Continuing London Literature Festival, Michel Faber and Stephanie
Merritt sat down in front of an enthusiastic audience in London’s Southbank
Centre to discuss Faber’s two latest books – The Book of Strange New Things and his first published collection
of poetry, Undying. Both of these
books came from an incredibly difficult time in his life – the novel was
written during the period his wife Eva was battling with incurable cancer, and
the poems were written in response to her illness and death, and the grieving
process that followed.
Naturally then, conversation turned to Eva frequently throughout the
evening. He spoke of her determination that he should complete his novel and
desire to be involved in the editing process as she had been with his previous
works. The poems that came to him during the final months of her illness are
very frank, almost brutal – a style that is rare in poetry on this topic. His
intention had not been to publish them, he spoke of feeling that it would be
perverse not to write them down. It was only when he read some at events that
he realised they were affecting people, that it was not just him offloading.
He spoke heartbreakingly honestly about his failing memory, and the
fact he is already losing parts of their early marriage. It was something they
were both aware of and had to come to terms with. He is writing her biography
for the family so he will have that when the memories fade but most poignantly
he keeps her memory alive in the way he behaves – not reverting to how he was
before they met. He also commented that this loss of memories means he does not
have the same tools that many authors draw on – mining their youth for
inspiration for their novels.
Faber spoke often of his wife but what also became clear was his
passion for effecting change in the world. He sees his novels as always having
multiple layers, that they always have a political or social angle. He spoke of
his anger and feelings of helplessness in major political decisions such as the
Iraq wars. He was so disillusioned by what he referred to as ‘humans and their
incurable stupidity’ that he stopped writing for a while and then thought of
writing a novel purely about aliens, with no human characters. Although this
idea proved impossible it did feed into The
Book of Strange New Things. In contrast to the norm for human characters in
sci-fi he made his almost supernaturally tolerant, as he believes they would
need to be in such situations.
The conversation then turned to deeper topics still – questioning if
we need the bad in life to have the good, if being a bit messed up is an
essential part of what it means to be human. He also tackled the question of
religion. Both himself and Eva were brought up in religious homes but lost
their faith. He makes it quite clear however that he would not make fun of
religion, that the faith involved is something he wishes he could have. He
spoke of the terror of living in a world where there is nobody to look after
us. The ideas of loss and how to deal with it are themes in The Book of Strange New Things.
The talk wasn’t relentlessly heavy however, he also touched on his
writing habits – not particularly rigid as some writers claim to maintain, he
writes until there is no more, and perhaps unusually for an author, only rarely
reads fiction. He also mentioned that he has no intention of writing another
adult novel, partly because he likes to write in different genres to make it
interesting for his readers, and has used them all now (except crime). For those
feeling bereft at the idea of no new Faber prose to devour – he aims to turn
his attention to Young Adult writing and produce something utterly magical.
We may have only had an hour but Faber was fearlessly honest about his
views on the world and his personal tragedies. It was fascinating to hear how
he approaches his writing and admirable how present he is in the real world,
how deeply he clearly cares.
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