Marlon James

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast, and, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:47

My castaway this week is the writer Marlon James. Widely hailed as one of the most important literary voices to emerge in the twenty first century, he won the Booker Prize in twenty fifteen for his epic novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, that centers on the nineteen seventy six assassination attempt against Bob Marley.

Presenter1:05

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Marlon was six when the events in the novel took place. He may have been destined to turn his talents to a story about crime eventually. As the son of a police officer mother and a lawyer father, he grew up in a family who joked that his mother locked criminals up and his father got them out. The road to success has been a long one. He published his first novel, John Crow's Devil, at 34 after it had been rejected 78 times and after he believed he had destroyed every existing copy of his manuscript. More on that later. He also teaches creative writing and gives students this advice. If you're a writer, you have to believe in yourself. Because if you're a writer, you're going to come across that moment where you're the only one who does. Marlon James, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Marlon James1:48

Thanks for having me.

Presenter1:49

Pleasure. So tell me a little bit more about this idea of self-belief. Have you always had it? Is it something you you've had to develop?

Marlon James1:56

I didn't always have it and I'm still working on it. I didn't believe in myself, which is why I destroyed that manuscript when I couldn't get anybody to read it, much less buy it. You know, I threw away that manuscript. I went back into advertising and design, which is what I was doing. And I pretty much forgot about being a writer. And if it wasn't for a bunch of forces, including Kaylee Jones, that great novelist and daughter of James Jones, coming to Jamaica and me going to her workshop and she insisting on not leaving the country until I found the manuscript and gave to her, which I did under duress.

Presenter2:34

It was your friends, I think, who said he's got a manuscript, he's got a novel, he's got a new one.

Marlon James2:36

He said

Marlon James2:38

It wasn't even a friend, it was somebody else in the workshop who I hadn't seen in a year. They just remembered I wrote a book. She would not take no for an answer and I had to find it in an email outbox and send it to her. And I remember because I didn't have enough paper, so I had to cut the first 20 pages and the last 20 pages. Clearly I didn't need them because nobody ever said this novel feels like it's missing something.

Marlon James3:02

and sent it to her and she loved it and she showed it to her publisher and that was that. But it was not because of belief in myself and and m my advice to my students is just don't do what I did. Seventy eight people can be wrong and sometimes majority just means all the wrong people are on the same side.

Presenter3:22

So tell me a little bit more about teaching. You teach creative writing and have done for some years in Minnesota. What do you enjoy about it?

Marlon James3:24

And hand

Marlon James3:28

I enjoy teaching undergrads, so I I like teaching kids who are just discovering their voice and just discovering that they can actually write or want to.

Marlon James3:39

or discovering that they're terrible and shouldn't do it. Um it's something about being so creative just for creativity's sake that I find really, really

Marlon James3:51

almost kind of intoxicating'cause I am so not that.

Presenter3:54

Oh, really?

Marlon James3:55

I mean, I write with purpose. I write to pick up a paycheck. You know, writing for me is work, and I love that it's work, but it's work.

Marlon James4:03

For them rating is almost play.

Marlon James4:05

Writing is figuring themselves out and just sort of tapping into this vast possibility of what they can be.

Presenter4:12

And tell me about the music that you're going to be sharing with us today. Eight special pieces of music. Do you listen to it when you're writing?

Marlon James4:18

I listen to music when I'm writing, I listen to music with everything. I mean I'm Jamaican, we do everything to a soundtrack. I just don't trust silence. Silence to me feels like deafness. It feels like absence of sound. It doesn't feel like an alternative to noise. It feels like the absence of sound. And I don't trust it. It makes me very uneasy.

Presenter4:39

So with that in mind, tell me about your first piece of music today. What are we going to hear?

Marlon James4:43

We're gonna hear Tennessee ring the alarm. Reggae started out in a lot of ways.

Marlon James4:50

Just as how hip-hop started out, where it was not just that it was street music or ghetto music, it was the music of people who couldn't afford instruments. It was also.

Marlon James5:00

young enough that the older kids wouldn't like it. It still felt kind of rebellious listening to a song at Ring the Alarm. It turns out of course it was one of the paradigm shifts for reggae music and a stunning brilliant song. But back then it was just it was a song of being 11, 12, 13.

Speaker 25:24

Hey, ring the alarm, hey, whoa!

Speaker 25:29

Ring the alarm, another sound is dying. Whoa, hey, ring the alarm, another sound is dying. Whoa, hey, some sound sound like a big jump on. Listen to the sound, it's a champion. Round the dancing or any session. Rock up the woman and rock up the man. Ring the alarm.

Presenter5:54

Tennisaw and Ring the Alarm. Marlon James, you've published four novels so far and it was your third, a brief history of seven killings, that won the Man Booker Prize in twenty fifteen. And looking at footage of the evening, your reaction to the announcement seems to be one of genuine surprise. What do you remember of that moment?

