Morgan Entrekin on a literary giant’s small kindnesses
There will be a memorial ceremony for Tom Stoppard in London today. When Tom died last November, he was eulogized around the world and eulogized brilliantly. You can go here to read some of those encomiums. But in honor of today’s celebration, I’d like to give a brief account of my experience with Tom.
I first met him in 1994 at the international PEN conference in Prague, the first PEN meeting in that city in more than 60 years, during which the Czechs suffered first Nazi and then Soviet repression. The participants included Philip Roth, Arthur Miller and his wife Inge Morath, Rose Styron and many other writers and human rights activists who supported the Czechs and especially Czech writers in their struggle against the authoritarian regime. President Václav Havel (also a Grove writer) welcomed his fellow writers for a conference on “Literature and Tolerance”, beginning an encouraging few days.
A year ago I merged Atlantic Monthly Press with Grove Weidenfeld to create Grove Atlantic. Although Grove had published Tom from the beginning of his career, for some reason, in the years just before I took over, he allowed his British publisher Faber and Faber to publish his new plays with their Faber North America imprint. Rose Styron introduced me to Tom and told him I was now the publisher of Grove. I told Tom that I knew he was no longer publishing with us, but we had all of his earlier work in print and that if he ever had any questions or ideas about the Grove editions he should please let me know. I also told him that I was committed to keeping Grove Atlantic free and that if he ever wanted to come back, we would be happy to have him.
“I was so happy to look up to the stage and see that you were listening to my jokes.”
A few years later I heard from Tom’s agent that he would like to return to the Grove. I received the manuscript of invention of Love. We published that wonderful play and all the works that followed. Tom’s return during those early years when I was working to re-establish Grove’s credibility and identity as a committed, independent literary house was extremely important to us.
Over the years I would see Tom in London or New York. I’ve worked with some accomplished writers in my 48-year career, but there’s no doubt that Tom was the most brilliant, erudite, and intellectually intimidating of them all. He was absolutely calm. He was so kind, so curious about what we were publishing and so supportive of our efforts to stay true to our mission and remain independent. One of the most memorable evenings was a snowy night at art patron Drew Heinz’s beautiful Sutton Place house, a dinner arranged for Tom to meet Tom Wolfe. I reminded Tom of the night he called me to ask if he thought we would be able to persuade Macmillan to allow Grove to purchase the rights to the plays that were published by the Faber North America imprint, which Farrar, Straus & Giroux had acquired. I suggested to Tom that he write to Jonathan Galassi, who was at the dinner, and ask him—which he did. I hoped that Jonathan, then head of FSG, and his boss John Sargent would respect an author’s wish to have all his work housed in one home. They did that and we’ve been able to bring all the plays together at the Grove.
So over the past two decades we’ve continued to publish Tom’s amazing and incredible new works coast of utopia To rock and roll And career-ending masterpiece Leopoldstadt Our Deputy Publisher Peter Blackstock has worked with Tom to rationalize and update the text of all his plays and publish them in the editions he has signed so we know the works will remain in the editions he has approved.
And one last memory, in 2015 my good friend Sabrina Guinness, who had married Tom the year before, called me and my wife Rachel Cobb to invite me to the opening of Tom’s new play. difficult problem In Philadelphia. I asked if we could bring my nine-year-old son, Alan. When the day came, we met Sabrina at a cozy Italian restaurant after traveling from New York. Tom was still in the theater working on last-minute adjustments with the cast, but he joined us a few minutes later. He proceeded to tell Alan what we were going to see his play about, which was the question of how consciousness arises in the brain – the hard problem. Alan, who has always been intellectually curious, was fascinated.
When we took our seats in the theater with horseshoe-shaped seating, I looked up and saw that Tom and Sabrina were sitting right in front of us. I was a little nervous because it was a long day for Alan, and I hoped he wouldn’t fall asleep during the game. On the contrary, he was completely engaged the entire time, sometimes laughing so loudly that I started to worry that he was disturbing the people around us. Later as we left Tom said, “Alan, I was so glad to look up to the stage and see that you were listening to my jokes.”
So as we celebrate one of the most extraordinary, truly talented authors I have had the privilege of publishing, I can only say thank you to Tom for your friendship and your kindness to me and my family, for the incredible work you have produced and given to the world, and for your support of Grove Atlantic at a critical time.
