Writing On Literature

Questions for Gail Jones on the novel Dreams of Speaking by Ayano Fukuda, Aki Irimajiri, Asuka Kimura, Tadayuki Kin, Hiroyuki Koreeda, Joyce Jie Xuan Lim, Yusuke Matsumura, Chihiro Seko, Yuichiro Tanakamaru, Reiei Tei, Junichi Tran, Yasuhiro Wakai, Erika Yamauchi Tokyo University 28/06/06 Can you explain the title Dreams of Speaking?  [We have one theory that Mr Sakamoto is too elegant, tolerant, and even omnipotent (for example the episode of the waiters).  He can be seen as a symbol of perfection (especially on how to live with technology) and exists to offer Alice a kind of salvation.  His sudden death can be interpreted as the end of a reverie, a dream.  Whatever the imaginary Mr Sakamoto communicates therefore represents the ‘dreams

Questions for A.L.Kennedy on the novel Paradise by Liu Mei Cheng, Yuko Miyawaka, Keiko Nagano, Tomoko Takeda, Satoki Umezawa, Ayaka Wada, Yasuhiro Wakai Tokyo University 30/01/06 Would a Scottish reader understand the meaning of ‘Mo run geal og’ (my fair young love)?  Do you include it here because the song is dedicated as a funeral song?  Or because this song has political or any other specific relevance to the reading of Paradise?  These words are offered as part of the book – how are they significant? Not too many readers would understand it – but the Gaels would. And it’s a very well-known song, so easy to find, should they wish to make the effort. It’s not something without which

 From Pretext 11 2005 A Sermon If you want your version of the world published, make every effort to get to know her, and you know who she is, because she used to sleep with him, and that bastard’s married to the sister off the commissioning editor.  But don’t tell him he’s a bastard, obviously.  Let him know he glows in the dark because word gets around, and you know what?  It’s a small world. Supposedly.  This is one model of the literary life, as a self-serving hive of coteries and changeable alliances moving from one generation to the next, a network of exclusive intimacies.  This must be highly reassuring if you’re in on it, of it, a node on

In his final year at UEA, 1994/5, Malcolm Bradbury chaired the pre-Christmas seminars of the MA in Creative Writing.  Over eight weeks, the students had one three-hour seminar a week.  In total, then, a sum of twenty-four hours with Professor Bradbury. From the first, he looked immensely tired.  He’d seen all our types before, must have done, and as he checked us over I imagined him hoping that this year, after so many other years, no-one in a black polo neck or steel-rimmed glasses was going to be chasing him down corridors in the hunt for publishers’ numbers. No luck, Malcolm.  Of course he was chased down corridors, and was patient and helpful and charming, or expertly evasive, which possibly

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