write about anything in which the theme was all inner, not outer.… Personally, I think she is a hell of an old lady! Of course, I may be prejudiced. Anyway, for better or worse, the voice in which she speaks is all her own, and I think now that I can’t ever again be content to write in anything except this idiom, which is of course mine.

  Margaret had discovered her own unique writing voice. As well, she would continue on another path initiated by her new book: she would create characters and situations which would allow her to exploit that special voice. In the future, she would not shirk from writing about a virgin spinster or a troubled, stir-crazy housewife, protagonists not calculated to shine in the public eye.

  Before Jack McClelland could respond to Margaret’s letter, he received an inquiry about her from Alfred Knopf, who remembered that his editors and Jack had once been at loggerheads about the quality of Leonard Cohen’s writing. Jack had supported the Montreal poet and novelist enthusiastically, whereas the Knopf editors had seen little merit in him. Knopf had been told, erroneously, that McClelland & Stewart had agreed “in advance to publish anything that [Margaret Laurence] writes.” On July 5, McClelland wrote Alfred Knopf: “While I could not confirm that we have agreed in advance to publish anything that Margaret Laurence writes, I would say that I don’t anticipate that she will ever write anything that we shall not want to publish.”

  Although This Side Jordan had been offered to Knopf in 1959, they had rejected it. When Jack McClelland had offered the book to Knopf, he had done so in—for him—an extremely laidback way, disguising the fact that he was eager to place the book.

  This is simply a novel manuscript that has been recommended to us by a number of outside readers. It’s had a cursory reading in our office and the feeling is that it may have some merit. I read the first two chapters only, and felt myself that it warranted a serious look, so I decided to leave it with you. I think the writer shows some promise. The background is interesting because it is possibly the first novel that has been set in Ghana. The writer is unknown to me. Whether it is publishable or not is anybody’s guess. I would appreciate it if you would give it what attention you can and let us know whether or not you think it is something you want to publish.

  In November 1959 an editor at Knopf told Alfred: “We have now had a report on the manuscript by Margaret Laurence that you left with us. Unfortunately I was unable to read it myself, but the report seems to confirm the impression you had, that this is not quite a successful book by a writer who shows considerable promise. Our reader felt that she had created an interesting situation and succeeded in creating the atmosphere of a place torn by racial conflict. But, I quote, ‘the novel is not as tightly controlled as it should be, the author lapses into pages of rhetoric about the African “mystique,” and the characters are often wooden. The writer should be watched; she can evoke a scene and a conflict, but is not yet master of her craft.’ ” In 1963, Knopf himself decided to review the entire matter when John Cushman offered three books as a package (The Prophet’s Camel Bell, The Tomorrow-Tamer and The Stone Angel). Initially, Knopf was not enthusiastic about such a deal because “whoever takes her up will have quite a job on his hands.”

  Meanwhile, a very confused Jack McClelland wrote Margaret a no-nonsense letter telling her flatly that not only was her work being rushed into print but also that simultaneous publication of several works could prove disastrous:

  More often than not I find myself writing to you like a Dutch uncle.… What in hell goes on at Macmillan’s? Have they gone completely berserk? They are rushing the short stories into print. They are rushing the novel into print … Even if you were the second coming of Christ it would be foolish to publish three of your books in one season, or even three of your books between this fall and next spring.… please believe even though Macmillan is one of the great imprints in the publishing world that editorial policy in English publishing houses is inclined to be too damn lax.… It may be that you have rushed it too much. It may be that it has flaws. I know very well that you won’t make changes unless you agree entirely with the suggestions that are made and I think this is the way it should be. But surely there is time to have HAGAR properly evaluated. This is going to be a key book in your writing career.

  He strongly suggested she phone Alan Maclean and demand production of the Hagar novel cease immediately. Of course, she refused:

  I am sorry to be nasty about this matter, but I resented your remark about the second coming of Christ so much that it was very fortunate for both of us that you were not present at the time, otherwise I would have clobbered you with the nearest solid object available. I do not imagine that HAGAR is without flaws, nor am I so lacking in critical perception that I delude myself about the quality of my writing.… Please, Jack, do not ever imagine that I am at this point over-estimating my own abilities. My problem has always been the reverse—to have enough faith in my own writing capacities to be able to go on, in some fashion, because the alternative—not to go on—would mean that nothing at all was any good anywhere for me, since this kind of work appears to be a necessary condition of life.

