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00:00:04.030Hi, this is Alexander Halak and welcome to the Music is Talking podcast.
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00:00:12.426For over three decades now I've been an internationally published music photographer and in that time I've met and worked with some amazing creative people.
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00:00:22.710To see some of my music photography, check out instagramcom slash the music is talking, or visit my website, which is wwwthemusicistalkingcom.
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00:00:39.323So join me as I speak with a wide variety of creatives, including musicians, filmmakers, authors, artists and many others, to talk about their personal creative journeys and their unique ways of making innovative and original work to help connect the wider creative community through shared experience.
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00:00:42.606Welcome back to the Music is Talking podcast.
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00:00:46.829Here on episode 2, we have a special early Halloween treat for you all.
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00:00:48.682Heading from Manchester.
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00:00:51.029Our guest is a master of the dark in the macabre.
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00:01:01.402This episode will bring us into the world of dark fiction with the incomparable Ramsey Campbell, a world fantasy grandmaster, award-winning author with a body of work which spans five decades.
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00:01:05.695In that time he has written over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories.
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00:01:07.444He is a true master of horror.
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00:01:13.962So get comfortable and follow us into the mind and world of Ramsey Campbell here on the Music is Talking.
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00:01:16.007Good afternoon, ramsey.
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00:01:17.742How are you, hey Alexander?
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00:01:18.424How are you doing?
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00:01:19.480Very well.
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00:01:30.102Thank you so much for taking your time out to have a conversation with us on this episode of the Music is Talking with yourself my pleasure, and so let's begin.
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00:01:44.846You're a novelist, an editor, a film critic of over 50 years and you started out very early in your journey.
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00:01:51.332Can you walk us through the early days in the journey of Ramsey Campbell?
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00:01:54.346Oh, where do we start?
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00:01:55.409Is probably the question.
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00:02:01.210I mean, really, by the time I was 11, I was writing complete short stories.
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00:02:16.234I mean they were very bad, and I will share with you a single sentence representing them, which was the door banged open and the aforementioned skeleton rushed in.
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00:02:19.608I leave you to imagine the rest of it.
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00:02:22.683So that was where I began.
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00:02:40.770I sort of stick together bits of favourite stories, favourite authors I read, with no particular regard for coherence, but, to be fair, they did have an actual narrative, they did have a beginning, middle and an end, and I was very well versed in the field.
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00:02:45.847I mean, I've been reading MR James and indeed Edith Horton since I was six.
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00:02:52.585I mean my precociousness rivaled that of Wilbur Wensley by the time I was 11.
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00:03:04.330I got on to Herman Melville and so forth, specifically a story, bartleby which I thought and still do think was a kind of a horror story, and I encountered it first in a book called Best Horror Stories.
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00:03:21.834But despite the fact that I was so well read, there is this thing about writing it exposes your maturity and however well read you are, you still write like an 11 year old, which I duly did.
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00:03:37.705So I then, not very long after that, I then began to try, in a very sort of instinctive and haphazard fashion, to model myself on favourite writers, or at least try to well, I put it that way.
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00:03:38.768It wasn't even that conscious.
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00:03:44.372What I was trying to do was convince myself I was as good as they were, which, believe me, I was not.
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00:04:02.008So Arthur MacKinn was the first to get the treatment and I wrote about 50 pages of what was planned to be a trilogy, in the MacKinn-esque way, of which I only remember the title of what would have been the final volume, which is the Broken Moon, which I would still say is the title.
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00:04:04.485Maybe I could find a use for it sometime.
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00:04:21.473Arthur MacKinn came John Dixon Carr, the detective story writer, who well specialised in apparently impossible crimes, very influenced by actually influenced by both DK Chesterton and, at times, mr James.
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00:04:33.180He had a real sense of the uncanny and macabre and occasionally he would embed a ghost story in the middle of an otherwise naturalistic or non-supernatural, to any rate detective story.
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00:04:38.620So I had two tries at writing a detective novel in his manner.
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00:04:41.307The first time I got around 60 pages done.
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00:04:45.959Second time and this is kind of interesting I think I started from scratch.
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00:05:01.685Rather than trying to incorporate as much as possible with the first draft, I kind of used it as being an example of how not to do it and started all over again, using pretty well the same characters and, I suppose, the same plot, but to a certain extent improved.
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00:05:03.569I'm now 14 years old.
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00:05:20.889But what happens then is my muse is hijacked because and you and I'm sure everybody else who's listening will find this difficult to believe but in 1960 there had never been a single paperback collection of HP Lovecraft ever published in Britain.
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00:05:21.932You couldn't find them.
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00:05:25.550You found the odd short story in anthologies, but that was your lot.
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00:05:41.281Came a collection called Cry Horror, which actually was originally called the Lurking Fear, came out from Avon in the late 40s, edited, I believe, by Don Walheim, who was later defwned to found Dural Books Cry Horror.
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00:05:52.430I found it at a bookshop with wonderful decaying monstrosity painted by Richard Powers on the cover, which was worth my half a crown all by itself.
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00:06:04.725Got the book home, scribed off school the following day, read it through from cover to cover, was utterly immersed in Lovecraft, who I'd only encountered when I had read the Colour Out of Space when I was eight.
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00:06:07.906But that was my baptism of fire, believe me.
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00:06:11.492Looked for Lovecraft ever since, but very little to find.
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00:06:16.410Now I had him and basically I thought I mean remember, I'm 14.
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00:06:28.293I thought not many was either the greatest horror writer I'd ever read, to whom the entire rest of the field led, if you like, aspired, if you want but also the greatest writer I'd ever read.
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00:06:40.199Well, that's going a bit, you know, but nevertheless, you know I found enormous things to admire in the work and I was still plugging about trying to do the John Dixon Carr novel murdered by Mood Light, my pastiche.
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00:06:45.192But you can see in the later chapters that Lovecraft begins to creep in.
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00:06:55.610You know, I'd begun to want to write like Lovecraft and shortly after I abandoned this novel, about 140 pages in.
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00:07:05.168It has actually been published that version in a strange collection called the Village Killings, another novellas from PS Publishing.
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00:07:12.788But I've done a lot of annotation to it to use it as a kind of glass through which to look at my psychological state at the time.
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00:07:19.588But I then, as I say, I abandoned it and I started writing Lovecraft pastiches.
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00:07:24.699Now I have to say I was pastiching the easy bits, the purple prose.
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00:07:33.444I mean infinitely more to that with Lovecraft, you know, even some of his admirers as well as many of his detractors think that's all there is to his writing.
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00:07:45.069But actually, to my mind, nobody better exemplifies modulation of language within a narrative to precise effect, you know, and care with structure.
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00:07:46.906Now, I didn't do much of that.
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00:07:52.199As I say, I did just the bits that seemed well readyous to imitate.
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00:07:54.567We wrote half a dozen of these stories.
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00:08:15.684A friend of mine corresponded Pat Kearney, who was then a fanzine editor we were both Lovecraft fans and fans of Weird Tales magazine and so forth having been put in touch by the British Science Fiction Association Library at the time, peter Mayby and Pat got well.
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00:08:19.151I mentioned that I'd written these stories to Pat and he asked whether he could read them.
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00:08:29.608So I duly, such as my amateurism, that I sent him off through the ordinary mail the only copy handwritten of this collection.
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00:08:32.929So if that had got lost he'd probably not be talking to me right now.
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00:08:35.126I'd be still in a corner sobbing.
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00:08:37.307But now he got there safely.
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00:08:42.725He read it and asked whether he could publish all the stories and I duly said yes.
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00:08:52.429And then he and one of his readers, an American fan called Betty Kujawa, suggested I should send them off to August Dirlith for his opinion.
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00:08:58.186You know, you obviously need Lovecraft's publisher and that was all I planned to do.
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00:09:01.668It was not in any way to submit them officially to Dirlith.
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00:09:08.544But I simply sent him a letter saying you know, dirlith, you are the world's foremost authority on Lovecraft.
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00:09:10.024I've written these stories.
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00:09:12.807Could you tell me, are they any good?
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00:09:17.467And he duly wrote back saying well, look, we hold the copyright on the mythos.
00:09:17.467 -->
00:09:18.610Well, this is arguable.
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00:09:20.253But you know, that's what, certainly what he said.
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00:09:26.471And we need to approve them and give permission before you can publish anything of the kind.
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00:09:36.613So I typed them up, sent them off, waited some weeks and got a little back saying, basically, these stories need a lot of work.
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00:09:38.566And by gun, did they ever?
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00:09:39.369That's absolutely true.
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00:09:46.846I may be able to perform you a little of the first draft at a moment to indicate how much they needed work.
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00:09:50.664But he said OK, they need work, they need to be fleshed out.
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00:09:53.687You need to learn to show rather than simply tell.
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00:10:00.994You need dialogue, which, oddly enough, I had previously used in all the stuff I've written pre Lovecraft.
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00:10:06.544But because you know, having read Lovecraft, they thought, oh, you're not supposed to use dialogue in a horror, so I can't do this anymore.
00:10:06.544 -->
00:10:13.552And he also said you know, expand the stories and perhaps write more in the same vein.
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00:10:18.250But if you do all this work, we think it's possible you might have an Arkham House book here.
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00:10:22.710But you're 15 years old by gun, you know.
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00:10:31.727When I'd recovered from first of all the editorial suggestions and then the idea that maybe this could be a book, I got on with it.
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00:10:35.308He published my first story when I was 16.
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00:10:38.187Now this is a story called the Church in High Street.
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00:10:44.932But he, having read my read write, said he wanted to do some more editing on it.
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00:10:50.886And because of the scheduling you know he did, I don't think he had time to let me do the editing to his suggestion.
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00:10:59.671So I had to agree to allow him to do some tinkering, which I duly did, and you know, to be fair, he did a very good job.
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00:11:05.566I would have preferred to do it myself, but, fair enough, the story appeared and so it is.
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00:11:11.024It's by Ramsey Campbell, j Ramsey Campbell, as I then was, and August Earth, if you like.
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00:11:20.589I then followed up on his suggestions, wrote more stories and my first book came out when I was 18, the Inhabitant of the Lake.
00:11:20.589 -->
00:11:25.990But I was threatening you with a bit of the first draft, wasn't I?
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00:11:27.131Yes, you were, yes, you were.
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00:11:31.485Well, are you unwary enough to invite this?
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00:11:35.192I'm ready, you're ready, but is the world ready?
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00:11:35.994That's the question.
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00:11:43.086Well, I've read this so often to audiences to great hilarity that I think I would probably do it verbatim for you right now.
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00:12:00.173It's in what was then the tomb bird which became the church in High Street, and the narrator has gone to visit his friend then in 10, in Kingsport, because I had to move everything to England and create my own new milieu at Dirlis Suggestion.
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00:12:14.952Anyway, the narrator has gone to visit his friend who has disappeared and finds a telegram which the chap was apparently writing out on the table when he was dragged away by amorphous things.
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00:12:23.089And the telegram, I think I might say the telegram goes as follows and do remember folks, this was meant to be a telegram.
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00:12:28.711So it says to Richard Dexter, come at once to Kingsport.
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00:12:40.734You are needed urgently by me here as protection against entities which may kill me or worse if you do not come immediately.
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00:12:43.825But what is this?
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00:12:48.232To trample them speakably down the corridor toward this room?
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00:12:56.106It cannot be the abomination that I bring from the mangrove vault beneath the carter to church in Hesquith Place.
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00:13:01.787Yeah, yeah, richard, that's it Now, whether you get that past the post office?
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00:13:03.813I certainly do, but there you are.
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00:13:04.817That was the telegram.
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00:13:05.437Thank you.
