Taught Transgressions

 Presented at the Great Writing Conference, Bangor University, June 2009.

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1)      Introduction – Transgressions and Teaching

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This proposal exploring the merit of using transgressive literature and encouraging transgressive writing has the University writer in mind.  At BA level particularly, there is more scope for experimentation in form and content than in community workshops, where writers tend to be bringing in their own projects.  In addition to this, transgressive literature encourages more challenging reflection that would be suitable for the critical element of a university writing course.  As ‘Creative Writing is often considered less intellectual, more instinctual, and thus given a place on the fringe of English studies,’ (Miller, 2005, p40) this opportunity for greater critical reflection on the process of writing is suitable and desirable.

The biweekly seminar/workshop approach is widely regarded as the most effective means of teaching and encouraging writing, and it is this reflexive process as well as tutorial guidance that attracts writers to the degree course. Broadly speaking, the lecture/workshop structure serves three purposes: to generate ideas on how a piece may be developed; to open a dialogue of free, critical exchange about a piece so that the writer may see if their intentions were achieved and if the piece is working; and to teach writers to read with a critical eye so that they are eventually able to self-edit and redraft alone.  From these three points, I shall explore the merit of using transgressive literature and of encouraging transgressive writing in a workshop program. 

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2) Generation and Implementation

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Literary transgression is that which highlights taboos and boundaries, moral and social, by exceeding them in subject and style.  Immediately, a prosaic topic within this parameter will force students to go at least some way beyond the borders of their own experience.  This is not so removed from the usual fodder of Creative Writing exercises, however: writers have the urge to experience in their work that which they can only explore imaginatively; transgressive writing encourages writers to explore imaginatively that which, in real terms, they should not. 

Jenks (2003, p177) tells us that ‘if boundaries, prohibitations and taboos are to be tested in a transgressive manner then the relationship between the perpetrator and the act must be wilful and intended, not accidental or unconscious.’  Thus, writers must be aware that it is not enough to transgress for transgression’s sake.   There must be a conscious and calculated intent, and the transgressive element necessary and relevant to the story. 

In this respect, transgressive writing offers a closer link between the theoretical and artistic elements of writing which has held tensions since quality needed to be assessed against established and evolving parameters within the Academy.  Transgressive writing forces conscious decision making and risk taking for deliberate gain, rather than allowing student writers to rely predominantly on their woollier visceral instincts.  For every boundary pushed, the nature of that boundary and how it came to be there needs to be known.  As well as enforcing greater critical reflection of their own work, this also serves to encourage writers to examine the world and the different social and moral values that structure it.

The first complete module based on transgressive writing ran across a third year group at the University of Gloucestershire in 2007.  The structure was that of an informal lecture alternating with biweekly workshops to receive and critique the work written in response to the fortnight’s topic.  The topics were broad and easily subject to interpretation.  Within the lectures, a variety of texts around the theme were discussed, highlighting the many ways in which a transgressive writer could breach taboo.

Hardy (2007, p109) tells us that ‘exposing students to a variety of literary traditions and movements provides the acumen of cherry-picking the more masterful tropes and qualities of genius as opposed to simply mimicking great literature to the letter, as imitation tends to do.’

Within a transgressive pedagogy, transgressive writing can be interpreted in many ways: from a controversial subject to an experimental style.  Offence is not a requirement: only risk-taking and a confrontational attitude towards that which has been deemed unacceptable to write about.  Transgressive literature is about engaging original and challenging writing through starting points potentially more stimulating and adventurous than the traditional fare.  The aim is to provoke original thought and writing by forcibly removing barriers, encouraging writers to engage with subjects that had previously been off-limits to creative thought. 

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3) The Workshop and Hatchets

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Writers come to a university Creative Writing course not only for the qualification but because they require something more than time to write.  They want the reflexive processes of the course: the provision of guidance and critique.  It is this final element that is typically the most useful. 

It is only fitting that if the writing is intended to be a challenging and provocative process that the workshops should also be unflinching, exposing the plain truth of how a piece succeeds or fails.  It is ideal that there is no censorship at any stage of the writing process, particularly in the workshop. 