  Only five months earlier, in February 1963, Blanche Knopf had turned down The Prophet’s Camel Bell, based on this chauvinistic readers report by Patrick Gregory: “Mrs. Laurence spent a year or so in Somaliland with her engineer husband. Her narrative of this sojourn is lacking in any sort of distinction, for she brings to her work neither a gift for prose, nor a fund of erudition, nor a discriminating eye. At best, she provides us with an accurate picture of an average Canadian housewife’s view of an exotic land. But this best is hardly worthy of serious attention.”

  However, it is not entirely surprising Alfred Knopf was willing to consider a change of opinion regarding Margaret Laurence. He respected Jack McClelland’s instincts as a publisher and his own taste in books was almost diametrically opposed to his wife’s—and to some of his editors. John Cushman, knowing very well the Knopfs often agreed to disagree—and in the process sometimes overruled each other—took pains to call Margaret Laurence to Alfred’s attention.

  Although they were both native New Yorkers, Blanche, who had been educated by French and German governesses, gravitated towards European writers (Gide, Mann and Sartre were great favourites) and refined English writers such as Elizabeth Bowen; in contrast, Alfred’s taste led in the direction of books dealing with frontiers and the opening up of the American West. In particular, he was a great admirer of Willa Cather, an author whose work bears many similarities to that of Margaret Laurence.

  In 1963, the firm of Alfred A. Knopf had been in existence for forty-eight years and Alfred, one of the most renowned of American publishers, was seventy-one. Like his wife, he had a forceful personality and a passion for books of the highest quality. As a young man in the sales division of Doubleday, he enthusiastically and energetically promoted Conrad’s Chance and, in the process, earned the author’s undying gratitude. As a publisher, he believed high-quality typography should grace all the writings which bore his art decoish imprint, the borzoi. (In an article in The New Yorker in 1948, Geoffrey Hellman explained the origin of this logo: “Mrs. Knopf … was crazy about Borzois in 1915, or thought she was, and suggested that they use a drawing of one as a trademark. ‘I bought a couple of them later,’ she says, ‘and grew to despise them. One died and I gave the other to a kennel. I wished I’d picked a better dog for our imprint.’ ”) In the sixties, Knopf’s fiction list included Shirley Ann Grau, John Updike, Muriel Spark and Doris Lessing.

  Knopf asked for three sets of reports on the three-book Laurence package. One reviewer—Henry Robbins—found The To
morrow-Tamer a “collection of good but rather conventional stories … I couldn’t help but feel that I had gotten this message only too often before”; the same person could not understand “what all the excitement at Wing’s office and Macmillan’s is about, for [Hagar], evidently the prize in the three-book package, strikes me as an intelligently written but rather dreary tale.… The real failure for me comes, I suppose, in Mrs. Laurence’s failure to make her pathetic matriarch into a really attractive character.… I certainly cannot see our taking her on at this point, and especially with three unsalable books.” Another reader, “BWS,” who compared Margaret Laurence to Daphne DuMaurier as a good “middle-brow writer,” was much more favourably disposed, especially to the African books. However, his reaction to Hagar was diametrically opposed to his colleague’s: “What makes this story strong is the author’s refusal to let pathos obscure the harshness in Hagar’s character.” Leo Lemay, an editor in whose opinion Alfred Knopf had implicit trust, was even more enthusiastic than BWS:

  This novel, which I found unusually engrossing, will not appeal to everyone. It may not, as a matter of fact, appeal to very many readers, but it is the work of a good novelist, a writer who belongs on the Knopf list and a writer who will bring distinction and probably profit, someday, to the house.… I thought it quite remarkable that a woman in her middle thirties could so graphically project herself into the life of a woman over fifty years older. There is also, in this book, an unsparing honesty about the nature of the woman herself.… We should present this writer with a great deal of noise.

