Graham Swift
Booker
Prize-winning author of
The Light of Day talks with Robert Birnbaum
Graham Swift was born in London, attended Cambridge University
and York University and is the author of seven novels, The Sweet-Shop
Owner, Shuttlecock, Waterland, Out of This World, Ever After, Last
Orders (which was awarded the Booker Prize in 1996), The
Light Of Day and a short story collection, Learning to
Swim. His writing has won numerous awards and has been translated
into twenty-five languages. Graham Swift is a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature and lives in London with his wife and eventually
will begin working on his next novel.
The Light of Day is a story of one day in the life of
George Webb, a middle aged, divorced, former police detective who
is now a private investigator. In this day we learn of George's
childhood, his marriage, his relationship with his daughter, his
police career and his love affair with a convicted and imprisoned
murderess. Anthony Quinn in the New York Times opines,
"He [Swift] has become a master of word paring and phrase-clipping
and scene-whittling and the austerity of style feels like a perfect
fit with the voice of his laconic detective."
Robert Birnbaum: I looked over your press portfolio
and looked at the review in Publisher's Weekly—which
is, of course, quite favorable.
Graham Swift: I've never seen it.
RB: Well, here it is, the forecast, "It's
been nearly seven years since the publication of Last Orders,
and an expectant readership may well justify Knopf's 75,000 first
printing. Lovely cover art won't hurt."
GS: (both laugh)
RB: Here's the review: "George Webb, a divorced
ex-cop and the narrator of this fine novel, works as a private investigator
in London (emphasized, because the novel takes place in Wimbledon).
Specializing in matrimonial work, blah, blah, blah. Nash, whose
client knows the truth of the affair already, … She is just
looking for a sign that her husband can love her again."
GS: I am starting to lose it already.
RB: "Webb's movements on a particular day
in November furnish the opportunity to learn about his childhood."
I could go on. I look at this and I think that is difficult to write
short, to summarize a novel in 300 words.
GS: Well, as I say I haven't read that before.
But I have read similar pieces where the facts and the way the plot
works, they got that wrong. And there is not really an excuse for
it, is there?
RB: No. But what I was fascinated by was the forecast.
This is a reality of the world that you inhabit and toil in. Has
it taken seven years to write this novel?
GS: On paper as it were it will seem it will be
seven years since the original publication of Last Orders.
But the reality is that, well, firstly, my time was taken up by
my last book, running around for it. Not a complaint—it was
a success. I did a lot of stuff. It was effectively two years. I
don't mean two solid years, two years in which my time was being
interrupted so I couldn't get back.
RB: Then you had that damn award [The Booker Prize].
GS: Exactly. So before I could even sit down and
pursue the next novel, find the subject for it, a couple of years
had gone by. And then at the other end, of course, there is no reason
that the public should be aware of this— I delivered The
Light of Day over a year ago. So a year has already gone by
since the finishing of that book. The real gap is four years or
so, which is still a long time, but it's about the time that it
takes for me.
RB: Why do you think it's a long time?
GS: I don't actually think it's a long time. But
I know that several people would.
RB: Your publisher and your agent?
In
the end I produce a novel and it is there for the public,
it’s there for the reader and it's not part of the package
that they should know how it was for me as I wrote it… |
GS: No, not them. But there are people who think
of writers as, every year a new book. And there are such writers,
of course. But I am not one of them.
RB: Do you feel any pressure from that?
GS: No I don't. I don't set out to see how many
books I am going to write. That's not the object of the exercise.
It takes as long as it takes. Another thing that happens is you
don't get it right the first time. You set out and stop and say,
"No, that's not right. I'll go back to the beginning."
That uses up time. But it's good time. That can be tough, but I
think that one of the ways I have, dare I say it, matured as a writer
is in the process of saying to myself, "No that is not good
enough." And rejecting my own work and in some cases starting
again.
RB: Any thoughts on how many people in the world
look at their lives this way?
GS: [pause] I would guess not many.
