U.S. Novelist Chooses Chch Publisher

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32266, 8 April 1970, Page 2

U.S. Novelist Chooses Chch Publisher

An American author living in Christchurch temporarily will have her latest novel published locally. Mrs Melanie Pflaum has signed a contract with Mr M. J.-Wood, of Univers Press, Ltd, for the production of her fifth novel, “The Second Conquest,” the love story of a Spaniard who goes to live in Puerto Rico.

Her other books, which include “Bolero”, “Windfall,” “The Insiders” and “The Gentle Tyrants” have been published in London, Paris, New York and Hamburg. Mrs Pflaum, who is on a year’s leave from her position as associate professor of English at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, knows the West Indian island well. “In ‘Second Conquest’ I have used 10 years exerience of living in the Caribbean and I have passed on the realities of Puerto Rico as against the myths surrounding the place expressed in such works as ‘West Side Story’,” she said recently.

Many Sources A very widely-travelled woman, Melanie Pflaum can draw on her own first-hand knowledge of many countries. This she has done in all her previous novels, which have backgrounds in Majorca, Britain, Panama, and Chicago (her home town) as well as university campus life. She is now in Christchurch with her husband, Dr I. P. Pflaum, professor of political science and history at the In-ter-American University of Puerto Rico who is at the Univesrity of Canterbury for an academic year on an exchange. Like all writers, Mrs Pflaum has to endure the frustrating time lag between having a book accepted for publication and seeing it in print “I just post a manuscript

to my publisher and forget about it until I receive the proofs," she said. The waiting period may be as long as 18 months. For the gentle American woman this does not matter much—patience is part of her mature personality. She fits in her writing with her uni-

versity work or may concentrate full-time on a novel, as she is now doing with another book she is turning over in her mind. But unknown writers, however promising, have to keep themselves somehow during the interim instead of giving all their time and energies to writing, she said. This she regards as a serious deterrent. More grants should be made available to help them over this difficult period, she feels,

if a country is to encourage good, indigenous writing. Speaking of the United States, Mrs Pflaum said that few grants were awarded and these went, in the main, to already established writers. She has never received a grant at any stage of her career as a novelist

“Governments will help farmers with seed for the crops they will harvest but no one seems to want to help a writer through the frustrating period between having a book accepted and its publication,” she said. “And no writer can live on advance royalties.” Work Dovetails Teaching English and American literature, as well as creative writing, helps her as an author, Mrs Pflaum said. “I often get ideas and stimuli from the teaching situation and, on the other hand, my own writing experience helps me to teach the craft of writing,” she said. “I can help students solve problems I have had myself.” Mrs Pflaum does not discuss a book she is writing with anyone. She fears it may bring her bad luck. “Not even my husband sees my work until it is in page proof," she said. At that stage, however, the former foreign news editor of the “Chicago Sun Times” is a great help to her. Knew Hemingway Apart from her novels, Mrs Pflaum has just finished a critical survey for a university magazine on Professor Carlos Baker’s biography of Ernest Hemingway, whom she came to know well in Spain during the Civil War. At that time her husband was bureau chief for United Press International in Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona.

Though she has been in Christchurch for only a short time, Mrs Pflaum is already in demand as a speaker. She will give a talk to the Canterbury Travel Club tomorrow and later in the month will address the staff wives’ club of the University of Canterbury.