Marlon James6:10

It was a genuine surprise. I was absolutely shocked. I really didn't think I was going to win. And I'm pretty sure I may still have the most rambling, incoherent Bukhari Prize speech ever. Certainly the shortest. In hindsight, I guess, yeah, I should have known. But I, yeah, I was absolutely stunned. I remember when we were about to announce the verdict, I got up to go to the bathroom and I was like, whatever. It's like, I'm going to go. And I should have known when three people followed me.

Presenter6:37

To make sure you got back on time.

Marlon James6:39

Yeah, they even stayed near the stall, and I'm like, you people have got to be kidding. And it was a woman, too, in a men's stall.

Marlon James6:46

Uh well, I don't know if she knew.

Marlon James6:49

I think it was just neat everybody in the room.

Presenter6:52

And with a longer view on it, what difference has winning the prize made to life for you?

Marlon James6:57

It made a lot of difference. For one, there's all that book sales. Selling a book sure beats not selling a book. And it's galvanized a lot of things. Briefly has been translated in nearly 30 languages. I also think there's a type of reader who would come across this book, some liking it, some thoroughly hating it, but both coming to it because of the exposure of something at the Book of Prize. Because I think writers like me, I mean, our books, you know, we sell decent numbers, we earn out our advance, we bring some acclaim to the publisher, but we don't storm the bestseller list. Not part of the whole popular literary imagination. It does take something like a prize, I think, to make some people curious. And that prize did that.

Presenter7:42

And you were the first Jamaican author to win the prize. What was the reaction to the news there?

Marlon James7:47

It was for the most part celebratory.

Marlon James7:49

But it was also slightly complicated because that was the same year I came out in the New York Times and Jamaica is still going through some issues with homophobia.

Marlon James7:58

When I went back funny enough to do the Bob Marley lecture, the excitement of people wanting to see and hear what I had to say was fantastic.

Marlon James8:06

At the same time, somebody created a Facebook group solely saying should a homosexual give the the Bob Marley speech. That's the sole purpose of the Facebook group. There's steps forward and there's steps back. I think we're making more steps forward than back, but make no mistake, the backward steps are there.

Presenter8:18

Yeah.

Presenter8:24

Well, we're going to talk about that a little bit more later, but for now, it's time for your second piece of music, Marlon James. Tell me what it is and why you've chosen it.

Marlon James8:33

I remember the first time I heard Nick Drake and I didn't like him.

Marlon James8:37

I think because I heard I was listening to him at maybe 10.30 in the morning, I was at work and I took it home. I didn't get home till 9.30 in the night. I took it home, I put it in my C D player maybe around 11. I put it in it was 1993, I did not take that out of my C D player until 1998.

Marlon James8:58

It never left and I played it nearly every night. And there's so much Nick Drake to pick, but Things Behind the Sun was the one I kept pressing repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Every time it plays there's this ghost in the room.

Speaker 29:13

Pleased bewilder them that stared and it smiled to see what we tied away.

Speaker 49:23

Once you've seen what they've been to when the earth just won't seem worth a night or a day

Speaker 49:32

Oh yeah what I say Look around you find the ground Is not so far from where you are

Speaker 49:43

Don't do wise.

Speaker 29:47

Uh

Presenter9:47

Nick Drake and Things Behind the Suns. So tell me a little bit more about growing up. You were born into a middle-class family in suburban Kingston, Jamaica.

Speaker 29:47

Duh.

Marlon James9:55

I describe my childhood as kind of a typical suburban 70s, 80s childhood that nearly everybody else had. We were two working parents, we live in a three-bedroom house in the suburbs. I was raised by Sesame Street, watching soap operas or watching the A-Team. Or if it's Sunday, there'd be some lofty British series like The Far Pavilions or Jewel in the Crown or I Claudius. And it was in a lot of ways very, very rich childhood and in a lot of ways stultifyingly boring.

Marlon James10:31

It's suburbs everywhere.

Presenter10:33

Boredom is the correct crucible for a creative imagination, though surely.

Marlon James10:36

Absolutely,'cause you you're trying to write your way out of it, or sing your way out of it, or dance your way out of it. And I was writing weird stories and drawing comics and and of course listening to unbuying tons and tons of music.

Presenter10:51

As I mentioned, your mother was a police officer and your father was a lawyer. What did you know about their jobs when you were a kid?

Marlon James10:57

I didn't know a lot actually. They were very good at shielding work from us. Particularly my mom was so just so over it. The election in 1980, there was actually a big shootout. Government actually shut up her workplace, which was a major act of defense,'cause she worked in Central Intelligence Headquarters. And they shut it up anyway, just as to prove that they can.

Presenter11:20

So what was it like for you going back and and researching? You know, when you were writing a a brief history of seven killings, it must have given you a a different perspective on what they were doing while you were growing up.

