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Wednesday, 15 February 2012 |
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“I've always been addicted to Victorian novels, especially such writers as Thackeray, Trollope, George Gissing and George Moore. If you strew your books with allusions that you hope more sophisticated readers will detect, then some of them go mad and detect allusions that aren't there,” he says. Known as a Man of Letters: a novelist, biographer, critic and reviewer, he has several awards like the Whitbread Biography Prize to his name. ‘Derby Day’, his ninth novel, was short listed for the Man Booker Prize last year. ‘Our Encounter of the Week’ is David John Taylor, better known as D J Taylor. Q: Your work is influenced by a range of writers from Dickens to George Eliot, George Orwell, Gissing, Thackeray, Tennyson, Trollope and other Victorian writers. A: Well, my Victorian novels are certainly influenced by all the Victorian writers you mention. But I should like to make a distinction between the style of ‘Kept’ and that of ‘Derby Day’. The first was consciously framed as a series of pastiches, in which whatever Victorian voice seemed most appropriate for the particular demands of the plot was taken out and put into service. With ‘Derby Day’ I was trying – I hope successfully – to create a style that was recognisably Victorian without obviously deriving from any existing source – as if the reader had picked up a Victorian novel by a writer he or she hadn’t previously known about. Q: Some of your writing is based on your roots in Norwich. Is it absolutely necessary for any piece of writing to be realistic in terms of your culture? A: Only three of my novels are (partly) set in Norwich. That said, I’m very conscious of where I come from in a way that a writer living in, say, a London suburb perhaps wouldn’t be. When it comes to putting words on paper I can’t say I ever think of it in terms of ‘realism’ – a term that in any case is by no means easy to define ‘Real life…whatever that is’ (as A S Byatt once put it). It’s more a question of what seems appropriate to the story in hand. Q: Is it easier to write a biography than a novel or vice versa? A: A biography takes stamina and the patience to complete and marshall the research, but the actual writing of it is fairly straightforward. You have the material, it’s up to you to convert it into narrative. You can prepare for writing a novel merely by scrawling a few notes on a piece of paper, but then you have to set to work imaginatively to create the material. Generally speaking, I find novel-writing much less arduous!
A: I vary enormously. The temptation, once one has finished something, and particularly when it appears in printed form, is simply to luxuriate in what seems to you to be its brilliance. On the other hand, going back to things written years ago, I’m often startled by infelicities, mistakes that subsequent experience would have ironed out. Q: The ‘Kept’ seems incomplete because you have not painted a clear picture of what happened to characters like Mr Pardew. Do you believe ambiguous endings are okay for certain stories? A: I dislike novels in which every last thread is pursued to the bitter end, a process which seems to me to emphasise the essential artificiality of the production. There was a practical reason for keeping the ending of ‘Kept’ slightly ambiguous, as I had an idea that I might want to re-animate certain of the characters in the future. And, in fact, Mr Pardew does reappear in my last novel ‘Derby Day’ (2011). Q: Would you say any of your books are autobiographical? A: My first five novels have strong autobiographical elements. For example, some of ‘Real Life’ (1992) is set in a street in Norwich where I once owned a house; ‘English Settlement’ (1996) has a City of London background, and I used to work for a big accountancy firm; the early chapters of ‘Trespass’ (1998) are set in a part of Norwich I know well. But this is only indirect. On the other hand, the theme of all these novels – coming back to the place you once lived and finding it changed out of all recognition, just as you yourself have changed – is very strongly connected to the view I take of myself.
Q: Should all literature have a social function? A: Given that in however indirect a way it reflects the society that created it, all literature ultimately has a social function, whether the writer sees him or herself as a social commentator or not. Q: What is the role of a writer as a social commenter? A: Some writers make more of a meal of their role as social savants, but in the end ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is just as much a projection of certain ideas about Englishness as a novel by Evelyn Waugh. Q: Apart from writing books you also contribute to a variety of newspapers. Do you never get tired of writing? A: No, I still find it an absolute joy. And having spent half a lifetime doing it I am still quite astonished that people are prepared to pay me money for putting words on paper! Q: Why did you decide to write a sequel to ‘At the Chime of a City Clock’? A: Having enjoyed the experience of creating its main character, James Ross, I determined that he was good for at least one more outing. Q: What inspired you to write ‘The Windsor Faction’? A: I’ve always liked ‘what if?’ novels, in which history is twisted slightly out of kilter and an element of chance is introduced. ‘The Windsor Faction’ is based on the premise that Edward VIII didn’t abdicate from the British Throne in 1936 but went on reigning, thus leading to certain political tensions that weren’t apparent under his successor, King George VI. Q: What are you working on at the moment? A: ‘The Windsor Faction’ is only just finished and can’t be published until next year. At the moment I’m thinking about the next novel and also working on a book about British literary culture, which will take several years to finish and the reading for which sometimes makes me think I’ve bitten off far more than I can chew.
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Q: You are also a critic apart from being a writer. How
critical are you towards your own work? 
