Westberg’s sentiments would be echoed a year later by senior McClelland & Stewart (M&S) editor Lily Miller. because I do not seem to have the ‘voice’ which the novel demands.” I think you should seriously consider dropping it.” Clarke’s frustration is palpable in a March 1979 letter to Jack McClelland in which he confesses: “MORE is perhaps, the most difficult novel I have attempted to write.

As I told you, there’s a strange lack of emotion in that book that is very unlike you.

Westberg wrote to Clarke in February 1979: “Actually Austin, I’m not at all sure you should spend time on revising MORE. Neil Nyren of Atheneum Publishers preceded his long and detailed rejection letter by wondering, “ Oh dear, what’s happened to Austin Clarke?” Nyren ended with the prophetic statement: “I think it’d take an enormous amount of work to get this into shape.”ĭespite further revision, the manuscript was consistently rejected. Even after Clarke’s revisions in June 1978, the manuscript was again rejected. It’s 642 pages.” A few weeks later, Clarke wrote again to Westberg describing how he had spent his day “doing not one damn thing, drinking scotch, and dreaming of the millions that will flow with the publication of MORE.” The fulfilment of the dream would have to wait some time, however, as More was declined by every editor who read the first draft. The length may appear shocking to you, but I do not think that it is a problem. A few days after finishing the draft, Clarke wrote to his agent, Phyllis Westberg, of Harold Ober Associates: “The revision of MORE has been finished!. Clarke’s first draft of More was completed in 1978 and focused on the lives of Mack, a Scottish-Canadian woman, her husband, and their circle of Rosedale friends and socialites. Austin Clarke (1934-) began writing More in 1977, a few years after the completion of his “Toronto Trilogy” ( The Meeting Point, 1967 Storm of Fortune, 1973 and The Bigger Light, 1975).” After spending time as a visiting professor at Yale, the University of Texas, and Duke University and having managed the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation for a year, Clarke returned to Toronto in 1977 and began writing novels once again.

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