Writers should be bold in experiencing the world and documenting or imagining a diverse range of experiences in their work, not stifling their writing to protect feelings or avoid taboo.  This in addition to a critique environment where students are firmly discouraged from being precious with their work will inevitably create stronger writers. 

In this light, the transgressive approach should be reserved for students at a later stage in their course, as new writers are likely to be too nervous and apologetic to engage with this method comfortably enough to be productive.  As the group becomes more cohesive, coming to understand and trust each other, more provocative writing can naturally be entered into.

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4) The Role and Redundancy of the Tutor

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The role of the Creative Writing tutor is not only to create time, permission and encouragement to write.  They also have the slippery task of teaching students how to decode their subjective experience of the world and to confidently reinterpret it into a creative piece.  This is done by empowering the student with creative boldness and enthusiasm. 

The hierarchy of ‘student’ and ‘teacher’ cannot exist in the same way as within other disciplines.  The tutor cannot simply pontificate and expect learning to occur.  Instead there is a growing equalising of voices within the workshop group, as the student-writers become more confident in providing feedback to others and in speaking about their own work.

In transgressive literature the leash is a little shorter, as the tutor is wholly responsible for leading writers down unplumbed paths laced with taboo and discomfort, presenting the need for stronger escorting and directing.  Certainly part of teaching Creative Writing is in helping a writer to identify what it is they want to write, and in this respect wholly transgressive writing can be accused of having a significant weakness.  However, ‘transgression’ can be approached and interpreted in many ways, and the ultimate goal of the course remains in having students leave as better writers than when they arrived.  Transgressive writing finds great strength here as it pushes writers to develop and experiment, writing in ways and on topics that they had not previously thought possible or permissible.

However, the content of the topics given and the texts taught by the tutor does inevitably raises the question of ethical responsibility:  Is it acceptable to coerce writers to imaginatively participate in the darkest acts and experiences of the world?

This query is primarily based on the fear that has fuelled much of the backlash against transgressive literature: that representing ‘forbidden’ viewpoints and encouraging apparent empathy with such people serves to condone the acts taking place, and perhaps even encourage them.  However, imagining is not to adopt the text’s perspective as one’s own.  Lolita (Nabokov, 1980) is no more a paedophile’s handbook than American Psycho (Ellis, 2006) is a guide to murder in metropolitan cities.  What is gained from reading and writing such texts is a moral understanding, both of oneself and of the world as a whole, which is itself morally valuable. 

Transgressive literature does not seek to destroy boundaries by exceeding them, but serves to highlight those moral and social lines so that we may probe for where exactly our fears and repulsions lie and to reaffirm them.  It is a means of furthering our individual understanding of the world. 

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5) Conclusion

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A module dedicated to transgressive writing is an exhausting undertaking that should be reserved until the student writers are competent and comfortable with their authorial voices.  It is challenging but holds the promise of greater confidence and understanding of the writing process, as well as teaching an unforgiving critical eye so that writers may self-edit alone effectively. 

It must also be said that this genre is one that has moved from the peripheries of the Marquis de Sade and Bataille to the shelves of local bookshops, with motivations varying from titillating humour in absurdist texts such as Luke Rhinehart’s The Dice Man, to readerly rubber-necking in the ‘Real Life Tragedies’ section of WH Smith.  I received this promotional ad from Abe Books just the other day…

Naturally, a module that confronts and generates controversial texts on a regular basis comes with risks.  Hardy (2007, p107) explained this best when speaking of gonzo-formalism, a workshop ethos exalting unrestrained critical feedback:  ‘Any provocative and reflexive pedagogy that goes against the grain of convention… is fraught with contretemps but then what is ‘evolved’ teaching without some inherent risk?’

At last, available to digitally queue for and pre-order  on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.  Sexy front-cover and blurb forthcoming.

The release date is down as the 1st Septemerber, which is nearly two years later than scheduled, but that’s publishing for you.

It’ll make a questionable Christmas present - and perhaps an enlightening one…

Dialogue gives readers a break from the straight narrative and can bring colour and energy to the characters and story.

Fictional dialogue is a careful bled of natural sounding speech and more eloquent and scripted ‘lines’ pre-written for the characters.  It is always designed to make the most of dramatic effect, and never dull like much day-to-day conversation is.  The way people talk defines who they are.  Their history is in how they speak and what words they use.

