Whatever Happened to Bluechrome? The mystery of the disappearing publisher.

When Bluechrome Publishing closed in 2009 the disappearance of the publisher, Anthony Delgado, was a mystery that baffled those of us involved. It’s a mystery that has remained for years – but it’s now possible to find some answers. Along with a number of authors, I was waiting for my book to be published by them and I was also working as Bluechrome’s fiction editor. Despite this I was given no warning that the company was closing and when all communication stopped I was left in as difficult a position as everyone else.

I tried to trace Anthony for my own sake and the sake of the other authors, as we needed to know our rights regarding our own books on the Bluechrome list. My own poetry collection, Never-Never Land, was the last book published by Bluechrome just as they were vanishing, so it had no launch, no promotion and I received no royalties. I managed to get hold of the remaining copies from the distributors, Central Books, with permission from the book reps Inpress books: none of the people in these companies had heard from Anthony.

He had managed to vanish very effectively. When I saw some online book sales for Bluechrome titles I thought he was still operating, but in fact books continue to sell via distributor, wholesalers and book reps. Apart from wanting to sort out my contract with Bluechrome so that I could republish my book, I was concerned about Anthony and wanted to know he was well – he had MS and I had heard he and his family had received death threats and other harassment from authors when new book launches were delayed in the year before the company closed.

While trying to find Anthony I discovered that he used the pen-name Erik Ryman for his own books. This was a surprise as he had asked me to edit a novel by Erik Ryman without letting me know it was actually his, but I remember how delighted he was that I ‘liked Erik’. I was supposed to receive a small payment for editing Bluechrome books but it never arrived, not even for the Erik Ryman novel. I never cared about the lack of payment as I knew small publishers struggled. Along with the poetry editor and some authors there was a lot of good will and the wish to help Anthony keep Bluechrome going but he wouldn’t talk to us at the end.

A couple of years ago I discovered that an Erik Ryman of Bristol (like Anthony) was active online again but there was no sign of any easy way to contact him. He was involved with the music community, mainly on guitar forums, where he said he had started the Jooky Guitar Emporium. Following various links I found he had tried to set up a small family publishing venture using crowdfunding to bring out a few books, but the amount needed hadn’t been raised.

In recent weeks the Jooky name came to my attention again when a poet told me she had been involved in advising a new publishing company to offer a cash prize for a poetry competition seeing as it had an entry fee. Always interested in new publishing companies I took a look at it – the Hedgehog Poetry Press – and signed up to the e-newsletter. Along with the competition there’s an anthology, a poetry magazine and an opportunity to have an individual collection published. There are good marketing ideas, including the putting together of a limited group of 100 subscribers who will be a kind of ‘literary salon’ to support the press and to spread the word.

On the contact page I found that the press is run by Jooky, which is a publishing company as well as a guitar emporium now, with a few specialist musical magazines on its list. The subscription method of funding is also used by the Jooky Guitar Emporium magazines.

I see some familiar names on the list of contributors to the Hedgehog Poetry Press magazine, including some well-known poets. So it should be easy to find out if the Erik Ryman of Bristol who started Jooky is the same as the Erik Ryman  of Bristol who is the alias of Anthony Delgado. If so, is he still involved with Jooky and if not, does the current owner know what happened to him? If you’re involved with Hedgehog Poetry Press or near them in Somerset I’d be interested to know the answers to these questions.

TV Review - Howards End Episode 4 BBC1

The fourth and final episode of Howards End came full circle with the Schlegel sisters and the Wilcoxes as obnoxious as they were for me in the first episode. In the third episode it seemed as if Helen had developed some awareness of Leonard Bast as an equal rather than a charity case and a social experiment but this was not to endure.

It was also confusing in some parts in a similar way to episode one, especially regarding what happened between Helen and Leonard, so it seemed as if the BBC were relying on people having read the book before watching the series. Did they have a single encounter or had it continued? I couldn’t quite tell. Either way, she decided she ‘never wants to see him again’ because he would ‘keep worshipping her’.

Being a single mother at a time when it would ruin her reputation is preferable to her than being with Leonard, which can be seen as brave, but the way she has continued to treat him abusively by encouraging him to get close and then distancing him because she ultimately views him as inferior shows that she’s the same Helen who wanted to patronise and help him. Her offer of a cheque for £5,000, which he keeps returning, compounds that insult.

