Jonathan’s Comments (group member since Oct 02, 2013)

Jonathan’s comments from the Ask Jonathan Coe - Thursday, October 31st! group.

Milan wrote: "Dear Jonathan,
Some nine years ago I translated The House of Sleep into Serbian and even though I have translated many renowned authors since then (P. Carey, A.C. Clark, J.G. Ballard, J.C. Oats, E..."

Hi Milan
Thanks for such a wonderful post. My goodreads webchat is now closed but if you would like to re-post over here, I'll be happy to answer.

http://www.jonathancoewriter.com/mboa...

David wrote: "Hello Jonathan. Previously, I tried to contribute to this conversation, but must have had technical difficulties, so I'll try again. This question is about The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. The ..."

Hello David

Happy to talk about this topic, but let's move the discussion over here.

http://www.jonathancoewriter.com/mboa...

Ines wrote: "Hi Jonathan!
I’m Ines from Russia. First of all thank you for all your books I enjoyed so much, especially the “The House of Sleep”. I was fascinated by this story from the very preface, and I have..."

Good evening Ines. We have a lot of people from different, interesting countries here today! My problem is that there is only one other language – French – in which I can read my books. As for the Dutch, Italian, German and indeed Russian translations, I simply have to trust the translator. And it’s quite rare, in my experience, for a translator to get in touch by email and ask me questions. They tend to prefer working alone, without my help. Sometimes when I travel abroad and present my books in other countries, readers will tell me whether they think the translation is good or not; but that’s really the only feedback I ever get. In the end, as I said, it comes down to trust: trusting your publisher, who in turn has to trust the translator.
Anyway, I’m very glad that you enjoyed The House of Sleep, and I hope you enjoy Expo 58 when it appears in Russia. And now I’m going to log off and close this ‘chat’, although I suppose there’s nothing to stop readers carrying on without me, after I’ve gone. And if any of you have further questions that you want to ask, remember that you can always post on my website, at www.jonathancoewriter.com/mboard/
Goodnight, and thanks!

Steph wrote: "Hello Jonathan. Thank you for your reply to my earlier question. As a successful writer with a major publisher, do you have any thoughts on the current boom in self publishing?"

Hello again Steph. Well, I remember the frustration of what it was like to write and not have any readers. This lasted a long time in my case, because I sent my first book off to a publisher when I was 16, and finally got published when I was 25. So I think it’s great, in a way, that any writer now has a way of getting her/his stuff out there, even if it’s to a tiny audience. But turning a book into a digital file and distributing it replaces only one part of the (traditional) publishing process. What about editing, copy-editing, proof reading? What about marketing and publicity? These are all essential components of publishing and the self-publishing model doesn’t seem to offer them. I’m concerned that people will tell themselves they have ‘published’ a book and then feel a terrible disappointment if it just disappears into an online chaos of thousands of other such products. It’s notable that even the one-in-a-million big self-published successes like EL James jump at the chance of having a mainstream publisher when it’s offered. And how are readers supposed to negotiate the mass of self-published books that are out there, and find the ones that are of real quality? It’s an important new development but it’s in its infancy and there are a lot of unresolved questions – I don’t think the answers will become clear for some years.

Philtrum wrote: "Hello Mr Coe,

I'd heard about The Rotters' Club but never got around to reading it until earlier this year. Once I started I just raced through it. So much of it resonated to deeply it was quite b..."

Hello Philtrum. Thanks for your compliments, and I'm glad that one of my books struck such a strong chord with your own experience. As for the TV version of The Rotters' Club, I liked it a lot. Of course it’s a different beast to the novel, as any adaptation would be. Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais are two of my favourite screenwriters and I was thrilled when they agreed to write the script. In the 70s they wrote wonderful serio-comic dialogue for The Likely Lads and Porridge, and I always say that they influenced my approach to dialogue more than any novelist has. In a lot of sections of the adaptation they said they didn’t need to change the dialogue much because they felt its rhythms were already close to their own.
The main problem was that the BBC insisted on an adaptation in 3 x 50 minute episodes, and that was pretty constraining on everyone. It could have done with one more episode – the last one was all very rushed. Also, of course, for tax reasons it was shot almost entirely on the Isle of Man, and I personally regretted the absence of real Birmingham locations. But I still think it was a fine, reasonably faithful adaptation, and I loved the cast – especially the young schoolkids, some of whom (Rafe Spall, Alice Eve) have gone on to great things since.

April~the little muffin^.^~ wrote: "What inspired you to write?"