RB: I ask because given that I expect there is
a shortfall in understanding who lives their lives in this way.
GS: That may be true too. I am talking to you
on how it is. I don't expect that sort of understanding. In the
end I produce a novel and it is there for the public. It is there
for the reader and it's not part of the package that they should
know how it was for me as I wrote it…
RB: But they want to.
GS: I know they are interested.
RB: They want to know your shoe size.
GS: But it's not necessary. Again, it's not what
it's really all about.
RB: In the Writers on Writing series that the
NY Times does, Ann Beattie had voiced the opinion to the
effect that writers are overexposed. These days they are tripping
all over each other on book tours. Whatever the conclusions to be
drawn from that, something that one might consider is it the audience's
hunger for contact with writers and therefore make extraneous information
more common or the desire of the writer to get out of that lonely
room and meet other sentient beings?
GS: Well, all this has happened in my writing
life. When I began writing, which is now sometime ago—when
I say began, this is long before I was ever published—my sense
of the writer then, the world's sense of the writer then going back
a few decades, was essentially of this person you never saw. They
might have a photo on the back of the jacket of the book, but they
sat somewhere and they wrote and they delivered their books to a
publisher who published their book and meanwhile the writer remained
where they were and possibly carried on with another book. All that
has changed dramatically. And it's taken some adjusting.
RB: [laughs]
GS: It really has. Because I am not the natural,
out-on-the-road kind of writer. That's not really me. But such is
the real world of books now that you have to do some of that. I
guess I have adjusted to doing it. If I hadn't I wouldn't be sitting
here with you now. But I would agree with Anne Beattie that this
has been quite a detrimental process in some ways. However it might
have helped the public, the readers feel that authors are these
invisible people, they are real human beings that they can occasionally
see and meet, I think it has cut down, quite seriously sometimes,
on the time and concentration of the writer at his or her work.
RB: You are expected to participate in these subsidiary
activities as part of your responsibility as a writer. It seems
that support systems have improved. Aggressive agents, who sometimes
take the places of what editors used to do…
GS: Yeah.
RB: Hot shot PR firms, smart publishers…
GS: Well, I have an agent. I certainly wouldn't
call him aggressive.
RB: He is not Andrew Wylie?
 GS:
No, I can safely say that. He may be aggressive with publishers
but I don't see that. My agent is such a very good friend. He has
been my agent for many years. I think what you just said is partly
true though the role of the editor…the publisher's editor
has been eroded to the extent that sometimes it is the agent who
is the real confidante of the author, the close companion of the
author. That is something else that has happened in my writing life
and the other thing, damn it, is that publishing itself has changed.
When I started out back home there was a long list of publishing
houses and imprints. The names are still there, but they have been
coalesced into these big conglomerates.
RB: Coalesced. (laughs)
GS: The actual choice of publishers now is more
limited. And they are constantly changing anyway.
RB: That is true in England also?
GS: Oh yes.
RB: Equally as in the US?
GS: That's my suspicion. The things become international
anyway. There is a Random House here, there is a Random House UK.
I think the one thing that you can say now is that a consistent
factor in all this, the factor of which you could say in five years
time, they are still going to be basically the same, is the author.
In five years time, God willing, I shall still be me. I hope still
producing what I produce. I can promise that so far I can. No publisher
can make the promise they will still be the same in five years time.
No way. Even in a year's time.
RB: What difference does it make if it's the editor
or the agent who is giving intelligent advice from the writer's
point of view but from the publishing houses it must make a difference
that editors have changed their roles and attitudes and allegiances?
GS: I think so. The unfortunate shift is that
the marketing departments for the publishing house have become more
important than the editorial ones. With some good exceptions. But
the whole business is marketing led now in way that it wasn't twenty
or thirty years ago.
RB: It wouldn't be fair to single out publishers
for this development. All businesses seem to be marketing driven.
GS: But you can still say, nonetheless, about
publishing that it has this cultural dimension. Of course, it's
commerce. Of course you want to sell books. That is true. It's legitimate
but there is a cultural dimension to it. So why are people in it?