Marlon James11:25

Seven.

Marlon James11:30

Yeah, because my perspective but then my perspective of say the nineteen seventy six was as a six-year-old. Nineteen seventy six crisis for me is who's my favorite Charlie's Angel?

Marlon James11:44

I still remember when Bob Marley got shot, um but I remember it more as one a news report. But I also remember it as one of the few times any news unnerved my parents. And now I know why. Now it's because Marley was untouchable and was supposed to be untouchable. And if people could try to kill Bob Marley, then it means they could kill anybody.

Marlon James12:11

It never occurred to me until writing that book that that pulled a rug out from under them. This is one of the one of the most certain things in in their world that Bob Marley is untouchable.

Marlon James12:24

And suddenly he got touched.

Presenter12:26

You've described your relationship with your dad as a peculiar kind of close, and I've read that you used to have Shakespeare duels with him when you were growing up. Who won usually?

Marlon James12:31

Used to have sh

Marlon James12:33

So then when you

Marlon James12:36

Depends on the play.

Marlon James12:37

Um he would win with Julius Caesar, I'd win with Hamlet.

Marlon James12:42

Um neither winds would Magbeth.

Marlon James12:44

I think that was our way of sort of bonding, because it's not like we ever talked about the the issues.

Marlon James12:50

It was a complicated relationship in the sense that um there were quite a few years I didn't even say a word to him.

Marlon James12:57

And, you know, we had a kind of reconciliation. I'm very glad, though, because he's no longer with us. And I'm glad we had that kind of.

Marlon James13:06

Sort of, it wasn't even an airing out, it was just a sort of declaring who we were.

Marlon James13:12

Of course my mom was always there for me and my mom was the type of person who would know things about me and I would say things that I would never say to my dad.

Presenter13:18

It's time to go to the music, Marlon James. Tell me about your third disc to day.

Marlon James13:22

I first heard Peter Gabriel when I was in high school, but he sort of sunk into my blood in college. And every time I think of Mercy Street, I think of rainy days in Jamaica, skipping college, and me and my friend Alicia and Robert and Damon and Alexis all in this car, rolling through Kingston. For some reason, no matter how fast you're going, you're gliding.

Marlon James13:49

And no matter what was going on out in the street, you never heard it. All you hear is rain on the windshield. And we're not saying anything to each other.

Marlon James13:59

We're just sort of letting Peter Gabriel fill the space, and it just is one of those joyous things, which is funny because it's a sad song.

Marlon James14:08

But it's one of those memories I have of just utter joy.

Speaker 414:16

Looking down on empty streets, all she can see

Speaker 414:20

Other trees all made some

Speaker 414:23

The dreams made real.

Speaker 414:26

All of the buildings.

Speaker 414:29

All of the costs

Speaker 414:31

Were once just a dream in somebody's head.

Speaker 414:36

Pictures of broken glass, pictures of steam, she pictures the soul.

Speaker 414:44

Slowly

Presenter14:45

Mercy Street by Peter Gabriel, taking you back to some inexplicably joyful college days, Marlon James. Um so tell me about more about you as a young boy. What what kind of kid were you?

Marlon James14:50

Yeah.

Marlon James14:57

I mean I was definitely a nerd, but I was definitely a geek. As um also the probably the school sissy. I remember really really loving comics and really really wanting to live in any era but the one I was in. Loving comics I'm wishing I could fly. That fantasy left me way later than it should have.

Marlon James15:20

And um just not feeling that I fit in at all.

Presenter15:24

How much understanding did you have of the ways in which you didn't fit? Was that something that you'd articulated to yourself at that point, or was it not?

Marlon James15:31

I think not necessarily articulated. I think I just found kindred spirits, really. That's one of the things we had, you know, that everybody else excluded us.

Presenter15:41

So who are you hanging out with?

Marlon James15:42

I was hanging out with the other nerds. I was hanging out with the art kids. I was hanging out with the poor kids. I was hanging out with the kids who curse too much and smell bad. I was hanging out with the new kid who didn't yet realize he could do better than us.

Presenter15:53

Bet.

Marlon James15:55

By summer he did.

Presenter15:57

There's a story I read that I really don't want to be true because it's it's sad about your school days, that you pretended you weren't your brother's brother so that he wouldn't be teased.

Marlon James16:06

It didn't feel sad back then and and I brought up to me was not just my idol, but I mean, he was like a second former with like fifth former cred. He was that cool.

Marlon James16:18

And being his brother, there are some expectations. I think I remember the incident where somebody screamed out some really nasty name and he heard it. And I was going, I don't know who they're talking about. And he's like, it's you. They're talking about you. And I was like, oh, wow. And he was with all his cool friends. And just without even knowing it, I just decided that, you know what, I'm not gonna ruin your cool or ruin your life. We're teenagers. We think that's coolness is life. The most we may have done is nodded at each other for the next five years. It's not like it's a big school. And then especially when he had to repeat a year, it ended up in my class. Nobody knew.

