On Ballardian.com

Being interviewed

This interview happened a few days before the big Ballard literary conference at the University of East Anglia in May 2007.

The questions were compiled by Gwyn Richards and went up on Ballardian.com. It was a great website. One of the best.

I really don’t like how I come across here. But I had probably gone into interview-Toby mode. That meant I had to maximize the spikiness.

Gwyn had done a lot of work in preparation. I’ve rarely been asked such informed questions about my books.

This interview, I think, was a sign I’d been welcomed into the Ballard gang. They were interested in me because of the obvious presence of Ballard in what I was writing.

That influence has receded now. But, back going through all this, I can see how important it was. As a writer, I wouldn’t have existed as I did without Ballard.

However badly, or arrogantly, that’s what I’m trying to say here.

I’d just like to preface this with a quick word about Ballard. I admire his writing immensely. I think he is unique among British writers for the consistent extremity of his vision, and his willingness to engage with the stuff of now.

• Ballard famously eschews ‘dinner party London’ in favour of the Orbital suburbs, both in his fiction and in his life. Your work, on the other hand, has emphasised the drudgery and boredom of growing up in the suburbs (I’m thinking of Beatniks in particular). Do you have any sympathy for Ballard’s viewpoint? Do you agree with Ballard that the suburbs are where the ‘real’ England is?

Clearly, it’s not in one place. That’s the reason why England is such a good subject, because it’s a hugely large number of subjects, all under the one heading. My understanding of Ballard is that he’s being slightly paradoxical: the suburbs are usually seen as innately conservative (small ‘c’), but they are where new phenomena are constantly emerging – rather than in the smug centre which prides itself on being cutting edge. And because these phenomena are suburban, and widely accepted almost immediately, they aren’t seen as in any way interesting. In this, I think Ballard is right. Hanging on to a sense of the weirdness and extremity of everyday life is very difficult. Particularly in empirical England which lives in constant denial of being weird or extreme.

• Which of Ballard’s phases do you think produced his best work – the SF days, the avant-garde experiments, the urban disaster novels, the dream allegories, the recent detective-style work?

An invidious question. I will answer by saying that I think that there is a particular rhythm to Ballard’s sentences. It was there right from the start (The Wind from Nowhere; I don’t understand why he disowns this), and it’s still there now. But, to my ear, this rhythm in his writing was most distinctive in The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, The Concrete Island and High Rise. His rhythm now seems to me slightly faster, slightly less sure of itself.

• What’s your favourite Ballard novel, and why?

The Drowned World. I find the imagery very satisfactory.

• Which of Ballard’s novels did you read first?

Crash.

• Which has had most influence on your own writing?

Probably Crash. I put it in the acknowledgements to Corpsing, because I felt the influence should be openly acknowledged.

• It’s interesting that your work consistently engages with both Literature (capital L) and literary theory, and your characters often talk about literature. Whereas Ballard’s are much more the ‘invisible literatures’ — of medical journals, the Warren Commission report, and so on. But your novel Corpsing has sections that read like ballistics reports, describing the path of a bullet through someone’s body in minute detail. Do you read and find inspiration in ‘invisible literatures’ as well as Literature, and if so, in what?

Well, medical textbooks, also. There’s quite a bit of that in Hospital. But I am probably more influenced by non-literary non-verbal sources: paintings, music.

• I read somewhere that you read theorists including Deleuze. What's the appeal there? Does theory feedback into your writing?

I have been reading Deleuze in the past couple of years, yes. Both in his own books and those he wrote with Guattari. It’s important to remind yourself that there are many different ways of thinking. I find the French theorists fascinating. Much more so than any English philosophy of the same period. It is an assault on common sense. I tend to assume that common sense, because it’s common, is wrong. I don’t believe the truth is simple.

• You and Ballard both seem fascinated by violence. It’s particularly interesting that you both deal with pre-meditated murder committed by children – your deadkidsongs and Ballard’s Running Wild. Although very different, one feels in both these novels that the parents are at least partly culpable for this. What draws you to writing about violence, and what to writing about the violence of children?

I really don’t know. It may be that I feel that everyone is capable of violence — if only imaginary violence. To portray the world honestly, you have to include that.