Surely they have to recognize that. If it's just about commerce
then sell something else.
RB: [laughs] Yeah, I remember Molly Ivins telling
that if you think people are stupid then go into advertising. I
was reading something that quoted Samuel Johnson on a diner party
he had attended, "A lot of talk and not much conversation."
From that observation I was thinking about this character George
Webb who spends his time in this novel thinking about the past.
Not all of it particularly insightful or profound.
GS: Yes, go on.
RB: Then it struck me that we don't really think
brilliant and original thoughts very much. Most of our thoughts
are humdrum and quite ordinary.
GS: That's certainly an area that I am at home
in. I am the kind of writer—it should be pretty obvious—who
certainly starts with the ordinary world. The world around the corner,
the familiar world. And if there is going to be anything extraordinary,
I will find it in that. Of course, there is something extraordinary.
There are many extraordinary things. What you just said about how
many things are said in a day that are really significant is another
question. How many things are thought which are significant but
never get said?
In a way, a more tantalizing question. Such is my faith in human
nature that I think…
RB: Go easy…
GS: I'll be cautious. But the saying things and
then articulacy you need to say them. I think we often have the
thoughts and the feelings and those thoughts and feelings go unsaid
because the words don't immediately come out. In my new novel and
in Last Orders, I was in part trying to give a voice—if
I can put it like that, to people's inner thoughts and perceptions.
You have to be very careful with this because the language that
I the author use must not condescend to the character must not betray
where that character was coming from. But I was trying to do that
thing of saying, "Well this man or woman might never have actually
said that in so many words but they could well have had the thought,
the perception that goes with those words.” And George the
central character in The Light Of Day is in that situation.
That is to say, he would have called himself a not very well educated
man. Educated but not very well educated. He says often, "Words
were not my thing." He's a policeman and a detective and thought
of himself as a man of action, if anything. Something has happened
to him now, which has transformed his life. And transformed his
whole perception of the world. And in a way, his sense of words
and language. And he is seeing the world anew in this novel and
needing to find ways of articulating what he is seeing.
RB: There were two instances in the book that
resonated for me. One, when he learns something about his daughter
that he hadn't known before. There is a very flat response, but
it's not like he hasn't heard what she has told him. You didn't
overplay that scene…
When
I started out back home there was a long list of publishing
houses and imprints. The names are still there, but they have
been coalesced into these big conglomerates. |
GS: Let's focus on that for a moment. The situation
is he has had a terrible relationship with his daughter. He's is
now a man in his middle years. His daughter is approaching thirty.
When she was young, a teenager, they were at war. It seemed she
hated him and he couldn't do anything about it. And then there is
this point later on in life when she finally says to him, "Look,
Dad, I'm a lesbian."
RB: She doesn't actually say that.
GS: She doesn't put it in that way. He asks, "Is
there anyone in your life?" And she says, "As a matter
of fact there is. She is called Claire." She is admitting something
that she has never admitted before. He never realized. But in a
flash he knows there was all that trouble in the past. In a flash
he feels guilty because he didn't know and because if he had he
could have understood her. But he understands her right now. And
then the next thought that flashes through his head is, "What
do I say?" And he's thinking, "Actually, it's okay that
she said this. It's not a problem. But if I just say that's alright
she's going to think that, ‘My God, for years I've kept this
a secret and I have confessed to him and he's just saying it's okay.’
So he thinks, "Should I make a big deal about it? Should I
behave like a father might behave in this situation and sort of
sound off about it all?" But in the end he just does the right
thing. A word of love that gets said. And suddenly this relationship
is completely mended.
RB: I have no idea what his wife's problem was
with him? Except she is a lapsed Catholic.
GS: Well, there is an element of that. The break
up occurs when his career as a policeman is finished and he gets
kicked out of the police for improper police behavior and part of
her reaction is really a judgement. She is a pretty judgmental woman.
