Marlon James Talking Books

themselves pay rises totalling $80 million.

Now, on BBC News, it is time for Talking Books. THEME SONG

Now, on BBC News, it is time for Talking Books. THEME SONG PLAYS.

Hello, and welcome to Hay Festival at the Wales. There are thinkers and

a young audience alongside authors and scientists. It is my great

pleasure to introduce Marlon James. APPLAUSE. It is my great pleasure to

introduce Marlon James, who I think is one of the most exciting,

adventurous writers in the world is today. He is the first Jamaican, as

I am sure you know, to have won the Man Booker Prize. For a book that is

breathtaking in its ambition, also, as many people have noted,

eye-watering in its violence and sex scenes... I think it would the real

mistake to think of Marlon James as a Tarantino of the literature world.

-- be a. He draws on a passion for Greek tragedy and many other

authors, as you will see. I wanted to begin with this amazing

international success you have enjoyed. Did you ever think you

would find yourself in the middle of the Welsh countryside talking about

Jamaican gangs? LAUGHTER. It is funny. I imagined

myself in a Welsh used bookstore. That I imagined. But, no, it was

enough for me that the book in my head came out on the page. It is not

that easy. Writers and the audience know what I and talking about. So

many things happen between your thoughts and what will sell. -- I am

talking. One thing that got me through so many passages was, not

just the sex and violence, but writing a 7-page sentence, with me

just thinking, you know what, I will just leave it and my editor will

take it out. The irony is that he didn't. I wrote 10,000 more words

and we still argue about it. LAUGHTER. I will release the uncut

version when I am 60. Why did you decide to have so many different

characters and voices in the book? It happened, I won't say by

accident, but that was the least plant being in the book. -- planned.

It is my all-time shortlist novel. It was supposed to be... --

shortest. The first page... It was supposed to be this quick crime

novella. I was reading Raymond Chandler and I wanted to write a

come in quake and kill a few people kind of book. Wham bam. Yeah. The

problem was I couldn't finish it. For some reason, I started the way

it I wrote my previous novel. I found a magical voice that could

carry me through the whole thing. I just kept failing at every turn. I

would hit page 50 and run into a dead-end. I was having dinner with

my friend Rachel and said, I don't know whose story this is. She said,

what makes you think this is one person's story? Ah. And she

prescribed me rereading As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. Oh... . The idea

was that one person could never tell this story. You couldn't just tell

this story about 1976 through one person. I think that if the

narrative voice, the narrator, has authority, and even humanity, then

it can take you through some things. And I take my readers through some

really horrendous stuff. You certainly do.

LAUGHTER. If there is a certain humanity there, then, the reader

will stick with you. I think that is right. I think you have to drown

yourself in the book to the point at which you are hearing the voices so

clearly in your own head. That is what takes you through it. Yeah, and

I think umm, I think sometimes we have this idea that the reader reads

books to escape pain and tragedy and the difficult. And I think that is

where we confront them. That is where we get to experience it

vicariously. That is where we... Because, there is more... Sometimes

we have this idea of if we enjoyed a book it means we had fun. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, I think so. I have read books I didn't enjoy three times.

That's good back to the context of this book. A very important year in

the history of Jamaica, 1976. -- Let's. -- go back. I don't think the

audience might realise how subversive a figure Bob Marley was

at that time. His assassination is the crux of this book. He was. It

was a big deal. Jamaica is, was, and still is, a pretty conservative

society. We are very much sold on the idea of this kind of colonial

education. This very British colonial education which has nothing

in common with Jamaican education. We are sold on this idea of a rasta

far in itself, something to disruptive and polarising. --

rastafarian. Rastafarians went through serious persecution in the

60s and 70s. For the most famous Jamaican, the one that could make

the voice of struggle to be this Rastafarian was just not cool. Umm,

he was... He was also not much of an example for the emerging black

rights movement because he was half white. People forget that

Rastafarianism is not a racial movement, even though it is back to

Africa, it is not a racial movement. He also... In my grandmother's house

there were pictures of the head of the political party. There were no

pictures of us. LAUGHTER. Right, OK. That is the

kind of cult of personality we have going on. For a singer to come along

and say, believe in yourself, to say, holds these people accountable,

it was subversive. He was polarising on so many levels. When you came to

write about it, you barely use his name, he is referred to throughout

the book as the Singer. Was that to give him an epic quality? It was.