Hello April. That’s a short question which, if I were to answer it properly, would require a very long answer. It’s hard for me to remember how I started because, like many writers, I began writing when I was very young – about 7 or 8 years old. I remember there was a cartoon strip in a boys’ comic (The Lion) which was about the adentures of a Victorian detective and his assistant. I liked the illustrations, which were very Gothic – full of secret passages and trapdoors, bats and cobwebs – but not the stories so much, so I started to write my own stories about these characters instead. I suppose I was an adolescent when I stopped just producing imitations of my favourite writers, and started writing more ‘serious’ things – stories which represented an attempt to understand and interpret the world. I think there are many, many people for whom the world is an unsatisfactory (or unhappy, or unjust) place, but writers have a unique way of coping with this: we create alternative worlds, in great imaginative detail, close reflections of the real world sometimes but always a neater, more beautiful version, full of pleasing patterns and a sense of order rather than chaos. I suspect that’s why I write – it’s a way of rearranging the world to my own satisfaction, without which life (for me) would be very difficult.

Loredana wrote: "Hi Jonathan,
I am one of your italian fans (we met briefly at the last Hay festival at your book signing). The first book I read was "the house of sleep" and it is still one of my favorite books ev..."

Hello Loredana. This is a question that comes up again and again, and I find it almost impossible to answer. Nobody can explain why writers are popular in one country and not in another. To take two extreme cases, look at Stefano Benni and Daniel Pennac – both superstars in their own countries, but more or less unknown in the UK. I think you must be right that ‘my sense of humour and social critique appeals more to non-brits’. Maybe in Italy and France (my two most successful territories) people read me, among other reasons, because they feel my books offer a window onto aspects of British life, but to British readers this is obviously not so interesting – they think they’re getting old news. But that doesn’t explain why The Rain Before It Falls, for instance, was so popular in France, Italy and (unusually for me) Germany, whereas British readers and reviewers didn’t seem to like it much. I just can’t offer an explanation, sorry. Unless my translators are so good that my books read better in other languages than they do in English …

David wrote: "Dear Jonathan

I really enjoyed Expo 58. As well as being an entertains read, it captures so well the conflicted relationship between Britain and Europe (or perhaps I should say England and Europe)..."

Thank you David. Delighted you enjoyed the novel. As well as being a self-contained story in its own right, Expo 58 is intended as part of a larger mosaic of fictions, which also includes The Rain Before It Falls and the stories ‘Ivy and Her Nonsense’ and ‘Pentatonic’. Each of these looks at episodes in the life of Thomas and his relatives at different moments and from different angles. And I intend – hope – to write more about this family, focusing in particular on Thomas’s son David who is only just born when Expo 58 ends. So yes, all being well, you’ve not heard the last of Thomas.
Incidentally the audio version of ‘Pentatonic’, which you can download from various sites, is one of the things I’m proudest of. The musical accompaniment, by my longtime collaborator Danny Manners, is especially lovely. Do have a listen if this sort of thing takes your fancy.

Ellie wrote: "Dear Jonathan, I loved What a Carve Up and look forward to reading Expo 58. I'd love to know:

How well do you get on with your characters? Do you like your protagonists, e.g Michael Owen, and how..."

Hi Ellie. Yes, I like all my characters. Even the nasty ones. I think there are some of my characters that readers get impatient with – the ones who are especially weak and indecisive: I’m thinking of Michael Owen, Benjamin Trotter, Maxwell Sim and Thomas Foley in Expo 58. But these are the ones who bear the most resemblance to me, so although I sometimes get frustrated with them as well, I can’t exactly disown them.

Sandra wrote: "Bonjour Mr. Coe , My name is Sandra , I'm French and it's such a pleasure to read all your books every time.

1- I'd like to know if you had ( among all your books) a favorite one who means a lot ..."

Hello Sandra. I almost never re-read my books so it’s hard to say which is my favourite. I always used to like The House of Sleep but I haven’t looked at it for more than a decade, and maybe it would embarrass me now. Of my more recent books I have a special fondness for The Rain Before It Falls, because there I allowed myself to show a tenderness which had been lacking from my books before. I also like Expo 58. It’s one of my lighter novels, but it’s one where the realisation of the idea was very close to how I imagined it. I ended up writing the book I intended to write – which doesn’t always happen!
I’m glad that you love writing. This love is, in itself, the most important thing – people who are just doing it to pursue a career, or because they have some vague notion of ‘wanting to be a writer’, rarely end up writing anything worthwhile. I would urge you to write whatever you want, not to think too much about what the market requires or what a publisher might be looking for. And you need to develop a strong core of self-belief. The paradox of writers is that they must be very sensitive – simply in order to respond to the world around them – but they also need to have a very thick skin. First of all you have to deal with rejection (my first novel, The Accidental Woman, was rejected by 15 publishers) and then you have to ignore what the rest of the world says about your books: it doesn’t matter if they’re praising them or disparaging them, you must close your ears to both, and just listen to the voices inside you. I wish you good luck.

