Galway Advertiser 2002/2002_04_18/GA_18042002_E1_086.pdf 

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Galway Advertiser April 18 2002

[ents] feature

Beckett, Burroughs, and Blair - John Calder speaks
JOHN CALDER, the man behind John Calder Publications, who published William Burroughs and Samual Beckett, was in Galway last weekend to launch a limited edition of Becketts complete poems. He spoke to Kernan Andrews about Beckett, Burroughs, and Tony Blair's schooldays. good Last Friday, Calder launched The Collected very historical Poems of Samuel Beckett 1930 - 1989, a joint introduction and venture with Kenny's which contains many I was going to previously unpublished poems. As we sit in the Rare Books room in Kenny's Bookshop, Calder publish it in says this is something he has wanted to do for a Britain." long time. However "I really would have liked to have done this 10 Girodias was years ago. I'd organised it with Beckett when he already selling his own edition was still alive, but then he died and his literary in France to as executive suddenly decided he didn't want book anything coming out at all. I just put it aside for many 10 years and the literary executor died and sellers as he Edward Beckett, his nephew, became responsible could persuade, so the market for these decisions, so I went back and started all l a r g e l y over again." Putting this book together involved enormous d i s a p p e a r e d . "He then sold it research and study of Beckett's manuscripts and another scribbles. "Beckett used to write poems on beer to mats when he was in cafes on his own and used publisher and to copy them into a little book afterwards. Some the whole of them are very, very short but wonderful. The edition just problem is, are these really poems or just little disappeared. What obviously happened was that jottings and putting down his thoughts? Finally, I they sold it to the Home Office who didn't want it had to take out a few of them, so the books a little to come out, probably with the Irish Government bit smaller then I intended it to be, but not very in collusion, as there was no great desire here to much." have a great hero besmirched." Calder describes the poems as complex, There has always been controversy over the reflecting the influence of TS Eliot's Waste Land diaries' authenticity with many believethem to be and James Joyce. Will they will give further new forgeries. Calder thinks they are genuine. "It was insights into Beckett? just a godsend to the Home Office at the time. "I think they will. Particularly what his The war was going badly, A rising in Ireland was preoccupations were as a young man. There's the last thing they wanted. They felt they had to make an example. Given his past history and antiquite a lot of Gaelic words in it. They're difficult colonial activities and so on, he would normally to understand at a first reading as they refer to all kinds of things he came across in his studies or have been, if not pardoned, then paroled. This was to stop any sympathy going towards him." was reading at the time." Calder knew Beckett well and describes him as Politics a friendly, humorous man, generous to a fault. Calder ran for election for the Scottish Liberals "He was always able to see other people's in the 1970s. He stood for parliament in 1970 and point of view," he says. "He was a wonderful 1974 and for the European parliament in 1979. "I man. He was very open, very frank, sometimes he think the reason I never got elected was that I was a bit too frank with journalists and they wouldn't go along with people who wanted would put down things he told them in capital punishment. On abortion, I felt women confidence or they misquoted him, so after that should be able to make up their own minds what he didn't like being interviewed and had the they do with their bodies. It's not what a lot of reputation of being solitary, which is totally people wanted to hear," he smiles. untrue. He had a great many friends and loved his A lot of things have changed since then. friends. He was always great company to be with. Scotland now has its own parliament and there is Laughed a lot, joked a lot. the phenomenon of Blair's Britain. What does he "He was incredibly generous. He was nearly make of such changes? always insisted on paying the bill. He would get "The atmosphere in Scotland is very different up and pretend to have a pee, in order to pay the to England," he says. "Scotland is looking very bill before anybody else would have a chance to carefully at Ireland now, how well Ireland is think about it. His generosity would get him into doing out of the common market. The great trouble. He would get a tax bill and couldn't pay majority of the people in Scotland are in favour it and go off to the country and stay there. I had a of going into the Euro. In England it's the other habit of waiting till he went to the country before way around. I think the day may come when the I would send him his royalties. I knew they Scottish parliament will take power into its own would be welcome," he smiles. "He was hands and do things they don't officially have the incredibly generous. He couldn't say no." power to do." Roger Casement Such an independent move is be one Calder Calder was at one point going to publish a would wtxome. However his opinion of Tony stray copy of one of Casement's 'black diaries', Blair is not so positive. "No I've got no time for the only copy the British Home Office didn't Blair at all," he says with a shake of his head. "I have. "Well. I was going to," he said. "They were met his headmaster a little while ago and said published by Maurice Girodias. He got hold of when he was at school, he was terrible at the Casement diaries from Singleton Gates, a everything except amateur dramat; journalist who had been able to get hold of the William Burroughs original mimeographed copes that had been Calder has long championed freedom of passed around to selected journalists at the time expression and has often got into a great deal of of the trial in 1916. He wrote his own trouble for it. In 1964 he became the first introduction and edited it and Girodias wrote a publisher in Britain to publish William

