My third novel, Glow, is published by Sceptre two months from today, and I've written a Frequently Asked Questions about it. Because the book isn't out yet, most of
these Questions I haven't even been Asked once, let alone Frequently.
And it might seem a bit too
early to start talking about it in detail.
However, plenty
of proof copies have already gone out, and I'm told that reviews are
already being written. So the
following FAQ is for interviewers and reviewers, anticipating some of
the more obvious questions that they might have. General
readers will not find any of this information very
interesting, and should not bother to read it.
Still, just in case, I've made sure not to spoil any of the plot.
How did you get the idea for this book?
There were two subjects I had been wanting to write about for a long time. One was London pirate radio. This is a fascinating and unique thing which has obvious potential as a plot point because it's illegal and secretive and faintly magical. But I've never read a novel about it. People will go to a Richard Curtis film valorising the offshore DJs of the 1960s (rendered unthreatening by historical distance) without even realising that London still has dozens of active pirate radio stations. Moreover, I knew that writing about pirate radio would give me an excuse to set the book in south London. In The Teleportation Accident, I'd already written about Dalston, which I hate; here, I had an opportunity to write about Peckham, which I love.
The other subject I'd been wanting to write about for a long time was corporate imperialism in developing countries. This, of course, has been novelised extensively, going back past One Hundred Years of Solitude all the way to Heart of Darkness and probably even further into the nineteenth century if I knew my Victorian fiction better. But in the age of Blackwater there is still a lot to address. I'm told I could get into legal trouble if I suggest that I drew from the activities of any other real-life companies in my research, so I'll just say that for various reasons I decided to set this part of the story in South East Asia.
I wanted to write about both pirate radio and resource extraction in the Golden Triangle, and I had to find a way to connect them. The clear solution was the drug trade. And the rest of the plot emerged from that triad.
Your first two books were wilfully confounding postmodern black comedies. This is a thriller with some pretty Hollywood moments. Why did you decide to write one of those?
There were two subjects I had been wanting to write about for a long time. One was London pirate radio. This is a fascinating and unique thing which has obvious potential as a plot point because it's illegal and secretive and faintly magical. But I've never read a novel about it. People will go to a Richard Curtis film valorising the offshore DJs of the 1960s (rendered unthreatening by historical distance) without even realising that London still has dozens of active pirate radio stations. Moreover, I knew that writing about pirate radio would give me an excuse to set the book in south London. In The Teleportation Accident, I'd already written about Dalston, which I hate; here, I had an opportunity to write about Peckham, which I love.
The other subject I'd been wanting to write about for a long time was corporate imperialism in developing countries. This, of course, has been novelised extensively, going back past One Hundred Years of Solitude all the way to Heart of Darkness and probably even further into the nineteenth century if I knew my Victorian fiction better. But in the age of Blackwater there is still a lot to address. I'm told I could get into legal trouble if I suggest that I drew from the activities of any other real-life companies in my research, so I'll just say that for various reasons I decided to set this part of the story in South East Asia.
I wanted to write about both pirate radio and resource extraction in the Golden Triangle, and I had to find a way to connect them. The clear solution was the drug trade. And the rest of the plot emerged from that triad.
Your first two books were wilfully confounding postmodern black comedies. This is a thriller with some pretty Hollywood moments. Why did you decide to write one of those?
Interviewers
ask a lot of questions of the form 'Why did you decide to write a
book that [instantiates
some general
property]', and they're not easy to answer, because they imply a
degree of preliminary strategic thinking that does not usually
take place. I never decided
to write a thriller; as I said, I wanted to write about pirate radio, corporate militarism and, concomitantly, drugs, and because all three of those are shady fields where there might be a few guns around, a thriller
emerged
as the
natural form. That said, I think all of my books have had
a balance of thiller and non-thriller elements. Glow
simply
has most of the non-thriller elements removed, because in this case
they would have been impediments.
Your first books were set mostly in
the 1930s and '40s. Why did you decide to write a book set in the
present day?
The deflection
above also applies to this question. But to answer it in the bluntest
way possible: the book involves raves, pirate radio and post-ecstasy
drug culture in south London, so it could not realistically have been
set before about 1990, and it made more sense for me to set it in
2010 than in 1990 or 2000 because I lived through 2010 as an adult.
Your first two books were noted for
their 'unsympathetic characters'. Why did you decide to write a book
with two pretty likeable guys at its centre?
I find the
practise of classifying fictional characters as 'sympathetic' or
'unsympathetic' to be pernicious and infantile. But I suppose I do
have an answer to this. As before, I didn't decide beforehand
that Raf and Isaac would be 'sympathetic'. However, they did develop
rather differently from Erskine or Loeser, and I think it's because
this book is the first time I've tried to write in detail about
certain categories of human experience towards which I feel genuine
fondness. I like south London, and foxes, and night buses, and
dancing, and falling in love. So my characters do too. And the
flippancy and pessimism which permeated my first two books would have
got in the way of that.
Still, please
don't take from this that I've 'moved on from' or 'grown out of' the
tendencies of my earlier work. My fourth novel may very well be
another postmodern black comedy about 'unsympathetic characters' in
the 1930s.
