0:00:15 > 0:00:19In 1654, the Dutch artist, Carel Fabritius,
0:00:19 > 0:00:22painted what would become one of his most important works
0:00:22 > 0:00:26The Goldfinch, measuring just 13 inches by 9 inches,
0:00:26 > 0:00:31captured the tiny, ordinary bird, tethered by a delicate metal chain.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35The same year, the 32-year-old Fabritius was killed
0:00:35 > 0:00:39when a gunpowder magazine exploded in the nearby Dutch town of Delft.
0:00:39 > 0:00:44It obliterated his studio and all but a handful of a paintings.
0:00:44 > 0:00:48This month, the hugely anticipated third novel by Donna Tartt
0:00:48 > 0:00:52is published. It is called The Goldfinch.
0:00:57 > 0:01:01Donna Tartt's first novel, The Secret History, was a sensation
0:01:01 > 0:01:03when it was published in 1992
0:01:03 > 0:01:07and has since been translated into 29 languages.
0:01:07 > 0:01:10It catapulted her to fame and along with her friend,
0:01:10 > 0:01:15Bret Easton Ellis, she led the East Coast literary brat pack.
0:01:15 > 0:01:18But her second novel wasn't forthcoming,
0:01:18 > 0:01:21and she garnered a reputation as a perfectionist
0:01:21 > 0:01:24and a writer who likes to take her time.
0:01:26 > 0:01:29It was a decade before The Little Friend,
0:01:29 > 0:01:31set in her native South was published,
0:01:31 > 0:01:33and that's when we first met.
0:01:33 > 0:01:37'I found her engaging, thoughtful and really quite serious.
0:01:37 > 0:01:41'Donna Tartt is famously private, and after The Little Friend,
0:01:41 > 0:01:44'she disappeared from public view once again,
0:01:44 > 0:01:47'so when her publisher asked if I would like to interview her
0:01:47 > 0:01:50'about her equally long-awaited third novel,
0:01:50 > 0:01:51'there was just one answer.
0:01:51 > 0:01:55'More than ten years on, I returned to see her in New York
0:01:55 > 0:01:58'and this time I found a woman more at ease with herself,
0:01:58 > 0:02:01'and surprisingly good fun!'
0:02:01 > 0:02:03A new novel from Donna Tartt.
0:02:03 > 0:02:05We met 11 years ago. We did.
0:02:05 > 0:02:10And then, you already thought you would start on a novel.
0:02:10 > 0:02:12Is it this one? It is this one
0:02:12 > 0:02:16Although I had started this novel years ago,
0:02:16 > 0:02:19I had started the very beginnings of it, before I even began
0:02:19 > 0:02:24The Little Friend, during the last days of work on The Secret History.
0:02:24 > 0:02:27I spent a lot of time in Amsterdam
0:02:27 > 0:02:30after The Secret History was published
0:02:30 > 0:02:33and it was a city that I came to really love and,
0:02:33 > 0:02:37to have... it stayed in my imagination,
0:02:37 > 0:02:39I would go to sleep and I would find myself in Amsterdam,
0:02:39 > 0:02:44once or twice a week. It was a mood before it was anything else
0:02:44 > 0:02:49and so, only now, 20 years on,
0:02:49 > 0:02:52I've been specifically working on this book for 11 years,
0:02:52 > 0:02:55but, actually, it's more like 2 , that the very beginnings
0:02:55 > 0:02:58of this book have been around for a long time.
0:02:58 > 0:03:02But then what happens is, that, 9/11 happens. Yes.
0:03:02 > 0:03:06And the book takes a different focus. It did.
0:03:06 > 0:03:10The genesis of it was the destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan,
0:03:10 > 0:03:13which was just a horrific event before 9/11,
0:03:13 > 0:03:18it was a terrible pre-shock, as one will have a pre-shock
0:03:18 > 0:03:23before an earthquake, it was the pre-trembling of the terrible..
0:03:23 > 0:03:29disaster that was to come and that was what I was writing about.
0:03:29 > 0:03:31I was haunted by that.
0:03:31 > 0:03:37So much has been lost in human history due to sheer carelessness.
0:03:37 > 0:03:43The idea of artwork being destroyed...
0:03:43 > 0:03:49on purpose was horrific to me that that was an INTENTIONAL act.
