Questions for Mo Hayder on the novel Tokyo by Liu Mei Cheng, David Gaston, Yudai Iwasaki, Kumiko Kondo, Yuko Miyawaka, Mizuki Moriyama, Kanae Nio, Junya Nomura, Miharu Suzuki, Keita Takekura, Katsuhito Tomita, Satoki Umezawa

Tokyo University 03/07/05

Is a Japanese translation of Tokyo planned?  If so, would you prefer the UK title Tokyo, the US title The Devil of Nanking, or something completely different?  When you were writing the novel, did the possibility of Japanese readers influence the writing?

If I had any doubts that the facts about Nanking have been repressed, those left me when my Japanese publisher, who has published my previous two books, refused to publish Tokyo. So the answer, sadly, is no.

I always preferred the title The Devil of Nanking. You might be disillusioned to know that often the title of the book is influenced by the art director: after two books publishers begin to ‘brand’ a writer – to give him/her a ‘look’ making the books readily recognisable in the market place. Part of my ‘look’ in Europe (not the US) depends upon short titles. Hence ‘Tokyo’. Sorry to expose to you the seamy workings of the industry (it’s something writers in general have a tacit pact never to mention). But the truth is that so many issues the readers believe are aesthetic choices are very often decisions-by-committee: influenced by marketing and publicity dynamics.

I tried to be aware of what Japanese readers might feel when reading the book – I tried as much as possible not to be too dogmatic about laying the blame at the feet of anyone. There is a scene in which a soldier refuses to shoot any more Chinese prisoners. His superiors attack him physically for this – and then, in a tiny moment, we see one of the senior officers is revolted at his own actions. My intention was to illuminate that the chain of blame was never ending – that everyone was being pressured from above. And sitting nominally at the top of that chain was a mild, small statured, possibly quite naive man, by the name of Hirohito. 

(See below for more on my approach to guilt and atonement)

The use of Japanese words is very effective in the English version, especially to represent Grey’s urge to belong, and yet at the same time her displacement.  This effect will be lost in a translation – is there any way it could be kept? 

Yes – it’s a very good point. Foreign language words add texture to any piece of text and can be very effective in creating rhythm. One of the problems for a writer is knowing how not to overuse foreign language – I had lots of Japanese words I really wanted to use, simply for their feel and resonance and musical quality, but I had to discard them because I knew they’d drag down the narrative pace.

They say that reading a work in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil. I’ve never kissed a woman through a veil, but I think I understand the metaphor. One of my greatest sadnesses is that I don’t speak another language fluently enough to be able to compare texts in translation and the original. A translator’s job is a much underestimated one – they don’t simply convert words into a different language – they are dealing with many other things: nuance, levels of irony, use of poetry, alliteration, etc etc

But as I have pointed out in the previous question, Tokyo will not be published in Japan. So no translator will ever have to struggle with how to keep that contrapuntal effect the Japanese words lend the text.

Shi Chongming’s journal is always introduced by the kanji character that means ‘history’ (and also, possibly, Shi Chongming’s name).  In the Author’s Note, you describe your extensive research into Nanking.  Does this emphasis on history suggest you were committed to facing criticism about your portrait of the massacre?

To date, with the exception of my publishers, I’ve had no adverse comments on my portrayal of the massacre (actually this includes several Japanese readers in Australia who have contacted me about the book). I tried very hard to raise questions about guilt and denial and explore those themes, without necessarily providing answers. This is partly a function of my writing style – I don’t like to dictate the reader’s moral response to the events I portray. Maybe I’ve got too much faith in the reader’s ability to make the right judgments, because sometimes my work is interpreted as immoral, or at least amoral. 

The massacre was a very difficult area to research – I don’t speak Chinese and my Japanese is pretty poor (especially after 16 years out of the country) so I needed help from a translator for the Chinese sections. The other problem was that most of the Japanese army records had been destroyed or confiscated during the American occupation.

The thriller genre often exaggerates for effect, and sensationalises the present.  In Tokyo, for example, there is a generic distortion of the geography of the city and also a lack of sympathetic Japanese characters.  Those described in detail – Fuyuki, The Nurse, Strawberry – are all physical grotesques.  Is there any danger that your exotic account of contemporary Tokyo casts doubt on your treatment of history in the chapters on Nanking? 

I think that’s a question only the individual reader can answer – since all interpretation of fiction is subjective. I’d argue that there are no sympathetic Japanese characters in Tokyo: Strawberry in particular is a sympathetic character, so is the Japanese soldier who refuses to shoot the Chinese prisoners. And there are equal numbers of unsympathetic characters from other parts of the world. In fact – you could say there are only 3 sympathetic characters in the entire book: Grey, Strawberry and Shi Chongming.

You are right however that Strawberry is a physical grotesque – and I think this stems from the very strong visual impression I have of young Japanese people. Going to Yoyogi park on a Sunday left an indelible impression on me of the chameleon possibilities of Japanese youth.  I don’t think there is anywhere else in the world where people use themselves as canvasses to this extent. I’m told the only Japanese industry that hasn’t suffered in the recession is the hair dye industry! Is that true?

