Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Novelist and poet who began publishing poems as a teenager and had early success with her first novel, leaving her bank job to write full-time.
On the island
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:20What was your first ambition as a child?
All my family had been connected with the stage in some capacity or another, and I think they felt, you know, don't put your daughter on the stage, and we know too much about it. I think they were probably right.
Presenter asks
2:00There's a theory that first novels are always autobiographical. Was yours?
No, mine wasn't. I was very lucky. I think it's such a bad thing. If you write an autobiographical first novel, what have you left in life? And mine, of course, was about the background and the kind of people I knew well, but it wasn't about me. I didn't write anything about my own direct experience for about twenty five years afterwards.
Presenter asks
2:21Which of your novels have been the most successful – which have the public liked best?
Well, I think uh the humbler creation… [My present or my latest one], an error of judgment, and the unspeakable Skipton, which is my favourite.
Presenter asks
What is it principally about Proust's work that fascinates you so much?
Well, I think it's the greatest novel of the twentieth century. And also, for me, it does create an absolute world of its own. It's quite a different world. I feel I've got two I can live in. One's my own and one is his. Also, I think he taught me the way to look at people… much more than any other novelist [has] ever written.
Presenter asks
4:44Do you plan a novel in great detail before you start work?
Not great detail. I do to a certain extent. I know exactly where I'm going, and I plan it roughly into parts. But I don't make it very close, because it would constrict me too much.
Presenter asks
5:30Do you have any great ambition in writing – one subject you want to tackle one day but have never been able to research or felt ready for?
No, I don't think one subject. I don't think I've ever felt that. But I do well, it's a very ordinary ambition, and all writers have it, and that is to write the kind of novel that when you've finished you think, That's what I want to do, that's right. Because ordinarily, of course, one gets to the end of a novel and you think, Well, it's not so bad, but you never get that feeling of it being right.
“If you write an autobiographical first novel, what have you left in life?”
“I think it is advantageous to write the same kind of novel every time, because people rather like it, but I shall be bored stiff, and the way I stimulate myself and get myself to go on is trying to do something different in approach or background every time.”
“I think the only conscious intention I have is all the time to try and write about people more deeply than before, and try and find a few things about them that haven't been said, or perhaps that sounds conceited, haven't been said in quite that way.”
“I feel I've got two I can live in. One's my own and one is [Proust's]. Also, I think he taught me the way to look at people.”
“I try to do ten to twelve in the morning and two to four in the afternoon. It's rather a [counsellor] perfection, but I try.”