Presenter16:53

Yeah.

Presenter17:00

Wow.

Marlon James17:01

We didn't sit near each other. We did not acknowledge each other. And then they go, Andre James, Marlon James, present, present. We didn't take the same buses home. We didn't go the same routes. We didn't leave at the same time. And yeah, people were, to this day, people are stunned. Like, you guys were related? I was like, he's my brother. I was like, how?

Presenter17:23

Let's go to some music then. This is your fourth disc today. Tell me about this one.

Marlon James17:24

This is your favorite.

Marlon James17:28

Well, this is a complete changeup. So Nana Cherry, who remains the goddess of my existence, she was part of that sort of buffalo aesthetic that was in Britain. And.

Marlon James17:39

At the time, I wanted no more than to be living. I didn't even want to be in a British house. I just wanted to be in a British street. In the late 80s, it was like Time of the Face magazine and Touch magazine, and people dressing Buffalo style, and they're all wearing Boyland clothes. And I just wanted all of it. And she, to me, just seemed to encapsulate all of that. And it was just such complete coolness. To this day, I think she's the one musician who has said, God, if there's ever a musician I wish was my best friend, it was Nina Chariot.

Speaker 418:15

Is it the pain of the drinking, or the semi-sinking feeling?

Speaker 418:24

Car never seems to work

Speaker 418:27

When it's like your girlfriends all the day And a hero with us in your dream And your sleep seem like you Turn around, ask yourself

Speaker 418:38

Turn around, ask yourself

Speaker 418:41

And try.

Speaker 418:43

Were you eh?

Speaker 218:44

Yeah.

Speaker 218:47

Mancha

Presenter18:49

Lena Cherry and Manchild. Marlon James, you studied English language and literature at the University of the West Indies. How did you find student life?

Marlon James18:59

I love student life. It was weird being part of the cool kids suddenly. We so we'd show up in the l library, we'd take over the second floor, we'd be playing um anything from EPMD to Bad Brains, we're smoking and drinking, we're not eating any food because we're young and pretty and we don't need food.

Marlon James19:21

We save our money for alcohol.

Marlon James19:24

And it it was it was d this it was actually pretty fantastic actually. But college was so set apart from from let's call it the real world that it was pretty traumatic going to work. Because as soon as I hit work I ran back into the same people I left behind in high school. And they were still narrow-minded and they were still homophobic and they were still very just not understanding.

Presenter19:52

So you got a job as a copywriter.

Marlon James19:54

Mm-hmm.

Presenter19:54

Um and like you say, after this kind of grace period i in college you're you're suddenly back in in the real world.

Marlon James20:02

Which surprised me'cause it was an ad agency. I thought, Oh, everybody here will be creative and everybody here will be progressive. No, actually it wasn't. It was a lot like going back to high school.

Marlon James20:12

It was so oppressive. It was so oppressive and so depressing, I think. And I'm sometimes amazed I made it through it. Um.

Presenter20:20

Were you writing it?

Marlon James20:22

I wrote in college and I did creative writing and it was really I even got an A. But for some reason, I'm not sure why, I didn't follow it. I didn't pursue it for years. One reason maybe because I was a copywriter, so I was writing way too much and all the time anyway. But writing by committee.

Marlon James20:43

And writing to please people who

Marlon James20:46

Wanted the sombite, the five-word thing. They wanted think mink. I didn't come up with that, but

Presenter20:54

What sort of campaigns did you work on?

Marlon James20:56

Uh, mostly corporate stuff for banks.

Marlon James21:00

There's nothing wrong with advertising and nothing wrong being in a creative field. I think sometimes that can be a godsend. But I think you need to know if you're a writer doing copy or a copywriter. You need to know if you're an artist doing graphics or you're a graphic artist. You need to know if you're a singer doing commercials or you're a commercial singer. Those are not the same things. And if you're a writer doing copy, if you're an artist doing graphics, you have to have an exit strategy. Because you are creating via compromise and you're going to spend a long part of your life doing it. There are so many cautionary tales in my own industry. People who are doing commercials for 30 years and go, I'm going to do my feature film now. No, you're not. And no, they haven't.

Marlon James21:40

And those who did do their sort of artistic work, it was terrible.

Presenter21:45

And what was your e exit strategy, if you had one?

Marlon James21:48

Get suspended from the jabber walker

Marlon James21:53

I also took all the books because I knew nobody in the department was going to read them. But then I think.

Presenter21:57

What did you get suspended for?

Marlon James21:59

I went on a photo shoot and he thought I didn't have to go. He thought I was chasing girls. I'm like, somebody didn't get the memo. I ended up writing fiction not to sell it or not to have a career, but because I wanted some aspect of writing that was mine and mine alone. So I didn't even intend to publish that first novel. I wrote it just to prove that I could make something that was just mine.

