Ask Jonathan Coe - Thursday, October 31st! discussion

Welcome to the group! Jonathan will be answering questions throughout the day on Thursday, October 31st in this thread only. In the meantime if you have a question for Jonathan, or just want to introduce yourself, feel free to do so in this thread.

Really enjoyed your pieces on Boris Johnson and Flann O'Brien from the the London Review of Books this year. Any chance of a collection of non-fiction?

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 stories there is the character that have also a lot of expectations, that can do great things (it's the case overall of Ben Trotter in "Rotter's club"), but especially for the fault of the chaos of events finish to fail, or to have a failure, big or littler.

So: Do you ever fold the temptation to save a character? :D also with the risk to lost your story? I'm asking this also because, like reader of your books, I ever hope for the best of the main character, because you are really good to create a great empathy with them. This "empathy" comes also to you, like writer, or you are always able to control without problems or conflicts?

Mirko

Mr. Coe,

Really enjoy your books, especially "The Rotters Club" and "Maximillian Sim". Your work is typically very British.

What is your opinion of the recent changes to Man Booker Prize eligibility? Is this a loss of an important venue for books from Britain and the Commonwealth, and the voices that those books represent?

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 stories.
I love "The house of sleep", it is my favourite book!
I was surprised when I read Expo 58 because I found it so far from the previous ones.
Why did you choose to write about that particular exposition? It was because of the historic context or for other reasons?

Hello Jonathan,

I've read a lot of your fiction and (more recently) your biography on B.S. Johnson, which I found fascinating. My question is about The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. I noticed from other Goodreads reviews that many felt 'cheated' by the ending. It took me a while after reading it to fully appreciate the theme of deception. Do you worry about readers not 'getting' your book?

From Steph, another Midlander (Stourbridge) now living in London.

Hi Jonathan! Form or content?

Hello, Jonathan,

I'm Richard, from Sri Lanka.

My question is about the end of The Rotters' Club. Great book, by the way, I absolutely loved it. But why did you choose to end it with the longest sentence ever written in English? And, in retrospect, do you think this was the right ending for the book?

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 to come straight from your heart)

2) Your books always impresses me. What were the last things that impressed you?

Well, I think you are one of the best.

Greetings

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, while he was speaking, a procession with the statue of a Saint and the marching band passed and he had to hang on before resuming the speech.
I wanted to ask if he remembers that particular circumstance and if he thinks to use it for a novel or a short story, for I think he could write something really amazing about that.

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 okay if I adapted it?

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 have somewhat faded, especially the political one. Can we expect to see a more political novel in one of your next books? Thank you.

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 I've read most of your novels twice - in the original and then in translation, to make sure I can recommend it to my grandmother )

One of my - well, our - favourite books is The Rain Before It Falls, and perhaps my question is rather stupid, but I've been wondering for ages, how do you choose the names for your characters? (the one I particularly have in mind is Imogen, but it doesn't quite matter) Is it a tribute to people you know? Or they just sound nice? Or, like Nabokov, you think that a name has just the appropriate colour for this character? Oh I know I'm sort of making a fool of myself, but I should have given it a go)

Thank you and all the best

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 the fact that your descriptions of his work didn't make me want to rush out and read him. So what made you want to write about Johnson, and do you ever see yourself doing a biography again? I think your book and, say, Romancing (the bio about novelist Henry Green), have the added benefit of bringing the work of less famous, but still notable writers to light. Thanks for taking our questions.

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 fourth, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. And I am already looking forward to reading the others, just putting off this pleasure for the months and years to come (as good writers write far slower than we devour their works:). Thank you for the wonderful time that you give us, your readers, thank you for the opportunity to come into these worlds, into the lives of the people that you create.

My questions are about the actual writing process.
1. How is it happenning? Is there a complete story or an idea formed in your mind that makes you take a laptop/pen/voice recorder, and start recording it as it is? Or does this idea just give you a kick and when you start recording, the story goes its own way and the result can be very different from the initial plot?

2. Is there a notion of "obligation" in your everyday work? Have you established some rules for yourself, like you should write, say, 8 pages a day, after which you get a kind of a novel draft and then edit it? or maybe you have long periods of non-writing but then some inspiration comes and you write without stopping for several days until you render it to paper/computer memory in full?

Thank you very much for taking your time and answering our questions. Wishing you all the best.

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!", "The dwarves of death" and "The house of sleep" and the J.Coe of "The rain before it falls" and "The terrible privacy of Maxwell Sim". The first Coe has a subterranean energy pushing forwards plots, characters and their fictional universe. It is the driving force, with his political, civil passion together with his entomologist's curiosity for human relationships. And then there's the J.Coe of the last two novels, with a more introspective feelings, a more seasoned look on life. Is it just aging? Or did something happen?