By the way, I came to do a signing in Paris less than two weeks ago! I'm sorry you missed it. Keep checking my website, as my events in France are always announced there on the 'News' page.

Carlo wrote: "Mr. Coe,

thanks again for the many hours of engaging fun, I would like to ask a question and make a note.

The note: the split, a fracture almost, between the J.Coe author of "What a carve up!",..."

Ciao Carlo. Thanks for your note. I think you are right and, to be more precise, you can locate the shift in my writing in the interval between The Rotters’ Club and The Closed Circle. I would say, generally speaking, that the novels before that are based on certainties; the ones that come after are based on ambivalence and ambiguity.

As for your question (‘have you ever written for someone else to put his or her name on the piece? Ghostwritten?’) , it’s an easy one: the answer is no.

Julia wrote: "Dear Mr. Coe,

My name is Julia and I am from Kazakhstan. I read three of your novels (What a Carve Up!, A Touch of Love, and The Rain Before It Falls (my favourite yet) and just started reading my..."

Hi Julia from Kazakhstan! I’d say that the story has to be two-thirds complete in my mind before I start writing. I’m unable to write even a few sentences unless I have a fairly solid structure in my head, and a good idea of the plot and all the characters. This means that during the first year or so of the ‘writing’ process, I won’t do any writing at all – just thinking, and maybe putting a few ideas down on paper. Sometimes – increasingly, in my most recent novels – the closing chapters of the book will be quite vague and shapeless: I’m becoming more and more receptive to the idea of letting my own characters and stories take me by surprise towards the end.
As for ‘obligation’, or routine, for the most part I’m very undisciplined. Most of the time I have regular working hours – 9 till 5, typically – but what I’ll actually do in that time is uncertain. Sometimes I’ll do nothing at all, just stare at the computer screen, sometimes like everyone else I’ll mess around on the internet. (Those tend to be the worst days.) Sometimes I’ll take out the old Victorian writing box my grandfather left me, and try to write by longhand in a notebook, which often makes things easier. But once the writing of a novel is more advanced, I become much more focused. Sometimes I’ll rent a cottage in the country and go away for a week or two and work till midnight, writing 2,000-3,000 words each day. The second halves of my novels are usually written very quickly in this way.

Erik wrote: "Hello, Mr. Coe,
As much as I've enjoyed your fiction, I found your biography of BS Johnson "Like a Fiery Elephant" to be one of the best looks at a writer's life I've read--especially considering t..."

Hi Erik. Johnson fascinated me ever since I was a young boy, when I first saw his film ‘Fat Man on a Beach’ on TV at the age of 13. Then I discovered his novels when I was a student, and because I was obsessed with writers like Flann O’Brien and (early) Samuel Beckett at that time – writers who Johnson himself was imitating – I quickly fell in love with his work. I suppose I was also attracted to the mystery around him – this unique, orginal writer who had been so famous just twenty years earlier, but was already slipping into obscurity. The two important factors in writing the biography were that I felt a very close personal connection with Johnson and his writing, and nobody else had written a biography of him before. I can’t think of any other writer of whom this is true, so I don’t think I’ll be writing any more biographies. It was a one-off. It’s a very labour-intensive activity as well.

Katerina wrote: "Dear Mr. Coe,

my name's Katerina and I am from Russia.

First of all I'd like to thank you for the moments of sheer pleasure given to me by your dense prose. And there's been plenty of them since..."

Hello, Katerina. You’re not making a fool of yourself at all. It’s an interesting question – although I don’t really know the answer. The main character in that novel, Rosamond, was named after the writer Rosamond Lehmann, so that one’s easy to answer. And Rosamond Lehmann had a sister called Beatrix, so that was the name I gave to Rosamond’s cousin. But Imogen …? I can’t remember if there was any significance. The characters Robert and Terry in The House of Sleep were named after Robert Ferris and Terry Collier, the heroes of the British TV show Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? Maxwell Sim was named after the Sim card in mobile phones. In What a Carve Up the Winshaws were called the Winshaws because I knew they were Sure to Win. Nowadays whenever I’m dedicating books at a book signing I try to remember the nicest and most unusual names, so I can use them for future characters. Actually Katerina is a pretty good one!

Dimitra wrote: "Hello,
in What a Carve Up and The Rotters' Club the political and sociological element is very evident whereas on your more recent works-although extremely well written- those elements seem to hav..."

