I thought I'd write a massive postmodern novel about Richard the Lionheart and Robin Hood, but it turns out they couldn't have met because the first mention of Robin Hood appears 60 years after Richard died.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There's an interesting mix to 'Robin Hood' because it's kind of modern but medieval. There is a blend of adventure with a very modern feel.
This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.
It would have been very easy to drift into writing a non-fiction book so by taking it away from Nottingham I forced myself to imagine much more of it.
We're past the age of heroes and hero kings... Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it's up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.
I had the idea in my twenties that a writer could immediately become the late Henry James. Henry James himself had to mature. Even Saul Bellow did.
Robin Hood is often seen as the hands-on-hips, archetypal, tally-ho hero. But, realistically, the one calling the shots wouldn't be at the front shouting about it. He'd be the one you don't expect.
In true-life dramas, you have to do so much research. It's a big responsibility to make sure things are as correct as possible. In 'Robin Hood', you have more artistic license - it's all action, adventure and reaction. This gives everyone a chance to make their characters their own and to make them believable.
Imagine a world in which no writer has written a literary novel in sixty years. Imagine a place where not a single person has read a book that is truly about the character at its center.
Perhaps that is why the novel flourished in England. You had these communities that would stay put and people would see one another all the time and cause one another to change and have the opportunity to observe the changes over time.
Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book.