标题: 1958.2 约瑟夫-康拉德：出版史上的一个脚注 [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-8-4 03:00 标题: 1958.2 约瑟夫-康拉德：出版史上的一个脚注 Joseph Conrad: A Footnote to Publishing History
ALFRED A. KNOPF had graduated from Columbia and was serving his apprenticeship at Doubleday, Page & Co. when his enthusiasm for Joseph Conrad first had the opportunity to express itself. It seemed to him shocking that such a master of English prose should be so little read in the United States, and when he was allowed to read the manuscript of Conrad’s novel, CHANCE, young Knopf initialed a campaign to present the author in a new light.
By Alfred A. Knopf
FEBRUARY 1958 ISSUE
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ALFRED A. KNOPF
WHEN I was an undergraduate at Columbia I sometimes used to buy books at Scribner’s retail store, which was then on Fifth Avenue below Twenty-Second Street. A tall soil-spoken gentleman named Simpson worked there, and he sold me Lord Jim one day in 1910 or 1911 and thus started me reading Joseph Conrad.
That July I made my first visit to England. In my junior year I had discovered Galsworthy’s novels in a secondhand bookshop in Harlem run by Carol Cox and his father. Joel Spingarn, about to be ousted as professor of comparative literature, gave annual prizes for undergraduate stories and essays. I wrote Galsworthy telling him that I was attempting an essay on him and asking for some biographical information. How little he was known in America at that time may be gathered from the answer my teacher, John Erskine, gave me when I asked about the man who had already published Fraternity: “He’s an Englishman who writes plays for Charles Frollman” — a remark which I must have relayed to Galsworthy, who replied promptly that he didn’t write plays lor Charles Frohman or for anyone else.
I sent Galsworthy a copy of my paper — the prize was awarded to a far better man, Randolph Bourne — and a correspondence began which ended only with Galsworthy’s death. When I told him I would be in England in June, he invited me to spend a night or two in the little cottage he had at Manaton, Devonshire, on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. We must have talked about Conrad, for Galsworthy was his oldest English friend, having met him in March, 1893, when Conrad was first mate of the sailing ship Torrens and Galsworthy a passenger. Galsworthy and a friend, Ted Sanderson, made a long trip to the South Seas hoping to see Robert Louis Stevenson, whom they greatly admired. But they turned back at Adelaide, on the Torrens, and Sanderson went right to London, while Galsworthy stopped over in South Africa. Anyway, a few weeks later, ! read in a Tauchnitz edition those wonderful stories, A Set of Six, as I traveled by easy stages from Chamonix across Switzerland to Basel. They really got me; I had found my idol.
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In the fall of 1912 I managed to secure very humble employment with Doubleday, Page & Company, newly moved to their great Country Life Press at Garden City. I worked there for cighteen months, first in the accounting and then in the manufacturing department. To my delight I found that the firm had published many of Conrad’s books: Youth, the volume of stories called Falk, Lord Jim, and the two novels written in collaboration with Ford Madox Hueffer, The Inheritors and Romance. In those days it seemed to me fantastic that a great writer shouldn’t have a large audience. I knew little as yet of the problems of publishing and, ignorant of my own ignorance, was completely happy. But I must have talked Conrad day in and day out to my associates. After all, James Hunekcr had written enthusiastically about him, and H. L. Mencken had been beating a drum for him for years.
In those days George H. Doran was publishing, with few exceptions, the best of the contemporary British novelists — his firm was at the top of its brilliant form — most of whom were represented by J. B. Pinker of London, who was also Conrad’s agent and had indeed staked Conrad rather handsomely for years. (To manage this Pinker always demanded generous advances from Conrad’s American publishers. He got them, but the novels never paid back these advances, and as a result by 1912 there were books by Conrad on the lists of Macmillan, Appleton, Dodd Mead, Putnam, Scribner’s, and Harper’s, as well as Doubleday. Harper’s had run the course longer than anyone else — from Nostromo in 1904 to A Personal Record in 1912.) Now Doran cast his line and hooked ’Twixt Land and Sea. But sometime early in 1913 Frank Doubleday (Effendi to all of us) returned from London with a contract that committed his firm once and for all to Conrad. Doran turned over ‘ Twixt Land and Sea, and shortly we received the manuscript of Chance.