00:13:06.381 -->
00:13:14.307But, as you say, this was your first story at 16, which has 16 to be published by Arkham House.
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00:13:16.523That's amazing, you bet.
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00:13:26.070You bet I mean, even in this day and time, if one was 16 to be published in Arkham, I couldn't even fathom that.
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00:13:27.986And to think that was the end.
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00:13:33.889And it wasn't the days of emails that you could email, send off and get a quick response.
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00:13:38.801Maybe in a day you'd have to wait weeks for the letter to go and then back.
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00:13:39.703That's just so.
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00:13:46.610Yes, so your first novel comes out at 18.
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00:13:52.884Well it says the collection of the novel, but yeah, and how did that feel?
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00:13:57.662Did you feel at that point you've made it as an author.
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00:14:02.373Or did you then think, okay, now the world is open.
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00:14:05.668Well, I suppose both in the right in a way.
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00:14:11.892Really, that first short story was when I thought I'm a real writer.
00:14:11.892 -->
00:14:22.582I mean not least because here I am, at 16, alongside the likes of Bob Block and H Russell Wakefield, john Nettcarp, heroes of my childhood.
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00:14:31.404Well, here's a man, adult reading too, but these people I could have dreamed I could be together with within the same cover.
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00:14:32.928So in a sense that was it.
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00:14:54.903But then, yeah, when the book comes out, much more so, you know, a real book, an actual book, an Arkham House book for him, say, and the thing was this I kind of felt, almost as soon as I'd finished Well, now, even before that, before the book came out, I actually finished writing those stories as I just turned 17.
00:14:54.903 -->
00:14:59.804Now it's just about to become, you know, it was round about, you know, end of end of 19.
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00:15:03.673Yes, end of 60.
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00:15:06.923End of 62.
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00:15:09.591Yes, indeed, I think about just about 17.
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00:15:26.663Now there was a crucial factor that then came into play, because I still remember, on the way on a railway bookstore, on the way back from staying with my relatives, my mother's, my mother's relatives up in Yorkshire, I tried to book a couple of Lolita.
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00:15:29.028Now, no, in those days.
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00:15:30.341Well, I was sort of I.
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00:15:34.985It was kind of supposed a forbidden book was no longer forbidden because it was published in Britain.
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00:15:54.027But you know a naughty book, certainly you know one that was not, you know, not not quite the done thing, which of course didn't in some ways, and so I bought it and I read, I suppose no more than the first few pages, and I thought, you know, there's so much more here than I was expecting.
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00:15:57.134This is, this is like nothing else I've ever read.
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00:16:04.645You know the glory of prose and you know that the, the, the, the extroits of comedy that this brought to bear on the most.
00:16:04.645 -->
00:16:23.187You know what would seem the most unlikely material in an absolute revelation, and I read it from cover to cover and I devoured Nabokov in the way that I devoured Lovecraft, and I then went and bought everything else by Nabokov that I could find, and it actually had luck with habit.
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00:16:33.317Ale Fire came out very shortly after that in paperback, which is equally astounding novel, and this pointed me in the direction I wanted to follow.
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00:16:49.750So the next story that I wrote, which is a story called the Stone on the Island, is still kind of Lovecraftian, I still said in my, you know, seven Valley locale, but it's much, much more playful with narrative.
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00:17:08.202The thing I previously read was obviously written really and, you know, I would say, much more sure of itself in terms of of the range of prose, and so that sent me off in a different direction and I now felt, well, okay, you know, I've done Lovecraft, I want to do me, if you like, now.
00:17:08.202 -->
00:17:31.128It took some time and I think I would probably argue that my first real, the first story of mine that I really recognize as being a whole lot more like me than like the influences that by now I have subsumed, and the story called the Sullars, which I wrote in 65s I'm now 19 years old and, crucially, it's set in Liverpool.
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00:17:52.201They set very much in the Liverpool of the time at which I was writing, and the, the, the actual description of the city centre, in that the actual walk that the central characters take to get to these subterranean vaults that are the subject of the story, is exactly.
00:17:52.201 -->
00:18:40.269It's a historical snapshot by now of what Liverpool actually looked like at the centre in those days, and so I was, I was I'm also very much so in terms of the treatment of character, which is very naturalistic and I, for instance, I'm very fond of the fact that the, the, the moment where the, the central characters, being told a tale of, you know, of the background, the basic of what has happened to the chap she went down the vaults with, and it's cut off not because it's so horrific but because she's just getting bored listening to this of the friend of us, grown on about it, and that that that I still, like you know the fact that that's kind of more like it to happen in a way, so that you're going to you know your brain will be blasted by by what you're listening to.
00:18:40.790 -->
00:18:45.020So I know that that that, to me, was a kind of a turning point for me.
00:18:45.020 -->
00:18:49.369I've, indeed that that comes in between as well.
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00:19:06.143Really, you know, after, after my, after my doing love God was, was reading Fritz Laiber and specifically smoke ghost, which I've always felt was a crucial development in the, in the urban supernatural horror story.
00:19:06.143 -->
00:19:19.642Because, you know, whereas previously the everyday may well be invented by the supernatural, and in fiction story it's the source of the supernatural, the everyday city at night.
00:19:19.642 -->
00:19:31.143And that again was something I wanted to pursue, and so all those things kind of came together to into what I then tried to set off doing, and you do this at 19.
00:19:31.904 -->
00:19:36.863And so you feel, at 19 is when you developed your voice.
00:19:36.863 -->
00:19:41.983It was no longer the amalgamation or the of what you were reading.
00:19:41.983 -->
00:19:44.711It was now yours in where you were living.
00:19:45.720 -->
00:19:47.565Yes, I think so.
00:19:47.565 -->
00:19:55.503I think so, it must be said, because I'm a huge instinctive writer, you know I I mean these days I've planned an advanet lesson.
00:19:55.503 -->
00:20:00.047I used to, but so you know, I wasn't really aware of what I've done there.
00:20:00.047 -->
00:20:12.502And so the next few stories that I wrote well, some of them are okay, but several of the first drafts of later stories over the next few years are actually very clumsy.
00:20:12.502 -->
00:20:28.151They're trying to do what I did there, but because I didn't really see what I was doing, they didn't do it, and so I rewrote a whole bunch of them, ultimately, most of which appeared in my, my second Arkham House book, also in some other Arkham House anthologies.
00:20:28.151 -->
00:20:40.967But I I once again, I just took the first draft of us how to do it, you know went to the material all over again, but from a completely different direction and with, you know, a different approach to prose.
00:20:42.240 -->
00:20:48.788Do you suppose in some way you were trying to copy yourself, but you didn't know what that formula was, which you did?
00:20:50.240 -->
00:20:57.849Oh, it's more trying not to copy yourself in a way, but I try to avoid, you know, to avoid repeating myself.
00:20:57.849 -->
00:21:04.847That's really the things I was trying to do, new things, but but not not yet being really equipped to be able to do them all.
00:21:04.847 -->
00:21:17.486I'm a great believer in in coming back to stuff later on where you, where you've developed the skills sufficiently to do the things you probably couldn't do, like you know, five, ten years, 20 years ago.
00:21:19.579 -->
00:21:22.990And what is it that drew you to the horror genre?
00:21:22.990 -->
00:21:27.368Because you say that you were very also influenced by Nabokov.
00:21:27.368 -->
00:21:37.128So yes, what is it about the horror genre that you drew you as like as the biggest thread for you?
00:21:37.761 -->
00:21:39.125Well, I mean, I've always loved it.
00:21:39.125 -->
00:21:40.170I think it's like a spark.
00:21:40.170 -->
00:21:43.390As far back as I can remember that's going back all the way.
00:21:43.390 -->
00:21:45.928You know um why I remember it's being.
00:21:45.928 -->
00:21:49.373It's being frightened and disturbed by, by fiction.
00:21:49.373 -->
00:21:51.971I don't mean that that everything I read frightened and disturbed me.
00:21:51.971 -->
00:22:03.386Well, I mean is that what stays in my mind are the things that you did, and I mean the very first I got there was may not be a familiar thing over there, but but Rupert Baird, does that mean?
00:22:03.386 -->
00:22:04.381Does he ring any bell?
00:22:04.381 -->
00:22:05.042Yeah, I remember.
00:22:05.344 -->
00:22:07.108Yeah, oh, okay, good enough.
00:22:07.369 -->
00:22:08.623Well, there was one story.
00:22:08.623 -->
00:22:12.286I again you say I'm talking about this horrible precociousness yet again.
00:22:12.286 -->
00:22:22.563I mean I was reading pretty fluently about I was 18 months old, so that time I got to be two, I was on my Christmas presents, or you know, I wasn't quite two actually.
00:22:22.563 -->
00:22:34.424I got a Rupert Baird annual and there was one story in that in which Rupert acquires of what appears to be a sort of magical Christmas tree that eventually skips off back to the forest.
00:22:34.905 -->
00:23:03.260Now, this is presumably supposed to be a slightly ear retail for kids, but the whole elements, you know him hearing a sort of little high voice behind the tree on Christmas Day, obviously in the tree in fact, finally going down in the midst of the night and discovering that the tree has gone, with the trail of earth leading outside the front door, and then kind of scratching sounds and go out and sing this silhouette scuttling away into the, into the forest.
00:23:03.260 -->
00:23:10.109Well, this absolutely terrified me and I think you know in many ways it's the, it's the stuff of MR James.
00:23:10.109 -->
00:23:22.410In many ways you know all those images and the reticence of it, the way it's told, that I mean presumably the idea was not to be too, you know, disturbing for kids, but for me what?
00:23:22.410 -->
00:23:26.780What happened was it showed just enough to suggest far worse as you know, as.
00:23:26.942 -->
00:23:31.682MR James does, has lovecraft does, and that's how it worked on my mind.
00:23:31.682 -->
00:23:33.326So that that.
00:23:33.326 -->
00:23:43.743But the point was that when I recover from several sleepless nights and believe me, I did lie uneasily awake, but for quite a few of them I then wanted to do it again.
00:23:43.743 -->
00:23:45.249I wanted to read this again.
00:23:45.249 -->
00:23:54.223Now, obviously, or you know, in retrospect, it seems obvious to me that the effect is that I must have been apparent and it had quite even got rid of.
00:23:54.223 -->
00:23:55.186So I couldn't find it.
00:23:55.186 -->
00:23:59.534I didn't find it again for decades, you know, and they.
00:24:00.076 -->
00:24:04.538I happened upon a copy in a book fair, going for, I think, 25 pounds, I mean.
00:24:04.538 -->
00:24:13.010So I immediately stumped up and bought it and was amazed to find that when I read it, all those images are still there.
00:24:13.010 -->
00:24:19.028I mean, they're not, they're not, they're not quite as potent to me now, but still what I saw is still there.
00:24:19.028 -->
00:24:34.968I can still see what I saw and what affected me that way, of course, once I got onto well, you know Tales of Terror, I do, I don't tell the term, but I was six years old, I was, I was, I was, I was hooked, basically, and it was again.
00:24:34.988 -->
00:24:55.031I think this is what you know distinguishes the, the horror aficionado for people who don't care for it, and is that when you know you want to repeat the intensity of experience that that that fiction has given you, and either you know by rereading that or seeking out you know similar in in some way.
00:24:55.031 -->
00:24:58.540Now I have to say, perhaps this again sort of answered your question.
00:24:58.540 -->
00:25:03.848You know that I only wish there were things that still did affect me that that profoundly.
00:25:03.848 -->
00:25:06.143I mean few things do.
00:25:06.143 -->
00:25:17.222One of the few things that do it are half a dozen of the films of David Lynch which actually take me almost to the edge of off terror, to the extent that I'm thinking can I cope with this?
00:25:17.222 -->
00:25:19.491And occasionally I've only just done so.