0:03:49 > 0:03:52Set in present-day America, The Goldfinch
0:03:52 > 0:03:55follows 13-year-old New Yorker Theo Decker,
0:03:55 > 0:03:57as he tries to navigate through life
0:03:57 > 0:04:01after surviving an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04In the immediate aftermath and surrounded by the debris
0:04:04 > 0:04:08of the blast, a dying man thrusts a ring
0:04:08 > 0:04:12and the canvas of The Goldfinch into Theo's hand.
0:04:12 > 0:04:16Here we are, in this wonderful cathedral, in a way,
0:04:16 > 0:04:20where the catastrophic start of the book happens.
0:04:20 > 0:04:24Theo Decker is with his mother in the Met
0:04:24 > 0:04:28and there's a massive explosion Runs in out of the rain
0:04:28 > 0:04:31and only happens to be here. And this of course is the,
0:04:31 > 0:04:34the kind of, you know, the kind of massive repository of cultures
0:04:34 > 0:04:37of all ages and antiquity. It is.
0:04:37 > 0:04:43And so explain what happens in here, on that day.
0:04:43 > 0:04:45In a way, it's...
0:04:45 > 0:04:49unimportant what happens. I don't want to...
0:04:52 > 0:04:57All he knows is, there's an explosion and his mother is killed. The..
0:04:57 > 0:05:02But he survives. He survives and wishes he hadn't.
0:05:02 > 0:05:06In a way, when I think about this novel in its totality,
0:05:06 > 0:05:09I think that Theo has had post-traumatic stress
0:05:09 > 0:05:12throughout the whole novel. I think so.
0:05:12 > 0:05:15The whole novel, he's haunted,
0:05:15 > 0:05:17he's looking for his mother,
0:05:17 > 0:05:19he's trying to find his mother in other things.
0:05:19 > 0:05:23And he does find her in some very unexpected things
0:05:23 > 0:05:26It's a book about displacement and about obsession,
0:05:26 > 0:05:32and about trying to recapture what can never be recaptured.
0:05:32 > 0:05:34About trying to find what is lost.
0:05:34 > 0:05:40But what he has is this wonderful relationship with his mother
0:05:40 > 0:05:43which has been forged in a very intense way,
0:05:43 > 0:05:46and she has provided him with a moral universe
0:05:46 > 0:05:48that serves him well, does it not, throughout the book?
0:05:48 > 0:05:51It does, but he's also provided
0:05:51 > 0:05:54by a different moral universe by his father.
0:05:54 > 0:05:57We don't really get to choose our parents
0:05:57 > 0:06:00and we don't really get to choose the parent that we're like
0:06:00 > 0:06:03and we're not always like the parent that we love the most.
0:06:03 > 0:06:09So, his father enters into his moral universe as well
0:06:09 > 0:06:13and his father is a gambler and a drunk.
0:06:13 > 0:06:18And has abandoned him, and he comes back into the book
0:06:18 > 0:06:21in some fairly unexpected and some expected ways as well
0:06:21 > 0:06:24"Things would have turned out better if she had lived.
0:06:24 > 0:06:27"As it was, she died when I was a kid, and though everything
0:06:27 > 0:06:31"that's happened to me since then is thoroughly my own fault,
0:06:31 > 0:06:35"still, when I lost her, I lost sight of any landmark that might have
0:06:35 > 0:06:40"led me some place happier to some more populated or congenial life.
0:06:40 > 0:06:44" 'Her death', the dividing mark, before and after.
0:06:44 > 0:06:48"And though it's a bleak thing to admit all these years later
0:06:48 > 0:06:50"still I've never met anyone who made me,
0:06:50 > 0:06:52"who made me feel loved the way that she did "
0:06:52 > 0:06:58The Goldfinch of the title, where did you first see this painting
0:06:58 > 0:07:03I first saw the painting as a copy in Christie's Amsterdam.
0:07:03 > 0:07:09And I knew the painting from reproductions but it is
0:07:09 > 0:07:13actually possible to love a painting very much through a reproduction.
0:07:13 > 0:07:17I grew up in Mississippi, and I was constantly
0:07:17 > 0:07:19looking at my grandmother's art books,
0:07:19 > 0:07:21my grandmother was an art teacher,
0:07:21 > 0:07:25and she actually painted some very good copies of things herself,
0:07:25 > 0:07:28she was a good copyist, and I knew paintings through copies
0:07:28 > 0:07:36and it was a great experience for me when I was, 18, 19-years-old and, it was like the amazing moment
0:07:36 > 0:07:39in the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy, she's been in Kansas,
0:07:39 > 0:07:44all greyness, and she opens the door, and everything's in colour.