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Doubleday, Page & Company was an exciting place for a youngster just out of college; he was really given his head. Thus I was allowed to sit in on the weekly editorial meetings held in the firm’s handsome dining room, and I was allowed to take the manuscript of Chance home and to be the first to read it. I was completely bowled over. I hastened to write to my friend Galsworthy, and I still recapture after more than forty years the thrill with which I read my first letter from Conrad which followed.
Capel House
July 20, 1913
DEAR MR. KNOPF:
Mr. Galsworthy has communicated to me your very interesting and friendly letter. I assure you that I am very sensible of the good opinion you have of my work (which dear Hudson also likes) and I congratulate myself on it — since if you had not “happened along,” all these books would have remained on the back shelves of the firm where they have been reposing for the last ten years. I see in your letter that you suspect me of undue aloofness. It is not so. I am very much interested; I find it quite exciting to be rediscovered by my own publisher, after such a long time.
I have manifested as much interest in my publishers as my publishers have in me —nothingless; it would be unreasonable to expect more from a man — and I don’t know that any angel has yet taken to literature. At any rate, I am not he.
Writing to you as to a good friend of my work, I must begin by saying that in business I am a partisan of frank speech as much as of frank dealing. I am glad to hear that Doubleday, Page & Co. has bought two of my vols. from Mr. Doran. It is a sign of interest. But the fact remains that Mr. Doubleday might have had all my books up to date in his hands if he had cared. Other people bought them and I haven’t heard that they have been ruined by it; though I did not give away my work for ten cents a volume, I can assure you. I am not an amateur who plays at it. It’s anything but play with me. Perhaps Mr. Doubleday does not know it, but it’s a fact that ever since Nostromo (1904) every line of my writing has been serialized in the U.S. — with the exception of the Mirror of the Sea, of which however a good part appeared in Harper’s Weekly. And the Mirror is not the sort of stuff to be read in the Elevated train or on the river-ferry while goinghome. Yet even here the Pall Mall Mag: (a popular sixpenny) published several papers out of it, Blackwood two or three, and a great penny daily the last two.
Why did these people do these things? Surely not from personal liking. I don’t know a single magazine editor here, not even by sight. Of the men on your side, I have seen Col. Harvey once — years ago. Obviously there is something in what I do, some ground to go upon. It is also a fact that ever since The Nigger (published by Appleton in 1898 under the absurdly sweet title, Children of the Sea) I have had in the U.S. a very good press—invariably. And you cannot deny that the majority of writers of notices in newspapers are men of average tastes. When it comes to popularity I stand much nearer the public mind than Stevenson, who was super-literary, a conscious virtuoso of style; whereas the average mind does not care much for virtuosity. My point of view, which is purely human, my subjects, which are not too specialized as to the class of people or kind of events, my style, which may be clumsy here and there, but is perfectly straightforward and tending towards the colloquial, cannot possibly stand in the way of a large public. As to what I have to say — you know it is never outrageous to mind or feeling. Is it interesting? Well, I have been and am being translated into all the European languages, except Spanish and Italian. They would hardly do that for a bore.
There are two methods in the publishing business. The first is speculative. A book is a venture. Hit or miss. To a certain extent it must be so. But here and there a writer may be taken up as an investment. An investment must be attended to, it must be nursed — if one believes in it. I can’t develop much feeling for a publisher who takes me on the “hit or miss” basis. A gamble is not a connection. What position I have attained I owe to no publisher’s efforts. Sixteen years of hard work begin to tell.
The question for me is: Has the Doubleday, Page Co. simply bought two books of mine or is it to be a connection? If it is the last, then you will find me responsive enough. I appreciate warmly the practical evidence of your good will towards my work. The writing of this long letter (which is not in my habits) is the best proof of it, for I should not have cared to open my mind like this to an indifferent stranger, I can assure you.
All I can do to help you form a stable connection between me and the firm I am ready to do — even to the sacrifice of my personal tastes. To begin with I shall at once revise the notes on me and send them to you, I hope by the same ship with this letter. As to the portrait: I shall this week make arrangements with the Cadbys (a couple in great repute as photographers. Very artistie) to have more than one photograph taken in their best manner. The photos will be in your hands in good time before the publication of Chance. The Rothenstein portrait we like very much, but something more recent is needed, I think.