In a previous interview, you mention that none of your Japanese friends had heard of the ‘Rape of Nanking.’  With China demanding an apology for war-time atrocities, this is now very topical.  ‘Ignorance is not the same as evil’ would seem to offer some comfort to contemporary Japan, but just knowing is not enough to resolve historical problems.  Should young Japanese also feel guilty?  What do you think we should do to improve the relationship with China, especially concerning historical issues? 

I have just come back from a working tour of Germany. Among the cities I visited were Dresden and Köln, both of which were heavily bombed by the British. In Dresden on one night alone 35 – 135,000 people died in the firestorms that swept the city. The bombing was largely unnecessary and sometimes supposed to be ‘revenge’ for the bombing of the British city of Coventry. Being in Dresden kept bringing me back to the question I had in my mind when I wrote Tokyo – namely, what is an individual’s responsibility for the actions of his/her nation. What do I as a British citizen owe the inhabitants of Dresden, for example? What does a student at Todai in 2005 owe the citizens of Nanking 1937? What do I owe the Iraqis for an invasion I neither authorised nor approved of? The problem is there are so many ways of answering this question that you can only accept there are no answers. At the end it’s about who writes history – and on that subject I come back time and again to one small comment, from General LeMay who ordered the fire bombing raids on Tokyo. If the US had lost the war, he said, many of the American Generals and politicians would have been in the dock at war tribunals, tried for atrocities. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.

You have addressed many taboos in Tokyo and your earlier novels.  In view of the critical and commercial success of films such as ‘Life is Beautiful’ and ‘The Downfall’, would you be willing to write a similar novel about Nazi concentration camps and links to modern Germany?  As a western writer, is it easier to tackle inhumanity from a safe cultural distance?

It’s a writer’s job to stick his/her nose into the taboos of any society. That is exactly where you learn the most – so I’ll probably always be hunting the weird and hidden. But with regard to using the Jewish holocaust as a subject: this was a question I was asked by several German journalists last week. I take your point about it being easier to tackle inhumanity from a distance – and it’s a good one because I think a lot of writers, including myself, find it much easier to tackle a lot of things at a distance (I found it easier to write about Tokyo when I’d left it for example). But this is not the reason I wouldn’t write about concentration camps. I feel that ways of treating the Jewish holocaust have been so thoroughly explored I have nothing to add to the voices. It is a very crowded forum. Part of the impetus for writing about the Pacific war was that it was such an unmined area and I specifically wanted people to know that there wasn’t just one holocaust in the 20th century, but several. It’s time we saw films/fictionalised accounts of the Armenian massacres, the Rwandan massacres, Stalin’s reign of terror, King Leopold etc.

The Nurse is the most frightening character in Tokyo, and not Fuyuki.  Is this a problem for the novel?  Also, the Nurse continues to roam Japanese society – does this suggest the possibility of a sequel?

Yes. I’ve been told that she is very frightening, which makes me suspect myself of pure evil genius, because I wrote her very quickly, right off the back of a moment’s inspiration (rare for me). I wanted Fuyuki to be believable, because he is at the core of the novel, and I thought that casting a comic book style shadow of violence across him would have been wrong. It was quite simple: he needed a henchman, and the Nurse was there.

I very much doubt there will be a sequel to Tokyo. I certainly have no plans at present. But never say never.

In some ways, the scene where Shujin is murdered didn’t seem brutal enough.  She could have protected her stomach or suffered some embarrassment at being stripped half naked by unknown men.  Does her undramatised capitulation undermine the realism of the scene, if realism was what you were aiming at here?

Generally speaking realism is exactly what I’m aiming for – the sort of realism you’d get in a cinema verité film, or something made by the Dogma film collective.  In the section dealing with Shujin’s death I was narrating through two filters 1) It is narrated through first Shi Chongming’s voice and then Grey’s. 2) Most of the scene is depicted as film footage. Both of these are filters that impose a different slant on the scene and must, necessarily, have an effect on the realism of the scene. But, if you feel that the realism was undermined, then maybe it’s simply a flaw in the writing.

Parents’ love for their children is a key idea in the novel, and one that challenges the book’s darkness.   You’ve spoken elsewhere about your difficult relationship with your parents, and the fact that you were pregnant when you visited Nanking.  Then, from Nanking, came the scene of a baby being bayoneted from her pregnant mother.  Is the writing a psychological escape valve?

You’ve put your finger on a very important point. Writing is a very important psychological escape valve. I used to suffer badly from clinical depression, but this largely disappeared when I began to write – so I have Japan to thank for this – she taught me how to accept that all humans have a dark side to contrast with their light side. It’s a concept we have problems with in the Christian west. Being published has validated the thoughts and ideas I used to believe made me dysfunctional on some level.

I have written before about parents and children and always from a very disadvantaged stand point – i.e. I wasn’t a parent myself. Now that I am a mother the world, both literary and concrete, has opened itself to me in an extraordinarily rich way.