0:07:44 > 0:07:49The wonderful experience of, you don't realise how much you're losing
0:07:49 > 0:07:52by only seeing a reproduction, and you can love
0:07:52 > 0:07:54a painting very much and very deeply through a reproduction, and
0:07:54 > 0:07:57I had loved, had gone through all my grandmother's art books
0:07:57 > 0:07:59all the art books in the library,
0:07:59 > 0:08:03and to see a painting myself in person, for the first time,
0:08:03 > 0:08:07great paintings like Van Gogh's where you see the texture of the paint,
0:08:07 > 0:08:10experience an aesthetic rapture that I think is unequalled.
0:08:10 > 0:08:13But in fact that leads me to something you say in the book,
0:08:13 > 0:08:16in fact which is that beauty in a sense is better than life
0:08:16 > 0:08:18Beauty is something that life necessarily can't give us,
0:08:18 > 0:08:20but a wonderful painting can.
0:08:20 > 0:08:23That's absolutely true, well, life can give it to us sometimes,
0:08:23 > 0:08:25but it doesn't give it to us all the time.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29So when you saw The Goldfinch, the real Goldfinch,
0:08:29 > 0:08:32for the first time, is that when you knew you wanted to put it in a book?
0:08:32 > 0:08:36I actually knew I wanted to put it in the book before I ever even saw
0:08:36 > 0:08:41the real painting, I knew that it was the one.
0:08:41 > 0:08:42And so, what was it?
0:08:42 > 0:08:46Because, in fact, you knew you wanted to put the painting
0:08:46 > 0:08:49in the book did you know, that the artist had died in a gunpowder. .?
0:08:49 > 0:08:52I didn't - again, this is wonderful.
0:08:52 > 0:08:55When all the cards start falling into place like that, you know
0:08:55 > 0:08:58that you've got your subject, you know you've got your book.
0:08:58 > 0:09:01When I found out the history of the painting, I thought,
0:09:01 > 0:09:03"My goodness, this is it, I had no idea.
0:09:03 > 0:09:06I thought, "God has just given this to me
0:09:06 > 0:09:07"it was just a gift."
0:09:07 > 0:09:10And it's a painting that Theo's mother adores.
0:09:10 > 0:09:14As a child would adore, it's a painting that a child would love.
0:09:14 > 0:09:17But it's also has so many meanings, death and resurrection.
0:09:17 > 0:09:19Was that almost serendipity,
0:09:19 > 0:09:22did these things come together or was that something that you
0:09:22 > 0:09:24were mindful of when you were writing?
0:09:24 > 0:09:31It's a very deep little painting, there's a lot there.
0:09:31 > 0:09:32Captivity and escape.
0:09:32 > 0:09:36The idea of bravery and brightness
0:09:36 > 0:09:42in really very terrible circumstances, and the chain is
0:09:42 > 0:09:48so delicate it's barely, barely there. At first you see the bird,
0:09:48 > 0:09:52you don't at all see that he can't get away.
0:09:52 > 0:09:57Is the Goldfinch, then, a kind of talisman for Theo, then?
0:09:57 > 0:09:58I think so.
0:09:58 > 0:10:01I think that, when he carries it around,
0:10:01 > 0:10:06he himself compares it to a holy article of protection.
0:10:06 > 0:10:10Even when it's wrapped up, even when he can't see it, he knows it's there, it gives
0:10:10 > 0:10:14an invisible sense of rightness and it reminds him of his mother.
0:10:14 > 0:10:17And it, in the same way, attaches him to life... It does
0:10:17 > 0:10:20..the same way the chain does. It does, it is his attachment to life,
0:10:20 > 0:10:22it is his attachment to beautiful things.
0:10:22 > 0:10:25He's living in not very beautiful circumstances.
0:10:25 > 0:10:27He's living in quite difficult circumstances,
0:10:27 > 0:10:31and it is the one, beautiful thing
0:10:31 > 0:10:33and the one reminder of beauty in his life for a long time.
0:10:33 > 0:10:37But what he does is he, he kind of hangs on, doesn't he
0:10:37 > 0:10:43he meets Boris, who's this kind of wild, Ukrainian, Russian,
0:10:43 > 0:10:44who's like the Artful Dodger.