There are plenty of other things leading up to the breakup but this
is the last straw for him.
RB: I saw her as a terminally dissatisfied person,
but I don't know what her beef, as we say in America, was with him.
GS: Ah, she is a teacher, so one factor is perhaps
that it doesn't look good for her purposes that she is married to
this guy that has been kicked out of his job in this way. But I
think there are a whole number of contributing factors. It's ironic
that she is a teacher because the central female character in the
novel is also a teacher, although she is no longer a teacher in
the sense that she is in prison. But she carries on teaching in
one sense because part of the relationship between her and George,
her visitor in prison, is a sort of teacher-student relationship.
It's not the primary relationship, but it does work like that.
RB: This may be oblique, but trust me this may
get somewhere. The size and shape of the book is interesting to
me. If it were a usual book size it would have been a thinner book.
As it stands now it is a 320-page book, but it seems to take less
time to read than one would expect from a book of such length. Was
the book (5'' x 7'') designed to make it look larger—perhaps
to slow the reader down?
GS: Well, what you said is interesting because
another way in which I hope I have progressed as a writer is in
the direction of economy and concision in the direction of saying
quite a lot in a few words and even then saying it with quite simple
words. This is not a wordy book if I can put it like that. I hope
if I ever was a wordy writer that I have become a less wordy writer.
And my sense of writing, more and more—this is something I
have said before—is that what you are dealing with really
is what lies beyond the word. The words themselves are not the be
all and end all of writing. They are only there to give something,
to transmit something. And that's why often the best words are the
least noticeable words, because they are transparent. The feeling
comes through. So, in that sense my novels have reduced, fewer words,
simpler words. But I hope what lies beyond is always expanding,
if I can put it like that.
RB: Here's what I am getting to. I believe Edgar
Allen Poe suggested a novella was a story that one would sit down
after dinner and be compelled to finish the reading in one sitting.
Did you have any thoughts about whether this story would be best
digested in one sitting—especially since this all takes place
in one day of George's life?
GS: If someone sat down and started it and didn't
get up again until they finished that's fine by me. There is no
obligation to read the book in that way.
RB: [laughs]
GS: But if they did that that's fine. I guess
I Iike to feel that I can have it both ways. That I have written
the kind of book which might affect the reader like that, which
would be read in one sitting and that would be fine. But at the
same time a book that can be slowly digested and certainly a book,
whether it was read the first time at a single sitting or not could
be reread with increasing satisfaction. Or reward or whatever.
RB: I, as I would suppose of other readers, would
aspire to reread books but one of the inhibitors is that there are
so many new books. I just read Robert Stone's new novel twice because
I felt distracted the first reading. Which got me to thinking about
how much I got out of the books I have read the one time.
GS: It's tricky isn't it? The very notion of reading
a book at one sitting and reading a book quickly can be misconstrued.
It's like saying it won't take you very long. It won't take up a
lot of your time. It will be an undemanding thing. That's hardly
what a serious novelist wants. You want to make demands. You want
something, which is full of real nourishment. But it is very hard
in these days to reread. I think the book culture is for the quick
thing. For the one off thing. So there is no modern contemporary
equivalent of the classic book, which is there on the shelf constantly
to be re-read.
RB: Actually, I have picked out two. I try to
reread one of two Garcia Marquez' novels every year, either One
Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in Time of Cholera.
It's an arbitrary choice but not less rewarding because of that.
What will happen to libraries?
GS: Libraries have gone into a sad state of decay
in my country. It's funny, I seem to be deploring all these sad
changes but again when I started writing, libraries were good places
to be. Pretty well supported by public funds, which they no longer
are. Libraries were even places where there was a market for new
publications. A serious novelist would expect to have so many copies
in libraries and now for obvious reasons that's all changed. The
whole communication of books has changed.
