:00:00. > :00:00.themselves pay rises totalling $80 million.
:00:00. > :00:12.Now, on BBC News, it is time for Talking Books. THEME SONG
:00:13. > :00:31.Now, on BBC News, it is time for Talking Books. THEME SONG PLAYS.
:00:32. > :00:48.Hello, and welcome to Hay Festival at the Wales. There are thinkers and
:00:49. > :00:52.a young audience alongside authors and scientists. It is my great
:00:53. > :01:09.pleasure to introduce Marlon James. APPLAUSE. It is my great pleasure to
:01:10. > :01:14.introduce Marlon James, who I think is one of the most exciting,
:01:15. > :01:18.adventurous writers in the world is today. He is the first Jamaican, as
:01:19. > :01:23.I am sure you know, to have won the Man Booker Prize. For a book that is
:01:24. > :01:28.breathtaking in its ambition, also, as many people have noted,
:01:29. > :01:35.eye-watering in its violence and sex scenes... I think it would the real
:01:36. > :01:43.mistake to think of Marlon James as a Tarantino of the literature world.
:01:44. > :01:49.-- be a. He draws on a passion for Greek tragedy and many other
:01:50. > :01:54.authors, as you will see. I wanted to begin with this amazing
:01:55. > :02:00.international success you have enjoyed. Did you ever think you
:02:01. > :02:02.would find yourself in the middle of the Welsh countryside talking about
:02:03. > :02:11.Jamaican gangs? LAUGHTER. It is funny. I imagined
:02:12. > :02:16.myself in a Welsh used bookstore. That I imagined. But, no, it was
:02:17. > :02:22.enough for me that the book in my head came out on the page. It is not
:02:23. > :02:29.that easy. Writers and the audience know what I and talking about. So
:02:30. > :02:35.many things happen between your thoughts and what will sell. -- I am
:02:36. > :02:41.talking. One thing that got me through so many passages was, not
:02:42. > :02:47.just the sex and violence, but writing a 7-page sentence, with me
:02:48. > :02:51.just thinking, you know what, I will just leave it and my editor will
:02:52. > :03:01.take it out. The irony is that he didn't. I wrote 10,000 more words
:03:02. > :03:14.and we still argue about it. LAUGHTER. I will release the uncut
:03:15. > :03:18.version when I am 60. Why did you decide to have so many different
:03:19. > :03:22.characters and voices in the book? It happened, I won't say by
:03:23. > :03:30.accident, but that was the least plant being in the book. -- planned.
:03:31. > :03:40.It is my all-time shortlist novel. It was supposed to be... --
:03:41. > :03:47.shortest. The first page... It was supposed to be this quick crime
:03:48. > :03:51.novella. I was reading Raymond Chandler and I wanted to write a
:03:52. > :04:00.come in quake and kill a few people kind of book. Wham bam. Yeah. The
:04:01. > :04:05.problem was I couldn't finish it. For some reason, I started the way
:04:06. > :04:12.it I wrote my previous novel. I found a magical voice that could
:04:13. > :04:17.carry me through the whole thing. I just kept failing at every turn. I
:04:18. > :04:22.would hit page 50 and run into a dead-end. I was having dinner with
:04:23. > :04:26.my friend Rachel and said, I don't know whose story this is. She said,
:04:27. > :04:36.what makes you think this is one person's story? Ah. And she
:04:37. > :04:43.prescribed me rereading As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. Oh... . The idea
:04:44. > :04:50.was that one person could never tell this story. You couldn't just tell
:04:51. > :04:59.this story about 1976 through one person. I think that if the
:05:00. > :05:02.narrative voice, the narrator, has authority, and even humanity, then
:05:03. > :05:05.it can take you through some things. And I take my readers through some
:05:06. > :05:10.really horrendous stuff. You certainly do.
:05:11. > :05:14.LAUGHTER. If there is a certain humanity there, then, the reader
:05:15. > :05:20.will stick with you. I think that is right. I think you have to drown
:05:21. > :05:24.yourself in the book to the point at which you are hearing the voices so
:05:25. > :05:31.clearly in your own head. That is what takes you through it. Yeah, and
:05:32. > :05:39.I think umm, I think sometimes we have this idea that the reader reads
:05:40. > :05:44.books to escape pain and tragedy and the difficult. And I think that is
:05:45. > :05:51.where we confront them. That is where we get to experience it
:05:52. > :05:56.vicariously. That is where we... Because, there is more... Sometimes
:05:57. > :06:05.we have this idea of if we enjoyed a book it means we had fun. Yeah,
:06:06. > :06:08.yeah, yeah, I think so. I have read books I didn't enjoy three times.