Even... Finally enough, that is my experience of Miley. -- funnily.

Totally symbolic. -- Bob Marley. I have never seen him in person. To

me, he was a series of news reports. Everything from his Vibration album

making number eight in the charts to the very tragic story of his

cancer... Bob Marley in cancer, Bob Marley off to Germany, they expect

good things, Bob Marley returning home. That is my experience, his

music, the few times he came on TV, news reports. He was already kind of

symbolic. Most of these characters, quite a few of these characters, are

based on people. Not based on one. Most Jamaicans think that Jim Brown

was an influence, and there are many parallels, but he did not have the

same view of homosexuals as in the book. But, no, the thing about him

is that he is a super violent man who has killed many people. I would

so get coffee with you. You have this book written about a difficult

time in Jamaica's past, written in patois, a lot of violence and sex,

how was it received? To get culture to be the language of art, we still

have an inferiority complex. In my second novel, my friend confronted

me saying, aren't you any less teacher, why are you writing in this

voice? -- an English. I had a friend that wanted me to write a book in

Jane Austin English, we aren't friends any more. The idea that I

speak proper and the whole notion of proper English, what that is, that

is something that I think hovers over Jamaican speech quite a bit. I

mean, our proper English is a very dead form of English. You know? When

I listen to it I still hear Rime of the Ancient Mariner and so on.

Because language can include changes. It can fool you. From the

way I speak, most Jamaicans think I Emmrich. Your skin is black but you

are mostly uptown. -- I am rich. No, it is because I watched so much

Sesame Street. LAUGHTER. But, yeah, umm, using

language can include and exclude, the above and below, and people are

obsessed with how people speak. We grew up in a country with a weird

silence were we talk in great detail about what is going on in Jamaica,

that is, if it is in the living room, or on the veranda, but we

don't talk anywhere where that voice will carry. So, the idea that this

book was having a discussion everybody has had, there is nothing

new in this book to any Jamaican, that that discussion was put right

and centre, it was very inspiring to them. And, I think, also, it was a

most 40 years ago. -- almost. Maybe that is the wrong thing to say. They

are far better at confronting it than before. The response has been

inspiring and great. Jamaicans love winners, you know. It doesn't matter

if they don't want a Man Booker Prize is, it is a prized.

LAUGHTER. What did your parents think about it? I remember you said

don't read Chapter four. It is a running joke I have with my mother.

Each acknowledge and is an ability for her to read the book. --

acknowledgement. Don't think she can read explicit gay sex. I think she

has read it. But she always says, you young people do what you want.

Does ... Did you get that love of language from your father? I have a

love of books that he has. He loves Wordsworth and Coleridge. Now I do.

Eventually I got cold done Shakespeare because of that. Does

that contrast your school? -- got hooked. You talk about a world that

doesn't even exist any more. I can never figure out if I will be the

last of the old or the first of the new. My generation... We are still,

you know, given British history, alongside Jamaican. Or the Jamaican

history is in the context of slavery. Colonialism. But, again,

that is where I developed my sensibility and where I first read

Tom Jones. It is where I read Dickens, Great Expectation, twice.

Huckleberry Finns. That kind of literary education is irreplaceable.

The homophobia that you experience then, did you feel that continued

into your adult life? My adult life was different. I think to be sort of

persecuted for being gay, I would have to have been gay back then and

back then I was sort of... I did that thing that all Jamaican men do,

we just become really devout Christians. People say, I notice you

haven't found a wife. I am all in fire for Jesus. That is the word.

And also, that religious sense does seem to inform your writing. When

you came to your first novel, it is very much a book about good and evil

and you are never quite sure who is good and who is evil in John Crow's

Devil. Yes, there are lines in that book that only someone who comes out

of church would know. It is like, when people say things like, when

someone looks at me, I am going through problems but no weapon

formed against me shall prosper. So a lot of it is... John Crow's Devil

was definitely, I mean, I wrote it when I was still in church. But that

still shaped a lot of the worldview of that novel, and that shaped a lot

of my worldview at the time, because when I was in church I wasn't faking

it. I actually genuinely believed that in church I wasn't faking it. I

actually genuinely believed. My best friend as a preacher in Texas, so

you can tell the fund discussions we have. And you know, I don't demonise

that time, poor choice of words. You know, I don't knock that time at

all. I'm glad I'm no longer in it. Not for the book I really was

interested in the demagoguery of old-time church in Jamaica. The

hypocrisy, the idea that the pastor is the religious authority which is

still the case in quite a few Jamaican villagers. Still the case?