The writer, Kenneth Lonergan, did well to keep us wondering why she decided to go to Germany and avoid her family. I thought it was to avoid Margaret once Helen knew about Henry Wilcox’s affair, as it would be hard to lie to her sister after a lifetime of honesty. Helen doesn’t know that Henry has told Margaret and she has forgiven him. The obvious reason – to hide a pregnancy – doesn’t occur to us.

When it comes to Henry being as accepting about a heavily pregnant and unmarried Helen the hypocrisy and double standards of the time for men and women become clear. He doesn’t even want Helen to spend the night in Howards End, where all the Schlegel furniture is being stored. As the housekeeper sets out the furniture and books, Howards End continues to play a main role in the story, establishing itself even more as the permanent home the sisters crave.

The switch from our focus on Henry’s affair to Helen’s unmarried sexual encounter is effective as we see very different reactions to the people involved. Helen is expected to marry, the man is considered a seducer and the active partner, with the woman as a victim but an embarrassment to be shuffled out of the way. If the man can’t marry her he should be thrashed.

Leonard would no doubt marry Helen and is looking for her, finally travelling to Howards End after getting some news from her brother Tibby. It’s clear that he will never be accepted by the Schlegels or the Wilcoxes as a possible husband because of his class, although Tibby has begun to admire him for returning such large cheques and not giving in to the temptation of money despite his poverty.

I haven’t read the novel, but the damage done to Leonard by the Schlegel sisters’ books and bookshelves makes me think EM Forster intended us to see him as the victim of their culture and philanthropy as much as he’s a victim of the class system and wealthy materialists like the Wilcoxes. The Schlegels want the same things as the Wilcoxes in the end – their comfortable house and the company of people from their own class.

At the end we see Helen and Margaret blissfully happy and Leonard is completely forgotten as they live their idyllic life. Helen tells Margaret that she now likes Henry, and Margaret suggests that it would be impossible for anyone to dislike him. Henry has been broken by the legal punishment of his son, rather than the horrific act he has committed, and the fact that he can’t manage to get him out of trouble by pulling all the strings he can. Even when Margaret hears that her husband hid from her the fact that she inherited Howards End from his late wife she is unperturbed. He asks if he did wrong and she replies that nobody has done anything wrong.

They have all done wrong and the victim at every stage has been Leonard Bast along with Jackie. Their lives would have been much better if Leonard had never met the Schlegels but the damage done to them is wiped aside and forgotten as Helen, Margaret and Henry walk out into the sunny meadow with Helen’s child. They deserve each other and Leonard deserved much better. He will stay in my mind and I must read the novel now to see if it comes across in the same way or if the TV series made significant changes to the plot and themes.

It’s not easy to get a strong reaction from viewers and Howards End managed to annoy me many times and to create some difficult viewing in the worst moments for Leonard, all done in casual ignorance by the philanthropic Helen, her family and their friends. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend catching it on BBC iPlayer.

TV Review – Howards End Episode 3 BBC1

Condensing Howards End into four episodes must have been a challenge for the writer (Kenneth Lonergan), but as we reached the penultimate episode it was all coming together nicely. He has all his plates spinning and he’s keeping them balanced, just as a novelist would be in the large central section of a book. The idea was to concentrate on the Schlegel sisters and the men in their lives and this does allow a wider look at other main themes.

The opening scene was a bit stagey and heavy-handed in showing Margaret Schlegel displaying her interest in the latest car being driven by the Wilcox chauffeur. It served to indicate her feminism, contrasting with the older Wilcox and his old-fashioned view of the roles of men and women, but there is little to reinforce the idea of Margaret as a New Woman apart from this and her decision to take the initiative in giving a passionate kiss later. I am left with the feeling that the Margaret in the novel might be more complex, interesting and likeable than the one in this series.

After the initial car scene the acting and dialogue became more believable, with a convincing marriage proposal that takes place without either person saying it explicitly and both cutting the other’s sentences short and saying they understood. Wilcox became more likeable than before in his modest expectation of rejection and offer to help with housing nonetheless. Margaret’s motives are hard to fathom, especially when she makes it clear to Wilcox that she agrees he should pass his money to his sons and daughters.

