Translator, and publisher, John Calder (83) is a historic figure in 20th century literature. Calder famously published Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and William Burrough’s Naked Lunch, facing prosecution. He is best known for publishing the works of Samuel Beckett. Calder continues to hold readings at the Bookshop Theatre, on The Cut in London. He has also received the French Order of Merit. House met him to talk about his life and work.

Who won the tennis match you were playing with Rita Hayworth, in Cannes?
Well it wasn’t really a match. She was waiting for the Aga Kahn to turn up, and I was waiting for my brother. She suggested we hit the ball around for twenty minutes, so that’s what we did.

Do you have a process when it comes to writing?

No. Just get on with it whenever you have the time.

You’re quite a personality in the literary world in London.

A lot of people think I’m dead, actually.

Oh, really?

So many friends of my age have gone, the new younger people coming up have no idea that we were ever here.

Was there a favourite text that you liked to bring to class when you taught at Nanterre, one that got people talking?

I had to teach what I had to teach. I made up my own philosophy course, which worked very well. There were about forty students. At the start I asked them how many of them smoked, and they nearly all did. I made them look at what it said on the cigarette package, and asked them, ‘Now, is this true or do you think it’s a lie? If it’s true, why do you smoke?’ By the end of the course only two of them still smoked.

What was your method to quit smoking?

The first week I smoked sitting in the bathroom, on the edge of the bath, which was very boring. The second week I made myself go down into the street on a very cold January nights. And the third week I used to walk a mile away, have a smoke, and walk back. After a while, you know, smoking was too unpleasant.

And you never went back on them?

The funny thing is I went on dreaming about them for a long time.

Can you remember the best advice you ever gave as an editor?

It’s a very difficult thing to tell people how to write and what to write. What you can help them do is to be self-critical. One of the best things you can tell people is to read their manuscript out loud, if possible with somebody else listening too. The faults will come out.

Do you think the celebrity involved in being a writer today can reduce the quality of the work?

Well, that depends on the writer. In my experience the better the writer, the simpler he is. In those days writers were not very often asked to do anything in public. They didn’t expect to get paid; they do now of course.
People were very careful about what they said in public on the whole. Nobody was allowed to say anything particularly outspoken. It was vetted in advance by the BBC.

In your book you had direct or indirect contact with the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Provost, even Senator Joseph McCarthy. What is it about writers that scares those in power?

Writers have a long term influence. Politicians, in particular, are always thinking about their heritage; what they’re going to be remembered for. Because of writers, the politician’s final reputation, the way they’re seen, and their authority, can be completely destroyed. They know they’ll be remembered from what writers say about them.

You have large background in political protest. Do you see that coming back with people again?

Well, they’re going to do a lot more protesting in the next couple of years. There’s going to be more and more to protest about.

When you look around today, do you see the change you were fighting for in those early post-war years? Has it been worth it, or has it been a change for the better?

There’ve been a lot of good changes a lot of bad ones too. Things are getting worse now the whole time. First of all, we’ve been electing stupider and stupider politicians and also more and more corrupt ones.

You still read quite a lot?

Oh yes. I don’t have depth of vision, which makes it easy to read quite a lot.

Is there a writer you’re particularly fond of now?

Well, obviously the ones I helped to promote, like Beckett, who I think is a major twentieth century literary figure.

You tell a story about Samuel Beckett fuming because a guard at customs greeted him with ‘Welcome back Paddy’. Was Beckett proud of his heritage?

Oh yes. He was very Irish. Even when he spoke French, Beckett had an Irish accent. But he didn’t realise he had an Irish accent. He always denied he had an Irish accent, but he did, it was a typical Dublin accent.

People keep saying that pretty soon books will cease to exist due to technology. Does that worry you?

People who like books are not going to stop liking books. The satisfaction you get from a book is quite different from the satisfaction you get from anything else.

How do you like working with actors?

Well, I get on with actors. But some of them don’t get on with each other, so part of my role is peace keeping.

What kind of traits does a good director need?

Talent, and above all a willingness to be faithful to the author.

You write that you found your voice in poetry when you turned 70. Do you regret not spending more time on your own writing throughout the years?

You can’t do everything. Whatever you do, it stops you doing something else. I never lost my great admiration for T.S. Eliot, who I got to know later in life, I never shared all his opinions, especially his early ones, but he certainly influenced me when I was young.

You’ve met and worked with so many people. Were you ever star struck? You met Marilyn Monroe…

Oh. Yes. It was the morning of the opening of ‘A View From the Bridge’ in London, I was having breakfast with Arthur Miller, as Marylin was sitting in bed, reading, talking in at us. She looked beautiful even then.

You write about the dumbing down of culture. What is the remedy for that?

I think the remedy for that is what’s happening right now: hard times. People tend to become more serious during hard times. The trivia of people only interested in fashion and so on is bad for intellect, bad for culture, bad for innovation and ideas. The recession in the 1930’s was very different to now, but quite a good time culturally. And I think that’s going to happen again now. We’re not in for a little blip of a recession. We’re in for a long recession.

What was your biggest challenge as a publisher?

I’ve always published minorities and individuals. It takes a long time to establish a writer, especially if he’s doing something unusual or different.