There are many styles of dialogue, none of which are ‘wrong’ but some of which will be wrong within the piece.  Dialogue must compliment the style and intentions within the story.  After all, a significant chunk of redrafting is better-marrying the various elements within a story.

Points to consider when writing dialogue

1)      Variation

Avoid having all your characters sound the same.  Spend some time trying to hear what your main character’s speech sounds like. 

2)      Fillers

People naturally use fillers such as ‘um’ and ‘uh’ in speech to bridge silences whilst they think.  However, we as listeners tune fillers out, so you should avoid writing them unless it’s significantly useful in the story – say, to show a character losing his words at a certain point.  Though here, do find other ways to indicate pauses in speech, such as allusions to body language.

3)      Economy

As in all writing, cut words and phrases in dialogue which aren’t serving a purpose within the story.  Remember: ‘purpose’ can be characterisation as well as exposition of plot and information.  On this point, don’t try to give away too much information at once through dialogue, either, as it will appear ugly and obvious.  Trust the reader’s intelligence, their ability to infer and that they will remember details from earlier in the story.  Better to drip-feed than to drown.

It is smoother to use action and description around dialogue to indicate tone rather than to just say ‘she shouted’.  This also serves to break up monotony in expansive spiels of loaded dialogue.  Once placed, characters can also simply speak and the content can imply all the information that tags would provide.  This presents a very clean and uncluttered speech, which authors such as Hemmingway favour.

4)      Tag lines

Veering away too dramatically from the ‘he said/she said’ staple can just draw attention to the tags that you were trying to underplay in the first place.  If the writing is good, you won’t need words such as ‘interjected’, ‘conceded’ or ‘agreed’ as it will be obvious within the action of the story.  Dialogue can be ‘annotated’, particularly in the first person, to indicate tone, atmosphere, tension, etc.

Dialogue needn’t be simply written, either – it can also be reported. 

Look at:  Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk - Dialogue is playfully reported as well as written ’straight’ throughout the book.  Palahniuk is good to look at for variety in dialogue style.  And he’ll make you cool.

5)      Phonetics

This enforces a sense of place and authenticity, even a time, within the story.  However do be mindful to avoid stereotypes when it comes to dialect.  If you know the lingo inside and out and can pull it off, have a go, but be very aware of the pitfalls when writing phonetically. 

 Look at: Filth, Irvine Welsh - There are sections of this book that you have to read aloud and sound out to understand, but so much of the character is in the dialect that Welsh couldn’t have written this any other way.  Trainspotting is also a good yarn, but it would have been a near-cliche to use as an example.

6)      Structure

Characters will not necessarily get to the point straight away, and natural conversation doesn’t often flow nearly from A to B to C.  Non-sequiturs are common and in a story can be used to subtly reveal a detail about the character, such as an aversion towards the topic being discussed.

      Character

If your character is a chatterbox, let them ramble.  If they are the strong silent type, let them be silent.  Don’t force words into their mouths and don’t try to make them conform to your own views of good communication.

9)      Speech doesn’t happen in a vacuum

Dialogue happens every day as a reaction to what has been and is happening.  There doesn’t have to be a direct relation between the two, but we should be able to imagine where the characters are and what they’re doing when they’re talking.

10)  Listen

The best way to learn how to write conversation is to listen to it.  Eavesdrop and notice good dialogue in film and television.

Remember: Have fun with dialogue!  If your characters are simply ‘not speaking’, put them in a situation quite side from the story and explore their speech off the record.  Reading dialogue aloud will help in redrafting it.  One author finds that assigning characters actual chairs and moving about whilst reading their speech very helpful in writing.

Look at: The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris - The first meeting between Starling and Lecter is particularly good.  Pay heed to: 3^rd person uncluttered dialogue; pace; tension; characterisation; exposition.   

Writing Exercise

Think of a character and give them a gender, age, education level and home location.  Put them in a room by themselves.  Have someone come into that room and make them angry.  Free-write the dialogue without tags.

