Tuesday Oct 21 2014
To Bath to hear
Michel Faber talk about his new, and supposedly last, novel The
Book Of Strange New Things. Bath is blessed with two superb
independent bookstores – Topping & Co., who also host the Bath
Autumn Book Festival, and the splendidly named Mr.B's Emporium Of
Reading Delights who staged this event (check out their excellent
web-site) that was held at the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific
Institute. In the wake of the recent film adaptation of Under The
Skin (a film I'm afraid I found impenetrable) and two radio
adaptations ahead of publication date, Faber's book has been hotly
anticipated and very well promoted (at least via Twitter anyway) by
Canongate. Having managed to miss out somehow on The Crimson Petal
And The White and his earlier work, my initial introduction to
Faber's writing was with the wonderful short story collection The
Fahrenheit Twins. The title story was made available as a
magazine give-away CD which had Faber reading it over a suitably icy
ambient soundtrack written and performed by Brian Eno, and as I had
managed to persuade Eno to release his then current album Another
Day On Earth on the record label I ran at the time I was keen to
make this unique collaboration commercially available as well. Lunch
with Canongate boss Jamie Byng and Eno's manager Jane Geerts
generated much enthusiasm but alas, for reasons I can't fully
remember but probably have more to do with my failure to convince my
sceptical bosses of its commercial value than anything else, the idea
never materialised and the CD remains, I suspect, something of a
collectors item.
However my
interest in Faber and his work was kindled and although it's been a
long time since then, the arrival of a new book is genuinely
exciting. The circumstances under which The Book Of Strange New
Things was written has already been quite well documented.
Tragically, Faber's second wife Eva, who worked closely with him on
his writing and seems to have been an invaluable source of
inspiration, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died last July
after the book was completed. In this, one of several select
appearances he's making to promote the book, Faber, a man known to be
private and almost reclusive, talked openly about his wife's illness,
the effect it had on the way the book was written (at her insistence
he wrote six lines a day while he was caring for her) and indeed the
content of the book. Unlike The Crimson Petal, which he said
was meticulously planned from beginning to end before he even started
writing it, Strange New Things was an adventure for him in
that he had no clear idea of where and how it would end when he
started out. Clearly I haven't read it yet (my signed first edition
rests invitingly on my desk as I write this) but, like all of Faber's
books it apparently avoids any attempt to be labelled genre fiction.
From what I can gather it's essentially about faith and relationships
but, like Under The Skin, it has a science fiction element
(there are aliens) that hopefully won't deter people who are averse
to that possibly intimidating genre. Like all of Faber's books that I
have so far read it promises to deliver, amidst a fantastical and
other-worldly setting, more perceptive wisdom on the human condition.
Prompted by a chap from Mr.B's who looked disarmingly like the actor
Hugh Laurie and was a really excellent interviewer, Faber's confident
and well-measured conversation ranged beyond the subject of the new
book and at one point he declared, surprisingly, that he hardly reads
at all these days. His life, it seems, is consumed by music. He
spends a lot of time with his record collection and plays music all
the time. “There is no way I'm going to read the Booker Proze
shortlist for instance. Why would I read when I could be listening to
Hungarian prog-rock?” This is obviously not a new obsession either
as he said that when he was a struggling novice writer in Australia,
before the days of computers and without a typewriter, he rejected
the idea of hiring a typist at $1.50 a page because he could buy a
second-hand LP for that! In the audience Q&A that followed I
asked him if music inspired him in his writing and whether he
listened to music when he wrote. He said that music didn't inspire
his work and that he listened to (non-vocal) music all the time when
he worked but music that definitely did not complement the mood or
setting of what he was writing. Miles Davis and Krautrock seemed to
be current favourites. He also said that even though his
fiction-writing days were over (“I've written all I have to say; I
don't want to repeat myself”) he was contemplating a book on music
(“which only 180 people will probably want to read”). But
underlying everything he talked about was the sense of loss that he
obviously feels so acutely with the death of his wife, and it was to
this theme that he turned again to complete the evening when he read
five or six startling poems (which may or may not be published
eventually) – some angy, some almost unbearably poignant, all of
them raw and scalpel sharp. It was an extraordinary performance from
such a reticent character. We were witnessing a sort of catharsis
that was both unnerving and profoundly moving. If The Book Of
Strange New Things carries anywhere near such an emotional punch
then it will be a truly memorable read.
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