Presenter22:23

Tell me about your fifth disc. Why have you chosen it?

Marlon James22:25

Jane's Addiction, Summer Time Rose, it was so different from eighties rock and eighties hard rock.'Cause we're talking of eighties hard rock, we're thinking of hair metal.

Marlon James22:35

Which I like.

Speaker 222:35

Hello.

Marlon James22:36

But it's everything about Jane's Addiction sounded and looked different. They didn't have hair moose, he had dreads. They didn't look like people who were dating Tanya Kitane and whichever model people were dating. They actually looked like drug addicts, quite frankly.

Marlon James22:53

Which the

Marlon James22:54

Turned out to be um the sound was like nothing else out there. This was not you give love a bad name.

Speaker 423:03

Falling into a sea of breath.

Speaker 423:12

This appeared among the shady blades.

Speaker 423:20

Children all renovate screaming tales.

Speaker 423:32

Behind the

Presenter23:42

Jane's Addiction and Summer Time Rolls. So, Marlon James, towards the end of the nineties you joined an evangelical church in Jamaica and you've spoken about that period as a time when you wanted to pray away the gay. What was church like? What was the typical service like?

Marlon James23:54

Mm-hmm.

Marlon James23:57

See church was pretty joyous actually. I quite liked church. I think because it was just so contemporary. The church pl you know, the musicians played reggae. In Jamaica we call it a clap hands church. Meaning that it was just lots of praise and worship and and so on. I really threw myself into it. I was at church nearly every day of the week. But I know I couldn't deal with the the anti-intellectualism of church. I couldn't deal with feeling like every time I entered the church I had to set my brain on dim.

Marlon James24:26

homophobia is going to get to me sooner or later. And then there was a certain kind of narrowness that was looked upon as a virtue. And I'm like, I will never think of ignorance as a virtue.

Presenter24:38

And were you at that point able to talk to friends about your sexuality? Did they know you again?

Marlon James24:43

But I didn't know I was gay.

Marlon James24:45

The cool thing about church is that church you can put things that are on hold for as long as you want.

Marlon James24:50

You know, we're all repressed together. We're all let's just forget all emotion and think God will provide.

Marlon James24:59

God is going to provide a wife who will understand my quote-unquote struggle.

Marlon James25:04

It's that we

Presenter25:04

Is that what you wanted?

Marlon James25:05

Yeah, and I wanted it more than anything. I that's why I eventually had my and my sort of exorcism to drive out the gay.

Presenter25:08

Yeah.

Presenter25:13

Tell me about that experience.

Marlon James25:15

In hindsight, I realize it's extreme ex-gay therapy. Back then, I thought they were just driving out demons. But it's the same thing. I think it's a kind of mental control, actually. It subjects you to so much sort of intense and immediate emotional turmoil that you almost respond to it scatologically. So in the room were barf bags, and I filled all of them up. And it was just this relentless. Everything you say, that's not you, that's a demon. Be gone, Satan. And you're like, but it's me. I go, okay, they may be right. Maybe it's just the devil in my mouth. And all of that. And man, this is turned to a really intense hour.

Marlon James25:57

No, in we we can say, you know, sometimes that person isn't possessed, they're just dealing with schizophrenic issues. Or the person isn't demons, the person is just a lesbian, uh, and so on. But back then I wanted to believe it really badly, so yeah.

Presenter26:16

And what happened after that?

Marlon James26:18

One or two or three months of quote unquote purity and within the third month all the attractions and all the lusts and all those things all came roaring back. But funny enough, I had a lot of clarity after that one and I said, Man, maybe that exorcism did work.

Marlon James26:35

Because I've tried getting rid of the sin, well, I wasn't really committing any, but wanted to, and that didn't work, and I've tried to get rid of the temptation, and that didn't work, and I tried to get rid of the whole cycles of forgiveness and blah, blah, blah, and that didn't work. And then one day it hit me, what if I got rid of the church? And that worked smashingly.

Presenter26:58

And what's your relationship with Faith today? Do you have any?

Marlon James27:01

Sometimes, I think I'm too much of a worse to become an atheist.

Marlon James27:06

But I don't think I have faith anymore.

Presenter27:08

Let's go to the music. It's your sixth disc. Why have you chosen it?

Marlon James27:10

Why have you chosen it?

Marlon James27:12

I roam the time here comes Nirvana.

Marlon James27:15

And there's a line of notes in the Incesticide album where he talks about all these people, homophobe, sexist, blah, blah, blah. If you're that person, he said a whole bunch of words I can't say on the air. And don't come to our concerts and don't buy our records. It was the first time I felt like somebody got my back. So Nirvana is super special to me.