RB: There is a persistent, gnawing kind of anxiety
that is expressed by books such as Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit
451 that we will come to a place and time where there will
be no books. But yet there are always signs of hope and you being
the optimist about humanity…
 GS:
Well, I am an optimist in many ways and even an optimist about the
book. There is now the resurrection of the book. People are often
saying the book is finished. Other things will take its place. Actually,
look around, the book is still very much there. There are bookstores,
still. There are readers. There are people who want this experience
that only sitting with a book can give. It's the experience I write
for. It's a wonderful, personal, private kind of chemistry which
occurs between you and the pages of the book, and it’s a very
free thing because as we all know every reader reads the book in
their own way. They have an experience, which is defined for them.
And nothing else really gives that. It's why—as much as I
love going to the cinema—I always think that the movies, the
screen is a smaller than the page because what you get on the screen
it may be marvelous but the screen is saying, "This is it."
Everyone sitting out there is going to see this and see the same
thing. Seeing whatever actor it is playing the character and so
on. How different that is when you read a book. I actually, when
I am writing I don't have a very strong visual impression of my
characters. If you say what's George like in the Light Of Day?
I don't think I could answer that. And that's partly because I want
to leave…
RB: Sarah wears black cashmere.
GS: Yeah, but that's clothing. She doesn't wear
that in prison either. But it's up top the reader to imagine how
the character looks.
RB: Well, the end of the literature and the end
of civilization and the end of this and that are certainly preoccupations
of … but I can't help but thinking that the literary universe
is of a fixed size. It doesn't get smaller and it doesn't expand…and
the anxiety that comes about its existence is about it competing
with every thing else that is getting larger. Growth is a sign of
success; thus we want the literary culture to grow as a validation
of its importance.
GS: Literary culture is pretty damn old. It has
grown. It is what it is and has reached its maturity and is maintaining
its maturity and doesn't need to do something to carry on being
what it is.
RB: Perhaps it is the anxiety of the marketing
departments?
GS: It may well be.
RB: I asked about the notion of reading at one
sitting is about the notion that his novel takes place in one day
but is a meditation on George Webb's life. At that point the idea
of one day became meaningless. I found the story to be very full
of time.
GS: It is. Yes, it does certainly follow the course
of a single day. I do that quite in detail and quite intimately.
Almost hour by hour. But that single day, that present day is a
hinge on which so much else I hung. Rather typically, I would say,
for my kind of narrative. I constantly move around in times—what
I naturally do. It's what we naturally do. On any given day, any
present day. How many memories will we have in the course of that
day? How many other things in our life will, mentally at least,
even if we are not entirely conscious of it feature for us on any
given day, our whole life is there, on any given day. That's the
way it works.
RB: Did you feel required to read detective novels?
GS: No, no…
RB: Is it an arbitrary matter that he is a detective?
GS: Well, it’s not entirely arbitrary. George
was there before he was anything else. He is a human being before
he is anything else. The evolution of his character involved him
being other things than being a detective. I won't say what he was
but there were earlier stages where George is not a detective. And
then a moment came somehow that I knew that he had to be a detective.
And that moment was not a moment when I said to myself, "Oh
now I am going to write a detective story. Or now I am going to
do that sort of thing which is done many times." Nor did I
say to myself I want to play around with the genre of the detective
story of the murder mystery. Why the hell should I do that? So,
it's a novel. It's a serious grown up novel, which has a detective
as its main character.
RB: One of the trade publications in their 200-word
capsule review suggested that the title was a bow to the noirish
aspects of the novels of the '30s and '40s.
GS: I wish someone could tell me. Maybe you can.
What does 'noir' mean, let alone 'noirish'? What does 'noir' mean?
RB: [laughs]
GS: I am afraid it really doesn't mean anything.
I know it's French for 'black'. But when people say 'noir' that
is not exactly what they mean. It's a label word and it's bandied
about and God's truth I don't know what it means.
RB: Well as long as we are talking about a word
that is normally affiliated with cinema, I don't share your feeling
about the limitations of film. There is lots implicit and loaded
into films. I can think of so many scenes that are just physical
gestures by an actor that I think require some interpretation.