A presentation about Tasteless created for the Creative Processes module of my Creative Writing Masters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMUQ93Q4vI8

and a second one about the representation of female characters in transgressive literature, for the Theory Studies module.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxR7PXttVLI

Here for easy linkage should the CD not work (like last time…)

The purple is spreading up my hands, a webbed map of the blood thickening in my veins.  My fingers are grey and seizing at the joints, the tips darker still.  I can’t feel the leads of the dogs in my hands, and it’s only when I look that I see the straps aren’t there anymore.

Savagery begets savagery here, the dogs barking and tearing on the pack leader now lying dead or dying.  Andes, the biggest dog left, staggers back and bows possessively over something solid and wet in the snow.  Pennine is dead.

Stepping of the supply sled, I go to pick up the big stick to beat the dogs back but my fingers wont bend and the touch of anything burns like my hands have been slammed in a hot vice.  The dogs growl at me as I stagger towards them, towards the carcass that may still be warm enough to bury my hands in to bring some life back to my useless fingers.  But they have turned wild with mistrust, lost their faith that I will do anything but get us all killed.

I am alone, the sled is gone, and the supply sled has barely survived the ice.  We are not lost, though, merely hindered by every misfortune that could have fallen on us.  I cannot beat the dogs into obedience, though, and without fear or respect there is nothing I can do with them.  I could unstrap them and let the pack go, but out of spite I leave them tethered to the sled.

Half a mile is not so far to walk to the old whaling sheds, but when the daylight has lasted weeks and the horizon wavers as a distorted smear, it feels like I have been walking the breadth of this pole.  As I walk, I beat my arms against my sides and wheel them about to keep my blood moving.  My spare gloves had been on the main sled, and the others had been too wet to ever dry here.  The snow was warmer, and when I rested I buried myself in the powder, scrubbing the ice from my lashes and beard with my arm.

Hours, days, seconds later, I reach the sheds, wooden structures rotting to black and stained with blood and fat.  Everything is unlocked and I fall with a barked shout infront of the cutting table.  There are frosted rags, rusted knives and a box of matches sat waiting, open wide enough for the one match sticking out.  I can’t get my fingers around it, but manage to lift it from the box pressed between the heels of my dark hands.  If I drop it, I won’t be able to pick it up again.  Manoeuvring the matchbox with my elbows, I wedge it between pieces of frozen down cloths, and with shaking arms, line up the dull head to strike.

Palahniuk’s Ongoing Affair with the Bahktinian Grotesque

 (Not sure why I can’t get this to embed, but never mind)

This is one of the pieces of work for Uni that has consumed my time and energy like a sentient tumour.  It was either a little animated video or sock puppets for this presentatin, both of which I’ve fancied doing for a long time.  I’m very surprised this worked out, as I am technologically challenged if my aura of Techno Death doesn’t get there first.

Normal service to resume soon(ish).

It’s satisfying as a writer to find yourself emptying all your money onto the bar in a lapdancing club in the name of god-honest writerly research.

Suffice to say I have already spent two solid hours writing today.

Shall be inviting the girls to the ‘Dolls’ book launch in April, though last night was for ‘Gabe’ currently on-course for a year later.   Tra la la.

Writers in education is a relatively small community, so it’s really good to put yourself out there and make yourself, and what you do, known.  With this in mind, I’ve been pitching to conferences like the Oceans of Short Stories in Liverpool last May as well as to the usual short story journals.  The Liverpool conference went really well, so I pitched for another one and just received notification that my paper has been accepted.

I’ll be giving a a presentation examining transgressive literature and the values of taboo subjects in taught creative writing courses.  Referenced will be the first wholly transgressive prose module at the University of Gloucestershire, undertaken last year.  The paper will explore the difficulties in approaching and creatively experiencing the forbidden and the unspoken as well as the rewards of such conscious risk-taking.  Ultimately, the presentation will highlight that this genre is ideal for creating original and memorable prose in new and developing writers.  Included in the presentation will be a short extract of my own prose (’that’ story, God help me) evidencing the content of the paper, and an opportunity for Q&A at the end.

More details for registration and the like will come in January.  The conference is the ‘Great Writing, International Creative Writing Conference’ at Bangor University in Wales.

This is a much bigger conference than the last, and with that in mind I’m very grateful that a version of this paper is what I’ll be writing for my Teaching Creative Writing module on my Masters.

Hohum, such exciting developments.  They delight me.

