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

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