00:25:19.491 -->
00:25:21.806So you know, lynch has it now for me.
00:25:23.579 -->
00:25:33.723Now, what fascinates me with this is nowadays one can go onto something like Amazon and it will recommend you books and say oh, you might like this.
00:25:33.723 -->
00:25:37.082You back then, of course, there was no Amazon.
00:25:37.082 -->
00:25:42.221How did you find these things at such a young age?
00:25:42.221 -->
00:25:47.782Was it from the cover art that drew you, or yeah, what, what, what.
00:25:47.782 -->
00:25:48.926How did you find them?
00:25:49.921 -->
00:26:01.542Well, it was mainly just just the public library to begin with, because I mean, you see another and decided obviously that was mature enough to use her tickets at the age of six, when I was six.
00:26:01.542 -->
00:26:21.328So I was getting adult books from the public library and, interestingly, I was almost never stopped from doing so, not by the mother and not by the library, and the only time that they said no, no, no, you mustn't take that, it was girlgolfs, dead souls, I remember, which it was only the title that had made me think of.
00:26:21.328 -->
00:26:37.240Maybe this, you know, has has something for me, but otherwise it was just a lot of trailing the shells and, and you know which I've always enjoyed, I've always liked that, that, that serendipity of stumbling along things that I might never otherwise have found.
00:26:37.240 -->
00:26:47.503So you know things like, say, jb Priestley's solitary collection of of strange fiction, which I think is called the other place of our member correctly.
00:26:47.503 -->
00:26:59.746Or you know, lp Hartley, who was not primarily associated, obviously, with with the supernatural but wrote a several, several dozen very effective stories in in the field.
00:27:00.147 -->
00:27:05.070But you know, usually it was anthologies actually, and wasn't only supernatural.
00:27:05.070 -->
00:27:09.190In fact I have to say it was more usually science fiction.
00:27:09.190 -->
00:27:15.546But you know, the most scientific anthologies in those days had quite a high proportion of the horrific.
00:27:15.546 -->
00:27:23.589So, you know, you would find the old Lovecraft story, something like from beyond, or beyond the wall of sleep, or or or.
00:27:23.589 -->
00:27:34.520But then equally, you know, I mean there were several, there were derroth anthologies, there were Groff Conklin anthologies I remember where, in one of which I actually encountered the color out of space.
00:27:34.520 -->
00:27:41.009But there were things like Margaret Sinclair's the Gardener, which is basically, you know, a horror.
00:27:41.009 -->
00:27:54.771It's often said that alien is the old dark house in space, but I mean the gardeners and our James in space, pretty well, genuinely horrific, little little story by a writer who actually did a bit several stories to weird tales.
00:27:54.771 -->
00:28:04.702And so it was basically that to some extent I, having read the, the, the authors in the anthologies, I would then seek out their books, if there were any in the library.
00:28:04.702 -->
00:28:18.541So that's how it operated, and so one of the things that was kind of crucial, I suppose that you know, I had my grounding in the classics by the time I was, long before I was a teenager, because they were mostly what you could find.
00:28:18.823 -->
00:28:22.511Now I wasn't allowed to buy magazines, books.
00:28:22.511 -->
00:28:27.605Yes, to some extent, but I think I probably had a couple of MR James paid to back collections.
00:28:27.605 -->
00:28:30.863But I was 10 or so 10 years old.
00:28:30.863 -->
00:28:32.247I was kind of released.
00:28:32.247 -->
00:28:36.759I was apparently old enough to do magazines, and that's great luck would have it.
00:28:36.759 -->
00:28:46.001And around that time a lot of British digest editions of American magazines were being remanded to get them for six months a copy.
00:28:46.001 -->
00:29:02.347And so the last few issues of weird tales for instance, I was able to grab and certainly invested in, because I actually seen a cover of one of those in a, in a or just a general store window actually when I was maybe seven or eight and this actually haunted me.
00:29:02.347 -->
00:29:03.912I wanted this thing.
00:29:03.912 -->
00:29:05.837You know I have been of course eight years old.
00:29:05.857 -->
00:29:08.749you can't have a pulp magazine that looks like that 10 years old.
00:29:08.749 -->
00:29:22.367Okay, well, maybe they're digested, so maybe they're not quite superb, even though they're the same magazine that I did begin to collect weird tales and, and you know, and some years after that Arkham House, when I look they still existed.
00:29:22.367 -->
00:29:28.792And you know, you see, before, you know, you know, a collector for many years.
00:29:30.039 -->
00:29:30.582Right, right.
00:29:30.582 -->
00:29:35.723So for you, going down those rabbit holes, you would find the short story.
00:29:35.723 -->
00:29:36.909Look for the novel.
00:29:36.909 -->
00:29:40.162Expand your reading.
00:29:40.162 -->
00:29:41.046Which expanded?
00:29:41.046 -->
00:29:42.042Yeah, that would be it.
00:29:42.042 -->
00:29:43.307Yes, yes.
00:29:43.307 -->
00:29:59.880And so when you're writing the face that must die from you know, from a killer's point of view, and quite terrifying and it's an uncomfortable read, but you don't want to read more.
00:29:59.880 -->
00:30:06.732How do you put yourself into that frame of mind to write this?
00:30:09.619 -->
00:30:12.067Well, there were a few things involved there.
00:30:12.067 -->
00:30:23.584Actually, I suppose it's worth saying that I've written other novels to some extent that are similar, other novels from the viewpoint of a psychopathic character, and certainly short stories as well.
00:30:23.584 -->
00:30:27.099I mean something like, say, secret Story, for instance.
00:30:27.099 -->
00:30:30.547But that's just to put that into a bit of a context.
00:30:30.855 -->
00:30:34.744The Face of Us Die is a special case for a variety of reasons.
00:30:34.744 -->
00:30:41.550First of all, I have to say, sadly, that many of John Horatio's traits are my mother's.
00:30:41.550 -->
00:30:48.886Basically she had many of those attitudes, the homophobia, the kind of casual racism, that kind of a thing.
00:30:48.886 -->
00:30:59.497She was also, I have to say, an undiagnosed, paranoid schizophrenic who she got worse as the years past.
00:30:59.497 -->
00:31:07.000But even back then, I mean really from very, very young I was having to sort of what she perceived from what was real.
00:31:07.000 -->
00:31:09.606Three years old I was having to do that.
00:31:09.606 -->
00:31:17.397I was perfectly well aware that there weren't really coded messages in radio soap operas that were aimed directly at her.
00:31:17.397 -->
00:31:25.224She was convinced there were, and she had this particular thing about people being disguised as other people.
00:31:25.224 -->
00:31:36.865Her neighbors were writing about her under assumed names of the newspaper, this kind of a thing, and sometimes she would be convinced that she recognized somebody who she didn't.
00:31:36.865 -->
00:31:55.240Basically and it was from that really that the face of Us Die came the whole notion of what if somebody with psychological problems were to be convinced that they'd recognized somebody from an identikit picture in the newspaper and attempted to have them arrested.
00:31:55.240 -->
00:32:02.521And because they looked nothing like them, they're not arrested, obviously, because it's not the person at all.
00:32:02.521 -->
00:32:10.236And so John Horridge then, as you remember from the novel then feels you've driven to intervene in a more direct fashion.
00:32:10.236 -->
00:32:12.279And that was where that already came from.
00:32:13.221 -->
00:32:38.960But the other thing, in the interest of full admission here, that was written in the mid 1970s, in my naughty psychedelic past, where it had the experience of acid LSD, and very shortly before I started writing of the face that must die, I'd had a nightmare flashback, and acid flashback precipitated by, as I think, by cannabis.
00:32:38.960 -->
00:32:56.439Actually, all of a sudden I'd gone into a full trip again, without certainly meaning to, the first thing I think of which was when I looked in the mirror and saw that my mouth was disappearing not something you particularly want to see at night, if indeed at all.
00:32:56.439 -->
00:33:07.632And once I got over this by a variety of means well, basically by Jenny, my wife, my companion, the best thing in my life, basically.
00:33:07.632 -->
00:33:11.402She looked after me as best as she could over that horrible night.
00:33:11.402 -->
00:33:20.856And also, listening to Beethoven's Last Quartet was actually remarkably consoling in some ways, or has been a favorite piece of mine.
00:33:20.876 -->
00:33:29.942But the thing was, you know, once this was over, I had this fear that it would happen again and I didn't know what might precipitate it.
00:33:29.942 -->
00:33:43.246And you know, I would occasionally see what appeared to be the beginnings of a flashback and, you know, flinch or cringe within myself, and it was partly writing the face that must die.
00:33:43.246 -->
00:33:46.700That kind of took me through recovery, if you like.
00:33:46.700 -->
00:33:51.057Also, you know some tranquilizers, that's to be perfectly clear on that.
00:33:51.057 -->
00:34:12.233But I was, I don't know, somewhere through chapter 11, I think it was and as I was writing I was right long hand, the first draft I saw the words begin to wriggle about on the page, which is not something you want to see, I can tell you, and I suppose the fact I carried on writing you know maybe the definition of a professional.
00:34:12.233 -->
00:34:19.077So I've somewhere got the book written and then rewritten and that's the tale they have in the face of us dying.
00:34:20.355 -->
00:34:30.541Wow, now let's talk about that, because you say you write the first draft handwritten, which reminds me of another author from Litherpool, clive Vaca.
00:34:30.541 -->
00:34:33.547Oh, yes, hand writes his drafts.
00:34:33.547 -->
00:34:34.596He does.
00:34:34.596 -->
00:34:36.838Why for you?
00:34:36.838 -->
00:34:46.463Is there something more immediate with the handwriting for you, or why handwriting for you as opposed to typing first?
00:34:47.996 -->
00:34:50.742I think I think it's part of the fluency of it.
00:34:50.742 -->
00:34:57.166I mean, it's not a mechanic, it's it's feels not like a mechanical process in the red.
00:34:57.166 -->
00:35:09.668I think typing or either using a typewriter or now obviously computer tends relatively to do to me, although I have to say I write nearly all my nonfiction directly onto the computer.
00:35:09.668 -->
00:35:12.838This may be a way of keeping the two processes separate.
00:35:12.838 -->
00:35:23.713I mean, I don't know, I've read very, very rarely written nonfiction longhand, very, very, even more rarely written fiction on the screen.
00:35:23.713 -->
00:35:26.498We're just a couple of stories that seem to work better that way.
00:35:26.498 -->
00:35:34.509But I suppose it may even be just the most banal possible answer in the sense that I've always done it that way.
00:35:34.509 -->
00:35:40.490You know, I got into the habit of doing it that way and in a sense perhaps I've never left that behind.
00:35:40.490 -->
00:35:42.717But I actually don't want to.
00:35:42.717 -->
00:35:43.963I think partly.
00:35:43.963 -->
00:35:49.762I think partly also, although I'm sure there are methods on the computer you could use to do this.
00:35:49.762 -->
00:35:59.998But I quite like to have the option of of putting in second thoughts immediately but keeping the first thoughts permanent or as permanent as they need to be.
00:35:59.998 -->
00:36:01.402So I was right there.
00:36:01.422 -->
00:36:02.445An exercise book.
00:36:02.585 -->
00:36:08.806I always leave the left hand page blank for any immediate revisions that I want to do.
00:36:08.806 -->
00:36:18.422Or you know, either immediate or you know within the process of writing, and then the the major rewrite comes when I come to the computer.
00:36:18.422 -->
00:36:37.976I mean there's an intermediate process actually I've just been through this with the novel in progress where, having completed the first draft and left that for some months, I then reread that draft and discover just how dreadful and clumsy and turgid too much of it is, and I can see the problems but not how to fix them.