Callino String Quartet to perform at NUIG

Burroughs' controversial novel The Naked Lunch, which unsurprisingly caused uproar. "I knew it would be an extremely difficult book to get published," he recalls, "so I sat down with Burroughs and we organised three of his books into a sort of anthology called Dead Fingers Talk which came out and had some of the more extreme things removed. This was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement by the deputy editor John Willet. He had gone to the trouble of getting the three books, which were The Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, and The Ticket That Exploded and read those then wrote a really blistering attack headed 'UGH!'. "This brought in a deluge of correspondence, some of it from me, and went on for 13 weeks. Sometimes there was six pages of correspondence and the circulation went up and other papers followed it and that made it impossible to prosecute the book and made it possible to publish it. These were the days in the 1960s when things were changing." The Naked Lunch is an extraordinary novel about drug addiction, the mind, and sex. Many still find it shocking and difficult to this day. "Oh yes it is shocking, " Calder says, "but he saw it rather like Swift's Modest Proposal to make people aware through shock. There's a lot of humour in it too and he's got a very good ear for dialogue. You can hear the voices when you read it." Burroughs himself doesn't appear to have been as wild and as strange as his writings though. "He was a very quiet modest man. The sort of man you wouldn't notice in the street. He was always called the 'invisible man' when he was in Morocco. He was so anonymous, he kept to himself," says Calder. "He was a workaholic, he liked writing but hated revising. The minute he'd written something he'd lost interest in it. He left it to other people to organise it. The Naked Lunch was put together by Allan Ginsberg from different fragments he found on the floor of his room." As for Calder himself, he loves his work, and though in his mid 70s, shows no sign of slowing down. "Work, work all the time," he says. "Back in the 60s we had 17 people in the office. Now we're three and there's just as much work and it never stops. I love it and I'll go on as long as I can."

THE FOURTH recital in this season's NUI, Galway Lunchtime Concerts will feature one of Ireland's most exciting young chamber ensembles, The Callino Quartet Since their formation in June 1999, the Callina Quartet (Ioana Petcu-Colan, violin; Sarah Sexton,violin; Samantha Millar, viola; Sarah McMahon, cello) have established. themselves as one of Ireland's most exciting chamber ' ensembles. In January 2001, they were selected as one of the first ensembles on Young Musicwide, Music Network's professional development programme for young professional musicians, and in July 2001 they joined Music Network's new Musicwide International Programme. Musicians with whom they have collaborated include the Volger and RTE Vanburgh Quartets, Rivka Golani, viola, Paul Silverthorne, principal viola, London Symphony Orchestra and Ensemble Paris Bastille. In masterclass they have worked with the Amadeus, Borodin, Volger, Scampa, Panocha and RTE Vanburgh quartets, with violist Hartmut Rhode and with composer Peteris Vasks at the 2001 West Cork Chamber Music Festival. This concert takes place in association with the Music Network/ESB Musicwide performance programme, funded by the Arts Council, ESB, the British Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The concert takes place on Thursday April 25 at 1.10pm, in the Upper Aula Maxima. Tickets at 5/3 are available at the door.

The eminent collection
WHEN HOPE and History Rhyme (Four Courts Press) is a new collection of speeches from politicians and writers who have spoken at N U I , Galway's Millennium Lecture Series. The book collects six speeches including Hillary Clinton on the peace process, former Irish president Maryl Robinson on human rights, and! Uachtarin na hEireann Maryf McAleese's 'Address on the| Occasion of the 150th| Anniversary Celebrations'. Of most interest will be Sen" George Mitchell's speech on his role in the Good Frida) Agreement and coming to terms with the realities of life m the North of Ireland and his hopes for its future. Seamus Heaney's lecture 'Us as in Versus: Poetry and the World will be of interest to those studying or writing about poetry and language. The book also has a series of engaging colour photographs of the speakers on the podium and meeting various dignitaries. Though only a slim volume, those who attended these lectures will like to have a record of the events and a reconl of the words of distinguished speakers delivered in Galway is to be welcomed. Edited by Prof Ruth Curtis, the vice-president for development and external affairs, NUI, Galway, When Hop* and History- Rhyme costs 24.95. Kernan Andrews