0:10:44 > 0:10:48He is, and he is a bit like the Dodger yes,
0:10:48 > 0:10:55and Boris was great fun to write - charming, bad boy,
0:10:55 > 0:11:01um, very dissolute but very noble and grand, too, in his way.
0:11:01 > 0:11:06And you give him this extraordinary, roller coaster relationship...
0:11:06 > 0:11:12but, in fact, you realise that Boris is very protective towards Theo
0:11:12 > 0:11:16He is, Boris has had a much rougher life.
0:11:16 > 0:11:20Boris has lived on the street in Ukraine,
0:11:20 > 0:11:24his father is a terrible alcoholic
0:11:24 > 0:11:31and Boris is a shoplifter, has to shoplift to eat,
0:11:31 > 0:11:36he's used to taking care of himself and Theo's not and he helps Theo
0:11:36 > 0:11:40get along without parents, they're living in a world without parents.
0:11:40 > 0:11:44"Before Boris, I had borne my solitude stoically enough,
0:11:44 > 0:11:47"without realising quite how alone I was.
0:11:47 > 0:11:49"And I suppose if either of us
0:11:49 > 0:11:53"had lived in an even halfway normal household, with curfews
0:11:53 > 0:11:56"and chores and adult supervision, we wouldn't have become quite
0:11:56 > 0:12:00"so inseparable so fast, but almost from that day we were together
0:12:00 > 0:12:05"all the time, scrounging our meals and sharing what money we had.
0:12:05 > 0:12:08"In New York, I'd grown up around a lot of worldly kids.
0:12:08 > 0:12:11"Kids who'd lived abroad and spoke three or four languages,
0:12:11 > 0:12:14"who did summer programmes at Heidelberg
0:12:14 > 0:12:16"and spent their holidays in places like Rio or Innsbruck or
0:12:16 > 0:12:22"Cap d'Antibes but Boris, like an old sea captain, put them all to shame.
0:12:22 > 0:12:25"He had ridden a camel.
0:12:25 > 0:12:28"He'd eaten witchetty grubs, played cricket, caught malaria
0:12:28 > 0:12:33"lived on the street in Ukraine but for two weeks only.
0:12:33 > 0:12:35"Set off a stick of dynamite by himself,
0:12:35 > 0:12:39"swum in Australian rivers infested with crocodiles.
0:12:39 > 0:12:41"He had read Chekov in Russian
0:12:41 > 0:12:44"and authors I'd never heard of in Ukrainian and Polish.
0:12:44 > 0:12:47"He'd endured mid-winter darkness in Russia where the temperature
0:12:47 > 0:12:50"dropped to 40 below.
0:12:50 > 0:12:52"Endless blizzards. Snow and black ice.
0:12:52 > 0:12:57"The only cheer the green neon palm tree that burned 24 hours a day
0:12:57 > 0:13:01"outside the provincial bar where his father liked to drink."
0:13:01 > 0:13:03'While Donna grew up in Mississippi,
0:13:03 > 0:13:06'which she drew on for The Little Friend,
0:13:06 > 0:13:09'she now divides her time between Virginia and New York,
0:13:09 > 0:13:12'where much of The Goldfinch is set.'
0:13:12 > 0:13:14Tell me about this room.
0:13:14 > 0:13:20I wrote a good bit of the book in here, I stayed here for
0:13:20 > 0:13:26two or three months in 2010. They let me bring my dog here
0:13:26 > 0:13:32and it's a charming old room with a desk and lots of life on the street
0:13:32 > 0:13:36outside and...lay on the couch
0:13:36 > 0:13:40and what I was reading here was Proust's
0:13:40 > 0:13:43letters to his mother, which I had bought in the flea market
0:13:43 > 0:13:47this is a great couch to read Proust's letters to his mother on.
0:13:47 > 0:13:52You can write here, where do you like to write? Can you write anywhere?
0:13:52 > 0:13:55I can write anywhere. I can write
0:13:55 > 0:14:03curled up in a corner in a spare armchair in somebody's house,
0:14:03 > 0:14:09I write on the Madison Avenue bus, I write any...all over the place.
0:14:09 > 0:14:12Always have been able to. In the bathtub.
0:14:12 > 0:14:14I can write anywhere.
0:14:14 > 0:14:17In the library? I can write in the library.
0:14:17 > 0:14:22I wrote a lot of Goldfinch in the New York Public Library
0:14:22 > 0:14:26in the Allen room of the New York Public Library, which was wonderful.