00:36:37.976 -->
00:36:46.786But then when I come to the screen, a completely different mindset picks in and basically everything is up for grabs.
00:36:46.786 -->
00:37:03.601You know, if it can't justify itself to me, it goes and I want to get rid of as much as possible and improve as much as possible, whereas the house, I have to say in the past sadly I would turn trying to keep the salvage as much as the first draft as I possibly could.
00:37:03.601 -->
00:37:05.746I mean these days absolutely the reverse.
00:37:05.746 -->
00:37:10.545I only wish you know I got into that mindset sooner.
00:37:11.715 -->
00:37:13.418Right right Now.
00:37:13.418 -->
00:37:23.030For those that don't know, you are the most decorated horror author for the United Kingdom.
00:37:24.177 -->
00:37:25.420Well it's very kind of people.
00:37:25.460 -->
00:37:31.023but so they say Is that ever pressure for you when working on new works?
00:37:31.023 -->
00:37:32.547Do you ever feel that you know?
00:37:33.838 -->
00:37:46.385No, no, I mean, the only question is to try and do better than I did last time, you know, and not to repeat this all because you do repeat yourself, because you know you have personal themes that you try, at the very least, to address them in a different way.
00:37:46.385 -->
00:37:53.402But no, the thing is, you know, when it's finished and I've done my best by it and sometimes I think, hey, that's not bad, you know.
00:37:53.402 -->
00:37:57.199And then, not very long after, I think, well, you know, I wish it were better.
00:37:57.199 -->
00:38:06.192So, you know, the only option now is do the next thing that fail better, as Beckett used to say, and that's that's how it feels for me.
00:38:06.192 -->
00:38:10.885But no, I'm never really aware of the awards or you know anything like that, but I'm writing.
00:38:10.885 -->
00:38:20.224It's just the pressure of what needs to be written that keeps me going and that kind of engages my mind, engages my imagination, is what I have to do.
00:38:21.135 -->
00:38:25.009Right, right, if now we can go back back again to the some of the beginning.
00:38:25.009 -->
00:38:31.766One thing that struck me as kind of funny is your first job was with Inland Revenue.
00:38:31.766 -->
00:38:37.262Yes, yes, did you ever pull from that experience?
00:38:37.262 -->
00:38:39.166Did any stories come about?
00:38:39.166 -->
00:38:48.335I think of the Banjoy Division that Ian Curtis wrote she lost control when he won a similar position.
00:38:48.335 -->
00:38:49.697Ah, yes.
00:38:49.697 -->
00:38:59.481And did that ever come for you, that certain people, certain clients, you developed ideas from seeing their own lives unfold?
00:39:00.164 -->
00:39:01.927Only in a very general sense, I mean.
00:39:01.927 -->
00:39:06.391I mean in fact that that that that's that's sort of that we were talking about much earlier.
00:39:06.391 -->
00:39:24.307The stone on the island, that that kind of turning point story after I've read Nabokov, that that drew very fully on the office environment I was working in and there are a number of other stores that do the story called down there written oh must have been a decade or more later.
00:39:24.307 -->
00:39:28.661Oh, it's longer than that even.
00:39:28.661 -->
00:39:37.485But I do draw on early experiences, but I wouldn't say I don't usually use real people as characters.
00:39:37.485 -->
00:39:48.179I may, I may draw on bits of of people and piece them together to form a new character, but it's very rare that I would try and represent somebody directly.
00:39:48.179 -->
00:39:50.222So no, not to that extent.
00:39:51.284 -->
00:40:01.340More stories really came out of working in the public libraries, because I started doing that four years after my civil service stint and that I did the libraries for seven years.
00:40:01.340 -->
00:40:04.788A bunch of stories came out of that Now.
00:40:04.788 -->
00:40:20.679I mean I'm still drawing on it now in a way, the novel that's out this year, the lonely lands, actually I went right back and had my, my, my central character, start working in the libraries and again there are.
00:40:20.820 -->
00:40:37.514There are details there that I'm still remembering, so you know, it certainly is a pool of material, as you say, I suppose above all around the turn of the century, because our finances have begun to look precarious.
00:40:37.514 -->
00:40:40.481In fact they weren't as bad as they look, but that's by the way.
00:40:40.481 -->
00:40:53.766But I went to work for a few months in a branch of borders the bookshop chain sadly long gone and that gave me an entire novel Again, not the people I worked with, but just a general experience.
00:40:53.766 -->
00:41:01.498I really wanted to do a short story out of it and I thought no, there's, there's so much here it can be a novel.
00:41:01.498 -->
00:41:03.744And indeed that's what it turned out to be.
00:41:03.744 -->
00:41:05.447So you know, nothing's wasted.
00:41:05.447 -->
00:41:09.525I'm I'm trying to say even the worst experiences, not that that was one of them.
00:41:10.456 -->
00:41:10.735Right.
00:41:10.735 -->
00:41:16.907So when you did the stints at borders, how was this a while back now, or?
00:41:17.128 -->
00:41:18.597this was the year 2000.
00:41:18.597 -->
00:41:22.269Yes, and I mean they were very good, the management they.
00:41:22.269 -->
00:41:31.721They kind of worked my shift so that I could have a, you know, at least a morning to work on my work in progress, writing in progress.
00:41:31.721 -->
00:41:36.605I think they were kind of pleased to have a writer, you know, behind the counter if you like.
00:41:36.605 -->
00:41:40.543There was certainly, you know, working with books, that that that's a favorite thing for me.
00:41:40.543 -->
00:41:44.818So it was not something I was unhappy to do by any means.
00:41:44.818 -->
00:41:52.887But then Jenny went back to full time teaching and you know that kind of upped our income a bit and then things took off again.
00:41:52.887 -->
00:41:57.666So you know we're, we're back where we ought to be right now I'm just thinking.
00:41:57.967 -->
00:42:08.882you know how interesting it must have been for a fan of yours to come in and kind of me, you know, believe there are yes, oh sure, yes, yes, yeah.
00:42:08.943 -->
00:42:10.246No, that was great, that did happen.
00:42:10.246 -->
00:42:11.996A couple of occasions that was.
00:42:12.036 -->
00:42:23.976That was fun to do, yeah, Now, when you are writing, do you, does it come to you all at one time Like, or do you get pictures?
00:42:23.976 -->
00:42:25.639Can you?
00:42:25.639 -->
00:42:30.329Can you walk us through some of how a novel comes about for you?
00:42:30.916 -->
00:42:32.958Well, yes, I mean okay.
00:42:32.958 -->
00:42:38.289First of all, I haven't plotted in advance for a long, long time.
00:42:38.289 -->
00:42:39.737I did for the first few novels.
00:42:39.737 -->
00:42:57.853I didn't feel sufficiently at ease with the form, in not not to need some kind of a pre-planned structure, but but I haven't really for, oh Lord, since the 80s really, I, I, I, I, I, I progressively abandoned working it out in advance.
00:42:58.034 -->
00:43:13.096What I do is gather a great deal of material and when, when it feels as if, basically when, when this feels that I've got so much, it's really kind of urging me to start writing it.
00:43:13.096 -->
00:43:16.344That's what I, that's what I start Now I do have.
00:43:16.344 -->
00:43:19.581Well, obviously you must know where, where to start or you won't start.
00:43:19.581 -->
00:43:21.545So you, you've got to know that at the very least.
00:43:21.545 -->
00:43:35.260But I do have a sense of the, the, the early developments usually, and usually you know some sense of the major developments of, of the narrative and approximately where they may go within the total structure.
00:43:35.539 -->
00:43:46.657But very often the act of writing will change most of that and it'll those things will still be subsumed into it, but in in ways that I would not have predicted.
00:43:46.858 -->
00:43:47.882I mean what I actually want.
00:43:47.882 -->
00:43:57.724I mean here I am at my desk right now talking to you, what I want every day when I come up to the desk to write, is to surprise myself with stuff I didn't know I was going to write until I wrote it.
00:43:57.724 -->
00:44:23.266And it's not so much pictures Usually it's the words themselves that I use to grasp the, the material, it's the prose is supremely important for me, you know, and the and the to be as precise as you possibly can to convey not so much what you're seeing in terms of an actual visual, but in terms of what you know is there, has become vivid in your imagination.
00:44:23.266 -->
00:44:27.081I think you know that that is how it works.
00:44:27.081 -->
00:44:45.349And until I, until I can feel the, the prose, take hold of the material, I don't start writing, which is why I always compose at least the first sentence before I ever sit down to write that, that, that at least give me something to start on, and you know, from there other things lead.
00:44:47.217 -->
00:45:03.563Right, and since you are so well read, you have, you can pull from many sources, as I suppose, of you, of you're not just limited to the horror genre and you have a lot of background in other form.
00:45:04.536 -->
00:45:06.099Sure, oh, yes, very much so.
00:45:06.099 -->
00:45:08.425I mean, I suppose that's one thing I did try to do.
00:45:08.425 -->
00:45:27.387You know, once I learned to write, like myself, what's to bring in things that I'd learned from Nabokov, graham Greed a great favourite Aris Murdoch, you know, was kind of in the background of your life, beckett certainly, but also films to some extent, but not the obvious ones.
00:45:27.387 -->
00:45:33.742I don't think I mean the occasional image from the horror movies has grabbed me sufficiently that I've kind of done a version of it.
00:45:33.742 -->
00:45:49.317But there were two films that were absolutely crucial to me in early development of your life, one of which was Los Alvidados, the Luis Benuel film, which I saw, actually when I was 14, the very first subtitle movie I ever saw.
00:45:49.336 -->
00:45:54.418I wasn't expecting this, you know, sat there for, but then you're saying well, you know what the hell is this?
00:45:54.418 -->
00:45:56.123It's writing down the bottom of the screen.
00:45:56.123 -->
00:45:59.039No, you want to, I want to look at the image.
00:45:59.039 -->
00:46:00.083Do I read the bottom?
00:46:00.083 -->
00:46:37.541I can't do both, you know you can get into it, but some way into Los Alvidados, which is, if you like, a social realistic film, so realistic it kind of spills over into surrealism, you know, I mean just a dog there in my seat thinking, you know, I couldn't have imagined I would ever see these things on a cinema screen and the kind of nerdy of realism and surrealism in that film kind of showed me how that could be done, how the, if you like, the fantastic could be used to illuminate the real.
00:46:38.304 -->
00:46:55.987And the other form which I saw, probably a couple of years later, was last year in Marion Bad, which I, which I, both of which of those films I still love, that you know there are still in my well, certainly top, top, top list of all time films of mine which are many that I love the cinema.
00:46:55.987 -->
00:47:05.393But Marion Bad's way with with time and narrative again, was so radical that I wanted to do that too.
00:47:05.393 -->
00:47:24.284There was a historical concussion which was in my second collection, when I tried to do that kind of time shift in the middle of a sentence, as René does, you know, by just editing two shots together, you know, while you know, just shifting the time completely is what I tried to do in that story and occasionally since.
00:47:24.284 -->
00:47:32.505So those were a few of the sources and yes, I have tried to bring things in, things I love, try to bring them into the field.
00:47:34.054 -->
00:47:35.699So let's talk about that for a moment.
00:47:35.699 -->
00:47:52.400Some of the things that you love, some of the films and music that you I don't want to say inspire, but that you have a kinship to, that you that draws you.
00:47:52.420 -->
00:47:53.103What kind of yes?
00:47:53.103 -->
00:48:01.597I mean there isn't any direct inspiration in the main, although, having said that, you know, this recent novel, falstones, is very much about music.
00:48:01.597 -->
00:48:04.786I mean you, you, you, you read this, alexander.
00:48:05.175 -->
00:48:05.536I have not.