For the future: A young literary friend of mine, Mr. Richard Curle, was here some time ago and asked my permission to write a book on me, a critical monograph on my work. Don’t think I mean a cheap puff: it would be an interesting attempt to describe my subjects and my methods. Say 50-60 thousand words. It would be exactly what’s wanted to educate readers. He knows my work backwards. I may ask him to begin at once and the little book could be ready in some six months. But I can’t very well ask him to drop everything and get on with that study unless I may tell him that you will, when the work is ready, consider it in a favourable spirit for publication in the U.S. Of course, I don’t suggest you binding yourself in advance. What do you say?
And there is another thing. Last year I published with Harpers’ a short volume entitled: A Personal Record. A bit of autobiography — and a bit of good writing as well. I let it go to them at a royalty of 10%, because Harpers’ have in one way or another paid me a good lot of money in the last five years; thinking also that they would try to do something special with it. But apparently not. They sold a couple of thousand copies, I believe, on the strength of the name, and that’s all. This book, rather intimate, quite readable, and for which I care in a special way — is just wasted. Now if you could buy it from Harpers’ at once and put it before the public properly in a cheap edition (I am going to arrange for a 2/6 ed. here), say 50c., I believe it would do good. I would suggest extending the title, as thus: A Personal Record, by J. Conrad. The Story of His First Book and of His First Contact with the Sea. As a matter of fact it is just that. And if people really want that sort of thing they will be able to learn a lot about me from that little book.
Now if Doubleday, Page & Co. can and will do that and use it for the publicity (I don’t mean sending men with loaded guns to force it on people, but everything short of that) then for my part I am ready to forego my royalties (under the agreement with Harpers’) for three years — except in the case of that vol: coming out with others in a uniform edition before the three years expire.
I am ready to embody my proposal in an agreement as soon as you have succeeded in extracting the thing from Harpers’, which may not be difficult if attempted at once. I don’t think I could do more to show my interest in the connection with your house, and my appreciation of your efforts on my behalf.
Believe me, my dear Sir, with friendliest feelings.
P.S. I am very busy finishing my next novel — the one I told Mr. Doubleday all about. I hope he wasn’t bored to death. Please give him my kind regards. I’ll try to send you in time corrected galley slips to set up Chance from. I recommend to you that book very specially, for, of its kind, it isn’t a thing that one does twice in a lifetime!
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I have no copy of my reply to this letter, but what I wrote, by Doubleday’s instructions, may be inferred from my next one from Conrad.
Capel House
August 24, 1913
MY DEAR MR. KNOPF:
I have your letter of the 13th inst. for which thanks.
In the matter of Curle’s book I certainly did not ask you (meaning the firm) for anything binding. But the idea of the publication in United States by means of English sheets does not commend itself to me. Both Mr. Conrad as subject and Mr. Curle as writer deserve better treatment. I assure you he is not a hack-writer. I am personally very much interested in the book, for reasons of which some are on the surface and for others which lie much deeper. I mean that book to be published in the United States independently of all arrangements in England; and I have good grounds to think that, should you decline it, I can carry the transaction out elsewhere. You don’t seem to realize that a book about Conrad will get published anyhow. And I mean Mr. Curle (who out of regard for me has put other work aside) to get a decent royalty and a small advance for his critical volume.
As to the Personal Record. I regret to say that my suggestion was not prompted by any specific information. I just threw it out on general principles. Harpers’ had it cheap. They haven’t made any special effort with it and I concluded that they would let it go if approached diplomatically. I am glad you think on re-reading that there is much to learn about me in it. Truly it is the very heart and essence of Conrad. And if people are only told that sympathetically, they begin to see that it is so.
The Falk volume question is interesting to me, but I fear there are no details that I could give you as to the origin of the stories. The volume failed with the public, because it was decapitated. It ought to have had “Typhoon” for the first story as published in England. But for some reason you allowed “Typhoon” to go to Putnam. I don’t shovel together my stories in a haphazard fashion. “Typhoon” belonged to that volume; on artistic and literary grounds; and its absence ruined the chances of the other stories. The reading of that first story attuned the mind for the reception of the others. And the public by neglecting “Falk” and the others recognized obscurely that the volume had its head off— that it was a corpse which, I fear, you will have some difficulty to galvanize into any sort of popularity. There’s no harm in trying. But you must be careful not to put people off by forcing on them work of which the quality is not so much on the surface. Later on they will understand me better and recognize the artistic finish of “Falk” and of “Amy Foster” — two of the most highly finished of my stories. Well! No more to-day.