Do you think you have any conspicuous or secret flaws as a writer?  Is there a specific area you’d like to improve in your next novel?  Do you see yourself writing anything besides thrillers?

The only point that I am consistently told is a flaw, and which I consistently refuse to change, is my descriptions of violence. On this point I am absolutely firm. Anyone who wants to read a book in which the driving force is an extremely violent act, must be prepared to accept descriptions of that violence. Anything else is dishonest.

However I am absolutely sure I’ve got other flaws too. The problem with these is I don’t know what they are so I can’t weed them out. Paradoxically the more you establish yourself in any career the more difficult it becomes to get honest and constructive criticism. I know several established writers who publish books they should be ashamed of. They get away with it because they are so established that no one will tell them their quality is suffering. My antidote to this is to read consumer reviews – on Amazon, or in Newsgroups for example. Or questions like yours. This is the most honest appraisal of one’s work you can hope to get. So the next time you share thoughts on a writer’s work on the internet, beware he or she might be looking over your shoulder.

With regards to the last part of your question, I write under a pseudonym because I would love to write children’s books one day – Secretly I want to be the next Roald Dahl.

We enjoyed reading about Grey’s shopping in Chapter 20.  The ‘weirdo’ Grey tries to be sexy for her work as a hostess.  What is your definition of ‘sexy’ and what do you think makes women sexy?

Wow!  I’m a heterosexual female, so I don’t think I’m in a position to comment on what makes other women sexy, but I will say I’m always amazed at the immense variety of things people find erotic in a woman. If you doubt this read a book called Encyclopaedia of Unusual Sexual Practices by Brenda Love (but only if you’re feeling strong).  So what is sexy? My guess is that the only common denominator in sexiness is confidence. A woman has to love sex and love her own body in order to be truly sexy.

Your description of Hongo is so life-like you must have visited Tokyo University.  How do you feel about the book being studied in the University that features in the novel?  And if you were to give a class here at Todai, what would you like to teach?

I went to Todai in 2003 and wandered the campus to get a feel for it. If I’d known about it when I lived in Japan in 1989 I’d have spent more time there, it’s the most welcome oasis imaginable in Tokyo. Of course I played God with the geography a bit, so I feel mildly nervous that the book is being studied there.

On the last part of the question, the truth is I would hate to teach a class at Todai. I have perpetual stage fright and work much better with the written word. So I’m going to wave a magic wand and say: I would be the student, not the teacher. I would sit for hours learning kanji and how the characters evolved. (Let me know if you can arrange it for me!)

Questions for David Mitchell on the novel Ghostwritten by David Gaston, Zoe Fen Koh, Maki Komatsu, Maria Lebed, Nobuhiko Matsusaka, Jun Ohashi, Erika Yamauchi

Tokyo University 12/01/2005

In Ghostwritten, we can’t agree which of your narrators is either the most or least successful. What do you think? And in a third category, which is your favourite?

Maybe written characters are similar to acted characters: if you can
forget that the illusion that this character on a page (or a movie screen)
isn’t a ‘real’ person, then it is successful. I think the most successful
characters in GHOSTWRITTEN are those who are culturally closest to me.
These are Neil Brose in Hong Kong and Marco in London. The furthest from
me, culturally, are probably the old woman in her Chinese tea-shack and
perhaps the woman in St Petersburg – these characters are probably the
dodgiest. My favourite? I have a soft spot for Bat Segundo because he’s a
music-geek and so am I, and maybe for Satoru in Tokyo because he’s a music
geek too and because he was the artistic grandfather of Eiji, the
protagonist in my second novel.

Do you believe in the end of the world, life after death, the significance
of the number 9? In no particular order.

Ha ha!
The end of the world: yes, but not all at once, and probably not
complete. The history of our species is made of endings and beginnings.
But if the environmental scientists are right, the next ending will not be
pretty.
Life after death: sadly, no, I don’t believe in it, but I hope I’m
wrong. The Buddhist model of reincarnation is particularly elegant.
I don’t believe in numerology, no, but I do believe in the aesthetics of
numbers. The numbers 9, 36 and 64 have a particular beauty for me. I don’t
know why, but maybe in aesthetics there is no ‘why’.

The Mongolia chapter supplies Ghostwritten with a kind of thematic and
self-referential climax, explaining in an elegant metaphor the process of
reading Ghostwritten. Was it a deliberate risk or experiment to place this
‘climax’ in the middle of the novel? And does it mean that the chapters
which immediately follow must necessarily seem disappointing, a mere
reversion to what has come before?

You’re right, Mongolia is a mini-GHOSTWRITTEN isn’t it? I don’t think I
noticed this when I was writing the novel, but you’re still right. I can
answer, then, that it wasn’t a deliberate risk. I hope the following
chapters don’t seem disappointing, but if they do, c’est la vie.

How do you approach the writing of female characters? When writing from the point of view of a woman, say Mo Muntervary or Margarita, do you change your methodology in any way?