00:48:05.536 -->
00:48:06.380I haven't read that one yet.
00:48:06.440 -->
00:48:08.882No, Okay, well, you're interested.
00:48:08.882 -->
00:48:12.918You'll be interested because this is very much to the point of your question.
00:48:12.918 -->
00:48:20.864I mean, the central character is, or was a child, was a kind of a musical prodigy, to the extent he had perfect pitch.
00:48:20.864 -->
00:48:33.956He's brought up by by adoptive parents who are music teachers and who want to shape them toward their ends, and he rebels again, just goes away but ultimately goes back to visit them, and that's the, the main body of the novel.
00:48:33.956 -->
00:48:44.947But the book does contain a lot of references to, to music that I've and experiences of music that I've, that I've had and that you know I give them to him.
00:48:45.175 -->
00:48:52.719So it, you know it lets me write about music in a way that I've not really done before Now.
00:48:52.719 -->
00:48:56.525I mean, what can I say about my, my own layman's view of it?
00:48:56.525 -->
00:49:05.467I mean, among my well, I've already said, beethoven's final quartet, the Opus 135, I think is just astonishing.
00:49:05.467 -->
00:49:15.885But the late quartets generally, and actually you know, beethoven for me is is possibly, well, maybe more like probably the single greatest composer.
00:49:15.885 -->
00:49:20.083If I had to choose just one, I think it would be Beethoven, I think.
00:49:20.445 -->
00:49:30.420I think what, the, the, the, the performances I I come to value more and more, the ones that give you that sort of shock of as if you've never heard anything like this before.
00:49:30.420 -->
00:49:41.585You know, as is so often the case with Beethoven, almost six minutes of not merely hearing it for the first time yourself, but kind of imagining what, what in heaven's name, must have been like for its first audience.
00:49:41.585 -->
00:49:49.681So you know, being hit by, you know the Opus 127 quartet, or you know the fifth symphony, the heaven's name, or indeed the ninth.
00:49:49.681 -->
00:49:53.692So Beethoven, yep is is one.
00:49:53.692 -->
00:49:58.467But then immediately I say this I think well, what about your home Sebastian Bach?
00:49:58.467 -->
00:50:02.260You know how, in heaven's name, could I do without all his music?
00:50:02.400 -->
00:50:03.364Well, the answer is I can't.
00:50:03.563 -->
00:50:05.077And obviously in this sense it's a silly thing.
00:50:05.077 -->
00:50:11.182You don't have to do without one to have the other, and I think you know in Beethoven it's a great radical.
00:50:11.182 -->
00:50:17.481I think, in the best sense a lot of Bach is is what's eternity?
00:50:17.481 -->
00:50:32.625I think eternity might sound like in the ecstatic sense, you know, and once I begin listing favorite Bach, I'd be here all day, so I won't do that, just just, you know, kind of take it as read that there's enormous amounts of work.
00:50:32.625 -->
00:50:43.715And I suppose the other thing is I have considerable numbers of versions of many of their, you know, of my favorites, of their work, because I want to hear what other people you know have done.
00:50:43.715 -->
00:50:59.039And new interpretations with Bach, of course, new instrumentations, because since he he went in that for that, to such an extent, you know, I think it's legit on the whole to listen to how, you know, people have adapted.
00:50:59.059 -->
00:51:18.347There's a wonderful version of the, the, the, the Goldberg variations, for example, a guitar duo to ten string guitar, which I, which I've fallen in love with recently, the one thing, I the one thing on the whole line, with exceptions, admittedly, orchestrations of chamber music.
00:51:18.347 -->
00:51:20.233I mean, there's a, there is a.
00:51:20.233 -->
00:51:24.588I can't, I can't remember who the perpetrator is, so I could spare their guilt.
00:51:24.588 -->
00:51:32.516But there's a version of a string orchestra of that final Beethoven quartet which sounds to me like Montevanni does Beethoven.
00:51:32.516 -->
00:51:34.581It's a most hideous experience.
00:51:34.581 -->
00:51:41.983So you know, avoid, unless you want to subject yourself and find it if it's really as bad as I as I say it is.
00:51:41.983 -->
00:51:45.597So those, those two, you know, paramount to me.
00:51:45.597 -->
00:51:48.202But you know I can go back to.
00:51:48.202 -->
00:51:57.108Well, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm very fond of the likes of Talis and William Byrd, the Perot or Hildegard that matter.
00:51:57.554 -->
00:52:04.097So you know, my, my favorites are scattered across the, the centuries, and I mean Richard Strauss.
00:52:04.097 -->
00:52:13.923I I find profoundly affecting his, his greater, I mean the Alpine Symphony, the four last songs, you know, these always will get to me.
00:52:13.923 -->
00:52:20.706Stravintia, I mean kind of, is a, is a great 20th century composer for the in terms of, not least of.
00:52:20.706 -->
00:52:25.222You know the amount he, the way he reinvented himself constantly.
00:52:25.222 -->
00:52:29.277I think you know is a is a voyage for the listener in itself.
00:52:29.277 -->
00:52:40.027I'm still kind of striving with Schoenberg, I have to admit, but there are things I like and things I wish I liked more, and those are just a few.
00:52:40.027 -->
00:52:57.425But I mean, you know, contemporaries like James Macmillan, thomas Addess, judith Weir again, you know I I found their music very affecting in in a variety of different ways, and so I mean, there's so much out there it's impossible to encompass but you can only try.
00:52:58.014 -->
00:53:00.480Yes, now let's talk on the literary field.
00:53:00.480 -->
00:53:06.117Any of your contemporaries out there that you know far too many.
00:53:06.157 -->
00:53:06.679Far too many.
00:53:06.679 -->
00:53:08.103I don't mean that in a bad way.
00:53:08.103 -->
00:53:21.884I mean that's in the sense that whenever that's the question, I always dread, simply because I always think, you know, I once I've finished dancing, I've I've gone away, I've gone, oh God, I forgot and I forgot, and I forgot then as well, you know.
00:53:21.884 -->
00:53:24.012And so I look, I've got to I'm.
00:53:24.012 -->
00:53:35.106Suffice it to say I'm not going to do um favorite horror, because there are so many that I think all I'm going to say is I think we are in a new golden age of of horror, prose fiction.
00:53:35.106 -->
00:53:38.967There's an extraordinary amount of the fine stuff out there.
00:53:38.967 -->
00:53:44.083Um, I suppose, if I would say you know where you would find it.
00:53:44.083 -->
00:53:47.835Try well, steve Jones, best Horror, you know.
00:53:47.835 -->
00:53:53.027Namath Books of Best Horror and Ellen Dachloes, best Horror, anthologies of the Year.
00:53:53.027 -->
00:53:57.873Um, that that will, that they'll give you all sorts of of pointers of where to go.
00:53:57.873 -->
00:54:03.115Of course, Ellen also does um, her sort of, you know, honorable mentions this at the end of the book.
00:54:03.115 -->
00:54:07.666So you the the, you know I will agree with great many of her listings.
00:54:07.666 -->
00:54:18.036So you know, uh, I would I basically just send people off to have a look at her books, and, and, and, and, you know, and discover the, the, the, the, the wealth of material out there.
00:54:18.036 -->
00:54:21.807I mean in terms of outside the field, I'll risk that.
00:54:21.807 -->
00:54:24.496Um, oh, I mean, among others.
00:54:24.615 -->
00:54:31.356Or Margaret Atwood, what never lets me down, uh, ishi Guru, um, I'm very, very fond of him.
00:54:31.356 -->
00:54:36.327Particularly love the unconsold, which is, I think, the strangest of his novels.
00:54:36.327 -->
00:54:40.443I also think Never Let Me Go is a a bone of Fide horror novel.
00:54:40.443 -->
00:54:43.121You know, it's a classic instance of the horror novel.
00:54:43.121 -->
00:54:48.000It's a horror story because the narrator doesn't think it's a horror, a horrifying situation.
00:54:48.000 -->
00:54:49.242Uh, not so much.
00:54:49.242 -->
00:54:49.503The.
00:54:49.503 -->
00:54:57.487The unreliable narrators, the unaware narrator, which is a very powerful, uh element in a lot of horror fiction.
00:54:57.987 -->
00:55:01.065Um, david Mitchell are like a great deal, I mean.
00:55:01.065 -->
00:55:06.561Particularly, he's very complicated into woven narratives that only gradually come together.
00:55:06.561 -->
00:55:10.898Um, that though, that, those, those, those astonish me a good deal.
00:55:10.898 -->
00:55:14.867Um, so those are the few names that immediately come to mind.
00:55:14.867 -->
00:55:18.065Oh, I think Joanne Harris I'm very fond of.
00:55:18.065 -->
00:55:24.103Sarah Pindra has been doing some extraordinary things with well, with, with, with, with well.
00:55:24.103 -->
00:55:28.204I suppose the crime story in a way, but there's a lot more to her than that.
00:55:28.204 -->
00:55:29.911Oh, and while I say crime novel.
00:55:29.911 -->
00:55:34.621Uh, one more chap, steve Mosby, m-o-s-b-y.
00:55:34.621 -->
00:55:38.951Um, is is very considerably worth discovering.
00:55:38.951 -->
00:55:45.871Um is occasionally meta fictional stuff, but um, yes, very, very, very remarkable chap.
00:55:45.871 -->
00:55:49.139So yeah, there's, there's just a few, okay.
00:55:50.481 -->
00:55:55.096Now, if you don't mind, if we can go way back um your, um, your mother.
00:55:55.096 -->
00:56:05.103Yes, some of the previous interviews I've read with you, she was a very big influence and uh, for you, yes, yes, I'd say.
00:56:05.103 -->
00:56:06.967Did she get to see?
00:56:06.967 -->
00:56:16.619I guess, uh, I don't want to say you're pinnacle because you're still quite prolific Did she get to see a good level of your work out?
00:56:17.521 -->
00:56:31.965Oh, yes, oh gosh, yes, I mean yeah, into into the early 1980s, certainly, um, so you know, the first almost two decades of my slow um, and then my first book was was dedicated to her, among other people.
00:56:31.965 -->
00:56:56.574Uh, so yes, she saw the first several collections and the first couple of novels and of course I mean I have to tell you, you know she often read them in TypeScript because I let her read them and in fact she did read, uh, the face that must die, um, and kind of ironically, uh, you know she didn't see herself directly in the narrative but she thought Pearl's hodge was misunderstood.
00:56:56.574 -->
00:57:02.766So perhaps in a way she did interact in her fashion with, with that depiction of her.
00:57:05.094 -->
00:57:06.860And I think she was very proud of your work.
00:57:07.601 -->
00:57:11.740Well, yes, I mean, she was very encouraging she was, you know she, she was very early on.
00:57:11.762 -->
00:57:17.684You know she did encourage me to, to, to, to finish what I wrote basically, and then to send it out.
00:57:17.684 -->
00:57:23.425I did in fact send out that, that very first book, with the, you know, the aforementioned skeleton in it.
00:57:23.425 -->
00:57:36.396I sent that to a few publishers, the handwritten copy, let me tell you, I actually said, illustrated in crayon by John R Campbell, as it then was, and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I actually got it back again.
00:57:36.396 -->
00:57:49.402But let me say this Tom boardman Jr, who was then a publisher of science fiction, on the very first British publishers to do contemporary science fiction in hardcover, send it to him.
00:57:49.402 -->
00:58:03.760And he said back and let us say, well, we must be turned off because we published ghost stories, um, but we think that you've made a fine starter and if you continue, we think you you'll have a good chance of making the grade which, again, you know, 11, 12 years old.
00:58:03.760 -->
00:58:06.887That's pretty damn encouraging, has it proved to be?
00:58:07.476 -->
00:58:08.617Most definitely Now.