In other news - university has piled up, the need for money has me at my survival jobs far too often, but life is generally doing good.  Just, busier than I’d perhaps like for the purposes of updating this place.  Good though.

 I recently passed 40K with Gabe, which has broken the back of the ‘novel’ challenge.  I thought I’d pop up part of one of the chapters I’m working on at the moment.  Takes place somewhere in the middle and can stand alone alright, I reckon.

Diversions

The problem with being a writer is that you do the majority of your work sitting in self-imposed solitary confinement, so when you do want to temporarily rejoin the outside world, it’s desirable that your social circle is one that you can plunder for ideas.  This means having a very diverse collection of people, many of whom you wouldn’t readily admit to seeing when the words are only dribbling onto the page.  Alcohol is part and parcel of seeing them.  

So, being a writer means you’re either sitting drinking with social castoffs trying to find something to write about or sitting alone trying to write.  Compound this with being unable to write and sitting alone in a small flat waiting for your lover to hopefully come back and it’s just going to lead to disaster.  Daytime television consists entirely of property, cooking and antique shows, punctuated with the news, which doesn’t seem to change much.  After 48 hours I feel like I’ve read the entirety of the Internet that’s worth reading and can no longer bear the sight of a monitor.  It’s time to go out and distract myself so I’m in a fit state to receive Tilley, if and when she comes back.

I go to where single parents and the unimaginative go to kill an hour for free.  Pets 4 U is two stories and smells like sawdust.  Just inside the door is a stand with various animal treats and toys on it under the banner ‘pets like presents too’.  Above the blown up photo of a Dalmatian puppy is a slot to put in a picture for the current holiday season.  Right now it’s empty.  I wonder if they’re going to start milking the Jewish holidays any time soon.

Inside their lidless glass cube the guinea pigs make alien squeaks and hoots at me as they scuttle backwards into a mass of hay.  Two escaped budgies fly over my head and perch on a hanging strip-light.  One employee is peering under the shelves with a net by the chipmunk cage.  I spot Rik at the cashier counter and maneuver around screaming children towards him.

“Hey Rik.  Going on your lunch break anytime?”

He grins and looks like he should have toothpaste in his mouth as a stand-in for a cigarette.  “Hey Gabe.  Yeah, me and Mike are off in about ten minutes.”  There’s no ‘about’ approximation about it.  People on minimum wage know exactly when their breaks are and will be gone for every second of it.  “Wanna grab a burger with us?”

“Sounds good,” I reply, trying not to sound grateful.  I’ve known Rik for two years and Mike for a few months.  It’s one of those casual acquaintances where you drift in and out of each other’s lives, have a few laughs but don’t get serious.  It’s a friendship with all the perks and none of them as well, in a way.  “Burger King?”

Rik’s acne scarred forehead creases, deforming the craters.  “Not McDonalds?”

“Went off them a few years ago.”

“But they’re using 100% chicken breast in their nuggets now.  It’s good eating,” he enthuses, far too keenly.  Suspiciously brain-washed, one might say.

“What were they using before?”

That throws him, and Rik glances quickly to the left before giving up on an answer with a shrug.

I point for razor-wire emphasis.  “And just think: they’re not raving about what’s in their milkshakes yet, are they?”

Another jaded shrug.  “Alright, Burger King then.  A burger’s a burger, wherever you grill it.”

*

The chips are stiff and over-salted but with the Teflon tables and harsh lighting, the chain really isn’t different from McDonalds.  The Golden Arches have this place down on their barbeque dip, though, and I’m quite particular to their squidgey chips that can be folded three times for ultimate dip immersion.

Rik and Mike have burgers with cheese and bacon slapped on beneath the wilted lettuce.  I have a large chocolate milkshake, as much to stand by my point of rejecting the food as actually wanting it.

Mike slams a hand on the table and grins through a mouthful of grey mush and beige grease.  Sexy.  “I’ve got a great one for you, Gabe.  Right up your street.  I’m going to give you your next book, you sick bastard.”

Long sip of chewy milkshake and I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth so my brain doesn’t think it’s freezing.  “Go on then.”