I approach the writing of female characters with trepidation! It is
difficult to try, but difficulties in writing are fun, and if you can tackle
them you can find freshness and originality for your writing. I try to use
what I have learnt about being female from my relationships with girls and
women (students, girlfriends, relatives, my wife) and sort of use that as a
bass-line in the ‘song’ of a character. I also show all my manuscripts to
my wife and listen when she tells me I’m making a horse’s ass of myself.
(She uses more diplomatic language than that.)

 Ghostwritten is a first novel, your first novel. There are instances when
the connections between chapters seem a little forced. Do you re-read your
novels? Would you consider re-writing them, and if so, what would you
change in Ghostwritten?

I can’t read GHOSTWRITTEN now, no! Last November I went to Hungary to
do a few talks organized by the British Council, and because GHOSTWRITTEN ismy only novel translated into Hungarian, it was suggested that I do a few
readings from that. Painful! As I was reading, I was editing and changing
things instantaneously.
This is a natural problem. As you work more in any science or art, you
learn more, and as you learn more, your previous work looks more and more
amateurish. I suppose if I could clone myself I would like to make my clone
re-write my work, yes. But because I can’t clone myself, I would rather
spend time writing completely new work and continuing to learn from my
mistakes.

If I rewrote GHOSTWRITTEN, I would find ways to remove the British
flavour from the non-British characters. I might be flattering myself, but
I believe I partly worked out how to do this in my second and third novels.
The Mo Muntervary section is too long, and now I live in Ireland so I can
see where I romanticised the culture in this section. I botched the Irish
accents, too. I probably wouldn’t worry about the connections too much…
I guess I think of GHOSTWRITTEN as a badly ironed, slightly out-of-style
shirt. But I think it’s a well-made shirt and I’m not ashamed to have it in
my wardrobe.

Your Japanese characters sometimes think and converse in ways that could be
identified as “gaijin”. Writing for Japanese characters clearly shows a
respect for Japan and an emphasis on the universality of human experience,
but is there a danger of over-using certain phrases and thought patterns
that are particular to British-English or an Anglo-Saxon lifestyle?

Yes, that danger exists, and in the cold light of day I think I am
guilty of having done this. Like I said, I made a better job of it in my
second novel, I hope, where the entire cast is Japanese. We live and learn.
It’s an intriguing problem to try to overcome, however. Normally
translators, not novelists, have to worry about this.

You taught English to Japanese school students. Did being a teacher, with
its daily awareness of the English language, benefit your writing when you
were starting out? Along the same lines, what language do you speak in your house now that you’re married?

Being an English teacher definitely benefited me as I was learning to
write, yes. It is usually difficult to make a living from your vocation
when you start out, because a certain level of ability is required before
people will give you any money for the fruits of your labours. The trick
is, therefore, to find a way to pay the bills that is not too far away from
your vocation. Teaching language is not too far from writing. Both work
with language and communication. Both are to do with observing people.
Both keep your brain awake. I used to teach writing using short little
stories that I wrote especially for my students. They never knew they were
my guinea pigs!

My wife’s English is loads loads better than my Japanese, so the more
complex stuff we discuss in English. She speaks Japanese to our 2-year old,
so our daughter is learning both languages. My parents-in-law send over
videos of NHK kids’ programs and we all watch ‘Yugata Quintet’, ‘Nihongo de
Asobou’ and ‘Okaasan to Isho’. I still try to study Japanese for 30 minutes
a day, and I’m currently learning this very funny song called ‘Kobuta no
Tonkichi.’

Did you know that the Tokyo chapter of Ghostwritten is by some way the
easiest for a Japanese reader to understand? The language and
sentence-structures seem to correspond to about high-school text book level.  Is this because Tokyo boys are simple? Or did you have another specific intention in creating this effect?

Ha ha!
No, I didn’t know that the Tokyo section is the easiest for Japanese
readers to understand, and no, I don’t think you Tokyoites are any simpler
than us Hiroshimanians. (Go Carp!) I suppose I was trying to get around
the problems of portraying a non-English speaking character in English in
the first person narrative mode by keeping things as simple and clear as
possible.

In previous interviews you’ve talked about finding the beauty in the
ugliness of Japan. Did you have another go at Japan in number9dream because you felt you hadn’t sufficiently captured this in Ghostwritten? Is Japan now finished as a location for you as a writer?

I could spend the rest of my life writing books about Japan and never
feel I had captured it. Cultures are, by definition, vaster than books,
like a lake is bigger than any pot.
I wrote NUMBER9DREAM because I had learnt more about the country and itspeople by then, mostly through teaching students in a university; because Iwanted to use and preserve all the thoughts and impressions I had about thecountry; because I was itching to write it.
Japan doesn’t appear in my third or fourth novel, but my fifth, which I
will begin in summer, will be a monstrous historical novel set on Deshima in
Nagasaki between 1790 and 1810. Odd-numbered chapters will be narrated by gaijins, even-numbered chapters will be narrated by Japanese. I can’t wait to begin.