Speaker 427:50

Cut up all guns, bring your friends, fun to lose, and to pretend she's overborn, self-sure, the dirt.

Presenter28:11

Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. Marlon James, and you moved to America in 2007 because you got a job teaching creative writing. Did moving to America change your writing?

Marlon James28:22

Uh

Presenter28:22

Uh

Marlon James28:22

Yeah.

Presenter28:22

How?

Marlon James28:23

It did. I think I'm a looser and freer writer. I don't think I could have written Brief History of Seven Killings in Jamaica. It's not just because I'm writing about killers who may still be alive or people who were connected to killers who may still be alive, most of whom I've met post-brief history. I think I would have had a failure of nerve. I don't know if I'd have written The Queer Parts, and I don't think I would have felt safe to write what is maybe a dangerous book.

Marlon James28:54

That the style for me became loose. I think I was very much over-obsessed with what a novel should read like and what a novel should sound like and with that book and and

Speaker 229:00

Two

Marlon James29:05

which is the first novel I wrote totally in the States. I think that freedom shows itself in the ways in which I'd allow it to slip into stream of consciousness or lots of run-on sentences or multiple characters and shifting time frames sort of abruptly. I think all of that is because because I moved and lived somewhere else.

Presenter29:26

In the early days in the States, I read that you did a lot of kind of high-level code switching, sometimes involving actual costume changes.

Marlon James29:31

Evolving out.

Marlon James29:33

Oh yeah. Talk me through that.

Presenter29:34

Talk me through that.

Marlon James29:35

God I'm queer. I've been living extensively in the US since 99. Meaning I'll come to the States and be there for like five months or six months out of the year. So I used to have this ritual because I was living in the Bronx and the Bronx was a very Jamaican community and I don't know about the Jamaican communities here as much as I do in America, but they're even more conservative in the diaspora. So I'm dealing with people who are nostalgic for Jamaica, very, very conservative, very homophobic, very, very suspicious of difference. So when I was in the Bronx, I'd dress as normal and as hip-hopy as I can. There's a limit to it for, I mean, look at me, I'm a nerd. I can't be hip-hop. But as normal and straightlaced as I can. A sensible shirt and baggy pants and sensible sneakers. And I would take the five train from way up in the Bronx. It's an hour's trip all the way down to Union Square. I'd go into the Barnes and Noble disabled bathroom because it was wider. And I'd go in, take off all my normal straight clothes and put on all my fabulously gay queer clothes. It's usually skin-tight jeans with obscenely low rise. Come back boots. I'd put on like my stereolab t-shirt. And I'm there strutting all over downtown New York like some peacock. Nobody from Jamaica goes lower than 125th Street. But it was like Cinderella because I had to get back before Barnes ⁇ Noble closed. 10 o'clock and I'm like, oh crap, I have 15 minutes or I'll be stuck in these clothes and have to go back to the Bronx. So I would dash back to Barnes ⁇ Noble, switch back into my normal people clothes and then jump on the train and head back up to the Bronx. And I would do that nearly every day.

Presenter31:21

How long was it until you stopped?

Marlon James31:24

I stopped and I moved to Minnesota. I think that maybe one of the reasons why the idea of a job so far away was great to me is that I could start over in exactly the version of myself that I wanted. And I decided there, I had my own personal don't ask, don't tell. I'm not going to talk about my life, but if you asked me, I would tell you. I was going to have two different versions of myself in Minneapolis. So that's where.

Presenter31:47

Let's go with the music. This is your seventh disc. Tell me about choosing this one.

Marlon James31:51

Prince, Wendell Squire was back in 1984, I was 14. Propyrine was the first album I ever bought. The first time I heard Windows Cry, first time I heard Prince, I don't know how to describe it in a way that's really articulate. I'll just say it electrified me. Prince immediately became and remains my favorite artist of all time. It's funny, I had no idea I was so well known as a Prince fan until Prince died on almost every major station. And I'm talking NBC, CBS, called, could you give us a word about Prince? I'm like, how do you know? And also, don't bother me, I'm too busy crying. I was crying the whole day. To be completely honest, I cried more about Prince's death than my dad's death.

Marlon James32:50

Dream if you can

Speaker 432:52

And courtyard.

Speaker 432:54

Ocean of violets in blue

Speaker 432:58

Animals like curious poses

Speaker 433:02

We're the hero.

Speaker 433:03

The heat between me and you

Presenter33:10

Prince and When Dubs Cry. So Marlon James, have you ever made a pilgrimage to Paisley Park?

Marlon James33:16

You know, I knew you were going to rot bring up my criminal past.

Marlon James33:19

Um

Presenter33:20

Well, we do our research. What can I say?

Marlon James33:23

So it was my 38th birthday and we were all kind of drunk and my a friend of mine Holly says I know what we should do we should drive to Pesa Park and break in and tag the door and run back out and of course me being it's my birthday and me being not sober think this is the greatest idea ever. This is a pretty long drive. So I had a very long time to realize this is a bad idea.