:06:09. > :06:14.That's good back to the context of this book. A very important year in
:06:15. > :06:21.the history of Jamaica, 1976. -- Let's. -- go back. I don't think the
:06:22. > :06:26.audience might realise how subversive a figure Bob Marley was
:06:27. > :06:37.at that time. His assassination is the crux of this book. He was. It
:06:38. > :06:43.was a big deal. Jamaica is, was, and still is, a pretty conservative
:06:44. > :06:49.society. We are very much sold on the idea of this kind of colonial
:06:50. > :06:55.education. This very British colonial education which has nothing
:06:56. > :07:05.in common with Jamaican education. We are sold on this idea of a rasta
:07:06. > :07:10.far in itself, something to disruptive and polarising. --
:07:11. > :07:14.rastafarian. Rastafarians went through serious persecution in the
:07:15. > :07:20.60s and 70s. For the most famous Jamaican, the one that could make
:07:21. > :07:28.the voice of struggle to be this Rastafarian was just not cool. Umm,
:07:29. > :07:31.he was... He was also not much of an example for the emerging black
:07:32. > :07:38.rights movement because he was half white. People forget that
:07:39. > :07:43.Rastafarianism is not a racial movement, even though it is back to
:07:44. > :07:48.Africa, it is not a racial movement. He also... In my grandmother's house
:07:49. > :07:51.there were pictures of the head of the political party. There were no
:07:52. > :07:58.pictures of us. LAUGHTER. Right, OK. That is the
:07:59. > :08:06.kind of cult of personality we have going on. For a singer to come along
:08:07. > :08:10.and say, believe in yourself, to say, holds these people accountable,
:08:11. > :08:16.it was subversive. He was polarising on so many levels. When you came to
:08:17. > :08:21.write about it, you barely use his name, he is referred to throughout
:08:22. > :08:29.the book as the Singer. Was that to give him an epic quality? It was.
:08:30. > :08:39.Even... Finally enough, that is my experience of Miley. -- funnily.
:08:40. > :08:44.Totally symbolic. -- Bob Marley. I have never seen him in person. To
:08:45. > :08:50.me, he was a series of news reports. Everything from his Vibration album
:08:51. > :08:58.making number eight in the charts to the very tragic story of his
:08:59. > :09:01.cancer... Bob Marley in cancer, Bob Marley off to Germany, they expect
:09:02. > :09:11.good things, Bob Marley returning home. That is my experience, his
:09:12. > :09:16.music, the few times he came on TV, news reports. He was already kind of
:09:17. > :09:22.symbolic. Most of these characters, quite a few of these characters, are
:09:23. > :09:34.based on people. Not based on one. Most Jamaicans think that Jim Brown
:09:35. > :09:40.was an influence, and there are many parallels, but he did not have the
:09:41. > :09:46.same view of homosexuals as in the book. But, no, the thing about him
:09:47. > :10:00.is that he is a super violent man who has killed many people. I would
:10:01. > :10:06.so get coffee with you. You have this book written about a difficult
:10:07. > :10:13.time in Jamaica's past, written in patois, a lot of violence and sex,
:10:14. > :10:19.how was it received? To get culture to be the language of art, we still
:10:20. > :10:25.have an inferiority complex. In my second novel, my friend confronted
:10:26. > :10:34.me saying, aren't you any less teacher, why are you writing in this
:10:35. > :10:39.voice? -- an English. I had a friend that wanted me to write a book in
:10:40. > :10:44.Jane Austin English, we aren't friends any more. The idea that I
:10:45. > :10:49.speak proper and the whole notion of proper English, what that is, that
:10:50. > :10:56.is something that I think hovers over Jamaican speech quite a bit. I
:10:57. > :11:05.mean, our proper English is a very dead form of English. You know? When
:11:06. > :11:10.I listen to it I still hear Rime of the Ancient Mariner and so on.
:11:11. > :11:21.Because language can include changes. It can fool you. From the
:11:22. > :11:27.way I speak, most Jamaicans think I Emmrich. Your skin is black but you
:11:28. > :11:31.are mostly uptown. -- I am rich. No, it is because I watched so much
:11:32. > :11:39.Sesame Street. LAUGHTER. But, yeah, umm, using
:11:40. > :11:44.language can include and exclude, the above and below, and people are
:11:45. > :11:49.obsessed with how people speak. We grew up in a country with a weird
:11:50. > :11:56.silence were we talk in great detail about what is going on in Jamaica,
:11:57. > :12:00.that is, if it is in the living room, or on the veranda, but we
:12:01. > :12:09.don't talk anywhere where that voice will carry. So, the idea that this
:12:10. > :12:15.book was having a discussion everybody has had, there is nothing
:12:16. > :12:20.new in this book to any Jamaican, that that discussion was put right
:12:21. > :12:37.and centre, it was very inspiring to them. And, I think, also, it was a
:12:38. > :12:41.most 40 years ago. -- almost. Maybe that is the wrong thing to say. They
:12:42. > :12:49.are far better at confronting it than before. The response has been
:12:50. > :12:53.inspiring and great. Jamaicans love winners, you know. It doesn't matter
:12:54. > :12:57.if they don't want a Man Booker Prize is, it is a prized.