Oe Kenzaburo has taken Murakami Haruki to task for not dealing with the
lived experience of most Japanese people. You’re clearly influenced by
Murakami. At the same time, you’ve said elsewhere that you wanted to avoid the Japan of cherry blossoms and Mount Fuji. Is there any risk that using Murakami as a guide and model is equally dangerous, and falsifies your depiction of modern Japan? Could Murakami be a modern version of Mount Fuji?

Gosh, I’m kind of glad I’m not answering these questions on live TV!
I was infatuated with A WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE when I wrote
NUMBER9DREAM, but I’m a little more objective these days. (Plus,
Murakami-san hasn’t really written anything as good since, apart from the
short stories in AFTER THE QUAKE). I think it is fair to say that he was my
guide and model for a while, but I’m learning other things from other
writers now.
Yes, you’re right, there is a danger that some people might confuse
Japan with Murakamiland, just as the USA is confused with Hollywood. I
suppose the only solution is for people like you to provide alternatives.

You’ve had a brilliant career, and in a very short time have become a
highly-respected and fantastically successful writer. Do you have any
disappointments?

Mmm, not sure if my accountant would agree with the ‘fantastically’ bit,
but thank you.

No disappointments, not really. ‘Disappointment’ is more a question of attitude than of fact. My last two books were shortlisted for the Booker
but didn’t win – if I wanted to, I could call those failures to win
‘disappointments’ but that would be to ignore all the good things that
happened to me and the books because they were shortlisted. If you are ever teachers yourselves, you may have the experience of teaching a class of 40 students where 20 students are asleep and another 10 not really paying much attention. But if you have 10 or 5 or even 1 student who is in tune with you, that class is rewarding. In a similar way, if I know I have a few
readers who enjoy what I write, that’s enough. I can earn a living out of
doing what I LOVE, and that makes me a lucky man. Disappointments shouldn’tbe carried around with you – disappointments should be learnt from and then flushed down the toilet as quickly as possible.

Questions for Catherine Fox on the novel Angels and Men by Kiyoka Yamagami, Takahiro Kiya, Mai Enomoto, Tomoko Takeda, Yuko Kato, Shunsuke Hiratsuka, Tomoko Masuda, Kate Morris, Zoe Koh, Adriana Hristova, Erika Yamauchi, Jun Ohashi, and Wakana Arai.
Part 2

Tokyo University, 25 June 2004

First of all, many thanks for your generous and detailed response to our previous interview. Your answers were very fluent and informative, though there seemed an (almost) general agreement that we’d like to know more about the relationship between feminism and your Christian faith, and how this plays out in the novel Angels and Men. Do you agree with the view ‘equal but different’ for male and female social roles? What is the difference between Christian feminism and other types of feminism?

The first thing to say is that I didn’t have a feminist or church agenda I was trying to give voice to in the novel. The main imperative was having a story to tell, so any bog theories are always played out in the action, through the characters.

Historically the church has been (and remains) a patriarchal organisation, although the gospel message itself is extraordinarily liberating for oppressed groups. The oppressive passages in the epistles (mainly Paul’s) need to be held in tension with the underlying message. The heart of it is interpretation. In Angels and Men the clashes and agreements between feminism and Christianity are explored as they have an impact on the experience of the main character.

Equal but different? Clearly there are fundamental biological differences between men and women, but it the extent to which they ought to dictate social roles is an open question. Biology isn’t everything. I may find I have more in common with a man from a similar background and education than with a woman whose experience has been different from my own. In the church, I can’t see any theological reason for differentiating between men’s and women’s roles. So ‘yes’ to women bishops, for heavens sake.

Difficult to say if there’s such a thing as ‘Christian feminism’. A form of feminism that excluded the possibility of a male messiah figure would cease to be distinctively Christian, obviously.

Although Mara is described as ‘prickly and difficult’, her likeability is not in doubt. You talk about inventing Andrew to make Mara seem more sympathetic. Is there a danger that she then becomes too likeable, and therefore unbalanced for the reader in the other direction?

A skilful writer can seduce you into sympathising with a complete monster. I remember reading John Lancaster’s The Debt to Pleasure, and although the protagonist is a raging egomaniac and indeed a serial killer, it wasn’t till the closing pages that I was finally alienated from him. This is what fiction can do. It invites you into the head of the character to share their experience. This is especially true of first person narratives, but also of books where the viewpoint is closely tied to the protagonist. If you step back you can see that the character is objectionable, but somehow while you are reading, you are still on their side. My aim is to get the reader to understand, and therefore to care. In my next two novels you get to see Mara from the viewpoint of two other very different protagonists, and this corrects the impression of the first book, I think. And incidentally, not all my readers find her sympathetic.

There’s a striking resemblance between Mara and the early-Christian figure Hildegard Von Bingen (as described in the case-study in Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat). As well as having visions of angels brought on by migraines, Hildegard was also a writer with liberal views about sex. Is Mara a modern religious icon, a twentieth-century Hildegard?

Hildegard of Bingen was committed to the life of a religious community and that was the context for her actions and achievements. I think Mara is too self-absorbed and isolated to function as a 20th C Hildegard.