Marlon James33:52

Except it's the most awesome idea ever, so whatever. And we drive and we finally make it to Paisley Park. It's night, nobody's there. This is a huge gate. We're gonna climb over the gate. We're gonna run to touch the first wall in Paisley Park and come back up. As I literally instantly touch the gate, all the floodlights go off. An alarm goes off. Suddenly, there are armed guards everywhere. There might be cops, it might be anything. I was like, we're freaking out. I didn't say this. My friend started screaming, we're English teachers, we're English teachers. We're English teachers, we're English teachers. Funny enough, the guys are such good sports, I guess, because they believe we were English teachers. And we spent pretty much the rest of the night with them telling us all the hilarious stories of who shows up at Prince's Gate.

Presenter34:38

There's a certain amount of consternation about the violence in your books, Marlon James. What's your assessment of that conversation of, you know, who decides how much is too much?

Marlon James34:40

Small

Marlon James34:47

I don't think my books are all that as loaded with violence as people say. I think there's a difference between preponderance and resonance. Of course my violence is gonna resonate because violence comes with suffering. I mean the readers are choosing not to read it, but I do think a lot of that kind of um criticism of violence is hypocritical.

Marlon James35:06

One of the reactions people had to my second novel, which is about slavery, which doesn't flinch from it either. Again, it's too valid. I couldn't possibly read that. I don't know if I can handle reading such cruelty. My response to that was, you know what? Reading about a slave getting whipped is probably hard. It's a little easier than getting whipped.

Marlon James35:27

Reading about abuse is probably hard. It's probably a little nicer than being abused. You don't have to endure these things, but you should know what they are.

Marlon James35:36

I actually think we've become weaker readers. And I've heard people say that. I say, I don't wanna deal with that. I wanna I really should just escape that. I was like, all right, fine, but that was not what literature is for. I mean, if that were the case, we wouldn't have a single Shakespeare play.

Presenter35:52

I'm going to cast you away to the desert island now.

Marlon James35:54

Mm.

Presenter35:54

Are you looking forward to being alone?

Marlon James35:56

For a time being, and then I'll turn into Ben Gunn and go crazy, I think.

Presenter36:04

How practical are you? Can you build a sh?

Marlon James36:05

I'm pretty practical. I'm pretty handy. To the point where it really annoys you when people are not. I was like, but you have this, this and this. It's not you don't have to be MacGyver. Like, just survive. Figure it out.

Presenter36:06

Bum.

Presenter36:18

I read that you're a pretty good cook.

Marlon James36:20

Yeah, I'm always thrown off when people ask me. The second question people ask is, what can you cook? It's like, what do you mean?

Marlon James36:28

Either you can cook or you can't cook.

Marlon James36:30

Give me something and I'll prepare it for you. So I just need to know the thing on the island is edible and it will be roasted on Monday, it will be sauteed on Tuesday, it will be boiled on Wednesday, but eat it raw on Thursday. It's like, nah, I'll be I'm good.

Presenter36:44

Getting hungry. Let's have some music. This is your eighth and final discs.

Marlon James36:49

Raiderhead in Limbo. Raiderhead is probably the last band I obsess over. I am exactly that type of annoying Radiohead fan that people hear about. Right now to hating the old stuff. Well, hating the first album. It's one of those songs. You have quite a few of them. It just seems to us show up. It just is. It doesn't begin, it doesn't end. You kind of slide into it. When you hear it, you sound like it was been going on for a while and you're catching up to it. You know, as a roving, busy adult, it's a song that slows me down.

Marlon James37:21

And it's a sign that made me stop and pay attention, which is funny'cause it's also a sign that technically goes nowhere.

Speaker 437:32

On your side

Speaker 437:36

Nowhere to hide Trapped towards that of the spiral

Presenter37:57

Radiohead and in limbo. Marlon James, I'm about to cast you away to your desert island. I will send you there with the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to read. You can also choose another book to take with you. What will yours be?

Marlon James38:10

Man, probably Tom Jones.

Marlon James38:12

Because I remember, God, you're taking me back to high school, and the GCE syllabus actually has tons of books you could read. And every book my teachers picked was the wrong book. And I was like, you know what? I'm done with this crap. I'm going to go to the GCE office, get a copy of the syllabus, and see what's on there. And I'm going to do that. And I went through and I saw Tom Jones. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was the first book in the list where I remember seeing in a bookstore. Went and bought Tom Jones. And man, I had the most rollicking time. Good lord, that book was so hilarious and so body and so rude and so much fun. It's also really long.

Marlon James38:54

And I'm going to be there for a really long time.

Presenter38:58

You can also have a luxury item, something that'll soften the blow of being cast away. What would you like?

Marlon James39:03

I want a pressure cooker.

