The literary feature: Publisher

As literary head hunters go, Tom Maschler was a Colossus. Working his way into Jonathan Cape via Penguin by 1960, he first collated Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and successfully negotiated Catch-22 in his first few months. From there it was up, Roald Dahl and Kurt Vonnegut both made their names under him and he published eleven Nobel Prize authors since 1963, and it would have been more if Graham Greene had kept his libido in check. But his successes do speak for themselves with Carlos Fuentes calling him Mr Latin American Literature.

For all his publishing accolades, humble he is not. A review by The Times [1].theeditorpressreview7 gives an account of Maschler being taken to a military asylum to identify Jesus Christ, only for him to leave, disappointed at not having found his son. As families go, his appears not to be the closest; much of the autobiographical content involves Maschler escaping or avoiding his family. Only later on do we have brief accounts of dinners, which invariably are shared with authors and his second wife. The only account of a friendship that isn’t a writer is with late publisher Graham C. Greene.

But this shouldn’t take away from what is a rather definitive picture of twentieth century literature. Written in a style which should best be described as Kingsley Amis-esque, Maschler takes the reader on a journey across Europe and back before embarking on the postwar Grand Tour of the United States that made so many literary figures back then. Reading this book makes it seem almost simple to break into the publishing market with writers seemingly turning up on his doorstep and becoming lifelong friends. A closer inspection shows more difficult relationships and short-lived affairs with some true heavyweights.

But Tom Maschler was a man who liked to make money, and it was his ingenuity and experience which created the Booker Prize at the start of the 1970s. Using his connection with the sugar plantation owning Booker Brothers and his love of Continental prizes, Britain’s most important Book Award was founded seemingly single handedly. Despite this, Maschler still feels a sense of pride when one of his writers wins, as detailed in the Salman Rushdie section of the book. Nor does he let his greed interfere with his ethics, canning Jeffrey Archer when the Peer demanded more money for his book, and keeping life-long friendships with Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake right to the end.

Although it may be easy to dismiss this book as a demonstration of literary egotism, I am certain that only the most bookish writer would fail to find a new name in there, and the anecdotes paint such a brilliant image of the post-War generation that it should survive on historical grounds. For all his faults Tom Maschler created two generations of writer from the ground and without him literature may well be a very different beast.

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