The biggest challenge always was to publish someone you believed in, who got no good reviews, who nobody else understood, and finding a way of establishing them as a writer. One example was a book called Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat. It faired badly so I sent a copy to a list of people whose names I got out of the ‘Who’s who’; Bertrand Russell, Graham Green, people like that. A good many of them responded, read the book, liked it and gave it excellent quotes. I was able to take ads in the Sunday papers with the quotes, and it worked: in the end I was able to bring out another edition, and sell the rights to other countries. It’s no good just publishing a book, and sending out review copies and sitting back. You have to get out there.

How many times were you imprisoned?

Three or four times. It was never for very long. I was a very small fry. I was never bound over like some people were.

Which I don’t think is a risk many publishers would take today?

No. Publishing today, is run by capitalists. There are very few independents left. There are also very few editors, who may have the skill, but no opportunity to do anything with it. Everybody is looking for a book like the last book that did well. Real originality is not what people are looking for. It takes too long to pay its way.

Did you find writing your autobiography daunting in any way?

No. No problem. I’ve got another book coming out in a few weeks. Which is a literary history of the 1950’s and 60’s.

Were you aware at the time of the privilege your upbringing allowed?

Well, everything is pretty much luck. If you’re in the right place at the right time, great things happen to you, if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time you get killed, or badly hurt.

Was it nice to focus on your own writing after so long focusing on others’?

Yes. And it’s doing particularly well in other languages.
Books aren’t discussed in the House of Lords anymore…
Well, they could be. I have an old enemy, William Rees-Mogg, an editor of the Times, who used to editorialise against me, and who wanted me tried for high treason [due to the publication of Gangrene]. Interestingly it was followed by a general election. It was the first thing to be discussed in the first cabinet meeting after the election, and it lead to political action.

What was your opinion of critics when you were working in publishing?

You try to influence them, and hope they like what you’re doing. There were a lot of very opinionated people who didn’t think very deeply about what they were writing about. A lot of people make their minds up about things in advance, before they’ve thought about what it is they’re making their mind up over.

John Calder’s autobiography ‘Pursuit’ is published by Calder Press

Words: Michael Henry Martin
Photography: Elliot Dollie
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As Editor of gentlemen’s ‘top shelf’ mags Juggs and Leg Show, Dian Hanson came to the attention of Benedikt Taschen who courted her for years before she took on the title of Sexy Books Editor at his publishing house. Since then Dian has brought out such terrific tomes as Terryworld, The Big Book Of Breasts and Tom of Finland XXL.

Taschen took a risk doing Sexy Books. The explicit sex could have ruined the brand, but actually it’s made it more dangerous and exciting.

The only person who I’ve experienced before who had this same approach as Benedikt and got away with it was Larry Flynt. He simply didn’t care. Magazines I did, lawyers wouldn’t let us do it. We’d say, ‘Larry Flynt does it.’ And they’d say, ‘He’s Larry Flynt.’ And that’s the same with Benedikt. He’s Benedikt Taschen. When it comes from Benedikt, they’re confident that it will be accepted as art.

Even though you’re dealing with the same erotic material as when you were working at magazines, do you see a difference in reactions from people now you work for a higher-end publishing house?

I’m publishing much more explicit material now that I could ever publish in the magazines. I liked the people in the porn community. I felt at home there. I had tremendous respect within that community and if sometimes I got little respect on the outside, I was still content with the respect I had within the community. But definitely I’d been scorned by the art community. Not artists – I was always friends with artists and artists always like sexual material.

And have you now found that respect in the wider art community?

I do get to know people that I wouldn’t perhaps have come across. The artist Richard Prince, who’s a wonderful person, I probably wouldn’t have met if I’d just stayed in that world. Terry Richardson, who I very well may have met!

Do you think being a woman has ever been an issue for you in this kind of publishing?

Working in the porn industry was very easy as a woman, because publishers assumed that women knew special things about male sexuality and therefore we were coveted, desired. I never had any of that, ‘Ugh, this is a man’s world, get out of it.’ Porn is made by a bunch of nerds who have been shy around women and I did learn to be a motherly boss.

It’s been said that a female editor of a male porn magazine is a bit like a mistress for the readers.

The majority of men feel they can’t talk about their sexuality with women. And I’m not just talking about foot fetishists and men with off the wall sexuality, but normal, garden variety men whose testosterone gives them a higher sex drive than their female partners. So many men have said over the years, ‘You’re the first woman I’ve talked to about my sexuality.’ And their sexuality would be so nothing, so vanilla, so acceptable. They broke my heart these guys.

I guess you were less the mistress and more like the madam of the whorehouse then!

Yes, exactly. I would be the woman who knew all, had seen all, who had, in their fantasies, experienced all and therefore take whatever secret they had and still like them.

There’s historically been a crossover of porn and good writing in magazines like Playboy. You do the same, mixing porn with thought-provoking essays. How did that all start?

In 1953, all the other men’s magazines at the time were aimed at a manly, Ernest Hemingway image. The guy who liked to boss broads, but the rest of his time wanted to race cars and wrestle alligators. And here comes Hugh Hefner, who’s a skinny little nerd. He’s not this kind of guy, so he creates a formula where he taught men that they can have women by buying the right things; they can have women by being sophisticated, by learning how to fix a drink, by learning how to cook, by decorating their homes, by learning how to dress in sensual fabrics. Basically, he was the first Queer Eye For The Straight Guy and by making men embrace the feminine side of their natures, he promised that they could get more women. You can see why this was attractive for this vast number of men who were never going to be alligator wrestlers. And part of this was that he encouraged men to be well-read.

www.taschen.com
Words: Stuart Brumfitt

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