00:58:08.617 -->
00:58:12.806Would you ever consider putting that out as a book, like just as a?
00:58:13.795 -->
00:58:14.056It's out.
00:58:14.056 -->
00:58:14.536It's out.
00:58:14.536 -->
00:58:17.963It was, I mean Bob Price.
00:58:17.963 -->
00:58:27.336Robert M Price published as an edition of an issue I beg your pardon of his magazine Crypt of Clue Clue or Clue Clue or how do you want to call it.
00:58:27.336 -->
00:58:32.802It's now, I think, rather rare and sought after, but I think probably still shows up on eBay occasionally.
00:58:33.675 -->
00:58:41.960I had no idea, that's okay, and it's there, the world, the world must carry from its existence, and does it include the drawings?
00:58:42.934 -->
00:58:43.376It does.
00:58:43.376 -->
00:58:44.418It does Nothing in color.
00:58:44.418 -->
00:58:46.824I have to say sadly, but you can't have everything.
00:58:48.195 -->
00:58:49.097For the emerging writer.
00:58:49.097 -->
00:58:51.945What can you warn them about?
00:58:53.998 -->
00:59:01.637Well, I suppose really because I have only one says you know, guard against writer's block.
00:59:01.637 -->
00:59:07.699And I think you know the best way is to do it that I found the way that worked for me and it's for me.
00:59:07.699 -->
00:59:13.583And I know it's easier to say than to do and I know not all writers would agree with me anyway on this.
00:59:13.583 -->
00:59:23.000But for me what works is you know, write every day while you're writing a new piece, at least the first grabbed, I mean, even if it's only a paragraph or two.
00:59:23.000 -->
00:59:25.266You know, if you can find the time not necessarily.
00:59:25.266 -->
00:59:31.838If you can find an optimum time when you're most creative and you can set that aside, then that's ideal.
00:59:31.838 -->
00:59:36.197If you can't, the next best thing is you know, find the bits of the day when you can do it.
00:59:36.197 -->
00:59:50.684You know when you've got a break from what you do in every day life and maybe just those couple of paragraphs, always carry a notebook although these days obviously your phone can function as that or you know pretty well for everybody.
00:59:50.684 -->
00:59:59.318I did say that one thing about you know always composing the opening of the session before you sit down to write.
00:59:59.318 -->
01:00:00.661That certainly works for me.
01:00:00.661 -->
01:00:08.076That is one way I've kind of, you know fended off writer's block when occasionally it might threaten, and I think, basically, you know.
01:00:08.096 -->
01:00:10.121But in what, however, this is going to work for you?
01:00:10.121 -->
01:00:12.996Engage your imagination with the material.
01:00:12.996 -->
01:00:16.003You know, don't try to impose stuff on the reader.
01:00:16.003 -->
01:00:23.597It's not a matter of you know doing it to the reader, you know it's fitting it yourself and conveying it to the reader.
01:00:23.597 -->
01:00:27.873I suppose you know Lawrence's definition of sentimentalism.
01:00:27.873 -->
01:00:31.201You know working out on yourself feelings you've not really got.
01:00:31.201 -->
01:00:33.547I mean, you need to in some way.
01:00:33.547 -->
01:00:36.300I think you need to well, to believe in it.
01:00:36.300 -->
01:00:39.005It needs to be authentic to you.
01:00:39.005 -->
01:00:41.880I don't mean literally believe in its possibility.
01:00:41.880 -->
01:01:00.101If it's fantasy, you won't but it must feel real in the sense of it, must feel like as if, with giving these characters and given this situation, this is how it would play out, and I think part of the business of writing is to sort out the inauthentic from the authentic.
01:01:00.101 -->
01:01:05.702I guess there's no easy way to learn that, but you know, you must find it out for yourself.
01:01:06.635 -->
01:01:06.896Yes.
01:01:06.896 -->
01:01:19.784Now, a lot of your work has included themes of sexuality in relationship between dreams, realities, and so I guess what my question here is?
01:01:19.784 -->
01:01:21.086The use of language?
01:01:21.086 -->
01:01:25.179Yes, how important do you feel it is?
01:01:25.179 -->
01:01:33.061Because I think you know, nowadays, with so much out there, it's so easy to write.
01:01:33.061 -->
01:01:41.547Basically, yes, how do you see the use of language and how important is it to the craft of writing?
01:01:41.574 -->
01:01:49.289No, in a word, crucial, essential, I mean, I think no one also in this field.
01:01:49.289 -->
01:01:57.820Actually, I actually think the best work in the field depends on the precise selection of language and the way the prose is used and the way it's modulated.
01:01:57.820 -->
01:02:03.597I mean not, it's no easy route to that.
01:02:03.597 -->
01:02:09.016You've got to develop an instinct for and it will be your particular method of doing it.
01:02:09.016 -->
01:02:11.956Certainly, I mean the way, you know, robert Aitman does it.
01:02:11.956 -->
01:02:13.860It's not the way Stephen King does it.
01:02:13.860 -->
01:02:20.963It's not the way MR James does it, not the way Lovecraft or Macon or Blackwood or me, you know, or all sorts of other people.
01:02:20.963 -->
01:02:33.940But no, I think, without that sense of language, however it may work in your particular way, I think you've got to find it, you've got to develop that.
01:02:33.940 -->
01:02:43.818Without it, I think you're just kind of, you're reporting, you're not conveying, if you see what I mean, until you're not conveying an imaginative experience.
01:02:43.818 -->
01:02:49.369So I think there still is a readership of this kind of thing, luckily.
01:02:49.755 -->
01:02:54.266I know there's something about people saying that attention span has dwindled.
01:02:54.266 -->
01:03:01.675Well, maybe for some, but my impression is well, certainly in terms of you know, people are like my stuff still.
01:03:01.675 -->
01:03:02.739You know new people who do.
01:03:02.739 -->
01:03:03.661Then not for all.
01:03:03.661 -->
01:03:04.224There's still.
01:03:04.224 -->
01:03:08.563You know, the generation out there who want to revel in prose.
01:03:08.563 -->
01:03:12.297You know, as Nabokov would say, you know rose around on your tongue.
01:03:12.297 -->
01:03:15.157I hope that will always be the case and I think it will.
01:03:17.688 -->
01:03:23.125And for you did you ever have a chance to meet some of your heroes?
01:03:23.125 -->
01:03:28.125If that's yes, do you like that word calling them heroes?
01:03:28.125 -->
01:03:30.914Yes, I think heroes is fine.
01:03:31.831 -->
01:03:33.085Oh Lord, a great many.
01:03:33.085 -->
01:03:33.525Now.
01:03:33.525 -->
01:03:51.514This is one of the great advantages of you know, one of the great things that I mean you could all kind of say, if you like, that I'm kind of a link between the weird tales, generation and the more obvious.
01:03:51.514 -->
01:03:52.715I'll say that all again.
01:03:52.715 -->
01:04:06.811No, no, I think you could very well say that I'm kind of a link between you know, on the one hand, the pulp generation, the great pulp writers, some of them, and the modern, the new golden age of you.
01:04:06.811 -->
01:04:09.958Like you know, I've known a lot of both.
01:04:09.958 -->
01:04:19.751So I mean, as luck would have it, back in the days of the World Fantasy Convention in America, I was invited over to Kirby McCauley.
01:04:19.751 -->
01:04:41.733Then my agents had the long gone and much missed, but he had me over as a guest and so I was able to meet people like Robert Block and Frank Belknap Long and Fritz Leiber I still remember hearing Fritz read the Horses of the Dog at midnight in Providence and you know, gayhan Wilson and Manly Wade Wellman.
01:04:41.753 -->
01:04:51.753I went to stay with him and Francis's wife out in Chapel Hill where I then met Karl-Edward Wagner and David Drake, and then, you know, I would hang out with all these people.
01:04:51.753 -->
01:05:04.085I mean one particular instance the next year 76, the World Fantasy Convention was in New York and Jenny and I went over for that and Fritz, as I remember I think, was one of the guests of honor at that one.
01:05:04.085 -->
01:05:09.494He certainly was one of the guests anyway, and we had both read out the first one.
01:05:09.494 -->
01:05:21.228Now I used to go and stay when I was in New York with Jack Sullivan on the Upper West Side and we invited Fritz over for dinner and I was at Jack's.
01:05:21.228 -->
01:05:37.034I always used to do a reading for his friends, so people like Tom Dish and Gayhan Wilson and Ted Klein would come over, and so we invited Fritz, since he was still in town, and so Fritz and I did a reading together and that's got to be one of the high points of my career.
01:05:37.034 -->
01:05:39.713He did Little Old Miss Backbeth, I remember.
01:05:39.713 -->
01:05:46.534And then we saw him off back to, you know, back to the subway, and that was a great night, I can tell you that.
01:05:47.144 -->
01:05:49.452And Robert Aitman you know Robert Aitman, we knew Robert.
01:05:49.452 -->
01:05:53.094He came to stay with me and Jenny when we were in our first house in Liverpool.
01:05:53.094 -->
01:05:58.914I mean, robert was always a bidding figure, but once he got to know him he was a lot of fun.
01:05:58.914 -->
01:06:15.690He was a very amiable conversationist with, we have to say, very decided opinions on and just about everything, including music and cinema and the field and more generally of, you know, literature Gosh who else?
01:06:16.967 -->
01:06:18.853And of course you know Steve King is a hero.
01:06:18.853 -->
01:06:22.338He destroyed and again much missed.
01:06:22.338 -->
01:06:24.125Too many great people gone.
01:06:24.125 -->
01:06:45.693But you know Peter was a good friend and you know used to stay with him in London when he was living in Crouch End Of course, which, parenthetically I may say you know, led Steve King to write the story Crouch End, because he went to visit Peter and loved the name so much he felt there's got to be a story in this somewhere.
01:06:45.693 -->
01:06:58.235But yes, I mean James Herbert, jim Herbert, you know we became great friends toward the end of his life and sadly, you know, again, so many of them gone.
01:06:58.235 -->
01:07:05.951So the memories remain and of course, you know, more importantly, so does their work, so they're never really gone.
01:07:07.485 -->
01:07:10.210Do you ever get that feeling when you go back to read their books?
01:07:10.210 -->
01:07:13.077Now that you can hear it in their voice?
01:07:15.668 -->
01:07:16.889Oh gosh, yes, I think so.
01:07:16.889 -->
01:07:21.077I mean not least because often I would, you know, have heard them read.
01:07:21.077 -->
01:07:28.864But yes, I think always, you know, when you get to know the author, you will get that extra sense of the voice.
01:07:28.864 -->
01:07:33.016You know that it comes up a little bit more alive.
01:07:33.016 -->
01:07:45.960Well, of course it comes alive anyway, purely for the reader, that extra level of I don't know quite what we call it bigger liveliness, something, you know, that comes out of knowing the writer as well.
01:07:46.846 -->
01:07:47.867Well, it's for me.
01:07:47.867 -->
01:07:48.168You know.
01:07:48.168 -->
01:07:54.940I know for myself if I get an audiobook, I prefer it much more if it's in read by the author.
01:07:56.048 -->
01:07:56.831Yes, yes.
01:07:57.304 -->
01:08:02.858Because then you actually feel how it was to be read, as opposed to who will miss.
01:08:02.858 -->
01:08:05.125The cadences and the pauses may not be right.
01:08:06.989 -->
01:08:08.351That's absolutely right.
01:08:08.351 -->
01:08:10.655Yes, in fact, funny enough.
01:08:10.655 -->
01:08:22.024I mean one of our current splendid contemporaries, reggie Oliver, who writes splendid supernatural fiction, very much in the classic English vein in the main.
01:08:22.024 -->
01:08:25.457Now he made the it's the other way around in his case.
