Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer who won the Booker Prize in 2015 for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, about the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley.
On the island
Eight records
We're gonna hear Tenor Saw ring the alarm. Reggae started out in a lot of ways… 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.
I remember the first time I heard Nick Drake and I didn't like him… Every time it plays there's this ghost in the room.
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. … All you hear is rain on the windshield. … It just is one of those joyous things, which is funny because it's a sad song.
Neneh Cherry, who remains the goddess of my existence… she just seemed to encapsulate all of that [British Buffalo aesthetic]. And it was just such complete coolness.
Jane's Addiction, Summer Time Rose – it was so different from eighties rock and eighties hard rock… everything about Jane's Addiction sounded and looked different.
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.
When Doves CryFavourite
Prince, When Doves Cry – back in 1984, I was 14. Purple Rain was the first album I ever bought. … Prince immediately became and remains my favorite artist of all time. … I cried more about Prince's death than my dad's death.
Radiohead in Limbo. Radiohead is probably the last band I obsess over. … It's one of those songs … it just is. It doesn't begin, it doesn't end. … As a roving, busy adult, it's a song that slows me down.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:49Tell me a little bit more about this idea of self-belief. Have you always had it? Is it something you've had to develop?
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 … if it wasn't for a bunch of forces, including Kaylee Jones … I would have [forgotten] about being a writer.
Presenter asks
3:22So tell me a little bit more about teaching. You teach creative writing – what do you enjoy about it?
I enjoy teaching undergrads, so I like teaching kids who are just discovering their voice … Writing for me is work, and I love that it's work, but it's work. For them writing is almost play.
Presenter asks
5:54What do you remember of that moment [when you won the Man Booker Prize]?
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 Booker Prize speech ever. Certainly the shortest.
The keepsakes
The book
Henry Fielding
Man, probably Tom Jones. ... I had the most rollicking time. Good lord, that book was so hilarious and so body and so rude and so much fun.
The luxury
Because chances are some of those things are inedible. 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.
Presenter asks
6:52And with a longer view on it, what difference has winning the prize made to life for you?
It made a lot of difference. For one, there's all that book sales. Selling a book sure beats not selling a book. … Because I think writers like me … we sell decent numbers, we earn out our advance, we bring some acclaim to the publisher, but we don't storm the bestseller list. … It does take something like a prize, I think, to make some people curious.
Presenter asks
23:42What was church like? What was the typical service like [from when you were in the evangelical church]?
Church was pretty joyous actually. I quite liked church. … The musicians played reggae. … I really threw myself into it. … But I know I couldn't deal with 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.
Presenter asks
26:16What happened after [the exorcism]?
One or two or three months of quote unquote purity and within the third month all the attractions … all came roaring back. … And then one day it hit me, what if I got rid of the church? And that worked smashingly.
“Silence to me feels like deafness. It feels like absence of sound. It doesn't feel like an alternative to noise.”
“That's one of the things we had, you know, that everybody else excluded us.”
“I cried more about Prince's death than my dad's death.”
“I think there's a difference between preponderance and resonance. Of course my violence is gonna resonate because violence comes with suffering.”
“Reading about a slave getting whipped is probably hard. It's a little easier than getting whipped.”
“I actually think we've become weaker readers. … That was not what literature is for. If that were the case, we wouldn't have a single Shakespeare play.”