The Great Pursuit
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''The Great Pursuit'' is a 1977
comic novel A comic novel is a Novel, novel-length work of humorous fiction. Many well-known authors have written comic novels, including P. G. Wodehouse, Henry Fielding, Mark Twain, and John Kennedy Toole. Comic novels are often defined by the author's liter ...
by
Tom Sharpe Thomas Ridley Sharpe (30 March 1928 – 6 June 2013) was an English satire, satirical novelist, best known for his ''Wilt (novel), Wilt'' series, as well as ''Porterhouse Blue'' and ''Blott on the Landscape,'' all three of which were adapted fo ...
. It is a satire encompassing commercialism in publishing and literary criticism.


Plot introduction

The story is a farce about greed in the publishing world, and the struggle between literature as a high art and the commercial imperative to reduce it to its lowest common denominator. The action takes place in
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
,
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, the
Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States. The term is used to describe the states which were most economically dependent on Plantation complexes in the Southern United States, plant ...
and the
Maine Maine ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the United States, and the northeasternmost state in the Contiguous United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Provinces and ...
coast.


Plot summary

Frensic and Futtle is a small and successful literary agency. But following a successful court case by a woman who claimed to have been libelled by one of their authors, the agency rapidly loses business. One day, a manuscript for a book called ''Pause O Men for the Virgin'' arrives at the agency, together with a note from the author's solicitor, saying that the author wishes to remain anonymous and that the agency has ''carte blanche'' on how it deals with the book. The book turns out to deal with the love affair between an 80-year-old woman and a 17-year-old youth. The populist American publisher Hutchmeyer agrees to sign a deal to publish the book in the United States for $2 million, providing the author carries out a promotional tour of the country. Sonia and Frensic decide to use aspiring but unpublished author Peter Piper to stand in for the anonymous author. But when Piper receives a proof copy of ''Pause'' from the publisher by mistake, it takes a certain amount of persuasion and arm-twisting from Sonia Futtle to convince Piper to travel to America.


Characters in "The Great Pursuit"

Frederick Frensic is something of an anachronism, adhering to styles and habits of the 18th century. He runs a London literary agency, Frensic and Futtle, with Sonia Futtle. He is known for having a nose for successful authors, but he attributes his success to knowing what the public wants. Sonia Futtle is Frensic's partner in the agency. An American, she has a very forceful personality and has a reputation as a very persuasive saleswoman. Peter Piper is a struggling and unpublished author, who has been writing the same book, ''Search for a Lost Childhood'', for at least 10 years. He has a very strong conviction that literature is a worthy and high art, and deplores trash fiction and the
dumbing down Dumbing down is the deliberate oversimplification of intellectual content in education, literature, cinema, news, video games, and culture. Originating in 1933, the term "dumbing down" was movie-business slang, used by screenplay writers, meanin ...
of commercial fiction. He only reads what he considers the great authors, and borrows the style of the author he is currently reading for the latest draft of his book. Hutchmeyer is a brash American publisher, known for publishing unremittingly commercial books. He never reads the books he publishes, and considers authors to be useless members of society, good only for helping him make money. Baby Hutchmeyer is Hutchmeyer's long suffering wife. Unlike her husband, she is well read and worldly, although she longs to be free of her life as what she sees as a rich man's plaything, and is tired of her husband's infidelities.


Title

The book's title refers to a textbook by Dr Sydney Louth, under whom Frensic read English Literature at Oxford. This is a thinly disguised reference to real life critic
F. R. Leavis Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis ( ; 14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York. Leav ...
, author of '' The Great Tradition'' and ''The Common Pursuit''.


Adaptations

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...
broadcast a 4-part adaptation of The Great Pursuit in 2005, with
Sandra Dickinson Sandra Dickinson (née Searles; born October 20, 1948) is an American-British actress. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She has often played characters within the trope of a dumb blonde with a high-pitched voice ...
as Baby Hutchmeyer,
Mark Heap Mark Heap (born 13 May 1957) is a British actor and comedian. Television credits include '' Ghost Train'' (1991), '' Smith & Jones'' (1997–1998), '' Brass Eye'' (1997–2001), '' Kiss Me Kate'' (1998), '' The Zig and Zag Show'' (1998), '' Ho ...
as Frensic, Laurel Lefkow as Sonia Futtle and
Adam Godley Adam N. Godley (born 22 July 1964) is an English actor. He has been nominated for two Tony Awards and four Laurence Olivier Awards for his performances on the New York and London stages, including ''Private Lives'' in 2001, '' The Pillowman'' i ...
as Peter Piper.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Great Pursuit, The 1977 British novels British satirical novels South African satirical novels Novels by Tom Sharpe Secker & Warburg books