That's not the question, though, which is: have you ever written for someone else to put his or her name on the piece? Ghostwritten?

Thanks for your time and I wish your pen will never run dry!

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 for you ?

2- any advices for someone who loves writing and who'd like one day to publish a book ?

thank you for your time, and I can't wait to read your new book !
I hope one day you'll come for a signing book session in Paris ! :-)

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 can you put up with writing them if you don't like them?

What inspired you to write?

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).

I liked reading, in the final chapter, about Thomas's later life, but would enjoy a fuller account of that. Is there any chance you might write that?

Hello again. Is tomorrow's event scheduled for any particular time?

E. wrote: "Really enjoyed your pieces on Boris Johnson and Flann O'Brien from the the London Review of Books this year. Any chance of a collection of non-fiction?"

Yes, there is one coming out (ebook only) at the beginning of December. It’s called Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements and contains both the pieces you mentioned, as well as lots of others going all the way back to 1990. I’d insert a link to the amazon page if I knew how to …

Steph wrote: "Hello Jonathan,

I've read a lot of your fiction and (more recently) your biography on B.S. Johnson, which I found fascinating. My question is about The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. I noticed f..."

There’s not much point in worrying about it. If you tried to make everything so simple and so clear that no reader would ever misunderstand your books, what you ended up writing would be extremely bland. Besides, once a book is published and sent out into the world, readers own it – you have surrendered it to them – and you can have no control over how they interpret it. All you can do is move on to the next one.

Rob wrote: "Hi Jonathan! Form or content?"

Hi Rob! Both, of course.

Palmyrah wrote: "Hello, Jonathan,

I'm Richard, from Sri Lanka.

My question is about the end of The Rotters' Club. Great book, by the way, I absolutely loved it. But why did you choose to end it with the longest s..."

Hello, Richard. I wanted to express the sudden rush of excitement and happiness that is felt by one of the characters (Benjamin Trotter) in the few seconds it takes him to raise a glass of beer from the table to his mouth. Hundreds of memories and impressions tumbling through his mind in that instant. Instinctively, I thought that some sort of stream of consciousness technique was called for. I didn’t plan to write the whole thing as a continuous sentence at first, but when I got about four pages in and realised that I hadn’t used a full stop yet, I knew that this was what it was going to be. Incidentally I think its status as the longest sentence in English has been overtaken by at least one other writer in the last twelve years. Yes, I do think it was the right ending for the book – although I’m aware that (as is the case with many of my endings) there are readers who don’t like it.

Paul wrote: "Mr. Coe,

Really enjoy your books, especially "The Rotters Club" and "Maximillian Sim". Your work is typically very British.

What is your opinion of the recent changes to Man Booker Prize eligibi..."

Hi Paul. I do think it’s time we had a prize which is open to both British authors and Americans but of course there is already a new prize – the Folio – which was set up to do precisely that. The Booker on the other hand has always had a distinctive character which derives from its emphasis on the UK and the Commonwealth, and I’m personally sorry that this will be lost now. For the next few years the only discussion around the Booker Prize is going to be whether British writers are as good as Americans, a topic which could soon become boring. Speaking personally, as a writer I feel far more European than Anglo-American, and yet this new development tilts the balance unmistakeably towards the Anglo-American axis. To me the most potentially interesting prize around at the moment is the Prix du Livre Européen. But it doesn’t quite get the publicity of the Booker.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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 ever. My question to you is this:
you are extremely popular in Italy (and I think in other european countries) but not as famous here in the UK (where I now live)... This really baffles me. Is it to do with promotion, or with something about your sense of humor and social critique that appeals more to non-brits?
Thank you.
Loredana

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 bizarre.

Your Wikipedia entry suggests you were born the day after me. I went to Bedford School. My two daughters were born in 1997 and 2000. You're me, aren't you? Haha. No. I also have three sons, so you can't be me.

I read the sequel but didn't find it as rewarding as the first book. Perhaps because the teenage emotions that you write about in TRC are universal, whereas the world of UK politics is not, perhaps, so familiar.

I tracked down the TV show on DVD and watched it with interest. It wasn't a patch on the book, imho.

My question: What did you think of the TV series based on The Rotters' Club?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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 …

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.

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.

Jonathan wrote: "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 w..."

Thank you so much for your time to answer everyones questions ! and gave me advices about writing :-)

gutted with myself i missed your signing session ! i'll check all the time now !

thank you !

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 a question about translation. Do you ever follow the way your books live in other languages or check whether the translation is good?

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.

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!

Jonathan wrote: "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 ple..."

Thank you) just when I thought I couldn't be more enthusiastic about a prospect of a new book by Jonathan Coe... ))