GS: I am a bit biased, and I half agree with you.
One thing that often happens in cinema when it works is this thing
of the little, the minimal thing giving a lot, particularly close-ups.
A shot of a character's eyes. All you need sometimes is to see the
close up of the eyes of the character or the face of the character,
not doing much at all. Given the right context you fill it in, the
audience fills in what is going on behind the eyes, as it were.
So that's the sort of parallel reverse of something you get with
the novel. But I still stick with the novel in the end.
RB: [laugh] I'm glad you said you were biased.
Would you be troubled if I read something that I didn't understand?
GS: Go ahead. Maybe I won't understand it either.
RB: "No matter what we do no matter how bad.
If we are found to be corrupt. Even if we do the worst thing ever.
Even if we do what we never thought was in us to do and kill another
person. Even if that other person was once the person for whom we
are holding out a net." I just couldn't get my mind around
that.
GS: Ah well. It comes from something before in
a chapter. I can't really say any more than that. It's the end of
a chapter and the effect of those words depends on things that have
come before.
RB: Tricky. Challenging.
GS: [both laugh]
RB: That does speak to the quality of one's first
reading. How do you know when your story is finished?
GS: By some sort of gut instinct, basically. I
guess you could say a book is never finished. You could always fiddle
around with it until doomsday. Little tiny touches. You sort of
know instinctively that it's now done and it’s rarely from
a moment of, "Aha, today I finished it." It's not like
that, but it dawns on you that it's that.
RB: In The Light of Day were you starting
with one present day as the container for the story?
There
are people who want this experience that only sitting with
a book can give. It's the experience I write for. It's a wonderful,
personal, private kind of chemistry which occurs between you
and the pages of the book, and it’s a very free thing
because as we all know every reader reads the book in their
own way. |
GS: No I didn't. I can't remember at what point
that decision came but it was a very positive point and a very constructive
point. Realizing that there could be this single day that was the
hinge for lots of other things. And this after all is something
I have done before because Last Orders had a similar structure.
There is a single present day and it is a special day involving
a journey in that novel. And that too acts as a sort of focus for
a lot of other stuff and a lot of going back in time.
RB: I was tempted to say that would seem to make
the task of finishing the story easier.
GS: It starts in morning with George's arrival
at his office just like any ordinary day although this isn't quite
an ordinary day. And it finishes technically with him returning
to his office and a passage of hours in between. But a passage of
a whole lot of other stuff too.
RB: And so you finish the first draft and then
what happens?
GS: First, I don't think there is anything as
distinct as a draft. That's to say the whole thing from start to
finish, even in a rudimentary form but complete nonetheless. I think
my drafts are more messy and chaotic things where I might have written
some stuff which will be pretty much like the final thing but a
lot won't be anything close to the final thing, which I have to
discard and rewrite. I would say I probably wrote two and even three
times as much as what you got in the finished book, to get to what
you have in the finished book. But not necessarily in the form of
complete recognizable drafts,
RB: At what point does someone else see it?
GS: Very, very late. Almost the point at which
I think I have got it, I've finished, is the point at which I can
contemplate showing it to someone else. And that someone else will
be my wife first and then one or two people in the trade as it were.
I guess those things go together. For me at least, it's a strange
paradox, I can spend this time with this something that I am the
only person who knows about it but with the object of lots of people
knowing about it, in the end. And there has to be a moment where
you move from one state to the other.
RB: I am aware that you have friends that are
writers. And I imagine you associate with them and such.
GS: Yup, I now know and number among my friends
quite a few writers. This another irony or paradox because certainly
there was a time when I wrote without knowing a single other writer
and indeed I did that for many years. So there I was, out in the
cold, as it were and then gradually I did meet other writers and
became good friends with some of them. I think when I get together
with them they would say the same thing, I am sure, writing itself
is probably the last topic to come up. We respect what each one
of does enough to not say, "What are you working on now? How's
it going?" that sort of thing. You can probably get the signals
anyway, but we talk about anything else but.