P.S. Yes, I do care very much for Romance. I’ll give your message to the Galsworthys before long.
A little later Conrad wrote me about a lawyer in New York—John Quinn — to whom he had been selling his manuscripts from time to time. In the New York telephone directory I found many John Quinns but, as luck would have it, I lighted the very first time on the right one. Quinn was fantastic; he was going away but if I would come to his office at 31 Nassau Street he would have his confidential clerk, Curtin by name, place his Conrad file at my disposal. And thus I came to read a most remarkable correspondence, one that seemed to me at the time almost heartbreakingly tragic. Conrad was always hard up, frequently ill — in a generally sorry state. He would discover a manuscript — or pretend to — and send it on to Quinn, who would buy it at whatever price seemed fair to him. There was nothing wrong with that, for manuscripts by Conrad surely had no market anywhere in those days.
My withers were wrung. I was young; I think I was ingenious; and I know I was brash, presumptuous, shameless. I ordered a fine personal letterhead, on handmade paper imported by the old Japan Paper Company; I lived at home in Lawrence, Long Island, with my parents, and had this address engraved on it; and I composed a letter designed to make its recipient run, not walk, to the assistance of Joseph Conrad.
I do not have a copy of that letter, but I know that I described my hero’s plight, asked for what we now so inelegantly call a blurb (we didn’t know the word then) about his work, and added mysteriously that I was in a position to see that any favorable comment sent me would be circulated through his publishers and the press. This letter went to many popular writers of the day: Basil King, Rex Beach, Louis Joseph Vance, William Dean Howells, Winston Churchill (the novelist), Harold Bell Wright, Robert W. Service, George Barr McCutcheon, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, Meredith Nicholson, and Mary Austin. To all I sent an advance copy of Chance. Only Dreiser suspected a connection with Doubleday.
The generosity with which most of them responded struck me as touching. Robert W. Service wrote me (he is now eighty-four years old and the only one of my correspondents still alive):
. . . I am glad indeed to have an opportunity of expressing my admiration for the works of one who is regarded by all competent critics as (with two possible exceptions) the greatest living master of English prose. Mr. Conrad is pre-eminently the Writer’s Writer, one to whom the fastidious reader may yield with an absolute confidence. . . . To us who write, his gleaming, supple prose is at once an inspiration and a reproach. He reassures, he stimulates. He has a magic power of evoking atmosphere, or hurling at us luminous phrases, packed with meaning, of combining in some fresh surprising way three or four words so that they conjure up a vivid and irresistible picture in our minds.
And from George Barr McCutcheon:
. . . I have liked all of Conrad’s books. To my notion, he is one of the greatest of living writers, and I believe he will take his place among the leading men in literature in time and the century just closed. Chance is but a single illustration of his power. It deserves to live, with the rest of his stories.
And Basil King:
Thanks for your kind letter received this morning. I am sorry to have been so long in sending you my modest opinion of Conrad’s book, but owing to lack of sight and the necessity of reading with a magnifying glass, I am slow at any task of the kind. In this case I regret it the less, since it is a book to be read with the concentration of the tastes with which one savours good wines. It is a book in which one can afford to pass nothing over. The flashes of observation thrown out by those who tell the tale — wise, humorous, or tender, as the case may be — are as remarkable as the tale itself, like the precious stones set in the binding of a missal. As I have told you already, I know of no more appealing figure in fiction than Flora de Barral, nor of a more manly one than Anthony. But of the book’s many striking qualities none is to me more impressive than the degree to which the concluding sentence justifies the quotation from Sir Thomas Browne on the title page, delimiting the significance of the title itself and rounding out the sphere of the author’s thought. Unity of purpose could go no further.
And Rex Beach:
. . . Joseph Conrad stands for the highest mark in present day English fiction. I consider him the greatest living author in the English language and have read nearly everything he has written. That his books are not more widely circulated in this country has always been a mystery to me . . .