01:08:25.457 -->
01:08:27.125You see, he didn't engage with my stuff.
01:08:27.125 -->
01:08:31.161He says this himself until he heard me read.
01:08:31.161 -->
01:08:32.024Then all of a sudden it clicked.
01:08:32.024 -->
01:08:36.394So yeah, that's so well.
01:08:36.394 -->
01:08:37.997I'm kind of delighted to hear that.
01:08:39.565 -->
01:08:42.672Right now we were talking about influences and things.
01:08:42.672 -->
01:08:50.780We were talking about music and some of your favorite music and you said earlier that some of Cronenberg's work do you find, can we?
01:08:50.820 -->
01:08:51.644talk about David Lynch.
01:08:51.644 -->
01:08:52.104David Lynch.
01:08:53.068 -->
01:08:54.552David Lynch okay.
01:08:54.592 -->
01:08:54.913Yes, yes.
01:08:55.345 -->
01:08:58.173Let's go down the film area, if we could for a moment.
01:08:58.173 -->
01:09:07.118Yes, so some of the films that, like David Lynch, that do scare you and what excites you in film.
01:09:08.689 -->
01:09:11.104Oh well, scares me these days very little.
01:09:11.204 -->
01:09:17.778I mean the many horror films I love, I mean Night of the Demon, the Jacques Tenure is my absolute, all-time favorite.
01:09:17.778 -->
01:09:24.757It doesn't make me frightened, it's in a wonderful atmosphere and certainly has a sense of menace, but it has a great deal more than that.
01:09:24.757 -->
01:09:28.030But, frank, no, very few of these days.
01:09:28.030 -->
01:09:43.920I mean, yes, yes, the Lynchers above all, I think, lost highway, which every time I see it again, that first section just has me virtually sort of carrying back in the chair, certainly on an intellectual level as well.
01:09:43.920 -->
01:09:48.125The other one I suppose that does still, is the Blair Witch Project.
01:09:48.125 -->
01:09:53.125I still find that deeply terrifying, precisely because of its reticence.
01:09:53.125 -->
01:09:55.007I mean, what do we see?
01:09:55.007 -->
01:09:59.534One bloody tooth is only getting in terms of, you know, graphic horror.
01:09:59.534 -->
01:10:05.104But the sense of uncanny dread in that film, I think it's pretty well incomparable.
01:10:05.104 -->
01:10:12.881And I still argue that in some ways it's a curse that the cinema has ever come to lovecraft's ambitions for horror.
01:10:12.881 -->
01:10:19.036You know, the documentary element, the allusiveness, the gathering of suggestion and that kind of thing.
01:10:19.036 -->
01:10:22.869But in terms of, you know, one excites me in the cinema.
01:10:22.869 -->
01:10:26.095Oh Lord, I mean so much.
01:10:26.095 -->
01:10:28.939I mean I don't know how long we've got to talk about this.
01:10:28.939 -->
01:10:34.957I mean, ok, maybe I can sort of represent it in a way with my, my, my, the.
01:10:35.625 -->
01:10:45.596I, sight and Sound recently did a poll of, you know, the, the, the 10 grade, the 100 greatest films of all time, and the approach of a variety of people to to list their 10.
01:10:45.596 -->
01:10:52.882So I did one and I think I probably call it all to mind in no particular order.
01:10:52.882 -->
01:11:01.234Hitchcock's where to go certainly was at the top and I mean I think it's his most beautiful film and also is most disturbing by far.
01:11:01.234 -->
01:11:12.631And in terms of kind of the, the, the, that extraordinary, which Kim know about, you know, tries to represent herself as what is wanted and comes to all the camera.
01:11:12.631 -->
01:11:17.235It clearly appealing to the audience and also to Hitchcock himself.
01:11:17.235 -->
01:11:20.780Since he wasn't his original casting was to be Vera Miles.
01:11:20.780 -->
01:11:33.541I mean that that's a complicate on so many levels and emotionally so affecting that I think that it left the film on to an even higher level that it already was occupying.
01:11:33.541 -->
01:11:36.470Let's have a moment of Max Offsdahl's.
01:11:36.470 -->
01:11:42.552I think is the greatest of all romantic tragedies, although there was certainly a hell of a lot of competition.
01:11:42.552 -->
01:12:05.646But again, there's so much going on in that film that every time I see it you know it's a new experience, as there's more, as I hadn't noticed before, and more eloquent in it, although I actually think that Opel's reckless moment is pretty close in terms of to equality and concisioned and richness, staking in the rain.
01:12:06.747 -->
01:12:25.310For me, the greatest musical, a great comedy, great from the bout film, not just about, you know, the, the birth of sound, but so much more than that in terms of what it does visually and I think, probably bringing up baby, I would, I would have this as if I oh no, perhaps I have.
01:12:25.310 -->
01:12:29.715That's a great favorite comedy, you know, which I can watch over and over again.
01:12:29.715 -->
01:12:33.439But the same could be said of sons of the desert, the Laura and Hardy.
01:12:33.439 -->
01:12:36.020So you, you find me with a lot of comedy, certainly.
01:12:36.020 -->
01:12:40.948So, okay, let's switch it in a direction, then last time we don't have to switch.
01:12:40.948 -->
01:12:42.050I've already spoken up.
01:12:42.470 -->
01:12:54.367You know is is, I think, for me, well, there are several great binaural films, but that you know, because that was my first experience, because it was so seminal for me, I think I will leave that one up there.
01:12:54.367 -->
01:12:56.748Miss a Gucci, I think.
01:12:56.748 -->
01:13:03.435Probably Sancho Dio, which, again, you know, is is is so rich and so inexhaustible.
01:13:03.435 -->
01:13:10.020But get to Modigatari, where he does the uncanny as well that, that that might just edge it out for me.
01:13:10.020 -->
01:13:12.466I don't know how many films that get.
01:13:12.466 -->
01:13:24.926Well, it's a citizen came, obviously, is is one that that, that you know, argues its way into the apantheon very easily, but, but I'm equally inclined to rate touch of evil, we well, I think.
01:13:24.926 -->
01:13:25.586What's it doing?
01:13:25.586 -->
01:13:35.895Equally extraordinary things, but with less immediately, a minimal material, but, but, but again, I think that is a astonishing masterpiece.
01:13:35.975 -->
01:13:43.407And again, you know, I see it again and again and, and I will never tire of it, I wonder what's left.
01:13:43.407 -->
01:13:45.168Really, I'm sure there must be something.
01:13:45.168 -->
01:13:53.059Oh, I think, yes, I think, my, my, my, sort of, you know, my, my, my, my, my, my comfort movie, if you like.
01:13:53.059 -->
01:14:12.492Well, actually that could be singing in the rain, but alongside that we'll have my name, the Totoro, the, the, the Miyazaki film, which I think is just a beautiful, touching fantasy Like nothing else you ever seen, and I'm heartened to find that was one of Kudasawa's all time favorite films.
01:14:12.492 -->
01:14:20.119And again, I'm sorry to have left Kudasawa, but there's so many people I could lead out and well, I have left out could put in.
01:14:21.145 -->
01:14:27.831I want to have a Fritz Lang film and although you know, in the times you might say metropolis perhaps, but I'm going to.
01:14:27.952 -->
01:14:42.168I went with hangman also die, which I think is, you know, unjustly neglected, and it's based on a screenplay by Bertolt Brecht, no less, but I think it's far more lang than it is.
01:14:42.168 -->
01:14:51.881It's Brecht and again, that concision of expression, even though the film's over two hours long, you know, it always feels kind of packed with with material.
01:14:51.881 -->
01:15:17.820And you know, although you know more recent films like the Black Book, the, the Heuphan film is, you know, and so do revirons actually, both of which are pretty powerful films about you know, that Nazi occupation and me, hangman also die, it's the one that gets to me most, most, you know, it plays on my nerves in a way that no other film on the theme does and I really think it is extraordinarily powerful.
01:15:17.820 -->
01:15:20.908And you know a justification of Lang's method.
01:15:20.908 -->
01:15:23.192I think it probably does my 10.
01:15:23.192 -->
01:15:25.975If I forgot they're any, well, you know they're there.
01:15:25.975 -->
01:15:26.456They're there.
01:15:26.456 -->
01:15:28.899I'll put them online and people can find them there.
01:15:30.125 -->
01:15:41.676And now, if you could pick any of your stories to be made into a film, which story and who would you like to have it?
01:15:41.676 -->
01:15:45.560Who would you like to have directed, if it was up to you?
01:15:46.524 -->
01:15:48.207Well, you know, of course I have been.
01:15:48.207 -->
01:15:49.628Some have been made.
01:15:49.628 -->
01:15:58.399You know three in Spain of which I'm fond, and the general model, toro, was bought up my short story down there.
01:15:58.399 -->
01:16:06.036So I believe that will be a thing you know in his, in his Netflix series, and I said, well, now, which would I really like to be done?
01:16:06.036 -->
01:16:09.868I think probably the grin of the dark actually.
01:16:11.609 -->
01:16:14.934But the trouble of my saying this is I have been talking to a director.
01:16:14.934 -->
01:16:20.039I don't think it's really fair to to know the director until you know the deal is done.
01:16:20.039 -->
01:16:25.490But I certainly have the impression that he could do a remarkably good job with it.
01:16:25.490 -->
01:16:27.472So I hope this will come to pass.
01:16:27.472 -->
01:16:35.764So, you know, if I, if I, if I leave that out as being my, my top one, then maybe needing ghost director by David Lynch, that would.
01:16:35.764 -->
01:16:45.858That would be something I can't help feeling now whether you know he's got quite enough in his own head, I think, ever to need to do me.
01:16:45.858 -->
01:16:49.422I mean, I know he did, he did Joe, joe Landzel.
01:16:49.422 -->
01:16:55.453That would certainly have been some experience, but so I can only imagine it's not likely to come to pass.
01:16:55.453 -->
01:17:02.125But maybe that grill, the dark deal just might, and I for one wait with great anticipation.
01:17:02.947 -->
01:17:10.085Okay, well, I look forward to seeing what happens in the future and then we can come back at some point we can say that's him.
01:17:11.068 -->
01:17:11.529That's right.
01:17:11.529 -->
01:17:12.070That's right.
01:17:12.070 -->
01:17:12.612That's right.
01:17:12.612 -->
01:17:13.774The man on the mask.
01:17:15.046 -->
01:17:16.707Now with your own work.
01:17:16.707 -->
01:17:21.149How do you keep yourself from getting too lost in the characters?
01:17:23.192 -->
01:17:26.096I don't know if I do, maybe I do get lost in them.
01:17:26.096 -->
01:17:39.096I think it's when they take on that life of their own and I don't need to try and figure out what they would do, because they already know that.
01:17:39.096 -->
01:17:40.882I know it's working right.
01:17:40.882 -->
01:17:43.752So, no, no, getting lost in theirs is a good deal.
01:17:43.792 -->
01:17:48.734so I'm concerned for sure Do you ever find after any of your books.
01:17:48.734 -->
01:17:54.144You have to put it away because it disturbs even yourself.
01:17:55.832 -->
01:17:58.860Well, I mean the faceless diet to some extent, was that?
01:17:58.860 -->
01:18:03.773Yes, I mean in particular Horridge is first killing.
01:18:03.773 -->
01:18:16.047I've always found that difficult to reread, you know it generally disturbs me and excruciates me really, but I do think it's legitimate.
01:18:16.047 -->
01:18:17.612I think you know I was trying to do.
01:18:17.612 -->
01:18:23.418That is how it would be and it wouldn't be that easy to kill somebody, you know, even even with that implement.