Sitting back decidedly pleased with his attentive audience, Mike plays out his story with vague hand gestures and animated eyebrows.  “So, last few months, right, we’ve had this guy in buying loads of rabbits and guinea pigs.  Like, three a week.”

Rik swallows loudly but doesn’t clear quite everything.  Flecks of white pulp cling to his teeth.  “Thought he was doing a breeding program or stocking a petting zoo or summut.”

“After thirty animals, though,” Mike continues, drumming a finger to his temple, “we get a bit weirded and suspicious, and call the police.”

Rik nods.  “They followed him home since he kept coming in at the same time to buy the things.”

A maniacal grin from Mike.  “Turns out he was fucking them and, like, ripping them up and splitting their insides so he had to keep buying new ones.  Sick bastard, huh?”

I slide my milkshake away and wish that I could go a few days without someone telling me shit like this.  “That’s a lovely story.”

Rik jabs Mike in the arm.  “It’s like that guy they found in a building after that earthquake.  Stone dead with a chicken on his dick.  Hell of a way for the wife to find out.”

Mike glares at him like he’s said something stupid.  As if stupidity could be the only thing wrong with that sentence.  “How could he have a chicken on his dick?  Surely his dick was in the chicken.”

Rik squints and speaks around a mouthful of food that all looks the same.  “Well, they’d both gone, like, stiff from being dead and I reckon that once the Earth started moving he stopped holding it and it stuck there on his own.  Clamped up around his bell end in its death throes.  Hell, it might even have been dead before the building came down.  Chickens pass eggs, yeah, but those are short and nothing deep like a cock. Unless he had a little stumpy one.  I don’t know.  That bit wasn’t there in what I read.”

Mike jumps in before I can.  “How do you even know this whole story isn’t bullshit?  Where in the world did this tale of cross species erotica even happen?  ‘Cause you could get a rough idea of dick size from that. Standard sized American condoms are made smaller than for the British.”

Rik shrugs awkwardly, embarrassed.  “I don’t know.  You know I’m shit for remembering details like that.”

Mike’s nostrils flare dubiously.  “Uh huh.”

I roll my cold cardboard cup between my palms.  “It could just be another urban story myth, like the girl who wanted to grow up to be a tractor.  Or Jesus.”

Rik’s mouth turns sour and he turns to stare through his reflection in the glass wall.   Mike flicks his eyebrows at me and keeps eating.

In his defense, I did come here seeking a distraction.  How can anyone think about their love life when all these images are being smeared across their brain?

-*-

It’s genuinely unsettling how much of what I write is based in truth…

In 1981, a seemingly innocuous book called The White Hotel emerged into the literary market.  It created a bit of a stir, and quite rightly.  Within a restrained and beautifully constructed narrative, a young woman recounts a tale of eroticism and violence to her psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud.  It is the most original book trying to make some sense of the Holocaust, a period that is all too easy to bury within sweeping statements of horror.

I first encountered this book in the Transgressive Prose module in my third year at uni.  I remember the lecturer sitting on the table at the head of the room, cross legged and furrow-browed as he held one of the photocopies he’d made for all of us of the final section of the book.  We had twelve pages and managed six before he said that he couldn’t read anymore aloud, much to our relief.  To my mind, this is the strongest indicator of the book’s power, as this was a module where every week we read and discussed stories of murder, rape, torture, paedophelia and grotesque persecution.  That this book, preceeding many of our births, could still weild this kind of emotional clout in the present day alongside Palahniuk’s Snuff and Easton Ellis’s American Psycho is stunning.

Quite simply, I believe that this text should be taught as a testament to the power of words.  Humble, simple words that we throw around every day, but have the power to make you weep in the hands of a master storyteller.

So, it was my enourmous pleasure when bluechrome put me in touch with D M Thomas for an interview.  Rather than taking the usual route that has been taken by many reviewers, I decided to try approaching him as a a writer.

One of the strongest and most enduring qualities of ‘The White Hotel’ is its structure, beginning in close proximity to a damaged woman’s thoughts and drawing back to end with traditional 3rd person prose.  Did you have this structure in mind when you began writing, or did it evolve as the book progressed?