Hello Dimitra. The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim is a novel about globalization and consumerism; Expo 58 is a book about the British attitude towards Europe. I think that both of these are quite ‘political’ themes. When people ask me this question they usually mean, ‘When are you going to write another novel like What A Carve Up?’. I know this is one of my most popular books, but to me, there is too much politics in it – the political element unbalances the human story. Also the political situation in Britain has not changed much since 1994 (except for going in the same direction, and getting worse) so if I tried to write another book like that, I would just be repeating myself. My next book will, I think, be set in contemporary Britain but it won’t be as satirical as What a Carve Up.

OK, I'm going to take a little break now and come back to answer some more questions later.

Willo wrote: "Hi Jonathan, please tell me why my favourite book of all time, What a Carve Up, has not been adapted for the screen. I'm a screenwriter, so if you fail to provide a reasonable answer, would it be o..."

The novel has been adapted for television at least three times – once by Stephen Davis, once by David Nobbs, and once by Jeremy Dyson. Each time, the editor who commissioned it changed jobs before the programme was put into production, and his/her successor had no interest in it, so the production was shelved. I think it’s too late now, and will never happen – the idea has missed its moment. To adapt it you would first of all have to buy the rights and then, as I’m sure you know, very few people ever use scripts that have been written on spec: producers all have their favourite writers. Why not write an original screenplay instead?

Georgiana wrote: "I've met Jonathan in Lecce, Italy, when he came to launch Maxwell Sim. It was so strange an experience, with Jonathan sitting atop of the stairway of a church and we sitting below, and suddenly, wh..."

Good morning Georgiana. Yes, I remember that evening well. One of the most beautiful settings I’ve ever encountered for a book presentation. Another surreal thing about that day was that I learned afterwards that the actor Jude Law had been sitting at a café about twenty metres from where I was speaking. (He didn’t come to listen though.)
I don’t think I’ll write anything about that particular episode but I do often get strong ideas for stories when I’m touring with my books. This is one of the reasons I like doing it so much – you get invited to wonderful places you would never normally see, like Bassano del Grappa which I visited a couple of months ago. And yes, I did get an idea for my new novel on my recent travels. Not in Italy, though. I won’t say where until I know for sure that I’m going to use it.

Mirko wrote: "Hi Jonathan! :)

I'm a huge fan of you and there is a thing I always wanted to ask you: how do you live the relationship with your characters, overall the main characters? In quite all of your sto..."

Hi Mirko. I’m interested in failure – I find it a much more interesting subject, and easier to write about, than success. I find it hard to empathise with strong, decisive, powerful, successful people. And the way in which random, uncontrollable events have a habit of throwing our plans off course, of shattering the illusion that we control our own destinies, has always struck me as the best theme for comedy as well as tragedy. So I think my central characters are always going to be weak, and their lives are never going to turn out the way they expect them to. The challenge is to try to explore this theme without too much cruelty, without making the characters look too much like chess pieces that I’m manipulating for my own amusement. I hope that sometimes I get it right.

Vasco wrote: "Hello Jonathan.

I have two questions.

1) After you finish writing a story, do you make many changes during the reviews? (I am asking this because your sentences are so perfect, although they seem..."

Hello Vasco. I revise my books as I go along – there is no first, second or third draft – so by the time I reach the final chapter, I’ll be more or less happy with everything that has come before. Then my agent, editor and close friends will read it and I’ll make changes according to what they suggest. (If I agree with them …)

In answer to your second question, 'What were the last things that impressed you?' The last things that impressed me were a novel (The Heart Broke In, by James Meek) and an album called Crimson/Red by Prefab Sprout. Actually it’s a solo album by the band’s leader, Paddy McAloon. It’s his first album of new music for ten years and the quality of the songwriting is incredible. So much passion and beauty, so much energy! If you don’t know this record I strongly recommend that you listen to it.

Gea wrote: "Hi everyone,

I am new on Goodreads and I was very excited when I read of the possibility to ask one of my favourite authors. First of all, I would like to say "Thank you" for your wonderful storie..."

Hello Gea. I wanted to write a book set in the 1950s because I had become interested in the character of Thomas Foley after his brief appearance in my novel The Rain Before It Falls, and I wanted to explore his early life. So I was looking around for an unusual place to set a novel in the late 1950s when I was taken to see the Atomium in Brussels, and I immediately became fascinated by the great festival of post-war modernity which had been staged there in 1958. I thought it was the perfect place to send Thomas – much more interesting than keeping him in London.
You can read more about the origins of Expo 58 on my website, which also has a message board where you can ask me questions any time you like – not just one day a year on goodreads!