Читать книгу With Child - Andy Martin - Страница 10

Three months later. New York.

CHILD: About a month after I finished Make Me I started writing ‘Small Wars’, the short story for the summer. I wrote the first line, ‘In the spring of 1989 Caroline Crawford was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel,’ and I turned around … and you weren’t there. Weird. I wanted to discuss the approach to setting the story in the past … about how to let the reader know this isn’t the present day. I felt it best to just announce, ‘In the spring of 1989,’ and have done with it. I’ll have to get back in the habit of talking to myself. Instead of you.

MARTIN: It’s like the end of a romance. There’s one immigration guy convinced I was having an affair. Wanted to know why I kept coming back to New York. I said I wasn’t working, it was just pleasure. How was it for you?

CHILD: The earth didn’t move. Except when the subway went by under the building. I’m used to having a housekeeper knocking around the apartment. It’s similar. And you had a knack of getting out just before I started to feel physically oppressed. I mean, I understood why you wanted to do it, but sometimes I thought, why me?

MARTIN: It could have been … almost anyone. In theory. Maybe not Donna Tartt – too slow! But you were willing. I liked your economy of style – very degree zero. And you said, ‘I’m starting Monday.’ So naturally I hopped on a plane. I’m still trying to work out why you let me do it, though. I used to think it was something to do with an ageing boxer wanting a spectator for his last big fight. Or maybe a magician who finally decided to twitch aside the curtain and say, ‘OK, come back here and see how it’s done.’

CHILD: Do you ever think there’s something crazy about writing twenty books about the same guy?

MARTIN: Well, no crazier than nineteen, I suppose.

CHILD: That’s why I did it. I thought it would make a change. I’ve been writing about Reacher for twenty years. I never had anyone watch me do it before. And it was a world first. A mad experiment. Literary criticism, but in real time. You were a wild card. What was the worst that could happen?

MARTIN: I was sitting about two yards behind you, reclining on a psychiatrist’s couch, while you tapped away. Trying to keep quiet. I could actually make out a few of the words. ‘Nothingness’ I remember for some obscure reason. And ‘waterbed’. And then I kept asking questions. I couldn’t help myself. How? Why? What the … ? Oh surely not! A lot of people thought I would destroy the book. I was like the ‘person from Porlock’ who stopped ‘Kubla Khan’ in its tracks (according to Coleridge, anyway). ‘You’re killing Reacher, man!’ as some guy said to me (after half a bottle of bourbon, but still).

CHILD: Here is the fundamental reality about the writing business. It’s lonely. You spend all your time writing and then wondering whether what you just wrote is any good. You gave me instant feedback. If I write a nicely balanced four-word sentence with good rhythm and cadence, most critics will skip right over it. You not only notice it, you go and write a couple of chapters about it. I liked the chance to discuss stuff that most people never think about. It’s weird and picayune, but obviously of burning interest to me. Previously only my daughter Ruth ever got it. Once we spent a whole drive to Philadelphia talking about a gerund we saw on a billboard.

MARTIN: And the way you care about commas – almost Flaubertian! I tried to be a kind of white-coated detached observer. But every observer impinges on the thing he is observing. Which would be you in this case. And I noticed that everything around you gets into your texts. You are an opportunistic writer. For example, one day the maid was bumping around in the kitchen and in the next line you used the word ‘bucket’. Another time there was some construction work going on nearby and the next verb you used was ‘nail’. We go to a bookstore and suddenly there is Reacher, more unexpectedly, in a bookstore. I couldn’t help wondering, for example, if I influenced the ‘home invasion’ scene? Sneaking past your security downstairs, pen and notebook in hand.

CHILD: I don’t know, to be honest. It was a logical development, for a thriller. It gave me a set-up for a set piece. But it could have been subconscious. I could have gone other ways. Or heard other things. Because you’re right, that’s my method. Like the thing with the bucket. In one ear, straight to the page. But not the name Wittgenstein [see page 398, Make Me]. That was a private joke.

MARTIN: The funny thing is you are clearly a frustrated academic. For starters, you have officially seen Waiting for Godot thirty-nine times. And you are good at the professorial analysis. Be it of Shakespeare’s ‘stony limit’ (Romeo and Juliet) or your own onomatopoeia. All I had to do was quote you. It was like watching Lionel Messi running rings around the opposition and providing simultaneous commentary.

CHILD: I believe it was Kant who said something like, Newton knew what he was doing and could take you back through the steps logically, whereas Homer had no idea and couldn’t possibly explain it either. I sort of thought: maybe I can explain it, I’ve been doing it long enough. Lots of readers ask me how I do this or that. I thought this was an opportunity to tell them. Or at least to figure it out for myself. Which was the main thing, to be honest. Normally I operate in a fog of instinct. I wondered if being required to explain as I went along might actually be more illuminating for me than for you.

MARTIN: That was the thing that drew me in: you never knew in advance what you were going to be writing about. You really were making it up as you went along. I can certify that. I remember what you said when we started off down this road: ‘I have no plot and no title.’

CHILD: The beginning of a new book feels like stepping off a cliff into the abyss. A long free-fall. One of these days I’m going to end up flat on my face. Or not, as the case may be.

MARTIN: Sublime confidence. And no rules.

CHILD: Elmore Leonard had rules. Made to be broken. ‘Never use an adverb.’ Never is an adverb! If you want to start with, ‘It was a dark and stormy night,’ go for it. I mean, suppose it really was a dark and stormy night? What are we supposed to do? Lie?

MARTIN: Do you think you learned anything from watching me watch you for a year?

CHILD: Well, I learned that line about Kant and Newton and Homer, that was one of yours, so thanks to Cambridge for that. It was like having a coach in baseball or tennis – you’re forced to reflect on what you’re doing, and maybe therefore you do it better. And certainly I think Make Me came out well. After this I reckon every writer is going to want a meta-book to go with their book – a boxed set. What about you: did you learn anything of value over the last year?

MARTIN: I remember one of the first things you said to me. ‘This isn’t the first draft – it’s the only draft!’ Actually, you do finesse things a lot; ‘churning’, as you call it. But you trust your own voice. Maybe that’s what I learned above all: don’t try to sound like someone else. But, looking ahead, I know you’re starting the next one on 1 September. The annual ritual. Any ideas?

CHILD: Pure déjà-vu for you. No title, no plot, nothing. Starting from zero.

MARTIN: How about Remake Me?

CHILD: That reminds me of my life in television. The endless sequels. Make Me Again, Make Me One More Time … What about you? You going to watch Jonathan Franzen next?

MARTIN: I’ve done Reacher Said Nothing. I see a series. Reacher Said Something. Then maybe Reacher Said a Load of Stuff, Reacher Said Way Too Much …

CHILD: You’re not watching me again. So what are they going to be about?

MARTIN: No idea. Your influence. I thought I might steal your schedule. Start September 1st. Finish March or April. I had to learn something from the master. I’m like a sorcerer’s apprentice. Begin at the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop. And drink a hell of a lot of black coffee in between.