Last week I reviewed Stephen Clayton's debut novel The Art of Being Dead
SP: You have had a career as a musician, enjoyed success as a painter, and now you are a novelist. Have you made your mind up yet?
SC: The thing is, I’ve always been a writer, but writing is such hard work, and I’m such a lazy bugger, that I’ve always been tempted to take the easy option, and at the age of eighteen who wouldn’t want to be up on stage, applauded and having fun? I suppose that means that I’m concentrating more on writing at the moment because the rest of my life has become so dull. The moral being: ‘I can’t write about life and live it at the same time’. Music for danger and excitement; art for peace of mind and writing for emotional and intellectual satisfaction. Plus, strangely enough, I’ve always thought of writing as the most romantic of occupations. So, perhaps, I’m at that stage in my life when I need a little romance. So, writing it is.
SP: Where on earth did the character of Jonathan come from? He is a remarkable creation.
SC: Jonathan worries me. He arrived almost fully formed one Monday morning and stayed with me for over two years. In fact, he’s still here, nibbling away at my self-confidence. I wish I could disown him and confess to having copied him from life or stolen him from some other author but, alas, no. He must be part of me and, as such, represent some of my thoughts and wishes but taken to extraordinary limits. I think I have always, perhaps unwisely, envied those who seem to live life safe from the passions and demands of other people, but, unlike Jonathan, I hope that I understand that such a life would be no life at all. I suppose I’ll just have to learn to live with him.
SP: Did you have a philosophical agenda with the book? That sounds quite grand but what I mean is that the characters all have quite unusual views on life and how to live it, it is a big factor in the novel, and I am curious at to the thinking behind that.
SC: Quite a few reviewers have referred to The Art of Being Dead as an existentialist novel. It’s a comparison that I am happy to accept but, in all honesty, I had no such philosophy in mind while I was working on the novel. Once the character of Jonathan had established itself and the plot formulated, then I believed it necessary to create a world that would place Jonathan in the most extreme and testing of circumstances that I could imagine. This meant portraying all of the other characters as unique and as dysfunctional, but in their own way, as Jonathan himself. I wished to invent a society that appeared to exist by its own rules and by its own standards of behaviour, thereby accentuating Jonathan’s and the reader’s feelings of alienation even more. Sorry if all of this sounds a little pompous and, probably, a great deal of the interplay between the characters was conceived unconsciously, but I did have a definite idea of how I wanted their world to appear. If there is a philosophical agenda there than it is one driven only by the character of Jonathan and not one that I have tried to impose on the novel as a whole.
SP: I am almost afraid to ask but are any of the characters based on real people?
SC: Oh dear, what strange company I have kept. Yes, a lot of the characters in the novel are drawn, at least in part, from real people. Kieran, especially, is an amalgam of a number of people who used to help out with the band. There is something about a rock band that seems to attract a certain group of wayward characters; individuals who never quite fit in nor have any desire to live in the real world. With some there is always an underlying feeling of sadness, while with others there is always a vague threat of anarchy and, perhaps, violence. Or perhaps we were just unlucky with our fans. Personally, I blame it on the sort of music we played. Now if we’d been a folk band or a string quartet...
SP: The book is set in the 1960s but there weren't many (actually I can't recall any) historical pointers in the book. It felt quite modern. Was setting the book in that decade an important factor to you?
SC: It was important that I set the book in the 1960s, but only in so far as it gave me a reference point; an imaginary picture that I knew well, of a certain time and place in which the action was going to occur, and one that I could keep constantly before me. In the book, however, I deliberately kept the references to the 1960s down to a minimum, not believing them particularly necessary to the understanding of the plot or the characters. I wished, also, for the reader to believe that such incidents could take place at any time and in any place.
SP: Your band, Tractor, signed to John Peel's record label. What was the great man like to work with?
SC: They always say be careful of meeting your heroes in case you are disappointed, but that certainly wasn’t the case with John Peel. He worked with us on two albums, concerning himself only with the finished sound and not with how that sound was achieved, and toured with us, and he was always a pleasure to be with. The John that you heard on radio was the same John in real life: kind, considerate and somewhat reserved. But what came over the most was not just his vast knowledge of bands and performers, but his genuine love of music. His support for musicians just starting out on their careers or for musicians who he believed had been overlooked by the establishment was generous and unstinting, even going so far as to support them financially and allowing some of them to stay at his house. Tyrannosaurus Rex, Leonard Cohen, Jethro Tull, Family and Led Zepplin were just some of the bands who benefited from his support. Unlike most DJs, he wished only for publicity for the artists and their music and not for himself. He is sadly missed and, I believe, irreplaceable.
SP: I usually ask guests to recommend a favourite book, care to offer a selection?
SC: This is really difficult as there are so many, so I have kept to the five that I have returned to most often. Sorry if the list reads like ‘those books you should mention if you want to appear really knowledgeable about literature’, but there are times when you have to be honest, even if it makes you sound like a bit of a tosser. So, here goes:
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
The Diary of Sam Pepys
The Road to Oxiana - Robert Byron
And ------- wait for it --------- that thing in twenty thousand volumes written by Proust!
See, I warned you.
SP: And what about a CD we should check out?
SC: Check out ‘Songs for Drella’ by Lou Reed and John Cale. Raunchy, painful and brilliant songs based on the life of Andy Warhol. As somebody once said, ‘the music is much better than it sounds.’
SP: And finally, what's next? Another novel? Composing an opera? Running for politcal office?
SC: I’m working on a new novel and, God help us, another Tractor CD should be released early next year. Well, as my dear wife says, ‘anything that keeps you out of the pub has got to be a good thing.’
The Art of Being Dead
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