Boyd Tonkin: Agents deal in passion, not per cent

It sounds like the guest list for the most eclectic, and glittering, of parties: a congregation of talent overflowing with strong voices and special gifts. Andrew Motion, Jackie Kay, Clive James and Wendy Cope appear; as do Margaret Drabble, Helen Simpson, Ruth Rendell and Joanna Trollope. Emma Thompson and Sandi Toksvig feature; but so do the chefs Samuel and Samantha Clarke; the dancer Deborah Bull, and a former inmate of Guantánamo Bay, Moazzam Begg. And so, of course, does Julian Barnes. A glance at the bereft and orphaned client list of Pat Kavanagh, who died this week, reveals that the modern book trade drew a leading agent's gaze into almost every corner of cultural – and political – life.

Kavanagh famously belonged to the "country solicitor" school of agenting: firm, discreet, tenacious, and above all a long-term anchor and shelter for her authors. She preferred making (good) deals to making headlines; and she came from that generation of agents who chose to strengthen the hand of writers, rather than maximise the return on "properties". Elsewhere, the acquisition of agencies by talent-management firms – the very process that caused a schism at Kavanagh's PFD last year, and led her and others to set up the United Agents group – has made books into bit-players in a multi-media global strategy that may also draw in film, broadcasting, music and sport.

Many writers distrust the packaging of their work as corporate commodities. They crave the intimacy and continuity of Kavanagh's approach more than ever. Hence the recent drift – which almost became a stampede – of former publishers into literary agencies. The trend began in earnest when Peter Straus quit Picador for Rogers, Coleridge and White, but has since been repeated many times. Authors often complain that hyperactive in-house editors within conglomerates fail to deliver the TLC that every new-born manuscript deserves. The best agents can, and do. Recession conditions may winnow out the weakest, but give the smartest deal-makers even more clout.

Figures such as Kavanagh have grown so familiar in British literary life that it is worth recalling that our business model does not even cross the Channel – let alone the world. French publishers, proud of a tradition of paternalist (some would say neo-feudal) relations with their cherished authors, still treat the agent as a predatory ogre spawned by the greed of "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism. French writers, I feel, sometimes hope that a bit more of this vulgar rapacity could be exercised on their behalf. Paris publishing felt the rumble of revolution when the noble house of Gallimard had to cede foreign rights to Jonathan Littell's blockbuster Les Bienveillantes to that most un-French pariah, an agent (Andrew Nurnberg).

In contrast, Spanish-language fiction has boomed around the world over the past 40 years thanks at least in part to the energy of agents. Gerald Martin's wonderfully readable new biography of Gabriel García Márquez (see facing page) has several episodes that indicate just how much he owes to his Mama Grande: the legendary Barcelona agent, Carmen Balcells. For Martin, Balcells is "the most important woman in his life" after his mother and wife. "Do you love me, Carmen?" the novelist once pleaded on the phone. "I can't answer that," came the reply. "You are 36.2 per cent of our income."

Yet star names and thumping deals make up a tiny proportion of most agents' daily work, here or abroad. Last month, in Istanbul, I met the young and dynamic pair who have built up one of Turkey's first literary agencies, Kalem. Ayser Ali and Nermin Mollaoglu are not jet-setting fixers (they took the train to this year's Thessaloniki book fair, in fact) but a two-woman antidote to "clash of civilisations" nonsense, working hard to bring the best of Turkey to the world. Grasping parasites? I think not. In some parts of the globe, agenting can be not just a dealing but a healing art.

P.S.In one obituary of Pat Kavanagh, one of the grandest of London publishing's grandes dames alluded to her ability to reduce the "spluttering hacks" of Fleet Street to silence in negotiation. This, remember, was an agent who represented Francis Wheen, Robert Harris, Blake Morrison and several other authors who – whatever their achievements elsewhere – are all distinguished journalists. Rarefied souls who find something ignoble about the art of reportage should pick up – if they can lift it – a boxed set of Robert Fox's magnificent four-volume survey for the Folio Society of the past in its first drafts, Eyewitness to History. From Herodotus and Xenophon to Robert Fisk (left) and James Fenton (another Kavanagh client), this giant haul from 2500 years of lasting testimony is the ultimate hack's revenge. Even novelists might learn a lot from it.