After he started out as an office boy for Victor Gollancz in 1933,
Pick's 66-year career in publishing saw him discover, nurture and publish some
of the biggest names in 20th-century literature, including JD Salinger, Graham Greene and Dahl. With a roster including Catherine Cookson,
Wilbur Smith, Anita Desai and John Le Carré, Pick had an unerring eye for what
the public wanted and formed close relationships with many of his authors.
Early in his career, however, his keen eye did not always serve him so
well. The young publisher tells of how he went into a Hampstead shop and tried
to persuade the bookseller to stock a new title. "I know you don't stock a
lot of new books," Pick said, "but there's a marvellous new book
coming next month called Burmese Days by George Orwell." It turned out the bookseller was George Orwell himself, working
under his real name Eric Blair, before 1984 and Animal Farm had made him
famous. It seems as if Orwell took the misunderstanding in his stride. "I
think he made some remark like: 'Very interesting'", recalled Pick in an
interview taped for the British Library.
Pick's as-yet-unpublished memoirs, donated in a large collection of
letters, interviews and press cuttings to the University of East Anglia by his
son Martin Pick, show how he signed Roald Dahl after a chance meeting. Pick had
bought a copy of Dahl's early short story collection Kiss Kiss in the US, and sailing
back to the UK on the Queen Mary he began to read it. When he discovered that
Dahl himself was on the ship, "much to the purser's annoyance" he
insisted on finding him, Pick writes. "The seas were very rough, but armed
with a copy of his book, Kiss Kiss, I found the cabin. Inside, his two children
were being sick, the nursemaid having been sick lay prostrate on a bunk,
Patricia Neal was looking for a £2,000 diamond which she had lost and Roald
Dahl was pacing up and down saying, 'I hope you don't find it, I never did like
it.'"
Pick invited Dahl for a drink and they went on to dinner, but Dahl told
Pick not to make him a book offer as he had five already from English
publishers and was travelling to meet them in the UK. Dahl was happy for Pick
to send in his own bid to his literary agent, however, and disembarking the
ship at Southampton, Pick "saw Roald Dahl waving a piece of paper and
shouting to me: 'It's all yours! It's all yours!'" His agent had told him
to snap up Pick's offer before the publisher changed his mind.
Pick also worked with Salinger, signing up Franny and Zooey after realising
it wasn't money the reclusive author was after but accuracy. Salinger's agent
told Pick: "Money doesn't mean anything to Salinger. He's got so much and
he's a recluse, but he is paranoic about how his books are produced."
Steinbeck was another of Pick's American authors, and he travelled to
Stockholm for his Nobel prize ceremony. "Steinbeck, who was a very heavy
drinker, had, for three weeks before coming to Stockholm, given up all hard
liquor and was just drinking beer," Pick recalled. "He had such
self-discipline."
Pick also encouraged Monica Dickens, the great-granddaughter of Charles
Dickens, to pen her first book. The pair met at a dinner party, where she had
him "spellbound" with her stories, Pick writes. He said: "Look,
if you could write a book as well as you can tell these stories I believe you
could write a bestseller." "I hope you aren't fooling me," she
replied. "My secret dream is to write. Nobody in my family writes and
nobody knows that it is my ambition." Pick took her to see his boss at
Michael Joseph and Dickens was given a contract, going on to write the
bestselling One Pair of Hands.
Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa (under the pen name
Isak Dinesen), was an easier signing, the memoirs reveal. Pick received a phone
call from the author herself in 1958, asking if he would be interested in
reading and possibly publishing her new book. When he said he would indeed be
interested, "'Splendid,' was the reply. 'I will ask the president of SAS
to bring it to you tomorrow.'"
The author, a celebrity in her native Denmark, appeared a demanding
customer once signed, however. Eating at the Connaught, at a table she insisted
be surrounded by screens, she would only order one thing at a time, and
"after two or three teaspoonfuls of the consommé she nibbled a corner of
the melba toast and said 'Now I am satisfied'." Later, waiting to fly home
to New York, she demanded that Pick find her champagne and oysters for the
journey. After managing to track them down, he was told by plane staff that
they couldn't open the oysters, but found a sharp knife on a nearby book stall
and opened them himself.
"My father was very deferential to authors. That's why I think he
got on so well with such a wide variety – he never pushed himself," says
Martin Pick, who is hoping to publish his father's memoirs. "He was very
aggressive in the way he dealt with marketing, for example, but they wouldn't
have seen that."
Pick Sr also arranged what he believed was the first celebrity author
signing – for Noël Coward,
attended by 360 fans – and met Wallis Simpson in Paris to discuss her memoirs.
On meeting Pick, the Duchess of Windsor immediately demanded to know who
Marilyn Monroe's publicity agent was. Simpson was distressed about Monroe's
dominance of the newspaper front pages, but "I explained that I wasn't in
any way able to help her in displacing Marilyn Monroe in her favour", said
Pick, who "certainly did not find [Simpson] witty, endearing in any way,
but a rather brittle, hard and vain person".
The publisher also had little affection for Dorothy
L Sayers: meeting the author just after publication of her new book The Nine Tailors, Pick
congratulated her on her knowledge of campanology. But Sayers "turned
around and said: 'Young man, twenty minutes with the Encyclopaedia Britannica.'
That … that was a moment of great disillusion," said Pick in his British
Library interview.
It was Wilbur Smith, though, who was Pick's longest-standing author.
Smith's first novel was acquired by Pick in 1962, and the pair worked together
until the publisher's death in 2000. Although Pick retired from his final
position as chairman of the Heinemann group in 1984, he remained as literary
consultant to the bestselling South African writer until he died.
"He was (and still is) extremely good looking and the younger
members of the staff would use any reason to come into my office just to catch
a glimpse of him," writes Pick of Smith in his memoirs. "It was even
suggested that one girl actually swooned on the staircase, but I think that is
probably an apocryphal story."
Thanks to the Guardian for this one!
