JON MCGREGOR
Jon McGregor was born in Bermuda in 1976 and grew up in the UK. He started writing seriously during his final year at university, contributing a series to the anthology Five Uneasy Pieces (Pulp Faction). He has had short fiction published by Granta magazine, and a short story entitled 'While You Were Sleeping' broadcast on Radio 4. His first novel, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, won the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best First Book) and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. His second novel, So Many Ways To Begin, was published in 2006. Find out more at the Contemporary Writers website.
This interview took place in December 2006.
 Photo: Neil Bennet
Susan Tranter: Thanks for taking part in this interview Jon. Can I start by asking if you've read anything recently which you'd recommend to EnCompass readers?
JMc: So He Takes The Dog by Jonathan Buckley. An absolute masterclass in restraint and understatement. Some of the writing is almost subsonic in the way its impact lingers. My absolute book of the year. Another one I enjoyed recently was The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson; this is his famous loose-leaf book in a box, where you shuffle the chapters and read them in any order, but quite apart from this innovation (gimmick?) the writing is wonderful and heartbreaking.
Anu: I'd like to ask Jon how he manages to examine everyday life in all its minute glory without, well, overdoing it. Does he find it hard to celebrate stuff which other people might find pretty unexciting - without coming across as boring? If you know what I mean...
JMc: I'm not sure I know the answer to this. I guess when I write I'm concentrating first on what interests me, what I find notable or curious or fascinating or remarkable about the world and about life - it's only at a later stage that I go back and try to work out if other people are going to find it interesting as well. Maybe it's a matter of how you frame it: if I set out to write about ordinary mundane everyday things then the writing might end up being ordinary and mundane and everyday, whereas actually I'm setting out to write about the fascinating and magical and life-turning moments of life except that I'm looking for them in the context of 'the everyday'. Does that make sense?
David R: I loved If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. I read somewhere that it had been partly inspired by the media frenzy following the death of Princess Diana, and that this was (albeit subtly) referenced in the book. Am I just being slow, or have I got my wires crossed, because if there was a reference, I missed it completely!
JMc: No, I don't think you're being slow. It was VERY subtle. On page 28, after the boy at number eighteen has taken a polaroid photograph, he
writes the date on the back - 31/08/97, the day that Diana died, and the day on which the whole book is set. When I started writing the book, it was going to be full of references to Diana's death - the characters were going to be discussing it, watching television about it, as we pretty much all did that day. But then I thought it would be more interesting, and the contrast between her much-observed death and the unobserved death in the street would be more pointed, if it was just never mentioned. So the passing mention of the date was almost like a private joke, the one remaining trace of what had been my original inspiration for writing the novel.
SpikyKaty: I'm a big fan of Jon's work and would like to ask him if he finds it hard to objectify when writing and if he tries to keep himself out of his work. Or, does he like to use his life, his memories, his moments within his work to make it a blend of his characters and himself? Can a writer truly be apart from their work and is this a good or bad thing, in his opinion.
JMc: Erm... I do at least try to avoid writing stories which are autobiographical in the most direct sense, as I do think there's something fundamentally uninteresting and insular about that. And when I'm imagining myself into a character's situation and decision-making process I do try and distinguish what I would do and what a character I've invented would do. But, no, of course it's impossible for a writer to be apart from their work, to not pour all their experiences and the experiences of those around them into their writing. I imagine the result would be like a blind man painting a landscape. Or like that line from Blackadder; 'You're comparing something you've never seen to something... you've never seen.' That said, I think it's always worth making the effort to expand your writing beyond your natural territory. I've never been a big fan of novels where the narrator's voice is essentially that of the author, for example.
RobW: Why did you decide to leave so many of the characters in If Nobody Speaks... nameless, and were you ever worried that readers would find it irritating, or hard to follow? (not that I did, by the way)
JMc: Because one of the big themes was that of neighbours not knowing each other's names, of living separated - if still interdependent - lives. I thought it would be quite effective to evoke this by holding back the names even from the reader. I did think that some readers would find it annoying or hard to follow - and quite a few people have confirmed that they did! - but I also thought, hey, why should literature always be pleasant and easy to follow?
Lena: I'd be interested to know how much research Jon does before starting a book.
JMc: It depends. With If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things absolutely none; there was no need, I knew the territory. Although actually I had to ask a few people about the experience of pregnancy. With So Many Ways To Begin there was a fair amount of research - I needed to know something about the geography and history of Coventry, Aberdeen, and Donegal (although it was knowing a little of the history which made me set the story there in the first place), and I needed to get some details about life in the 50s and 60s right. My research mainly consisted of going to these places, walking around, reading old newspapers in the libraries, visiting the museums, talking to people. But actually most of the research was done during the process of writing - I wanted the characters and the stories to come first, and to sort out the facts later.
Abu: Your writing has been called lyrical, and your titles certainly seem rather poetic. Are you interested in poetry, and if so, who are your favourite poets?
JMc: I'm interested in the tools of poetry - sound, rhythm, image, breath - but I've always found that when I try to write poetry it ends up being either absolutely atrocious or giving up and becoming prose. So yes, I'm interested in poetry and poets; at the moment I'm particularly into Alice Oswald, Charles Simic, Don Paterson, Kathleen Jamie, Paul Durcan, Adam Zagajewski... and others.
JSW: I was very interested to learn that Jon wrote a novel on a narrowboat! I wonder if he found the constraints of his surroundings a helpful factor? Would he recommend something similar for other aspiring writers?
JMc: It would probably be more accurate to say that while I was living on a narrowboat I was writing a novel; it wasn't something I chose to do because I thought it would help my writing. Although having said that, living on a boat did mean that my cost of living was extremely low, and thus my need to work was extremely limited (down to about two evenings a week at one point) - and thus my time to write was maximised. And that's the main thing - if you want to write a novel, you need as much time as possible, and as little else to think about as possible, and any situation you can engineer to achieve this will help. Living on a boat was just a coincidence, more or less.
Sara Andersson: Who are your favourite writers and who would you say you have been influenced by?
JMc: I think I have more favourite books than favourite writers... in no particular order: That They May Face The Rising Sun - John McGahern; So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away - Richard Brautigan; Alice Munro - pretty much all her short stories; George Saunders - pretty much all his short stories; Underworld and The Body Artist - Don DeLillo; The Pillow Book - Sei Shonagun. In terms of influence, maybe that's a different question. Douglas Coupland made me want to start writing stories, although I'm no longer much of a fan of his work. Ian McEwan's first short stories made me realise what literature could do, and made me want to try and do it. John McGahern made me calm down.
Michael: I liked the way you used the descriptions of artefacts to start chapters in So Many Ways to Begin. Did you come up with the items first, and then spin the story out from there, or did you create the objects to fit the story?
JMc: Both. There were some key objects (the tobacco tin, the scratched photograph, the birth certificate, the model boat) which made me think this would be a viable way of telling the story. But then it was a mixture of sometimes coming up with the object and developing a story out of that, and sometimes having a scene or story and needing to find an object within the scene to use as a chapter title. Sometimes the device creaks slightly, I have to confess, but hopefully it mostly works. One thing I was interested in doing was prompting the reader to make the connections - where does the object come from? How did David obtain it? What further narrative information does it offer? Hopefully these are questions which people can explore further on their second reading of the novel!
Susan Tranter: Many thanks for taking part Jon.
JMc: Well, thanks for your questions everyone; it's been fun thinking about them.
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