:12:58. > :13:06.LAUGHTER. What did your parents think about it? I remember you said
:13:07. > :13:13.don't read Chapter four. It is a running joke I have with my mother.
:13:14. > :13:21.Each acknowledge and is an ability for her to read the book. --
:13:22. > :13:28.acknowledgement. Don't think she can read explicit gay sex. I think she
:13:29. > :13:37.has read it. But she always says, you young people do what you want.
:13:38. > :13:46.Does ... Did you get that love of language from your father? I have a
:13:47. > :13:51.love of books that he has. He loves Wordsworth and Coleridge. Now I do.
:13:52. > :13:55.Eventually I got cold done Shakespeare because of that. Does
:13:56. > :14:02.that contrast your school? -- got hooked. You talk about a world that
:14:03. > :14:08.doesn't even exist any more. I can never figure out if I will be the
:14:09. > :14:18.last of the old or the first of the new. My generation... We are still,
:14:19. > :14:22.you know, given British history, alongside Jamaican. Or the Jamaican
:14:23. > :14:31.history is in the context of slavery. Colonialism. But, again,
:14:32. > :14:40.that is where I developed my sensibility and where I first read
:14:41. > :14:47.Tom Jones. It is where I read Dickens, Great Expectation, twice.
:14:48. > :14:54.Huckleberry Finns. That kind of literary education is irreplaceable.
:14:55. > :15:09.The homophobia that you experience then, did you feel that continued
:15:10. > :15:12.into your adult life? My adult life was different. I think to be sort of
:15:13. > :15:15.persecuted for being gay, I would have to have been gay back then and
:15:16. > :15:17.back then I was sort of... I did that thing that all Jamaican men do,
:15:18. > :15:22.we just become really devout Christians. People say, I notice you
:15:23. > :15:32.haven't found a wife. I am all in fire for Jesus. That is the word.
:15:33. > :15:36.And also, that religious sense does seem to inform your writing. When
:15:37. > :15:41.you came to your first novel, it is very much a book about good and evil
:15:42. > :15:49.and you are never quite sure who is good and who is evil in John Crow's
:15:50. > :15:52.Devil. Yes, there are lines in that book that only someone who comes out
:15:53. > :15:59.of church would know. It is like, when people say things like, when
:16:00. > :16:07.someone looks at me, I am going through problems but no weapon
:16:08. > :16:11.formed against me shall prosper. So a lot of it is... John Crow's Devil
:16:12. > :16:17.was definitely, I mean, I wrote it when I was still in church. But that
:16:18. > :16:22.still shaped a lot of the worldview of that novel, and that shaped a lot
:16:23. > :16:27.of my worldview at the time, because when I was in church I wasn't faking
:16:28. > :16:29.it. I actually genuinely believed that in church I wasn't faking it. I
:16:30. > :16:33.actually genuinely believed. My best friend as a preacher in Texas, so
:16:34. > :16:41.you can tell the fund discussions we have. And you know, I don't demonise
:16:42. > :16:46.that time, poor choice of words. You know, I don't knock that time at
:16:47. > :16:49.all. I'm glad I'm no longer in it. Not for the book I really was
:16:50. > :16:57.interested in the demagoguery of old-time church in Jamaica. The
:16:58. > :17:02.hypocrisy, the idea that the pastor is the religious authority which is
:17:03. > :17:07.still the case in quite a few Jamaican villagers. Still the case?
:17:08. > :17:10.Oh yes. There was a case about a year after my book came out where
:17:11. > :17:14.this deke and raped this girl and the police found out about it
:17:15. > :17:20.because he filmed it, and the preacher was horrified. Not because
:17:21. > :17:28.of the crime, she was horrified because people dead challenge his
:17:29. > :17:31.authority, because he had already been punished and spoken to the Lord
:17:32. > :17:36.and how dare you challenge my authority? And that is still there.
:17:37. > :17:40.In Jamaica we talk about creatures sitting on a whole heap of things.
