We asked four authors reading at this year’s ILF to share their wisdom on life and lit with Exberliner readers.
CAROL BIRCH
Although English novelist Carol Birch’s work was long perceived as verging on the populist, her 2011 novel Jamrach’s Menagerie was one of the favourites short-listed for the Booker Prize. Presenting the German translation at this year’s festival, she’s likely to draw a crowd appreciative of the research-based, 19th century subject matter and literary influence reflected here and elsewhere in her work.
Why do you write?
It’s just what I have always done.
What else – if anything – could you have done?
Looking after animals. Filing and indexing – I’m very good at that and find it meditative. I could have worked with people with special needs – I have done a lot of that.
What is the worst/best part of being a writer?
Worst: Insecurity. Fitting it in around the family. Best: Insecurity. The feeling when it comes right.
Your favourite literary character?
Fuchsia in Titus Groan and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake.
Your literary lodestar?
James Joyce.
Your creative stimulants?
Time and peace (and some other stuff).
The best book you’ve read in the last year?
The Amateur Marriage by Ann Tyler.
What must a good writer be?
Determined, thick-skinned, observant, slightly obsessive.
Your advice to young writers?
Don’t give up when you realise how hard it is. Be brave. Listen to all advice and feedback, but ultimately make your own decisions.
JOHN BURNSIDE
Winner of, amongst many others, the coveted T.S. Eliot and Forward Poetry Prizes for Black Cat Bone, and Professor in Creative Writing, Literature and Ecology at St. Andrews University, Scottish writer John Burnside’s poetry and novels explore the interplay between man and nature in all its consequences with a consistency that is all the more powerful for its discretion. He brings to Berlin his latest novel A Summer of Drowning.
Why do you write?
Well, it’s a quest. A search for the real world, as opposed to the one we’ve been given to consume.
What else – if anything – could you have been?
Had it not been for two very good friends, I could have been rather a sad corpse, some time in the late 1970s. I didn’t appreciate how much they did to help me at the time, so I didn’t thank them for it. It’s the one thing I most regret now.
What is the worst/best part of being a writer?
Being interrupted. I sometimes dream about the books I might have written, had I not been interrupted so often. The best thing, of course, is the solitude. We work best when we are alone, and this creates a whole new relationship to time, which in turn leads to a deeper understanding of happiness as a discipline.
Your favourite literary character?
Miss Havisham. Bartleby the Scrivener. Elizabeth Archer. More recently, I found the character of Bonpland, as portrayed in Daniel Kehlmann’s Die Vermessung der Welt utterly fascinating, and – highly important in any characterisation – ultimately elusive.
Your literary lodestar?
In a word: Melville.
Your creative stimulants?
Solitude. Silence. I mention only the legal ones.
The best book you’ve read in the last year?
I just finished Thomas Glavinic’s profoundly unsettling The Camera Killer. It is a wonderful, terrifying book.
What must a good writer be?
A good reader.
Your advice to young writers?
Read. Listen. Experiment. Most of all, refuse to accept the personhood you inherited. Society as we know it is a trick. Let your writing ask for – demand – something better.
CHAD HARBACH
Co-founder of the high-brow American literary journal n+1, Chad Harbach comes to the festival to present his first novel – in a move away from the secure boundaries of criticism to the outfield of creativity. The Art of Fielding reveals Harbach’s fascination with baseball and made the 2011 New York Times Bestseller list.
Why do you write?
When I was young, what happened between me and an author felt like the most real and dear part of my life. I’ve never lost that feeling (for better or worse!).
What else – if anything – could you have been?
I was good at mathematics, and I think my mind is still largely organised that way – I find numbers and logic very soothing.
What is the worst/best part of being a writer?
The worst part is that you wake up each morning not knowing whether you’ll be able to write a single decent word that day. It feels like the most difficult pastime in the world, and the slowest, and sometimes the most meaningless. The best part is that, if you work at it for enough years, you can some sometimes for very brief periods feel like you’re doing this difficult thing well.
Your favourite literary character?
Ahab – he’s been in colleges, as well as among the cannibals.
Your literary lodestar?
Chekhov. Or Faulkner. David Foster Wallace. No, Thoreau. Definitely Thoreau.
Your creative stimulants?
Mostly caffeine and fear of failure.
The best book you’ve read in the last year?
Stendhal’s The Red and the Black. Also a fantastic book about the publishing industry called Merchants of Culture.
What must a good writer be?
Sceptical of the value of her own thoughts.
Your advice to young writers?
Read. Walk. Write. Repeat. Stay off the internet.
PAULA MORRIS
Descended from a Maori iwi, New Zealand novelist and short story writer Paula Morris presents Rangatira at the festival. Set in 1863 London (“Poverty. Disease. Prostitution. Child Labour. A sky black with fog and smoke…The greatest city on earth!”) the novel deals in part with the life of her Maori ancestors and the culturally unique role of whakapapa (bestowing and establishing of identity) that permeates Maori society.
Why do you write?
It’s a vocation, I think. As necessary as eating, though not always quite as enjoyable.
What else – if anything – could you have been?
I’ve been a waitress, a publicist, a marketing manager, a university teacher… People who say they could only be a writer are just showing off, or maybe they never had to worry about making a living.
What is the worst/best part of being a writer?
The worst part is the insecurity. Nothing is certain: you don’t know if you’ll write another book, or if anyone will want to read/buy your work.
Your favourite literary character?
I love the hapless, drunken Jim in Kingsley Amis’ novel Lucky Jim.
Your literary lodestar?
Two American short-story writers: Deborah Eisenberg and James Salter. I’m in awe of both of them.
Your creative stimulants?
Cities.
The best book you’ve read in the last year?
Claire Tomalin’s Charles Dickens: A Life.
What must a good writer be?
Curious.
Your advice to young writers?
Read as much as possible, and look for what you can learn, not for what you can critique. Don’t judge your characters: ask why.
