This Writing Life

This Writing Life

By James KiddArtsBooksFiction
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This Writing Life episodes

  • Episode 08 - Brian Turner Part 2
    In the second part of my lengthy conversation with the poet Brian Turner we begin by discussing language - in particular pejorative terms like 'Haji'. Turner moves from this, through coining 'otherise', to recall his own experiences in Iraq. 
    ----more----
    Our major themes include: 
    • what it was like to follow the 'Invasion Troops'
  • the effect of Abu Ghraib on the Iraqi people
  • Turner's own relationship with the Iraqi people
  • life under the threat of roadside bombs
  • Donald Rumsfeld and the narrative of 'body counts'
  • raids and prisons
  • the guilt of putting innocent people in prison
  • hypermasculinity and writing about women 
  • the military and Turner's family history 
  • Turner's homemade war movies
  • the allure of warfare - adrenalin, meaning and moment 
  • war, beauty and destruction in Mosul
  • death and the end of the world
    • Runtime: 24.39.
    25 min
  • Episode 07 - Brian Turner Part 1
    Brian Turner has become world famous for his war poetry, which was largely inspired by a year-long tour
    of Iraq with the 3rd Stryker
    Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. The ostensible reason for our meeting, however, was first sustained work of prose, a memoir entitled My Life as a Foreign Country, which ----more---- covered his early life, his family's long record of military service, his own tours of Iraq and his struggles to readjust to life back in America. This lyrical, unflinching book, which noticeably does away with page numbers, is his own Portrait of the Soldier-Poet as a Young Man. 
    We met in Liverpool and talked in an office of the English Department, who were hosting a reading by Turner, Ilya Kaminsky and Carolyn Forché. In the first part of a lengthy conversation, we touched on office decor (Turner teaches creative writing at Sierra Nevada College), before pondering the vexed relationship between war and poetry. Turner recalled an early patrol outside Baghdad, where he had to decide whether to shoot a small band of men or not. He also pondered memory, violence and the language of war. 
    His themes included:  
    • war memoir as genre
  • sex, drugs, and boredom in the military
  • love and intimacy in war
  • camaraderie
  • beauty in war
  • the fear and excitement of being a soldier
  • the intensity of working in a war zone
  • how post traumatic stress wrecks relationships
  • violence
  • 'How many people did you kill, Sgt Turner?'
  • 'Did someone try to kill you, Sgt Turner?'
  • Turner as occupier
  • complicity and the War on Terror
  • memory and ghosts in 
  • Turner recalls a patrol outside Baghdad.
  • how serving in Iraq changed his use of language as a poet
  • Turner reads and discusses Here, Bullet
    • Brian Turner's website is: http://www.brianturner.org/bio/
    29 min
  • Episode 06 - Brian Turner reads Here, Bullet
    Brian Turner, the next guest on This Writing Life, reads the title poem from his first collection, Here Bullet. As a soldier in the US army, Turner served in Bosnia and Iraq, before turning to writing. He is the author of three books: in addition to Here, Bullet, he has published one other volume of verse, Phantom Noise, and the memoir My Life as a Foreign Country.
    Brian's website is: http://www.brianturner.org/poetry/