The book started as the poem, ‘Don Giovanni’, as a separate entity, though I knew it wasn’t finished.  Then, the synchonicities with what happened at ‘Babi Yar‘ made me realise, one day months later, that this was a novel, beginning with poetry and ending with bleak prose.  So I needed other styles to bridge those.  Since I’d long wanted to write a novella in the form of a Freudian case study, that became the obvious middle section.  To be bridged in turn by a lush erotic prose narrative and the narrative of my heroine’s life between Freud and Babi Yar.   So the general form was in my head from the first day.  In the course of writing, I realised I needed a prologue of letters and a final section, Lisa’s ’spiritual fantasy’.

What fueled your desire to tell the story of ‘The White Hotel’’s troublesome and, ultimately, futile attempts to be adapted into a film?

The bizarre twists and turns, such as a war once ruining the project –NATO’s war against Serbia– and the bizarre characters involved.  Also the idea of weaving my life into this narrative.

Having written ‘Bleak Hotel’ and re-examining what could be described as a difficult period in your life, do you find yourself perceiving ‘The White Hotel’ in a different way now?

No, not really.  My novel is still separate from all the movie flummery.  I haven’t actually re-read it for 20 years or more, apart from browsing it to look for passages to read to an audience.

Across your extensive writing career in prose, poetry and translation, have you found that the way you write has evolved over time (in terms of time of day, place, mood, ambiance, ‘props’, etc)?

The two big changes were from writing part-time, when I was a teacher/lecturer to writing full-time;  and from poetry to mostly fiction, which came more or less simultaneously.  Poetry always in long-hand first;  fiction straight into type.  Cigarettes always to hand, apart from a two year period when I had given up.  I used to be a writaholic, but I take it easier now.

Many authors feel that all their earlier writing has an influence on their work, and that they couldn’t have written ‘C’ without writing ‘A’ and ‘B’ first.  What writing turning points across your books do you feel have influenced you most, be they research, a new style, new topic, etc?

I think my bursts of translating Akhmatova and Pushkin taught me a lot;  and the life of Akhmatova ushered in my first published novel, ‘The Flute-Player’.  The way the great Russians don’t clearly separate verse and prose, e.g. ‘Dr Zhivago’ and Pushkin calling ‘Eugene Onegin’ a ‘novel in verse’, gave me the courage to try to do the same –mix up the forms.

For what reasons did you use Kuznetsov’s text, ‘Babi Yar‘, when writing about the Holocaust? 

I didn’t actually use Kuznetsov’s text.  In his novel ‘Bibi Yar’ he quotes an eye-witness account, by the sole survivor, Dina Pronicheva.  It was her account, which echoed so strangely my ‘Don Giovanni’ poem –the falling, earth, water, fire, etc.– which made me realise my poem was the beginning of a novel.

The novel has often been discussed in relationship to pornography - what are your thoughts on these readings?

The real pornography was what the Nazis did to their victims.  Lisa’s erotic thoughts are natural and true to her character, as I saw it.

During a module studying Transgressive Literature, we examined a passage from The White Hotel as a study of taboo - in this case, the intimacy developed with the characters and the unflinching descriptionts of events.  There was such a powerful response to this that we ceased the reading of it sooner than expected and spent a long time discussing our unease and the effectiveness of the piece.  What were your intentions for the reader when writing The White Hotel, in so much as a writer can have intentions for their audience?

My reaction was surprise!  I didn’t expect it to have such an emotional effect.  I was told by one reader that she vomited on reading ‘Don Giovanni’, and by two other women that they masturbated to it.  I’m surprised by both reactions –though I prefer the second!

Many new writers whom aren’t published and aren’t in the public eye commonly feel unqualified to label themselves as ‘writers’.  When did you feel you could identify yourself by your craft, rather than simply saying ‘I write’?

I honestly don’t remember.  But I called myself a poet long before I called myself a writer.

Finally, where do you think you’ll go from here?  You say you’re taking it easy in writing now, but are there still projects that you want to get out of your system in the near future?

Yes, but I feel too uncertain about them –or rather it– to want to spell it out.   In case it doesn’t work…

D M Thomas’s new book, Bleak Hotel: The Hollywood Saga of the White Hotel is out now.  Watch this space for a follow-up review and interview.

 
With my utmost thanks to Anthony and Don for this opportunity.  I thoroughly enjoyed myself