  He concluded his report by mentioning he was not pleased with the title.

  Suitable title or not, Alfred Knopf became sufficiently enthusiastic that he eventually decided to do something unique in the history of his firm: he would publish three new books (the American edition of Prophet’s was entitled New Wind in a Dry Land) by the same author on the same day. “Well,” he told Jack McClelland, “we are taking the plunge on Margaret Laurence, putting up no less than five thousand dollars for the three books.” He was doing this because a “reasonable amount” of enthusiasm had been generated to offset “very negative reactions.” He added: “I do want to say to you quite honestly that were it not for your enthusiasm for the lady and her work, we would not be taking her up.”

  Alfred Knopf was a careful reader. On January 29, 1964, he asked Margaret to explain the “geography” of The Stone Angel, which, as a non-Canadian, he found confusing. On February 1, she replied, providing her publisher with information on the various locales: “I don’t think you are being dense in the slightest. For some reason, I was reluctant to explain anything more than was absolutely necessary, perhaps because I felt that the actual places were not the important thing. The names of the towns are fictitious, but Manawaka is meant to be located somewhere in southern Manitoba, like the town of Neepawa, where I grew up.… Hagar lived on the prairies for most of her life, but when she left her husband she went to the west coast of Canada, to a city which—although it is not named—is Vancouver.… When Hagar runs away from her son’s house, in her last attempt at independence, she goes to a deserted fish cannery on the shore of the Pacific. When we lived in Vancouver, we had a summer cottage at a place called Point Roberts, which was actually in the State of Washington—a tiny point of land that had been cut off from the rest of America by the boundary between Canada and the U.S.A. We used to say that we owned part of the U.S.A. There was an old ramshackle fish cannery there, similar to the one in the story. A great deal of The Stone Angel was written at Point Roberts, so perhaps that is why it somehow found its way into the novel.”

  McClelland, who had been urging caution to Margaret, was thrilled, especially as he had finally had a chance to read Hagar: “I don’t think it will be the easiest novel to sell that I have read recently, but I think it is a moving and a first-rate piece of writing.… I agree completely about the title. It is hopeless and I will take the matter up with the author right away.” The title had also been a concern of Alan Maclean’s. First of all, Margaret countered with “Rage Against the Dying” (the quote from Dylan Thomas is used as the book’s epigraph); Maclean did not like this and made some suggestions, at which point she began rereading the Psalms for inspiration. Her new choice, “Sword in My Bones,” displeased even her: “This title seemed to me to suggest either a who-dun-it by Mickey Spillane or some kind of blood-and-thunder story.” In Dance on the Earth, Margaret states that the title of the book finally “stared out at me in the first sentence of the book itself” early in 1964; in fact, the dispute over the title was resolved by the end of September 1963.

  Knopf’s acceptance of her three books cheered Margaret, but, as she told Adele two months later, it also “frightened the hell out of” her. Why this was, she was uncertain. In large part, it was because she was afraid her literary career might be over just as it had begun. She was struggling with her new novel. She had “destroyed so many pages in the last six months” that she hated to think of the cost of the paper that had been trashed. Her new novel was about Stacey MacAindra and was the novel which eventually became The Fire-Dwellers, but in the autumn of 1963 her work on that book—probably because it was so close to her own recent experiences in Vancouver—became impossible.

  She once told her friend Gordon Elliott: “One’s writing is not meant to be bound up with one’s life, but only jerks believe this.” At times, when she valiantly attempted to work on that narrative, she became convinced she would be forced to return to Vancouver “to the same house and to the same groove, and then I get rather low in my mind and start hitting the bottle, which is very dangerous. I have been much better of late, however, having scared myself in this way so much that it provided the necessary shock or something. Anyway, I know now that I am not an alcoholic, which for a time I thought I must be, but I have to take care in this area and always will.” At about the time she was wrestling with a novel that was completely resistant to her best efforts to bring it to life, Margaret had to cope with a miserable experience.

