Pursuit by John Calder

Pursuit by John Calder (Calder Publications, ?24.99)

John Calder is the last of a dying breed: a maverick publisher who goes
his own way regardless. In these - his "uncensored memoirs" as he calls
them - Calder gives a blow-by-blow account of his fifty years in
publishing during which he's championed and introduced to the British
reading public such controversial literary figures as Samuel Beckett,
William Burroughs and Henry Miller, plus French New Wave authors Alain
Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras. Never afraid to roll his sleeves up
and get stuck in, Calder fought a major obscenity trial at the Old
Bailey back in the sixties for Hubert Selby Jr's notorious novel Last
Exit to Brooklyn, which became a landmark victory.

I have to declare a personal interest, in that three of my own novels
have been published by Calder. And I've come to admire him for his
downright stubbornness (some might call it pig-headed obstinacy) in the
pursuit of an ideal - to inform and educate through literature and to
do whatever the opposite is of "dumbing down." Even today, in his
seventies, he still criss-crosses England and America with a briefcase
full of books, still eager to make a sale and spread the good word to
an increasingly apathetic and cynical world.

While at 600 pages this autobiography is overlong, it isn't your
average Grand Old Fart repenting at leisure. It's jaw-droppingly candid
at times, indeed rather juicy. Never a saint, as Calder himself admits,
he is frank about his many affairs and even includes an orgy here and
there. He's also keenly self-aware of his own failings, as when he
dedicates the book "to three people I know I have let down and to whom
I feel a deep guilt that no apology can mitigate." A rare breed, John
Calder. Practically extinct.

Trevor Hoyle