• As a father, do you worry about violence, especially in the wake of recent moral panics about inner-city London violence?

I try not to. But it’s not merely moral panics. The corner shop at the end of my road was recently robbed by a group of six or seven men, each one of them carrying a gun. They hospitalized the guy working behind the till — hit him several times on the back of the head with the butt of a pistol. I probably worry more about a general callousness — callousness as entertainment.

• Your books strike me as being eminently filmable. Are any such films in the offing? Would you like to see any of them filmed?

I would be happy to see any or all of them filmed. So far, there have only been short films made from short stories. You can see one of them, ‘Rare Books & Manuscripts’, online here.

• Both you and Ballard have published short stories as well as novels, and in my opinion some of your most vivid and memorable writing is in this format. In your interview with Ballard last summer, he bemoaned the lack of places to publish short stories in more recent times. Do you find this as well? Why is this so, and what can be done about it?

I agree. However, I think the American scene – with which ours is often compared – can be immensely smug. It is easier to be published in anthologies, over here, than in magazines. The only thing that can really be done is developing an audience specifically for short stories. I think it’s there, if only because of the number of people now attending creative writing courses.

• What do you appreciate about the shorter format, as opposed to novel-length fiction?

It is a far less reasonable proposition. Hospital is an attempt to be unreasonable at novel length. But, most of the time, a novel requires the novelist to moderate their extremity.

• In Ghost Story you begin with an apparently autobiographical and (in comparison to most novels’) long introduction and make it clear that the novel is based, at least to some extent, on your own experiences. Ballard has, of course, written extensively about his life — albeit in a highly fictionalised form — in Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women. In the latter especially, it is not clear to what extent he projects his own obsessions and character types on the people around him, and to what extent events have influenced his fiction. Presumably all novelists base ideas and characters on people and events from their own lives, but does this work the other way around as well? Do you ever interpret reality through your own fiction?

It’s all I do.

• It would be fair to characterise some of your writing — particularly some of your short stories — as being experimental: for instance, your using internet culture and email as narrative in the “Betamax Boy” story in Adventures in Capitalism. Where, if anywhere, do you see the best current avant-garde/experimental fiction?

I don’t really believe in literary experiments. If a writer writes experimentally, that suggests they don’t know what the outcome of their experiment will be. Whereas, when I write, I have a fairly good idea of the outcome, I just don’t know what the effect will be (on readers). That’s a very different proposition. If I misjudge, I misjudge the readers rather than the work itself.

• Ballard recently said in a couple of interviews that he thinks internet culture has a tremendous vitality. And in your recent interview with Ballard, you spoke about the Myspace phenomenon. Now, when people talk about the power of Myspace, they usually do so in relation to unsigned bands and the networking that has allowed them to gain their first record deal. As a writer, and a successful one, how have you found your experience on Myspace, in terms interacting with your audience? Has it been beneficial?

I have a better sense of my audience now, I think. Whether that is a good or a bad thing, I’m not sure. I’ve been running my own website for quite a few years: www.tobylitt.com.

• How do you see the state of fiction writing in this day and age? Are we in a positive place?

The state of publishing is not good. A lot of pseudo-literary writing is passed off as the real thing. The real thing is very rare. But that’s always been the case. There is a real problem that many readers are offended by anything which asks them to work. Books must go to them, not the other way round. I’m sure that, from the point of view of the future, much of our fiction will seem simplistic and banal. Any decent novel should require rereading, probably more than once.

• Your latest novel Hospital came out on 5 April 2007. Could you tell us something about that? What sort of research did you do for it?

It takes place in a hospital of thirty-two stories, twenty-six above ground and six beneath. It contains around one hundred and twenty five characters. At midnight, for various reasons, everyone in the hospital is miraculously healed.

• You say on your web site that High-Rise is an influence on Hospital — how so?

In that the book is, to a great extent, the biography of the fabric of the building rather than of any particular character in it.

• You are speaking at the Ballard conference at the UEA in May. What we can expect from your talk?

I’m taking part in a panel. So, I’ll wait to see what questions come up. We should be discussing the most recent books.