Bonny Schoonakker
8 August 2004
Johannesburg — Nobel-winning author accused of trying to edit her own life story after she withholds authorisation of book
NOBEL laureate Nadine Gordimer has been accused of trying to stop the publication of her first full-length biography. Liz Calder, editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury Publishing, said on Friday that her company had withdrawn from its contract with Cape Town-based author Ronald Suresh Roberts, who began researching his subject more than eight years ago.
Bloomsbury would no longer publish the biography, No Cold Kitchen, initially written with Gordimer's co-operation, because Gordimer no longer "authorised" its publication, Calder said.
At first, Gordimer declined to comment, but yesterday she hit back, accusing Suresh Roberts of dishonouring a 1997 agreement about a book on her life and "artistic development".
Suresh Roberts, who has found another publisher for the manuscript, said he was "just bemused" that Gordimer had "censored" the work despite her lifelong campaign for freedom of expression.
Bloomsbury was due to publish the book by the end of the year. Instead, Cape Town-based Jonathan Ball would publish it early next year, in association with another British publisher, according to Suresh Roberts.
Suresh Roberts rejected as "a startling falsehood" Calder's statement that Bloomsbury's contract was to publish only an "authorised" biography. This was not stipulated in his contract with Bloomsbury, signed in May 1998, and his agent in London would seek damages from Bloomsbury for breach of contract.
Suresh Roberts said that Jonathan Galassi, his editor at New York publishers Farrar, Straus and Giroux - and Gordimer's US publisher - had also withdrawn from publishing the book on Gordimer's instructions. Galassi had nevertheless assured him he was "very favourably impressed" with the work.
"This is outrageous behaviour by a woman who claims to be a champion of free speech," Suresh Roberts said, referring to Gordimer's reputation as "an uncompromising opponent of censorship", as she described herself in a lecture marking the dissolution of the Publications Control Board.
"She wanted to appear without vanity or blemish. I resisted and she emerges in rounded, human terms. It's just that she is un accustomed to being written about in ways over which she has no control."
Gordimer's daughter, Oriane Taramasco, had written to him from Italy to say how much she had enjoyed reading the manuscript and learning about her mother, he said.
Gordimer sent a copy of her agreement with Suresh Roberts to the Sunday Times, pointing out: "My contractual relationship with Mr Roberts... specifically provides [that] 'Gordimer has the right to review the draft submitted to the publisher and the right to review a galley of the final text as edited and approved by the publisher for publication. If Gordimer poses any objections for any reason at all, and such objections are not rectified to her satisfaction, then she has the right to withdraw any endorsement or public acknowledgement of her association with the book, and it may not be called an authorised biography. Such objections must be made in writing within 90 days of acknowledged receipt of each draft of the text. Gordimer also has the right of approval over the title.' "
Gordimer added: "Objections which were raised by me in March 2003 have to date received no response nor to my knowledge have been rectified as contractually required. There has been no question of my opposing publication of the book, only of the portions of the text that have not been agreed with by me in terms of my agreement with Mr Roberts.
"In respect of the substantial number of inaccurate and in some instances untrue statements, I am not prepared to take the matter further in the press. I naturally reserve all my rights."
Suresh Roberts said although she had given him access to her papers and archives, Gordimer had "constantly interfered" with Bloomsbury's editing of his manuscript, insisting that aspects of her private life be left out. He had obliged her and "excised one account of an affair".
He said he suspected her objections were not to any compromising details, but rather to having her story told by someone else.
Last week, in a letter to his London agent, Caradoc King, Bloomsbury's Calder said No Cold Kitchen was "brilliant" but that it was no longer "a publishing proposition". Calder said she had "read this long and lively biography with great interest and admiration. It is a brilliant book in many ways, and especially in its analyses of the works of Nadine Gordimer."
Nevertheless, Bloomsbury was no longer able to honour its contract with Suresh Roberts, "given the fact that it no longer has the authorisation of Nadine Gordimer. I am very sorry about this but I am sure you will understand the problem for Nadine Gordimer's own publishers."
Asked by the Sunday Times to state why Gordimer had withdrawn her authorisation, Calder issued only a terse statement, repeating her letter to King: "We made a contract with Ronald Suresh Roberts for an authorised life of Nadine Gordimer. As Nadine Gordimer's publishers we cannot publish the book in its present form as it is no longer authorised."
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