I was invited on to a radio show last week and, to add some novelty to the interview format, I had twelve questions thrown at me. As I have the memory of a sieve, I may not be able to recall all of them, but as a break from the usual book related stuff I thought I might reprint here the ones I can remember, along with my answers. So . . .
Favorite Scent
Easy one, this. Cinnamon, and the smell of turf fires. My grandparents’ farm in Kerry had a small turf bog, and I always associate the smell of burning turf with my childhood. Now that so many people have central heating and gas fires, you don’t get that wonderful smell so much anymore. As for cinnamon, well, it’s just my spice of choice. I have a mild addiction to cinnamon buns. Sad, really.
Worst Dating Experience
Oh dear. I once dated someone who told me that she liked me so much she’d come off her medication. Although flattering for a second or two, this does beg the question of a) what medication are you on?; and b) is it really a good idea to come off it? She was very sweet though, so perhaps that wasn’t so much the worst experience as the most memorable line from my dating adventures.
Most Overrated Activity
Strangely, I nominated getting a haircut, if only because I once dated someone who had an orgasm while having her hair washed in a salon. Now, I’ve had some good haircuts in my time but nothing to could compare to that. You could rub my head until Doomsday and it wouldn’t even cause a tremble downstairs, although if it did you’d never get me out of the hairdresser’s chair. I guess it just goes to show how differently men and women are wired.
Favorite Thing About Ireland
Kerry again, or north Kerry in particular. Less touristy that south Kerry, and a bit less scenic, but lovely people and Ballylongford, the village in which my mother grew up, is still one of the most welcoming places I know.
Favorite City
Probably Portland, Maine. It’s certainly one of the few places other than Dublin in which I could imagine living. For flying visits, though, it has to be New York.
Who would you invite to your last supper?
Well, I could figure out who I wouldn’t invite. I can never understand people who nominate Jesus as a guest at their last supper. After all, He probably wouldn’t be keen on coming after the first one, and also it would be hard to trump Jesus at dinner table conversation.
“So, I went to the Bahamas for my holidays.”
“Well, I came back from the dead.”
See? It’s a no-win situation.
Most respected politician?
I think politicians are increasingly pragmatists rather than idealists, so I found it hard to choose a living one. Instead I nominated a deceased Irish Labour politician named Frank Cluskey, who used to come to our house when I was a child. He was the first politician that I ever met, and committed to those old style ideas of socialism and equality that are anathema to the modern British Labour party, at least.
Literary villain(s) and literary hero
Well, in common with at least one fellow author, I have a problem with adults who are obsessed with Harry Potter books. You know, it’s like Kerplunk and hula hoops. It’s for kids. Read it if you want, and by all means enjoy it, but don’t dress up as Dumbledore and queue for hours outside a bookshop, or tell me that the books represent some level of profundity for adults. If you’re an adult learning stuff from Harry Potter books then you’ve missed something along the path of life. Equally, if you think that they’re the best books ever written then you just haven’t read enough. I’m sorry, but there it is. I wish J.K. Rowling only the best, and I absolutely the support the right of adults to read whatever they choose, but even Rowling must sometimes shake her head at the excesses of her older fans.
The hero would probably be Ross Macdonald, for reasons explained in an earlier edition of this column.
Beatles or the Stones?
Beatles, every time.
Biggest Fashion Disaster
Spoiled for choice here, really. The one my friends refuse to let me forget is a jacket with writing on the back that I wore only once. I think it advertised some fictitious flying company.
“Are you really employed by the Caribbean Flying Corps?”
“Er, no.”
End of story.
Trait that I Most Dislike in Other People
Meanness. I really despise it. I think people who are tight with money tend to be miserly in other ways too. It’s a symptom of a deeper malaise. One of my favorite insults relates to meanness. As the great Brendan Behan once said of a particularly stingy acquaintance: “If he was a ghost, he wouldn’t give you a fright.”
Song that Most Irritates Me
Gosh, there are so many, but if I had to pick one it would be an Irish ballad called The Fields of Athenry, which is just a dirge and now appears to be everywhere in the way that cockroaches and flies are. I’m a huge Liverpool fan and they even sing a version of it on the terraces at Anfield. I’d ask them to stop, but I’d probably get beaten to a pulp.
