Writing On Literature

  Deux artistes un ecrivain   Quand êtes-vous déjà mort? J’essaie de ne pas penser à la mort. Je préfère penser à la vie. Qu’est-ce qui vous fait lever le matin? Mes enfants. Que sont devenus vos rêves d’enfant? Des rêves d’adulte. Qu’est-ce qui vous distingue des autres? Comme tout le monde, je crois être différent des autres. Vous manque-t-il quelque chose? Tellement de choses… Pensez-vous que tout le monde puisse être artiste? Quoi qu’on crée, il y aura toujours quelqu’un quelquepart pour trouver que c’est de l’art.  D’où venez-vous? De l’étranger, du sud-ouest, de la ville voisine, de la porte voisine: tout dépend où je suis. Jugez-vous votre sort enviable? Par qui? Il y a des gens mieux lotis,

Experimental novelist kicks the regular rulebook into touch. From The Japan Times 11/04/2004 www.japantimes.co.jp By RICHARD FREEMAN Staff writer During a recent tour to Guam, members of the Tsunami Teetotallers (a Japan-based ad hoc rugby team) were left speechless when, during pre-match introductions, their scrum-half Richard Beard introduced himself as an English "experimental novelist." Born in 1967, Beard graduated from Cambridge University and worked as a teacher before enrolling in Malcolm Bradbury's Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia in 1994. His first novel in the experimental vein, titled "X20 (A Novel of Not Smoking)," was published in 1996, and was followed in 1998 by "Damascus" -- which will be published in Japanese by Shogen-Sha in November. Meanwhile,

From Scotland on Sunday, March 2004-What books are on your bedside table? Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness by Kenzaburu Oe, All Quiet on the Western Front, James Clavell's Shogun, and Katie Morag and the Tiresome Ted -Which books have you been unable to finish? Kenzaburu Oe has been on the bedside table for about as long as it takes for something to happen in a Japanese novel. A mysteriously long time. -What was your favourite childhood book? Willard Price's Adventure series, in which a boy's give-away weakness was always to have 'hands as soft as butter.' The two teenage heroes spent each book in a different exotic location (South Sea Adventure, Amazon Adventure) in search of, you guessed it,