Morgan Entrekin on the Small Kindnesses of a Literary Giant
In London today there will be a memorial celebration for Tom Stoppard. When Tom passed away last November, he was acclaimed and eulogized brilliantly all over the world. To read some of those encomiums you can head here. But in honor of today’s celebration, I would like to offer a brief account of my experience with Tom.
I first met him at the International PEN Conference in Prague in 1994, the first PEN meeting in that city in more than 60 years during which the Czechs had suffered first under Nazi and then Soviet repression. Among those attending were Philip Roth, Arthur Miller and his wife Inge Morath, Rose Styron and many other writers and human rights activists who had supported the Czechs, and especially the Czech writers in their struggle against authoritarian regimes. It was an exhilarating few days opening with President Václav Havel (also a Grove author) welcoming his fellow writers for a conference on “Literature and Tolerance.”
A year earlier I had merged Atlantic Monthly Press with Grove Weidenfeld to create Grove Atlantic. Though Grove had published Tom from the beginning of his career, for some reason he had, in the years right before I took over, 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 said to Tom I knew he was no longer publishing with us but that we had all of his earlier work in print and if he ever had questions or thoughts about the Grove editions he should please let me know. I also told him I was committed to keeping Grove Atlantic independent and that if he ever wanted to come back we would love to have him.