This week John read:
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
and listened to:
Witching Hour by Ladytron
Monday, February 27, 2006
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Creative Writing
About two years ago, a close friend of mine lost his publishing contract. He had been writing a series of crime novels that appeared to be doing well, but I think he felt that he had exhausted that particular seam and wanted to try something set elsewhere with a different central character. Unfortunately, the new series didn’t sell as well as he had hoped and the publisher didn’t renew his deal. I felt pretty terrible for him, perhaps in part because what had befallen him is something that most published writers worry about fairly constantly, even, I suspect, those who appear to be virtually untouchable in terms of sales and critical kudos. It only takes a couple of missteps before one finds oneself in a potentially difficult situation, and publishers are notoriously unsentimental about their authors once sales begin to plummet.
I suppose I’m more than usually aware of this at the moment as I’m reading through the copy edited manuscript of the next book, The Book of Lost Things. (The copy edit, incidentally, is the version of my manuscript that has been checked for errors and inconsistencies and has also been annotated with instructions for the typesetter. The next stage is the proof, which looks like an unbound edition of the final book and offers a final chance to catch errors before publication.) Last year, when I was touring The Black Angel in the United States, I was asked in a bookstore what my next book would be about. I explained The Book of Lost Things as best I could, and a reader came up to me afterwards and told me that he had no intention of reading it, that he had no interest in any book of mine that wasn’t a mystery, and when I got back to what he thought I should be doing he’d consider parting with his money for what I wrote.
Now apart from possibly requiring a lesson or two in diplomacy, the reader in question was quite within his rights to say what he did. Just because I write something doesn’t automatically mean that anyone is going to want to read it, and if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool mystery buff then you may not want to read something that isn’t a mystery, even if it’s written by a writer whose previous work you’ve enjoyed. Nevertheless, a response like that from a reader is going to send a shiver down the spine of even the most well-adjusted of writers.
Suppose, when the book appears, that everyone feels that way, or at least enough people that sales plummet and a noise that sounds suspiciously like thin ice cracking comes from beneath one’s feet? What then? Perhaps it would be better to stick with the stuff that works and sells right from the start. After all, I get paid less for writing non-Parker books than I do for Parker books, so it actually hurts me financially to take a creative risk. In fact, I didn’t take an advance at all in the UK for Nocturnes because I was worried about sales and I didn’t want to make it an unattractive proposition for my publisher (and also, to be truthful, I wanted to take a little pressure off myself, for if the book didn’t do well then I hadn’t taken the publisher’s money and it would be less likely to go down as a blot in the copybook of my career. Such are the things about which a writer worries . . .)
The problem is, of course, that it’s impossible to progress and take the easy option. We develop by trying new things, not by doing the same ones over and over again. In addition, while I love writing the Parker books and have tried, in my way, to make each one different from the last, there are some themes and stories, some avenues of exploration, that are just not suited to that structure: hence most of the stories in Nocturnes, and the writing of The Book of Lost Things. These departures also allow me to stretch writing muscles that have not been used during the writing of the Parker books: I can experiment with voices, with points of view, with other genres. I can learn different skills that may be applied, in turn, to the Parker books, enabling me to return to him with fresh eyes and some new weapons in my armoury. In that way, taking time out to try to experiment with other forms contributes to keeping the quality of the Parker books as high as my skills allow.
(I’m also fortunate in that there is a loyal core to my readership, or so it seems. Nocturnes sold far better than anyone expected, myself included, and it’s been heartening to see some of the responses to my remarks about The Book of Lost Things on my website. All writers should be so lucky, I sometimes think . . . )
But there is still that fear, that nagging voice that sometimes sounds like one’s own but at other times emerges from a little man in an American bookstore. Why take the chance? Why not stick with what’s working, even if the quality takes a bit of a tumble along the way? Not an enormous tumble, not enough to make readers feel cheated, but a tumble nonetheless. I’ll have more money in my pocket. I’ll probably have bigger sales. A couple of people may complain that the book wasn’t quite as good as the last but, hey, there’ll be another one along next year and perhaps that one will be better. Whole careers have been sustained by that kind of reader optimism. There will be no real risk involved. It’s a sweet deal, so why mess it up?
The answer: because I have to. Last week, I read Kurt Vonnegut’s slim, wise little book, A Man Without a Country. Towards the end, he recounts a conversation that he had with the graphic artist Saul Steinberg.
“Saul,” Vonnegut asks, “are you gifted?”
Steinberg doesn’t answer for a moment, then says: “No, but what you respond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.”
I don’t know that I’m an artist. I think most creative work aspires to the condition of art, but that’s not the same thing at all. (Secretly, most creative people would like to believe that they’re creating art but probably suspect that they’re not.) But I do recognise that struggle, that refusal to take the easy road, that need to risk failure because without the risk the thing isn’t worth doing at all. In the end, like James Lee Burke says, you have to learn to ignore both the catcalls and the applause.
You have to go with your heart.