It’s hard to see what has drawn her to him and it seems like a genuine attraction, even if his attempt at a kiss is initially looks unwelcome. The Margaret who worried about her sister Helen being led on and abandoned by Wilcox’s son in the first episode, seemingly at his father’s request, has vanished. She has no time for Helen’s objections even if we are suddenly reminded by Helen’s own memories that Wilcox is the stuffy and cold authoritarian who hid behind his newspaper to make her feel unwelcome in his home.

Wilcox had been winning us over with his humble proposal in this episode and his willingness to ‘enjoy’ a meal at the protein café at Margaret’s invitation, despite others saying the reformed food is vile. However, we soon see his other side when he just expects Margaret to do as he says. He is inconsiderate about her Aunt Juley’s need of her company on a seaside break and takes her away, speaking over her objections. He also tells her which of his houses she will live in with him without consulting her, only letting her know when she asks.

Margaret’s first view of the empty Howards End is a striking moment. It’s almost derelict without the family there and she seems to fall in love, which many viewers will understand and identify with. In this episode we discover that Howards End is not the only or the main property Wilcox owns and he doesn’t want to live in it. This makes it unacceptable that he ignored his wife’s dying wish to leave it to Margaret (I would still have liked to see more of their short but deep friendship).

Worst of all he has no conscience when he hears his advice has led to Leonard Bast giving up a safe job as a bank clerk and taking on a lower paid job. He doesn’t even remember Bast or that he said the bank was going to have serious financial difficulty. The bank is in no trouble at all, but Bast’s new employer lays him off, leaving him struggling with serious poverty and his live-in partner Jackie ill and malnourished. When he is unwilling to ask the Schlegel sisters for charity, Jackie calls on Margaret to ask for help.

Helen’s response is as immature and tactless as her behaviour in earlier episodes, making us cringe as she drags Bast and Jackie on a train to confront Wilcox at his daughter’s wedding to insist he takes responsibility for his incorrect advice. When Margaret sees them at the wedding marquee she seems to have turned into an echo of Wilcox, shocking Helen by insisting they should leave. However, she offers to speak to Wilcox in a more conventional way to ask him to find Bast a new job.

Wilcox comes good with an offer to please Margaret, even though he believes Bast’s problems are all of his own making. The bringing together of Bast, Jackie and Wilcox leads to a revelation about Wilcox’s past and I’ll be interested to see in the final episode if Margaret will accept it with so-called Bloomsbury open-mindedness about polyamory or if it’s just a new way of turning a blind eye to the patriarchal behaviour of men like Wilcox.

Bast remains the most interesting character to me, and the subtlety of Joseph Quinn’s acting works superbly in this role. So much has to be suggested by looks, body language and few words: his despair at his poverty and loss of work; his feeling of failure at not looking after Jackie; his humiliation at being pressurised to ask for charity and his polite way of understating it in his letter so that Margaret would have to be an expert at reading between the lines to know how much trouble he’s in. The moment he sees Margaret in his home we feel the shock and humiliation with him and we cringe with him on the train he would certainly never have got onto with Helen without Jackie going along with the plan.

When Margaret asks him to leave and says Helen has misled him in expecting Wilcox to help, Bast is only too eager to apologise and go, but Margaret is charitable enough to put him up in a local hotel where Jackie soon falls asleep and he’s left alone with Helen. This moment feels as if it has been inevitable since his first awareness of her sitting beside him at the classical music concert. Helen finally listens to him, rather than treating him to her philanthropy. In few words he tells of his working class family cutting him off because of his relationship and we find out the back story that has left him in his trapped situation. But he does care for Jackie and when Helen says they can’t have anything in common it’s a poignant moment when he answers, ‘We have companionship in common.’ His acceptance of Jackie with her past, and his greater compassion for her because of it, marks him out as the most appealing and ethical character.

Despite her immature behaviour and tactlessness, Helen has also become more likeable because her motives are laudable. She has also started to see Bast as an equal. It’s a significant moment and Joseph Quinn somehow charges the atmosphere with a type of charisma I admire and don’t quite understand in an actor. How exactly does he do it with so few words and restrained body language? When he crosses the room to help Helen close the window, standing close and reaching across her to do it, there’s more erotic tension than in an explicit scene. He has quickly established himself as an actor I would watch a television series to see.

All three first episodes are on BBC iPlayer for a while and they’re well worth seeing, and the fourth will join them after it’s aired this evening.