The whole 'Melrose' series is an attempt to tell the truth, and is based on the idea that there is some salutary or liberating power in telling the truth.
From Edward St Aubyn
I'm really not responsible for what mental operation people have when they're reading my books other than the ones which are created by literary effects.
The Booker 2011 is of no more interest to me than the world heavyweight championship, which I'm not going to win either. It's irrelevant.
I'm not trying to uncover the facts of my life but to discover the dramatic truth of the situations I was in.
Proust is a hero of mine. I read 'A la recherche' in one go, and I'm a very slow reader. It had an astonishing impact, reading it on my own and being my main company. I think Proust is the most intelligent person to ever have written a novel.
Well, the attractive thing about the subject of happiness is that it is notoriously difficult to write.
The thing about the 'Melrose' novels is that I have to feel they're impossible when I set out.
Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn't have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.
The first book I fell in love with was 'Little Toot,' the story of an adorable tugboat operating out of New York Harbor.
It's no use imagining that bringing great writers together inevitably precipitates great conversation.
2 perspectives
1 perspectives