You say that the angels in the novel are supposed to create a sense of ‘eerie otherness’. Could you explain what you mean in more detail?

I think I mean that I was conscious as I was planning the novel that its geographical and political scope was very limited, and that I was in danger of writing a small domestic piece about the lives of a tiny group. I wanted to make the book bigger than that. It occurred to me that what I had at my disposal was the whole of the Christian tradition. After struggling to get the first chapter right, at some stage (though I can’t now remember when or how — possibly I’d read a review of the film Wings of Desire) an image came to my mind of angels over the city of Durham. Suddenly this created an extra tier of action which created the depth and resonance I was looking for. Initially there was a lot more of this writing in the book, but it got cut.

Was the ending of Angels and Men surprising to you? Or did you always aim, even before you started writing, for the book to end this way?

I always saw it ending with her father waiting for her, with echoes of the parable of the prodigal son.

Looking back at the novel now, how do you feel about the ending?

I think it ends well, though not tidily. Judging by the number of people who have asked me “What was in the letter?” it was more of a cliff hanger than I’d intended it to be. You get a sense, while writing, (or perhaps I should say that I do), of the whole thing moving inevitably towards the only right fitting conclusion, and when you get there, you know it. Then you sit back and say,That’s it. I’ve done it.

You mention the sexual revolution destroying a common ethic which was often exploited by previous generations of writers. If this is also true in other fields of behaviour, so that the common ethic is much weaker than it once was, is it still possible to write novels which can be accepted by a ‘wide range of people’?

Well, we have the phenomenon of the bestseller, so either it is possible to write novels accepted by a wide range of people, or else people don’t read novels simply to have their own world view affirmed, but for a variety of other reasons. I think there is still a shared sense of what constitutes a good way of living, and what is by contrast cruel, or shallow, or self-serving. Maybe we like to read about a world in which these values are upheld? But many great novels have the satirical function of challenging prevailing views and attacking the status quo.

In both the novel and your replies to our earlier questions, you allude to classical works of English literature. Do you have any model English writers in your mind when you’re writing?

I think it is inevitably true that writers are to some extent shaped by what they read. I would love to write a novel as good as, say, Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels, but it isn’t true to say I model myself on her.

Your depiction of Mara is in some ways an attack on society, and its attitudes to religion and gender-roles. If you could change society, how would you do it?

At the heart of it all for me is grace, the undeserved kindness and generosity of God. Any lasting change of society I can envisage would have to spring from that — a personal acknowledgement in gratitude, which then plays out in generosity towards others. Plus I would have women bishops.

The novel described the process of Mara’s recovery from depression and isolation. What do you think of the therapeutic value of writing stories?

There’s no doubt that many people are helped by writing down some of their traumatic experiences, maybe in the form of stories. This is a separate process from writing a novel, though, which is a public form, not private therapy. It’s possible as a writer to work through various issues while writing, but that is probably a by-product. If you set out to lay a ghost by writing a novel, it may or may not end up being a good book.

Do you see a clear connection between commercial success and reader approval? How important is it for a writer to be commercially successful?

Writing a novel pre-supposes an audience. It is not a private journal. The crude measure of success is sales, yes. If the readers approve of me, why aren’t they buying my novels? Commercial success is, in theory, less important than artistic integrity. So what we want is critical acclaim and obscene wealth. There is an unkind natural law which states that it is the people most absurdly sensitive to criticism who feel the most driven to write and put their stuff out there where it can be attacked. I don’t know why we bother, really.

Questions for Catherine Fox on the novel Angels and Men by Kiyoka Yamagami, Takahiro Kiya, Mai Enomoto, Tomoko Takeda, Yuko Kato, Shunsuke Hiratsuka, Tomoko Masuda, Kate Morris, Zoe Koh, Adriana Hristova, Erika Yamauchi

Tokyo University, 3 June 2004

Was there someone or something in particular that motivated you to write Angels and Men?

I have wanted to write novels for as long as I can remember. The first ideas for Angels and Men came to me in 1986 when I was reading 17th C Quaker tracts and investigating the phenomenon of religious fanaticism. The other motivation was my love affair with the city of Durham. It struck me that there was a gap in the market, and nobody had done a kind of Brideshead Revisited about student life there.

When writing this novel, did you have a primary reader-group in mind? Did you expect the readers to be mainly female? And, with the readers in mind, did you hesitate to concentrate so specifically on religion for fear of turning readers away?

In the first instance I was writing for myself with total 100% commitment — the way first novels often are. I had to decide fairly early on, however, how to pitch the style. I wanted to make it accessible to as wide a range of readers as possible. I wanted it to be enjoyed by professors of Theology and by my childminder. This meant that I ruled out anything too experimental in style, although I believe the book engages with important ideas. I hope it can be read a different levels, both as an exploration of fanaticism and salvation, but also as a cracking good read. I suppose I’m still a bit surprised that so many men appear to enjoy it, though I wasn’t trying to write a ‘women’s book’.