0:14:26 > 0:14:29And is that because there's reference books? What makes
0:14:29 > 0:14:32the public library so good to work in? I know a lot of writers
0:14:32 > 0:14:36would be, I imagine horrified to be in a kind of public space.
0:14:36 > 0:14:40It's...if you need a character at all, all you have to do
0:14:40 > 0:14:45is look up, people walking back and forth, and it's
0:14:45 > 0:14:48like being an artist sketching at a sidewalk cafe.
0:14:48 > 0:14:51The people, walk-on characters everybody you need is
0:14:51 > 0:14:57right there, and, you know, of course, books
0:14:57 > 0:15:03This was a book for which I had to read a lot and some
0:15:03 > 0:15:08fairly difficult-to-find books as well so the New York Public Library
0:15:08 > 0:15:11was a great resource while I writing this book.
0:15:11 > 0:15:14But do you have a routine, if you're at home for example,
0:15:14 > 0:15:17if you're in the countryside, do you have a routine, do you write every day?
0:15:17 > 0:15:21I do write every day, unless, you know, things do happen,
0:15:21 > 0:15:27you know, the well will go out or you'll have a dentist appointment.
0:15:27 > 0:15:30Every now and then, life will intervene,
0:15:30 > 0:15:34but I write every day and, even if I have guests,
0:15:34 > 0:15:41I will slip away to my little room where I work, and always, yes.
0:15:41 > 0:15:43You're an inveterate note-taker as well, then?
0:15:43 > 0:15:46I do, I carry a notebook with me wherever I go,
0:15:46 > 0:15:49because if I don't write it down when I think of it,
0:15:49 > 0:15:54I'll never think of it again. And most of my notes are...
0:15:54 > 0:15:57Joan Didion uses the phrase, "Bits of the mind's string too short to use."
0:15:57 > 0:16:02And so many of my notes are just bits and bobs
0:16:02 > 0:16:06and little magpie gleanings and glintings and
0:16:06 > 0:16:10they won't really ever turn up in any piece of finished work,
0:16:10 > 0:16:14but my notes on Amsterdam, the notes that I took,
0:16:14 > 0:16:1721 years ago now, they did finally end up in a novel
0:16:17 > 0:16:22because, when I was in Amsterdam, I loved it and sat at the window
0:16:22 > 0:16:26of my hotel and took notes and I was writing about it the whole time
0:16:26 > 0:16:29even though I had no story to go with it.
0:16:29 > 0:16:32And what about at night, I mean, are you a night writer
0:16:32 > 0:16:35Oh, yeah, I do, a "night writer", I like that.
0:16:35 > 0:16:37Yeah, I do.
0:16:37 > 0:16:40Well, it depends. If I've had a hard day, I'll quit,
0:16:40 > 0:16:43I'll knock off, I'll go do something else,
0:16:43 > 0:16:47but if I'm on a run, if I'm doing well, I'm like a gambler
0:16:47 > 0:16:50I don't want to get up from the table. When you're hot,
0:16:50 > 0:16:55you're hot, you need to stay there, I will stay until I'm played out.
0:16:55 > 0:16:58You have written, then, if you're saying you write every day...
0:16:58 > 0:17:01I do. ..then you've more or less written solidly
0:17:01 > 0:17:04for the past 21 years.
0:17:04 > 0:17:08I have written solidly, yes, but I've written solidly in scraps.
0:17:08 > 0:17:12I mean, not every day do I sit down and write a tremendous
0:17:12 > 0:17:17block of finished prose, but I'm always fiddling around
0:17:17 > 0:17:20and writing little bits and bobs of things, and some days when I'm out
0:17:20 > 0:17:25and about and with my notebook in a pocket, it is only bits and bobs.
0:17:25 > 0:17:28When I say that I can write on the Madison Avenue bus,
0:17:28 > 0:17:31I don't mean I'm writing pages of finished prose on the
0:17:31 > 0:17:35Madison Avenue bus, but things will occur to me and I'll jot them down.
0:17:35 > 0:17:41And very often they're the germs of things that will become pages of prose. That's writing, too.
0:17:41 > 0:17:43Do you ever think you've made too many sacrifices
0:17:43 > 0:17:46for all these books? It's not a sacrifice.
0:17:46 > 0:17:50It would be more a sacrifice
0:17:50 > 0:17:54if I felt I had to be, I don't know, I mean, going to an office instead
0:17:54 > 0:17:58of doing this, or doing something else, that would be the sacrifice.