As a public-school-educated north
London Jew, how did you feel while writing this novel about
small-time criminals on Peckham housing estates?
Blissfully
confident, 100% authoritative.
Will I learn a lot about the
political situation in Burma from this book?
No! This book is
about Burma in the same way that From Russia With Love is
about the Soviet Union. I've never even visited Burma. For heaven's
sake do not rely on me as an authority. I just exploited the country
as a plot point. If you really want to learn about Burma, some
enjoyable books include From The Land of Green Ghosts by
Pascal Khoo Thwe, Under the Dragon by Rory McLean, Everything
is Broken by Emma Larkin, and of course Burmese Days by
George Orwell. But it's changing so fast that it may be better just
to read the New York Times at the moment.
And don't even get
me started on how slapdash and under-researched the neuroscience is.
What were the books that inspired
this book?
In non-fiction, it
was The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. In fiction, it was
William Gibson's Bigend trilogy (starting with Pattern
Recognition) and John Updike's Rabbit quartet (starting with
Rabbit, Run).
You published your debut novel in
spring 2010, and here is your third novel already. How are you so
prolific?
I'm afraid the
most accurate answer to this question is also the most boring one.
The way I see it, I am not actually that prolific. For commercial
reasons, the fastest my publisher could possibly publish my books is
about one every two years. The average length of my books so far is
about 100,000 words, which means that to maintain that rate I would
have to write about 50,000 words a year, or about 1,000 words a week.
1,000 words happens to be my target for one good day of writing (and
I think if you took a survey of writers you might find that 1,000
words is about average or even on the lower end of the distribution).
Consequently, as long as I do one good day of writing a week, I have
the whole rest of the week for revisions, research, promotion,
travel, screenwriting, freelancing, short stories and so on. (Of
course, this is an abstract week, for demonstration purposes only –
in practice, maybe I'll do a whole fortnight of writing followed by a
week of this and a week of that and a week of the other.) So a
medium-length book every two years, which people seem to think is
prolific, feels like the very minimum level of accomplishment I can
demand of myself. After all, I'm in good health and I have no
dependents and no day job. Barbara Cartland once wrote 23 novels in
one year.
At this point,
other writers will object that my calculations only make sense if I
always have a book in progress and I make no false starts and I never
throw anything away. Well, yes, that is basically the case. I am a
disturbingly efficient factory machine. I think it's because my books
are conceived so much in terms of their complicated plots, so I
always know precisely what I have to write next. In the long run,
perhaps this will limit me, or perhaps my methods will evolve, or
perhaps neither.
Still, you must be very motivated?
When I tell people
that I work at home, feet from my bed, unsupervised, on my own
schedule, with no real deadlines, and I yet I don't have any trouble
getting enough words down every week, they say, 'Wow, you must have
such self-discipline.' Then when I tell them that, because my writing
methods prevent me from turning the internet off entirely while I
work, I use a complex battery of software, and one kitchen appliance, to limit my access to
time-wasting websites – this, this, this, this and this – they
say, 'Wow, do you have no self-control at all?' So maybe I am very
motivated or maybe I am not very motivated. I will wait
for everyone else to make up their minds on this question.
The book is set in south London,
where you once lived, but shortly before starting the book you left
London to take up a residency in Berlin and you haven't gone back to
London very much since. Was this an obstacle?
Yes, it felt like
pretty bad timing. But I had years of observations saved up when I
left, and when I did visit London in the course of writing the book I
took a lot of notes. I also made heavy use of Flickr.
Is non-24 sleep/wake syndrome a real
condition? Do you go looking for these rare conditions?
Like
trimethylaminura in Boxer, Beetle, it is a real condition, and
like trimethylaminuria I heard about it because I met someone who
knew someone who suffered from it.
I am reviewing or blogging or
tweeting about this book. Good evening?
Good evening. I
would really appreciate it if you could give away as little of the
plot as possible. I mean, OK, it's not one of those books where half
way through it mind-blowingly turns out to be about a completely
different thing from what you thought it was going to be about. But I
think it does take some unexpected turns, and I'd really like them to
remain satisfying.
Are you going to be doing a lot of
promotion for this book?
I suppose, but
sometimes I wonder: what's the point of burnishing my media image any
further? I mean, I'm already regarded as an Alan Bennett-like
national treasure, cherished by readers of every age for my warmth
and humility.
Are you ever going to join Twitter?
Yes! I used to say
I would never join Twitter. I didn't feel it would be useful or
positive for me as a writer, and I maintained that I couldn't
reasonably be accused of being inaccessible to my readers given that
my personal email address is on my website and I reply to every
single email I get. But I've come to realise that it's important for
getting my books out into the world, and that maybe I could even make
some new friends. So I admit it – I was wrong! Please do follow me
at my new personal account.
3 comments:
I didn't understand why you decided to write this book... ;-)
You are one of my favorite writers and I can not wait that the book is published in Italy
Kisses from your number one Italian fan. I adore your works!
Mr. beeauman,
Haribo...now that's an unexpected twist, albeit a delicious one!
DL
I adore your works!
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