RB: What happens if a friend writes a book you
just can't abide?
GS: I think I would have the courage to say that.
I never had to say that so bluntly. I might say, "I couldn't
get on with this one like I got on with the last one." Or something
like that. Again that works reciprocally. It would be surprising
if someone read several of your books and felt equally about each
one of them. Not just a friend but any reader. Different books please
different people.
RB: Someone quoted me Gertrude Stein's idea that
artists should never be criticized. I would think taking bad reviews
and less than glowing commentaries must be hard.
GS: Well we are all human; we would all prefer
to have nice things said about us than not so nice things. I care
less and less what the critics and reviewers say. Partly because
I have gotten used to that process. I have gotten used to the process,
which is a pretty brief one. You publish a book and then for a little
while it will be in the papers and people will say things about
it but it is a little while—a few weeks. And that's behind
you and the book is out there in the real world as it were, and
it will find readers and that's what matters. So it's a transient
experience anyway. I know what I am doing. I know the worth of what
I am doing. If people don't get it, well, too bad. [chuckles]
RB: Well, there are reviewers and there are critics
like Michael Dirda and Jonathan Yardley and Gail Caldwell and James
Wood who take a broader more contextual view. Do you pay attention
to those writers?
GS: I am not terribly up on what comments I have
had a part from things I knew about before I came here. I read some
of it, I don't make it a job to read everything that is said.
RB: I'm distinguishing reviewers from critics
and get your sense of whether they perform a service and whether
the criticism is well argued and thought out and knowledgeable?
GS: That is or should or could be a useful distinction—reviewing
and criticism. There is a lot of reviewing and you could say there
is not a lot of real criticism. A lot of reviewers aren't really
critics in the sense that that is their professional activity. There
people doing that job because they got picked to do it that week,
that sort of thing. The consistent sort of regular critic is not
actually a very common thing these days. Perhaps there should be
more of that. But then even if you have a regular critic, the danger
is they might occupy a position and get very important about it
at the expense of certain intellectual freedoms. It's not a perfect
world.
RB: It would seem that more book coverage is better.
GS: Well, it often said that there is no such
thing as bad publicity. I wonder. People who say that are often
publicists. [both laugh]
RB: Yeah, there are there are these celebrities
who do awful things and continue in the limelight. In any case,
what is next for you?
 GS:
When I am through with the current touring—I'm in North America
now and there are going to be a number of translations of The
Light of Day, starting this Fall. I am going to have to do
more of this at home or in Europe. But when I am on the other side
of that it will be back to the novel writing. I hope. There is something—I
was going to say fermenting, but that might be too strong a word,
but there is something getting on up there at the moment. So when
I can, I'll sit down and put it to the test.
RB: I get the sense that you approach working
on a book from start to finish. That is to say, that you could be
working on it now on planes and trains or wherever.
GS: In a sense there is no reason, but if you
were me I think you'd know ...I'm certainly not that kind of writer.
I can't do more than one thing at one time. I'm afraid that while
I'm traveling like this I'm not being very creative. [chuckles]
RB: Do you listen to music when you write?
GS: Not when I write. But I do certainly listen
to music and I think music informs my writing. I don't mean any
particular music. I just think I have a musical feeling for things
even though my business is words and narrative. A lot of the things
that occur in music also occur and work in storytelling. Things
like rhythm and timing and pacing and so on. And I am a very emotional
writer. Music is obviously an emotional language. When I say I am
an emotional writer I don't mean that I am constantly tearing my
hair out sitting in my room, although I can get like that. I am
guided by emotions. My sense of the shape of what I am doing is
guided by emotion. It is not an intellectual presence. It has very
much to do with feeling and in the end I want to write things that
people feel and if someone says to me, "I was moved by what
you did, I was gripped, I was compelled by what you did." That
means much more than someone saying, "Oh I did like that description
on page 37." Emotion is central.
RB: Good.
GS: Thank you.
____
|
Posted:
July 2, 2003