But the veteran William Dean Howells after a second approach:
I did not reply to your letter of some weeks ago, because I supposed it was generally understood that I never gave opinions of books which were to be used as advertisements. The fact that you would “see my remarks circulated through publishers and the press” seemed to me sufficient reason for not making any. I am sorry if I seem to have neglected your letter.
And from Harold Bell Wright, probably the biggest-selling novelist of the day:
Mr. Conrad’s book Chance and your letters relative to Mr. Conrad’s work at hand.
As to Mr. Wright’s writing a paragraph for the purpose of furthering the sale of Mr. Conrad’s books; I am sure that a moment’s reflection will convince you that such a thing is practically out of the question. Mr. Wright, though receving [sic] many calls of this kind has made it a rule to not give any letter for publicity, for you can see that did he do so in the case of one writer, he would be overrun with letters requesting the same from writers all over the country, and of course it would be manifestly impossible for him to comply with all requests, which would cause many writers to feel that they had been unjustly discriminated against.
Yours very respectfully,
B. H. Pearson, Sec’y
Meanwhile my indulgent employers allowed me to write and sign a booklet on Conrad which they printed and distributed widely, and we came to the publication of Chance with such a battery of critical praise that its success was assured and indeed the ground laid for a very substantial market for many years for all of Conrad’s books.
In the spring of 1914 I left Garden City to go to work for Mitchell Kennerley, then a small highly personal publisher with a list already studded with such distinguished names as Walter Lippmann, A. S. M. Hutchinson, D. H. Lawrence, and Joseph Hergesheimer. Kennerley, incidentally, was a great friend of John Quinn. After this I had little contact with Conrad for many years, though we exchanged an occasional letter. But in 1921 Mrs. Knopf and I drove his great friend, Richard Curle, from London to Canterbury for lunch with Conrad at Bishopsbourne, his house nearby, and there we met for the first time.
Then two years later we took Thomas Beer down to see him to discuss the introduction he had promised to write for Beer’s Stephen Crane. Conrad was in fine form; we had already after years of neglect made the books of his dear friend Hudson popular in America, and now we were promising to do our best for his “Stevie.” As we left for the station he accompanied us to the door, and the last words I heard him speak were, “Now we must do something for Robert.”
I never saw him again, and the books of Robert (R. B. Cunningham-Graham) never have been much read over here.
约瑟夫-康拉德：出版史上的一个脚注
ALFRED A. KNOPF从哥伦比亚大学毕业，在Doubleday, Page & Co.做学徒时，他对约瑟夫-康拉德的热情第一次有机会表现出来。当他被允许阅读康拉德的小说《机会》的手稿时，年轻的克诺夫开始了一场以新的方式介绍这位作家的运动，这让他感到震惊。
在那些日子里，乔治-H-多兰正在出版，除了少数例外，当代英国最好的小说家--他的公司正处于辉煌的顶峰--他们中的大多数人都由伦敦的J-B-平克代理，他也是康拉德的经纪人，多年来确实为康拉德提供了相当丰厚的报酬。(为了处理这个问题，平克总是要求康拉德的美国出版商提供慷慨的预付款。他得到了这些预付款，但这些小说从未偿还这些预付款，结果到了1912年，麦克米伦、阿普尔顿、多德-米德、普特南、斯克里布纳、哈珀以及杜伯雷的名单上都有康拉德的书。哈珀出版社在这方面做得比任何人都久--从1904年的《诺斯特罗莫》到1912年的《个人记录》）。现在，多兰投下了他的线，在 "陆地和海洋之间 "上钩。但在1913年初的某个时候，弗兰克-道布尔迪（Effendi to all of us）从伦敦回来，带着一份合同，将他的公司一劳永逸地交给康拉德。多兰交出了《海陆两界》，不久我们就收到了《机会》的手稿。
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康拉德先生的书《机会》和你与康拉德先生手头工作有关的信。
至于赖特先生为了促进康拉德先生的书的销售而写了一段话；我相信，只要稍加思考，你就会相信，这种事情实际上是不可能的。莱特先生虽然接到了许多这样的电话，但他规定不给任何宣传信，因为你可以看到，如果他在一位作家的情况下这样做，他就会被全国各地的作家要求同样的信淹没，当然，他显然不可能满足所有的要求，这将使许多作家感到他们受到了不公正的歧视。
尊敬的您好。
B. H. Pearson, Sec'y
