The passing of Pat The London literary world was plunged into grief this week at the death, aged 68, of the doyenne of literary agents Pat Kavanagh, also the wife of novelist Julian Barnes. Major writers from her client list paid tribute and expressed shock at the suddenness of her passing. Kavanagh died from a brain tumour diagnosed only five weeks ago.
"Pat was a link with an older, more distinguished, less corporate and less commercial era in British publishing," said Robert Harris, who was her client for 26 years. He treasures a framed photograph of George Orwell she gave him, knowing he revered Orwell and which had hung in Arthur Koestler's study; Kavanagh had salvaged it when she had to clear out Koestler's desk after his suicide.
Novelist Blake Morrison hailed her as the finest agent of her generation. "She was completely trustworthy and when you sent her a typescript she would always let you know what she thought in no uncertain terms . She had complete integrity," he said, as well as the values of an earlier generation. "She was old school but she never seemed jaded. We all thought she would always be there."
Hermione Lee stressed Kavanagh's refusal ever to be false or gushing, while Margaret Drabble saluted her discretion, genuineness and frankness in an industry rife with gossip and flattery.
To Joanna Trollope she was "a six-star class act", while Helen Simpson said that once Kavanagh thought you were good, your confidence was fuelled: "Pat would get you the money, but she was much more interested in your writing." In recent years, Kavanagh and other agents left PFD, the agency where she worked for the bulk of her professional life, after disagreements with its new owners and set up a new agency, United Agents, which opened for business this year. Her authors' loyalty to her was evidenced by the way her client list followed her.
Indeed, her client list was a persuasive indicator that she was on the side of the creator, said Clive James: "But to be on the side of the creator effectively, an agent must know the business. Pat did. I can well remember her first explanation to me of why it was better, on a book of memoirs, to have a rising rate on later royalties [the 'escalator' clause] than to inflate the advance, especially if I also wanted the publisher to put out off-trail stuff, such as collections of essays and poetry. 'The secret,' she said, 'is to be a long-term asset'."
The literary voices celebrating her would, he said, all say it differently - but there would be common themes: "Respect, admiration, love, and a racking grief at so cruel a blow, which had an awful quickness for its only mercy."
Faber workshop
Irish writers Gerard Donovan and Claire Keegan will give a four-day writing workshop organised by British publishers Faber and Faber in Dublin next spring as part of its Faber Academy programme. The course will run from Thursday to Sunday, April 16th to 19th, in Newman House, 85-86 St Stephen's Green, Dublin, old university haunt of no less than James Joyce. The cost is €630 and the subject is The Art of the Short Story. "Using discussions and exercises, the workshops will address the elements of the form - among them setting, characters, time, structure and how fiction forms a temporal arc - while pondering how short-story writers use detail, and the lack of it, to cast the spell of that single effect," says Faber.