350- ] English Literature
Jon McGregor
Wednesday 01 November
2006
reading time: 5 min, 1146
words
Literature
Interview
Jon McGregor
"These things, the
way they happen. These things, the way they begin"
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If Nobody Speaks of
Remarkable Things (2002) earned Jon McGregor numerous awards as well as a
Booker Prize nomination, quite an achievement for a debut novelist. Through a
poetic and absorbing prose the novel magically transforms the ordinary everyday
lives of its characters into something quite beautiful. His recent novel, So
Many Ways To Begin, examines what happens when our lives fail to take the turns
we expect through the eyes of David, a museum curator, who finds out his whole
life has been constructed around a lie. James Walker went in search of truth…
What brought you to
Nottingham?
I was following a girl;
she came here to do a post-grad diploma and I just tagged along. Obviously it
was the right thing to do because we're married now.
…and how have you found
the city?
There's not that moany
old London thing of expecting life to be served up on a plate, which is
refreshing. The pleasures are harder to find than in some cities, but if you
look closer they're there; and I have to say LeftLion are doing a lot to bring
some of the more underground stuff to the surface.
Are you still living on a
boat and what attracted you to this particular abode? I myself once lived in a
converted garage for three years...
No, the boat thing was
short-term. I was only ever planning on passing through Nottingham but once it
became clear we were staying put it seemed daft to live in what was essentially
a very small and very wobbly caravan. What was the garage like?
Like a very small but
static caravan… Your first novel was a tremendous success and certainly my book
of the year. How did you find the added attention?
The attention was fun,
and mercifully short-lived. You could win the Nobel Prize for literature and
still not get recognised on the bus. Obviously it changed my life in that I was
able to quit the day-job, write full-time, and develop a massively
over-inflated sense of my abilities.
I found If nobody similar
to Amélie. Both treat Princess Diana’s death as peripheral within the narrative
and in doing so inverse societal norms by championing the ‘ordinary’ over
celebrity. What are your feelings on this comparison?
Hey that's funny. I never
really thought of that, but it's a neat (and flattering) comparison. I guess me
and Jean-Pierre Jeunet had the same kind of idea; didn't any other sad stuff
happen that day? That month? But yes, I love that film (and anyone who accuses
it of being over-sentimental has a rusting tin can for a heart). Thinking about
it actually, I probably found that intricate attention to detail - the
following through of unforeseen consequences and coincidences, the tiny moments
which turn a life round - quite an inspiration.
…and celebrity culture?
There's nothing much left
to say is there? Other than that the rotting decadence of late-stage capitalism
is laid bare every time some talentless nark steps out on a red carpet or
grimaces for the camera.
Given the themes in your
books, can human beings ever really fully connect?
Yes, but it's hard though
don't you think? And sometimes it feels like people aren't trying so much to
make those connections, or they can't imagine how much sweeter life might be if
they did.
Both books, despite the
events that go on, seem to foster hope. Would you describe yourself as a
positive thirty-year-old?
I've always felt that
when you're in one of those moments where life clicks into place - sunrise,
first beer garden pint of the year, cycling downhill, Peter Crouch and his
robot dance - then how can you be anything but positive about the world? Life
can suck a lot, but there are always the bits in between. Mind you, when I'm
not being such a sunny optimist I'm usually engulfed by fury and despair about
the avoidable environmental catastrophe which everyone seems to be doing their
best not to avoid...
‘If nobody…’ is set
nowhere in particular whilst ‘So many...’ is set across numerous cities. Was
this change of setting difficult to make?
It was difficult in that
it forced me to make some fact/fiction decisions I'd not had to make before:
just how true to life should a fictional location be? If I'm inventing
characters who live in a real city, am I allowed to invent the name of the
street they live on? It was tricky to know when to let the research stop and
the creativity begin.
Two of the cities used in
‘So many…’ were Aberdeen and Coventry which through their industrial/
manufacturing roots are quite similar. Does this particular environment
interest you?
I was definitely interested
in their parallels (ship-building; car-building; oil). I think a British novel
set in the mid to late twentieth century would find it hard to avoid at least
an allusion to industry and manufacturing. Britain was built on industry and
manufacturing - its urban culture developed as a result, and the painful social
upheavals of the last thirty years have been a direct consequence of the
collapse of the industrial economy. So yes, that kind of environment interests
me.
Truth is very important
to David. How important are your roots?
I left Bermuda at the
heady age of five months. I did go back there once, when I was nineteen, and
was surprised by the emotional reaction I felt; it might have just been
projection though, it's kind of cool to go and find your roots somewhere, isn't
it?
The use of artefacts was
a novel way of introducing chapters, when did this idea come about?
Very early on. It seemed
like a convenient way to structure the book, and obviously it fitted with the
main character being a museum curator; it also gave me a direction for the
story, that he was assembling this collection in order to take it to someone.
If you were to take an
artefact to represent Nottingham , what would you choose and why?
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