  In mid-October 1963, Robert Weaver, who organized the CBC literary program “Anthology,” was in London. He contacted Margaret and suggested they go to a party at Mordecai and Florence Richler’s. Margaret must have been very surprised to see George Lamming there, accompanied by a woman named Ethel, a Jewish emigré from South Africa active in the anti-apartheid movement. The situation was awful enough for Margaret, but things became even worse when the playwright David Mercer began to pay court to Ethel and an enraged Lamming threatened to beat him up. Just as the two men were set to go at each other, Richler intervened (at some point, Lamming had complained to him about Mercer) and the threat of violence ended when Richler asked Mercer to leave. Margaret drank very heavily that evening and was beside herself with anguish when she and Weaver arrived back at Heath Hurst Road. As she stumbled up the stairs, she woke the children. Jocelyn, accustomed to looking after David, was frightened by the display of her out-of-control mother, but she had to stifle her own feelings in the wake of her small brother’s tears. Weaver departed quickly and Jocelyn settled David. Margaret had passed out.

  Margaret’s behaviour on the evening she encountered Lamming was not typical of her response to excessive drinking. Usually, she would become maudlin and repetitive. Another hallmark of her drunken behaviour was that she would almost always speak of Neepawa, especially her grandfather Simpson. In drinking, she sought a state of consciousness that—if not true to the facts of her daily life—allowed her free access to her deepest feelings. She was also trying to exert some sort of control over reality by liberating herself from it and thus making it—for a short duration—less painful. The irony was that in returning to Neepawa when she drank, she probably made herself more unhappy in her daily life but, at the very same time, got in touch with the forces in her past out of which she constructed her greatest writings.

  Earlier, in the summer of 1963, Frances Bolton, a twenty-one-year-old cousin of Jack Laurence’s, had come over f
rom Canada to live with Margaret and the children. She looked after the children while Margaret wrote; she also provided the exceedingly lonely writer with much needed companionship. In London, Margaret made friends with Alice Frick and Marjory Whitelaw, journalists associated with the CBC, and saw the Richlers occasionally, but otherwise knew very few people. Soon after she arrived in London, Margaret had joined the CND (Committee for Nuclear Disarmament) and even took part in the last day of the massive CND-organized Aldermaston March in the spring of 1963.

  Without doubt, she felt close to despair, despite the incredible way her writing career was taking off. Late that autumn, she was delighted to take advantage of an offer made by Jack’s firm to pay her way out to East Pakistan. She left the children with Nadine, who came down from Scotland, where she was now living, to look after them. Years later, Margaret wrote of an attempted seduction on the flight from London to Karachi. “The blankets were handed out by the stewardess, and the lights turned off for the night. There were three seats in the row, but only two were occupied. Me and the salesman. He began by expressing the opinion that we’d both be more comfortable if we removed the armrests between the seats. I, however, thought otherwise. After a weary night spent in fending off this clown, my inborn sense of tact and politeness was wearing decidedly thin. ‘Well, at least it must be a change from the farmer’s daughter,’ I sourly commented.”

  When she arrived back that December, she sent Jack McClelland an enthusiastic report of her sojourn in the East:

  Having spent a month in the wilds of Pakistan I still have some feeling of unreality, although I am quickly being brought back to the realities of life by the English climate, which is pretty awful at the moment. I had a very good visit, during which my husband managed to take a week’s local leave and we went to see a lot of ancient Hindu temples in India, which probably sounds rather deadly but was actually quite interesting, especially as they included the Black Pagoda at Konarak, famed for its pornographic carvings. I have personally unearthed (I think) the secret of the Black Pagoda—the reason why so many of the amorous postures look so uncomfortable is that owing to the rectangular shape of the building blocks all the couples had to be pictured in standing positions, and let’s face it, the permutations and combinations are strictly limited to the human physique. With me, a little tourism goes a long way, but I must admit I found these temples quite beautiful, although the climate was extremely warm and there were odd moments when I would have traded every ancient temple in India for one very dry martini, well iced. We went swimming in the Bay of Bengal, which was marvellous, and I acquired a wonderful tan, which I am now unable to show off, as England is too cold to expose even an arm.