The Great Pursuit

The Great Pursuit is a 1977 comic novel by Tom Sharpe. It is a satire encompassing commercialism in publishing and literary criticism. 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, New York, the Deep South and the Maine coast. Frensic and Futtle is a small and successful liter... more

The Great Pursuit is a 1977 comic novel by Tom Sharpe. It is a satire encompassing commercialism in publishing and literary criticism. 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, New York, the Deep South and the Maine coast. Frensic and Futtle is a small and successful literary agency. But following a successful court case by a woman who claimed to have been libeled 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... less