01:18:23.418 -->
01:19:07.730So I think you know, whereas my I think you would say you know my thing would tends to be reticence in, on occasion I think you've got to go for the detail and in that particular case I did, I suppose, more recently a novel called Somebody's Voice, where the autobiographical element of that novel, that is to say the autobiography of a character within the novel which forms a lot of the first section of the book, the whole relationship with the abusive stepfather, yes, that I found very difficult to write, but you know, in a sense not difficult in the sense of it was fluid enough.
01:19:08.091 -->
01:19:14.091You know, I just wished I wasn't writing it almost, but it had to be, it had to be done, and there it is.
01:19:14.091 -->
01:19:24.162I think you know it's the truth about that kind of situation and you know, either you tell you, try to be as authentic as you can, or don't do it at all.
01:19:24.162 -->
01:19:26.895And so, yeah that I had to.
01:19:26.895 -->
01:19:45.052I would say I had to put it aside for those reasons, because I had to keep writing it until the thing was completed, but but yes, it did sort of hang around In my mind, for sure, more in terms of thinking well, this is how it would be, or, worse still, this is how it is right now.
01:19:45.052 -->
01:19:49.962You know, everywhere, all over the world, I'm sure, that's the worst of it.
01:19:50.810 -->
01:19:53.979What are the future projects that you're working on that we can look forward to?
01:19:55.552 -->
01:19:56.395Oh, quite a number.
01:19:56.395 -->
01:20:12.298Let me see, there is this new novel where I've just passed the stage of looking at the horrid thing and see how ungainly it is, and soon I shall get on to the, on to the screen and start improving it.
01:20:12.298 -->
01:20:14.568That's called the incubation.
01:20:14.568 -->
01:20:17.396So that will be next year's novel.
01:20:17.436 -->
01:21:29.682But then the luck, and in the meantime there's a new connection coming out from PS Publishing called Fearful Implications, which is well, basically a lot of my recently anthologised and well, yes, or magazine published stuff that will be in a new book and perhaps most surprising to people who don't know about this, there is a monograph, also coming from from PS Publishing, something over 70,000 words long, on the three stooges, which is actually kind of six stooges and counting, because you know that's how many there were, when you actually look over their uniquely strange career, the way the personnel of the trio kept changing and in some cases, you know, with by somebody with his back to the camera in the best fellow Legosi in Plan 9 from outer space mold, and it's very much a personal journey, this book, you know, because I started out thinking, well, they're not very funny, but watching them on the one British television in this would have been, I suppose, in the in the, the 80s I guess and then gradually feeling well, there's something here that's of interest.
01:21:29.750 -->
01:21:42.069And when Sony brought out on DVD a chronological series of all the short films, I I bought those one by one, watch them again and began to feel well, you know, there's something here.
01:21:42.069 -->
01:22:03.094And when PS the girl Pete Crausel at PS Publishing asked me to develop for their series of monographs on film, this was what occurred to me, and once he'd recovered his job he's dropped Joe he agreed to it and so that will be out this September, I do believe, and people can well.
01:22:03.094 -->
01:22:04.015I hope I have.
01:22:04.015 -->
01:22:12.402What it does is makes people look again at the students, as I looked again, and I think that's the purpose of all good writing really to make you look again.
01:22:13.671 -->
01:22:14.033Excellent.
01:22:14.033 -->
01:22:15.655I'm very excited to check this out.
01:22:15.655 -->
01:22:21.076You know, there's all this talk of all this AI writing and creating.
01:22:21.275 -->
01:22:21.818R2.
01:22:22.378 -->
01:22:22.579Yes.
01:22:22.579 -->
01:22:24.913What are your thoughts on this?
01:22:26.770 -->
01:22:29.278It's anathema, I won't go anywhere near it.
01:22:29.278 -->
01:22:36.020I mean predictive text on my, on my phone and sometimes on the computer, is quite enough.
01:22:36.020 -->
01:22:37.988But at least you know.
01:22:37.988 -->
01:22:40.213You know that you're not going to be guided by that.
01:22:40.213 -->
01:22:42.640You know, sometimes it gets the words right.
01:22:42.640 -->
01:22:47.078I mean, that's a nerve thing when it knows what you're going to say before you do.
01:22:47.078 -->
01:22:55.993And increasingly my phone seems to be learning my, my style and, you know, suggesting increasingly complex language.
01:22:55.993 -->
01:23:00.502But so long as it's only a suggestion, that's okay.
01:23:00.681 -->
01:23:09.295And I'm sort of heartened by the fact that when I use it, as I occasionally do, whether it's not convenient to type, you know, to make it, I'll dictate onto it.
01:23:09.295 -->
01:23:21.681And what's sort of unnerving is to watch it, think about what I said and then put that on the screen, then maybe decide no, that's not what he said after all, so this must be what he meant instead.
01:23:21.681 -->
01:23:34.212So that much I can cope with the emotion because it's I've got that sort of inspiring, because I'm sure I'm going to write a story about that pretty soon and I've occasionally, you know, talked about it in the fiction.
01:23:34.212 -->
01:23:38.662But AI, actually stuff that we're right for you keep that away from me.
01:23:38.662 -->
01:23:39.752Now.
01:23:39.811 -->
01:23:47.578I gather you know that, that some people are going to use it and that sometime soon, maybe the wretched thing with even start writing stories of its own.
01:23:47.578 -->
01:23:49.893But I think we've seen enough to see that.
01:23:49.893 -->
01:23:51.315You know it's like.
01:23:51.315 -->
01:23:53.199I don't know exactly what it's like.
01:23:53.199 -->
01:23:55.734It's like a player piano.
01:23:55.734 -->
01:24:01.190You know it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, as beta relates to the player piano.
01:24:01.190 -->
01:24:07.509So real, real prose is related to AI and chat, chat, gpt or whatever the.
01:24:07.509 -->
01:24:12.921The other horrid thing is and no, not for me, and I and the other thing.
01:24:12.921 -->
01:24:26.533I mean I do know that writers are are worried about it, but I genuinely think there will still be a readership out there that will value real prose and real imagination and that will never go away, and they will never go away.
01:24:26.533 -->
01:24:29.680So I think the world isn't quite ending yet.
01:24:30.810 -->
01:24:32.033Now let's just touch on this.
01:24:32.033 -->
01:24:35.180You've mentioned your wife, as you're right.
01:24:35.180 -->
01:24:36.676Indeed it is.
01:24:36.676 -->
01:24:38.594Can you tell us how you met?
01:24:39.791 -->
01:24:40.872Yes, I certainly can.
01:24:40.872 -->
01:24:51.993We met at a convention, the science fiction convention, back in 1968 in the Buxton in Derbyshire, where I was later around, where I was later to set my novel, the Hungry Moon, in fact.
01:24:51.993 -->
01:25:04.176Now we met briefly at a party and we, we, we, you know, we chatted for a bit but then, quite you know, we then went in our separate directions and nothing happened for a year.
01:25:04.176 -->
01:25:14.332And then this was when we used to attend the British science fiction Easter con there's always an Easter but, you know, went from city to city, venue to venue.
01:25:14.332 -->
01:25:23.872So the next day was in Oxford and we met again, having got out with other people over the course of the year, but then, you know, split up with them and we got together again.
01:25:23.872 -->
01:25:26.538This time we didn't, we didn't split up.
01:25:26.760 -->
01:25:36.945And I think I always, I always remember good old Brian Aldis, who was a good friend, and I I, since he lived at Oxford I asked him where's a good place to go to find an Indian meal.
01:25:36.945 -->
01:25:41.806We had a great Indian dinner, jenny and I, and I think that cemented our relationship.
01:25:41.806 -->
01:25:51.259And then we stayed up all night watching movies and it became very apparent to me that we had, you know, fundamentally the same taste in in science fiction, horror film.
01:25:51.259 -->
01:25:55.037So that was another step, and you know we read the same kind of a thing.
01:25:55.037 -->
01:26:02.523And well, you know, we visited each other and a year later Jenny moved to Liverpool.
01:26:02.523 -->
01:26:05.612We lived together and the following year we got married.
01:26:05.612 -->
01:26:19.115And so 1971, we've been married ever since and without Jenny I wouldn't be half the person I am and I again, I just don't suspect I wouldn't be here to talk to you now as the person I am.
01:26:19.115 -->
01:26:24.914So you know, jenny is my, my, as you say, my rock and the jewel of my life.
01:26:25.631 -->
01:26:26.391That's gorgeous.
01:26:26.391 -->
01:26:32.444Do you think we'll see a romantic inspired horror novel?
01:26:34.235 -->
01:26:37.208I think the closest I've ever really got to writing a romantic story was that.
01:26:37.208 -->
01:26:42.600The only story concussion, which in a sense, it's very much a love story, you know it's.
01:26:42.600 -->
01:26:54.811It's it's, if you like, a tragic love story, but I mean love story that comes to the top because of the, the temporal divide, the, the, the, the, the temporal era that it is is at the core of the story.
01:26:54.811 -->
01:27:01.412But yeah, I mean, I still think that that is my romantic story, so I'll, I'll stand by that.
01:27:01.412 -->
01:27:04.162I think, although it was before I met Jenny.
01:27:04.162 -->
01:27:07.212I have to say so she must forgive me for that.
01:27:07.212 -->
01:27:10.712I think she had you had.
01:27:10.733 -->
01:27:14.681you had the great fortune of having August Dörloth as your editor.
01:27:14.681 -->
01:27:30.082Yes, Was there any advice from him or from other editors that really stuck with you that if someone was to ask you for advice now, you find that it kind of resonates with you still?
01:27:33.237 -->
01:27:42.159Oh, above all, what he tells me very early on, which is don't depend on writing to make a living until you know you're able to do that comfortably.
01:27:42.159 -->
01:27:53.024You know, get a, get a daily job which isn't too demanding, and then, you know, use your spare time to write, which is why I went to the civil service seemed like the most obvious thing.
01:27:53.024 -->
01:27:57.756You're like nine to five approximately, on five days a week.
01:27:57.756 -->
01:28:06.631The library is then, you know, later on it became more useful because there were shifts and you could actually have a morning to write often enough.
01:28:06.631 -->
01:28:09.319But that was it really.
01:28:09.380 -->
01:28:23.677You know, don't, don't trap yourself into into making it a living before you're actually capable of doing it, or you'll suddenly, well, the very best is going to happen is you'll be cranking stuff out that you know you really don't want to write at all.
01:28:23.677 -->
01:28:26.350You have to do it because you need to make the money.
01:28:26.350 -->
01:28:33.591So, you know, save it until you you have, you know, sufficient backing in terms of your work.
01:28:33.591 -->
01:28:40.943You know, either in terms of what you've written, also in terms of you know, the day work that you do, that the you can.
01:28:40.943 -->
01:28:45.777You can actually write only what you want to write, what really engages your imagination.
01:28:45.777 -->
01:28:51.859I know this is, you know, easier to save than to do, but I do think it's very important to try and do it that way.
01:28:52.810 -->
01:28:53.492Well, excellent.
01:28:53.492 -->
01:28:55.296Why don't we stop there?
01:28:55.296 -->
01:28:58.762And this has been so wonderful.
01:28:59.872 -->
01:29:00.493Thanks for that.
01:29:00.493 -->
01:29:01.775Well, thank you for having me.
01:29:01.775 -->
01:29:04.481Alexander, it's my, my pleasure, good to do.
01:29:06.775 -->
01:29:07.618Thanks for hanging out with us.
01:29:07.618 -->
01:29:20.751If you like this and would like to hear even more about exciting and informative episodes, then please take a moment to give us a follow on Instagram at the music is talking, and don't forget to subscribe to our channel wherever cool podcasts can be found.
01:29:20.751 -->
01:29:21.771Thanks again.