I don’t think readers are necessarily turned off by religion if it’s handled well. My image of a novel is low budget virtual reality. It offers readers the chance to experience a different world for the space of however many hours or days it takes to read the book. My inspiration was the orthodox Jewish writer Chaim Potok, whose novels are a window into the world of Judaism.

In Angels and Men, the male characters seem idealised. Why is that? And which one do you like best?

I think the men are bastards, actually, in their different ways. Both Rupert and Johnny are different takes on the cliche of the romantic hero, which was something I was exploring. Andrew is my favourite male character.

Do you think there is a distinction between Romance novels and serious novels? Which do you consider Angels and Men to be?

There’s a lot of snobbery about genre fiction, much of it undeserved. My intention in Angels and Men was to write serious contemporary fiction, though the book can be read at the level of a romantic yarn. The thing about genre fiction is that it has certain conventions, which I didn’t try to follow in Angels and Men. The romance myth is hugely dominant in our society. Despite all of us knowing its limitations, we still feel its influence, and it is one of the narrative frameworks we tend to impose on our own experience. I think the novel is an ideal literary form to examine the myth.

Did the characters develop during the writing of the novel, or were they all planned out in advance? Did they ever take on a life of their own?

Yes, the characters developed. My books are character- rather than plot-driven. The more you write and think about them, the more subtle and ‘real’ they become. They react to one another in unpredictable ways, and to the situations you place them in. The best example from Angels and Men is the character of Andrew. He wasn’t part of the original plot. I realised early on that there was a danger of Mara being too prickly and difficult for the reader, so I thought it would help her cause to put an even more unlikable character in the room next door. As the action developed he became more complex and interesting. I began to think there was a love interest there, so I kept trying to contrive a scene between him and Mara, but it kept not happening. I was halfway through the book before I wondered if he was gay.

Are you a painter? In this novel, you use painting to express Mara’s feelings. Why painting, and not music or poetry?

When I was 18 I had to choose between art college and university, so although I’m not a painter now, I was then, and was making use of that experience in my fiction. While I was writing the book I had a close friend who was a painter, and we used to exchange ideas. In fact, she was reading the novel chapter by chapter as I wrote it, so there may be some of her input in the pages.

We’re interested in the level of autobiography in the novel. How far do the events of the novel correspond to your own experience at University, with sects, with men? Are you Mara? And if the novel is not autobiographical in this way, do you have other models for the characters?

The bottom line is that my writing comes out of my own head, not out of somebody else’s, so to that extent it is the product of my own experience and reflection. Some of the broad contours are autobiographical — yes, I went to Durham; yes, the college with the theological college next door is unmistakably the one I attended; yes, I did a thesis on women and Quakerism; yes, I have firsthand experience of charismatic Christianity, though not as extreme or as unpleasant as Mara’s. No, I’m not Mara, thank God, though it might be fun to be that rude to people now and then. My characters aren’t modelled on real people. I will take little bits of people — their experience, anecdotes, hair, mannerisms, attitudes, speech etc — and use them as starting points. But the real thrill of writing traditional fiction is when this mish-mash of bits suddenly starts living and breathing as an utterly believable character.

The book displays various opinions towards homosexuality and feminism. Which opinion is closest to your own? Do you think of yourself as a feminist?

Most thinking women are feminists, in the sense that injustice and discrimination on gender grounds is always unacceptable. My feminism finds its expression within the context of my Christian faith and the two inform and inspire one another. The issue of homosexuality is highly contentious in the Anglican Church at the moment. This was true, though less urgently, when I was writing Angels and Men, which is why I have groups of theological students sitting in bars arguing about it. The character most closely expressing my views would be Johnny.

Love, sex and marriage – do all three have to go together?

No. In earlier generations of fiction-writing a lot of drama revolves around the characters’ struggles with sexual temptation/immorality. You could say that the sexual revolution removed at a stroke one of the richest seams a novelist could mine. If it’s OK to engage in sex outside marriage, and adultery is bad behaviour rather than ‘sin’ — what is there left morally for the writer to get her teeth into? Tess of the D’Urbervilles couldn’t have been written in 2004. This is why I enjoy writing about religious belief — it’s one place where acute ethical and sexual anguish is still very much alive.

Have you ever witnessed a miracle? Or a spiritual visitation of any kind? Angels? Did you have any intention of converting your readers?

No, I’ve never witnessed a miracle, though I know otherwise sane normal people who claim they have. It’s an idea I can easily accommodate within my world view. Angels — no, only once in a dream. I don’t intend to convert my readers, so much as open a window onto the mysterious world of faith. Occasionally I read other people’s novels and get the feeling that they are on their own personal crusade. If the agenda of the writer is too obvious, then the fiction tends to be compromised. The novel doesn’t make a good vehicle for preaching.

The novel deals with many delicate issues, such as religion, feminism and homosexuality. Is there anything you would refrain from writing about, either by your own decision or persuaded by an editor?

No.