:17:41. > :17:44.All the secrets of the neighbourhood he knows. He is the person you
:17:45. > :17:48.confessed to. I don't necessarily look at it as a bad thing, because
:17:49. > :17:52.for a lot of these neighbourhoods church is the only good they have,
:17:53. > :17:55.it is the only thing holding them together, it is the only place they
:17:56. > :17:59.are getting social services, it is the only place they are getting
:18:00. > :18:02.counselling. So at its best church can be a wonderful thing in these
:18:03. > :18:07.neighbourhoods. But they are also can be this really sort of what kind
:18:08. > :18:12.of authority. -- they can also be. That is what I really wanted to
:18:13. > :18:16.attack in that book. And a very interesting structure in the first
:18:17. > :18:20.book as well. I think this is where, you mention Greek tragedy earlier
:18:21. > :18:25.but you draw on the idea of a chorus, don't you? Yes, I am very
:18:26. > :18:31.much inspired by great tragedy. By this Greek and Roman, Greek tragedy
:18:32. > :18:37.and Roman tragedy and so on. The idea of the chorus, the idea of...
:18:38. > :18:44.And I think I had a chorus in the first novel. But also the idea of
:18:45. > :18:48.the offstage event, or, you know, writing people who have really,
:18:49. > :18:52.really horrendous flaws but you have to recognise their humanity in a way
:18:53. > :18:57.which I think the ancient Greeks got better than anybody. But yes, for
:18:58. > :19:00.the first novel, the idea of this chorus, that even sometimes
:19:01. > :19:04.contradict the author, is something that I find really, really
:19:05. > :19:12.interesting. I reread Greek plays before I right every book. I am
:19:13. > :19:17.rereading one right now. Because again, I just think the ancient
:19:18. > :19:25.Greeks understood, are the only people to fully get human nature.
:19:26. > :19:30.And in your second book, The Book of Night Women, which is about slavery,
:19:31. > :19:34.a wonderful book, but in the book, you spell out in horrible, sickening
:19:35. > :19:39.detail the kind of brutality that was involved in the slave 's State.
:19:40. > :19:43.The funny thing about the book is that I pulled back, I actually held
:19:44. > :19:49.back. People don't realise how horrendous livery was. I actually
:19:50. > :19:54.held back with that look. Because I think, even if the extreme violence
:19:55. > :19:57.is totally true, I think sometimes we fall into this sort of
:19:58. > :20:03.pornography of violence, and the end result is that people get numb. And
:20:04. > :20:08.I didn't want... And I have said this before, I think violence should
:20:09. > :20:13.be violent, but I think a violent act in a novel shouldn't pretty much
:20:14. > :20:20.have the same impact as violence in real life. Even though, the funny
:20:21. > :20:23.thing about the stories I write, they get... They get a lot of
:20:24. > :20:28.attention for violence, and actually not that violent. It's just that I
:20:29. > :20:34.would rather have four scenes that really resonate then say 40 that
:20:35. > :20:37.makes you go numb. It is not necessarily that I load it with
:20:38. > :20:41.violence, it is that the violent scenes really leave a mark. And then
:20:42. > :20:44.they always say, you know, reading about the life of the slave is
:20:45. > :20:52.probably a little bit better than being a slave. Yes, just... It is
:20:53. > :21:00.probably a little bit better than being one. So I think we can read a
:21:01. > :21:08.little bit. Yes, no, certainly. And people have made comparisons between
:21:09. > :21:14.your books and films and... Is there filmic influence at all? There is a
:21:15. > :21:19.huge filmic influence. I was inspired -- I'm as inspired by film
:21:20. > :21:25.as I am by books, with Brief History, certainly Robert Altmann
:21:26. > :21:37.and Cuaron are hugely important to me. As I said before. Even with
:21:38. > :21:40.Cuaron, a lot of the imagery comes from cinema. There were some
:21:41. > :21:44.important things I got from cinema. One was to recognise the sort of
:21:45. > :21:49.depth and poise in an actual scene. I think is a writer sometimes you
:21:50. > :21:54.are quick to go the metaphor or simile or Aleutian. And I say this
:21:55. > :22:05.to my students, a sunset does not need your help -- allusion. It's
:22:06. > :22:09.pretty spectacular on its own, just tell us the dam sunset. But
:22:10. > :22:14.recognising that there is power in the actual scene around you, as
:22:15. > :22:18.opposed to trying to lay it, was very important -- damn. Particularly
:22:19. > :22:22.for the two looks which were told by people who were not writers.
:22:23. > :22:26.Nobody... I mean, I think I have tried to cheat a little bit and have
:22:27. > :22:29.one or two characters who were literary, but by and large these are
:22:30. > :22:33.not people who will compare anything to a summer's day. So I had to find
:22:34. > :22:43.resonance somewhere else. And that is one of the things I think cinema
:22:44. > :22:46.does really, really well. Marlon James, many thanks indeed for
:22:47. > :22:58.speaking with us. Thanks for having me.
:22:59. > :23:02.Some reasonably decent weekend weather for most parts