This week John read:
A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
The Planets by Dava Sobel
The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin (uncorrected proof)
Desperation by Stephen King
Doctor Who: A Critical Guide by Kim Newman
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
and listened to:
Espers by Espers
I suppose I’m more than usually aware of this at the moment as I’m reading through the copy edited manuscript of the next book, The Book of Lost Things. (The copy edit, incidentally, is the version of my manuscript that has been checked for errors and inconsistencies and has also been annotated with instructions for the typesetter. The next stage is the proof, which looks like an unbound edition of the final book and offers a final chance to catch errors before publication.) Last year, when I was touring The Black Angel in the United States, I was asked in a bookstore what my next book would be about. I explained The Book of Lost Things as best I could, and a reader came up to me afterwards and told me that he had no intention of reading it, that he had no interest in any book of mine that wasn’t a mystery, and when I got back to what he thought I should be doing he’d consider parting with his money for what I wrote.
Now apart from possibly requiring a lesson or two in diplomacy, the reader in question was quite within his rights to say what he did. Just because I write something doesn’t automatically mean that anyone is going to want to read it, and if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool mystery buff then you may not want to read something that isn’t a mystery, even if it’s written by a writer whose previous work you’ve enjoyed. Nevertheless, a response like that from a reader is going to send a shiver down the spine of even the most well-adjusted of writers.
Suppose, when the book appears, that everyone feels that way, or at least enough people that sales plummet and a noise that sounds suspiciously like thin ice cracking comes from beneath one’s feet? What then? Perhaps it would be better to stick with the stuff that works and sells right from the start. After all, I get paid less for writing non-Parker books than I do for Parker books, so it actually hurts me financially to take a creative risk. In fact, I didn’t take an advance at all in the UK for Nocturnes because I was worried about sales and I didn’t want to make it an unattractive proposition for my publisher (and also, to be truthful, I wanted to take a little pressure off myself, for if the book didn’t do well then I hadn’t taken the publisher’s money and it would be less likely to go down as a blot in the copybook of my career. Such are the things about which a writer worries . . .)
The problem is, of course, that it’s impossible to progress and take the easy option. We develop by trying new things, not by doing the same ones over and over again. In addition, while I love writing the Parker books and have tried, in my way, to make each one different from the last, there are some themes and stories, some avenues of exploration, that are just not suited to that structure: hence most of the stories in Nocturnes, and the writing of The Book of Lost Things. These departures also allow me to stretch writing muscles that have not been used during the writing of the Parker books: I can experiment with voices, with points of view, with other genres. I can learn different skills that may be applied, in turn, to the Parker books, enabling me to return to him with fresh eyes and some new weapons in my armoury. In that way, taking time out to try to experiment with other forms contributes to keeping the quality of the Parker books as high as my skills allow.
(I’m also fortunate in that there is a loyal core to my readership, or so it seems. Nocturnes sold far better than anyone expected, myself included, and it’s been heartening to see some of the responses to my remarks about The Book of Lost Things on my website. All writers should be so lucky, I sometimes think . . . )
But there is still that fear, that nagging voice that sometimes sounds like one’s own but at other times emerges from a little man in an American bookstore. Why take the chance? Why not stick with what’s working, even if the quality takes a bit of a tumble along the way? Not an enormous tumble, not enough to make readers feel cheated, but a tumble nonetheless. I’ll have more money in my pocket. I’ll probably have bigger sales. A couple of people may complain that the book wasn’t quite as good as the last but, hey, there’ll be another one along next year and perhaps that one will be better. Whole careers have been sustained by that kind of reader optimism. There will be no real risk involved. It’s a sweet deal, so why mess it up?
The answer: because I have to. Last week, I read Kurt Vonnegut’s slim, wise little book, A Man Without a Country. Towards the end, he recounts a conversation that he had with the graphic artist Saul Steinberg.
“Saul,” Vonnegut asks, “are you gifted?”
Steinberg doesn’t answer for a moment, then says: “No, but what you respond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.”
I don’t know that I’m an artist. I think most creative work aspires to the condition of art, but that’s not the same thing at all. (Secretly, most creative people would like to believe that they’re creating art but probably suspect that they’re not.) But I do recognise that struggle, that refusal to take the easy road, that need to risk failure because without the risk the thing isn’t worth doing at all. In the end, like James Lee Burke says, you have to learn to ignore both the catcalls and the applause.
You have to go with your heart.
This week John read:
A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
The Planets by Dava Sobel
The Motel Life by Willy Vlautin (uncorrected proof)
Desperation by Stephen King
Doctor Who: A Critical Guide by Kim Newman
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
and listened to:
Espers by Espers
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