While writing, have you realised any limitations to your writing ability? What do you see as your weaknesses as a writer, and is there anything you have to conquer to improve your career?

Every time I write I come away with a sense of the gulf between what I intended and what I ended up with. My main weaknesses are probably a narrowness of subject matter, a temptation towards flippancy and the pathetic need to make people like me. Currently I’m struggling with a lack of confidence and direction, which I will clearly need to conquer if I’m going to write another novel.

Why is the title of this book Angels and Men? Why not Women and Men, which might be more appropriate?

The title comes from the prayer for St Michael and All Angels in the Book of Common Prayer, which begins “O everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order…” “Women and Men” sounds boring. I intended the novel to resonate with a sense of eerie otherness, and the image of the angels watching over the city was central to that.

Questions  for Andrew Cowan on the novel Crustaceans by Kouhei Furuya, Yuko Kato, Jun Ohashi, and Takuya Osada.
Part 2

Tokyo University, 7 December 2003

First of all, many thanks for your generous response to our previous interview.  Your answers were very helpful and informative, we felt, though with one exception.  It was hard to understand your method of writing. As well as writing and revising each line, do you come back later and revise every line again?  Once you decide on the nature of Euan’s accident, for example, there is clear foreshadowing earlier on.  Why bother with so much earlier revision if you have to come back and revise again later?

On the whole, I don’t come back and revise later.  One reason I write so slowly is that I am constantly trying to think about what will (or might) happen 100 pages later.  I do write rough notes for later; I constantly think about what is to come. So there is a lot of foreshadowing going on. Occasionally I will realise I must go back 50 pages and alter something. I HATE it when this happens.

Related to the last question, there’s a sense of fragmentation in the novel. One finely crafted sentence and then another (you use very few conjunctions between sentences). How far is this deliberate, and what effect do you think it creates?

A key working idea for Crustaceans was fragmentation, the idea that this man’s life had been shattered. The narrative is then an act of piecing together. 

But Paul is in a way a reluctant narrator. He is still half in his shell. So he speaks in short (-ish) sentences. It was half-deliberate. I did also try to substitute for conjunctions with rhythm and cadence – the rhythm of the prose is supposed to ameliorate any fragmentariness in the writing.

In my current work-in-progress I find I am writing much longer sentences than is normal for me.  Lots of conjunctions.  Perhaps this is a belated reaction to the prison-house of the style in Crustaceans.

We noted many instances of replicas, imitations, otherness.  What is true for Paul is often true for other characters, as life stories seem set to repeat themselves. Borges said that every story will be repeated. In what ways would you say Crustaceans is exclusively your book, and could only have been written by you?

There are many parallels and recurrent motifs in the book. This again was a deliberate thing, to offset (or compensate for) the fragmentariness, to give an underlying unity. That’s one thing.

The Borges idea is another thing entirely. If you pare down Crustaceans so that only the ‘story ‘ remains – man loses child – then yes, I’m sure this will and can be repeated.  But the novel is so much a product of my sensibility, my noticing, my way of punctuating, my own life experiences, it could only ever have been written by me – for better or worse.

Were you disappointed by the commercial reaction to the book?  Or is it enough for critics, students, and translators to value it? What, in fact, do you think of readers?  If you liked them more, wouldn’t you write an easier book? Or are readers simply too stupid to understand?

I was and am very disappointed that the book hasn’t sold more copies.  Every writer wants to sell lots of copies, especially if his livelihood depends on book sales.

I’m also very pleased that those who have read it do mostly seem to value it.

As for readers, it would be crippling for any writer to try to anticipate what ‘they’ will think or want.  Who are ‘they’?  ‘Readers’ is such a generalising concept. There are thousands of potential readers, all completely individual. How can a writer hope to please them all?  Some will be stupid, some will be highly sensitive and intelligent, some will find Crustaceans ‘hard’, some will think it ‘easy’. A writer can only write the book that he or she feels it is necessary and vital for him or her to write, otherwise it won’t be an authentic act of self-expression, and it won’t be a distinctive (ie individual, unique) piece of work.

Of course, it can be ‘distinctive’ and bloody awful. But far better that than a book which is written to be ‘pleasing’ and ends up indistinguishable from a thousand others.

We were very impressed by the sufficiency of the word ‘enough’ on the final page.  Did you feel this novel is enough?  Is there anything, in retrospect, that you’d like to change, to delete or add?

The book is done and gone now. The last time I re-read it there were sentences I wanted to rephrase, but too late.  I am pretty happy with it.  (My second novel, Common Ground, was written in more of a hurry, under more pressure from a publisher, and I feel that that book is one third too long.  If I had another life I would begin that book from scratch, and it still pains me that I can’t.)

And if this is enough, what type of book can you write next? Can you write in any other way?  How do you stop your next book being the same type of novel?

I wouldn’t write another book like it, because I’ve said enough (for me) on that subject in that style.  My present book is set in summer, concerns a private detective, and is written in longer, more generous sentences, and has more dialogue. The underlying sensibility is no doubt very similar, but the ‘product’ is quite different.