Oh yes. There was a case about a year after my book came out where

this deke and raped this girl and the police found out about it

because he filmed it, and the preacher was horrified. Not because

of the crime, she was horrified because people dead challenge his

authority, because he had already been punished and spoken to the Lord

and how dare you challenge my authority? And that is still there.

In Jamaica we talk about creatures sitting on a whole heap of things.

All the secrets of the neighbourhood he knows. He is the person you

confessed to. I don't necessarily look at it as a bad thing, because

for a lot of these neighbourhoods church is the only good they have,

it is the only thing holding them together, it is the only place they

are getting social services, it is the only place they are getting

counselling. So at its best church can be a wonderful thing in these

neighbourhoods. But they are also can be this really sort of what kind

of authority. -- they can also be. That is what I really wanted to

attack in that book. And a very interesting structure in the first

book as well. I think this is where, you mention Greek tragedy earlier

but you draw on the idea of a chorus, don't you? Yes, I am very

much inspired by great tragedy. By this Greek and Roman, Greek tragedy

and Roman tragedy and so on. The idea of the chorus, the idea of...

And I think I had a chorus in the first novel. But also the idea of

the offstage event, or, you know, writing people who have really,

really horrendous flaws but you have to recognise their humanity in a way

which I think the ancient Greeks got better than anybody. But yes, for

the first novel, the idea of this chorus, that even sometimes

contradict the author, is something that I find really, really

interesting. I reread Greek plays before I right every book. I am

rereading one right now. Because again, I just think the ancient

Greeks understood, are the only people to fully get human nature.

And in your second book, The Book of Night Women, which is about slavery,

a wonderful book, but in the book, you spell out in horrible, sickening

detail the kind of brutality that was involved in the slave 's State.

The funny thing about the book is that I pulled back, I actually held

back. People don't realise how horrendous livery was. I actually

held back with that look. Because I think, even if the extreme violence

is totally true, I think sometimes we fall into this sort of

pornography of violence, and the end result is that people get numb. And

I didn't want... And I have said this before, I think violence should

be violent, but I think a violent act in a novel shouldn't pretty much

have the same impact as violence in real life. Even though, the funny

thing about the stories I write, they get... They get a lot of

attention for violence, and actually not that violent. It's just that I

would rather have four scenes that really resonate then say 40 that

makes you go numb. It is not necessarily that I load it with

violence, it is that the violent scenes really leave a mark. And then

they always say, you know, reading about the life of the slave is

probably a little bit better than being a slave. Yes, just... It is

probably a little bit better than being one. So I think we can read a

little bit. Yes, no, certainly. And people have made comparisons between

your books and films and... Is there filmic influence at all? There is a

huge filmic influence. I was inspired -- I'm as inspired by film

as I am by books, with Brief History, certainly Robert Altmann

and Cuaron are hugely important to me. As I said before. Even with

Cuaron, a lot of the imagery comes from cinema. There were some

important things I got from cinema. One was to recognise the sort of

depth and poise in an actual scene. I think is a writer sometimes you

are quick to go the metaphor or simile or Aleutian. And I say this

to my students, a sunset does not need your help -- allusion. It's

pretty spectacular on its own, just tell us the dam sunset. But

recognising that there is power in the actual scene around you, as

opposed to trying to lay it, was very important -- damn. Particularly

for the two looks which were told by people who were not writers.

Nobody... I mean, I think I have tried to cheat a little bit and have

one or two characters who were literary, but by and large these are

not people who will compare anything to a summer's day. So I had to find

resonance somewhere else. And that is one of the things I think cinema

does really, really well. Marlon James, many thanks indeed for

speaking with us. Thanks for having me.

Some reasonably decent weekend weather for most parts