    1 min
  • Episode 05 - Tomas Gonzalez: Part 2
    In part two of my conversation with Tomas Gonzalez in an echoey London hotel, we continued to discuss his dark, autobiographical debut novel In the Beginning was the Sea. ----more----
    We began with the influence of Carson McCullers, William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marques, then moved onto:
    • the beauty and horror of nature
  • man's environmental transgressions
  • Gonzalez on how we are turning the planet into a garbage dump
  • the sea as a symbol in Colombia
  • humankind's hubris
  • the place of religion and mysticism in his work
  • his anger with his brother
  • how writing can help understand death and pain
  • the importance of the quiet life for Gonzalez
  • 'Human beings are too successful for their own good'
  • writing about Colombia from abroad
  • Gonzalez's pessimism for the future
  • Gonzalez on Marquez and magical realism in Colombian fiction 
  • 'It's all so fucking difficult and so fucking beautiful'
  • horror and beauty in Gonzalez work
  • on J' wife Elena as character and reality
  • the future: past novels and future short stories
    • 26 min
  • Episode 04 - Tomas Gonzalez: Part 1
    The Colombian novelist Tomas Gonzalez has been writing for three decades, but has only been read this year by an English-speaking audience after his debut, In the Beginning Was the Sea, was published by the wonderful Pushkin Press. 
    ----more----Terse but lyrical, the novel was inspired by the murder of his brother Juan, who had swapped fast-living in Bogota for a dream of rural self-sufficiency on the Colombian coast. Juan, or J in the novel, was killed by a man he hired to manage the farm he shared with his girlfriend, Elena. The novel was Gonzalez's attempt to understand what happened and ponder its meaning against a larger universe at once beautiful, terrifying and indifferent to the human drama. 
    We met in the slightly downbeat bar of Gonzalez's Kings Cross hotel. It was a peculiar venue to  discuss matters at once melancholy and inspirational. We were interrupted, variously, by a loud fan, a woman filling a metal dog bowl full of food, the ensuing dog skittering on its claws towards its lunch, several workmen and a chatty receptionist. Enjoy the atmosphere.
    In part one we covered: 
    • how to discuss debut novels that are 30 years old
  • the true story behind the novel
  • dreams of escape and escaping the rat race
  • the murder of Gonzalez's brother Juan
  • Gonzalez's encounter with his brother's murderer
  • revenge, violence and art
  • why he wrote the novel
  • the challenge of turning real-life tragedy into art
  • the lure of escape and escapism
  • ideas of success
  • how Gonzalez wrote the novel
  • Gonzalez the barman and making writing pay
  • drinking and literature
  • moving to Miami
    • My review of In the Beginning was the Sea in the Independent is: here.
    28 min
  • Episode 03 - Karen Joy Fowler: Part Two

    In the second half of my conversation with Karen Joy Fowler, we shift seamlessly (sort of) from Star Wars to ponder: 


    ----more----
    • self, other, difference and childhood,
    • whether an interesting childhood a good thing,
    • parentting as experiment,
    • bad dads,
    • responses to the novel, including a letter from a woman whose family participated in the actual experiments,
    • communication in the animal world,
    • vivisection,
    • the Brown Dog Riots in Battersea,
    • non-violence and American activism,
    • Fowler's ideas about writing,
    • inspiration and uncontrollable characters,
    • reviews, bleakness and comedy,
    • literature empathy and September 11th, 
    • risk, happiness, success and how to be a hit novelist (not),
    • the challenge of following We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,
    • and, how Obamacare can help American novelists.
    We are All Completely Beside Ourselves was my novel of 2014, and was also nominated by Katy Guest, literary editor at the Sunday Independent. 


    31 min
  • Episode 01 - Karen Joy Fowler: Part One

    Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is one of 2014's most memorable and lauded novels. Having received rave reviews across the world, it won the Pen/Faulkner in the United States and then became one of the first works by an American to be shortlisted for the Man Booker. 

    ----more----
    Our narrator is Rosemary Cooke, an introverted college student drifting through life.
    Slowly, she reveals that her isolation springs from her unconventional upbringing. Her
    father is an animal behaviourist, her mother is traumatised, her brother has
    gone Awol and her sister, Fern, has vanished entirely. The implication that Fern’s disappearance lies at the heart of her dysfunction is explained in a beautifully judged twist, not so much in the tail as the head. 

    I talked to Karen on the day We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was published in the United Kingdom. She was in suitably celebratory mood, sipping prosecco as we discussed (in part one): 

    • the origins of the story, 
    • how her father and her daughter helped shape the novel, 
    • how formative experiences playing with rats in her father's lab informed the book,
    • that title, 
    • the real scientific experiment that inspired the story,
    • twists in the tale,
    • how to structure a narrative,
    • humour,
    • Kafka, Robertson Davies and literary other allusions,
    • Bob Dylan's lyrics,
    • and how Chewbacca is discriminated against in Star Wars
    There was also a false start and the distinct sound of bubbly being drunk. 
    Part two to follow. 
    Karen Joy Fowler's website is: here.

    27 min

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