Presenter39:05

Okay.

Marlon James39:06

Because chances are some of those things are inedible.

Marlon James39:10

But two hours in a pot and steaming that at least you know coconut husk is gonna be really good after two hours of steaming

Presenter39:18

Pressure cooker it is, then. Finally, which of these eight disks would you rush to save from the waves if they were going to be washed away?

Marlon James39:25

I have a feeling I'd follow them in the waves and drown myself. What would I save? What would I rush out and grab? I probably would rush out and grab the Prince.

Presenter39:35

Marlon James, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you so much for having me.

Presenter39:52

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Marlon. We've cast away many writers and Booker Prize winners to our island, including Margaret Atwood, Pat Barker and Arundhati Roy. In nineteen eighty eight, Sue Lawley spoke to Salman Rushdie.

Presenter40:07

So, Salman, Cambridge wasn't as bad as you feared.

Speaker 440:10

No, I mean it was a good time to be at university. I mean so I was at university from sixty five to sixty eight, which was I suppose the years of of student power.

Speaker 440:18

all the kind of turbulence of the time. And and it was also a an awakening for me in all sorts of ways. I mean, first of all, it was an awakening to the fact that there were other sorts of people in this country than the kinds that I'd encountered at public school, and that it was possible to to enjoy.

Speaker 440:32

an English experience, so to speak. And I did. I had a very good time there.

Presenter40:36

I was at

Speaker 440:38

I was a very tiny bulb in footlights, yes. There were lots of people who were much bigger. Did you flash on a?

Presenter40:44

Did you flash on and off?

Speaker 440:46

No, I mean actually I did much more kind of straight acting than than footlights there. I mean I think I was only once on a footlights stage.

Presenter40:52

That you wanted to be a hack.

Speaker 440:53

I did it was the other thing that I that I thought that I might have done. And actually it was also a kind of cover in case I couldn't be a writer, really. And I I was really quite terrified of discovering that I couldn't be a writer.

Presenter41:05

That you you read history, didn't you?

Speaker 441:07

That is

Presenter41:07

You and and you left there with a good degree?

Speaker 441:10

I didn't know. I left there with a very average degree, a sort of extremely undistinguished second.

Presenter41:13

And you went into advertising?

Speaker 441:15

Well, no, first I went into acting in London and, you know, in the fringe theatre, I sort of spent a while doing that and then when I was starving to death, I went into advertising. But in fact, I remember a show which kind of connects with the next bit of music where we had to be in a Vietnam protest play called Viet Rock, which we sang various songs, including this one. But I remember it particularly because there was a part of it where it was very fashionable in those days to insult the audience. I mean, audiences didn't feel they'd had their money's worth unless they'd been insulted, abused a little bit. So there was a bit of this where we were supposed to improvise, abusing the audience about their passivity about the Vietnam War and so forth. And on this particular day, the entire segment of the audience that I was supposed to abuse consisted of a coach party of paraplegics.

Speaker 441:57

And I was absolutely terrified. I thought, I can't do this. The director told me I had to go out and do it. It was the show.

Speaker 442:03

And so of course you had to use what there was there, so you had to tell people that just because they were cripples didn't excuse them from having a political conscience and so forth. And I came out sweating blood and they came backstage afterwards and said they'd never had such a good time in the theatre because they was pleased to have been treated as as the rest of just like the rest of the audience.

Presenter42:16

Two.

Presenter42:17

Yeah. I can't imagine you someone in in advertising. Did you get on pretty well?

Speaker 442:23

The thing is I found it quite easy. I mean I wasn't outstanding at it, but I did I could do it to a kind of level of competence without without really s engaging my brain.

Presenter42:34

Copyright

Speaker 442:35

Copywriting, yes. So so I could do it, you know, a couple of days a week and and make a living.

Presenter42:40

Come on, give us a jingle. You must have written a few.

Speaker 442:42

Well I yeah, I did write a few I mean I suppose I mean I don't that I can say this on the BBC, but I did I did there were there were one or two chocolate bars and actually cream cakes was probably the most famous slogan that I ever was responsible for. Not even nice.

Speaker 442:56

Yeah.

Presenter42:56

Yeah.

Speaker 442:56

Uh

Presenter42:56

Uh Uh

Speaker 442:56

Uh

Presenter42:56

That you're

Speaker 442:57

Oh yeah.

Presenter42:57

Yeah. Perfect.

Presenter43:00

Salman Rushdie talking to Sue Lawley in 1988. Don't forget you can listen to many more editions from the Desert Island Discs back catalogue via BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be Jacqueline DeRochas, the CEO of Tech UK. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 443:27

Beyond Today is the daily podcast from Radio 4. It asks one big question about one big story in the news and beyond.

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Just how big is Netflix?

Speaker 443:36

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Speaker 443:40

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Presenter43:41

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Marlon James44:10

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