0:17:58 > 0:18:02I mean, I feel very lucky that I m able to devote this amount of time
0:18:02 > 0:18:07to doing what I do, because it's what I think about all the time I'm obsessed.
0:18:07 > 0:18:09Are you really, though? You seem quite balanced to me.
0:18:10 > 0:18:14Well, I mean, you're encountering me when I've
0:18:14 > 0:18:17just finished a book, not when I m the middle of one. Maybe I wouldn't
0:18:17 > 0:18:20seem quite so balanced if you'd seen me while I was working.
0:18:20 > 0:18:23In the same way that you actually hit great streaks,
0:18:23 > 0:18:26have you hit bad streaks of thinking,
0:18:26 > 0:18:30"The last 50 pages, I have to strike"?
0:18:30 > 0:18:32Absolutely, absolutely.
0:18:32 > 0:18:37There was a point in this book where I realised I'd taken
0:18:37 > 0:18:40a bad turn and it was just about eight months of work
0:18:40 > 0:18:44And I realised, you know, but it's OK because sometimes
0:18:44 > 0:18:50you have to go through that, before you can get to...you're
0:18:50 > 0:18:55throwing off impurities in a way, you are, you have to run, you have
0:18:55 > 0:18:59to play out the hand of cards, you have to really get to
0:18:59 > 0:19:06where you need to go. Sometimes you must run through the other options.
0:19:06 > 0:19:08There was no way that I could have
0:19:08 > 0:19:11gotten to that point had I not spent those eight months
0:19:11 > 0:19:14They're invisible, they're not in the book, but I needed to
0:19:14 > 0:19:18spend them in order to get to where I was, yeah.
0:19:18 > 0:19:21And does that mean that that way you keep your sense of equilibrium
0:19:21 > 0:19:23because you now that it's not in vain?
0:19:23 > 0:19:28It's not in vain, because it's. . the work is there, it shows,
0:19:28 > 0:19:31even if it's not... it's part of an invisible
0:19:31 > 0:19:33underpinning of the work. I mean, Hemmingway
0:19:33 > 0:19:41used the metaphor, and it's very correct, of an iceberg.
0:19:41 > 0:19:44With writing, sometimes you'll only see the tip.
0:19:44 > 0:19:47Everything else will be cut,
0:19:47 > 0:19:50but there's a sense of weight underneath the water.
0:19:50 > 0:19:52The real world is there, even though it's not
0:19:52 > 0:19:59going to be in there verbatim, what you've done - no, it's not in vain.
0:19:59 > 0:20:02Funnily enough, you were talking about Hemmingway, but there's
0:20:02 > 0:20:05a lot of literary illusion and there was in The Little Friend as well.
0:20:05 > 0:20:08Here you've got Saint-Exupery and it's wonderful, can I just. .
0:20:08 > 0:20:12Wind, Sand And Stars, which is the title of one section...
0:20:12 > 0:20:16"You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you
0:20:16 > 0:20:18"for ever by ordeals endured together."
0:20:18 > 0:20:21That is Boris, and Theo, isn't it?
0:20:21 > 0:20:23You couldn't buy that kind of friendship.
0:20:23 > 0:20:26No, you can't, it's a gift when it comes.
0:20:26 > 0:20:30"But still I was lonely. It was Boris I missed.
0:20:30 > 0:20:33"The whole impulsive mess of him.
0:20:33 > 0:20:37"Gloomy, reckless, hot-tempered appallingly thoughtless.
0:20:37 > 0:20:40"Boris, pale and pasty, with his shoplifted apples
0:20:40 > 0:20:43"and his Russian-language novels, gnawed-down fingernails
0:20:43 > 0:20:45"and shoelaces dragging in the dust.
0:20:45 > 0:20:48"Boris, budding alcoholic.
0:20:48 > 0:20:52"Fluent curser in four languages, who snatched food from my plate
0:20:52 > 0:20:55"when he felt like it, and nodded off drunk on the floor,
0:20:55 > 0:20:57"face red like he'd been slapped "
0:20:57 > 0:21:00The person that we haven't talked about who I think is one
0:21:00 > 0:21:05of the most vivid characters in the book is Hobie. Who is this figure
0:21:05 > 0:21:10that when Theo gets the ring from the elderly man in the Met
0:21:10 > 0:21:15after the explosion and takes it, this is this, like a secret,
0:21:15 > 0:21:18a spell that he's going to be able to cast over the rest of his life.
0:21:18 > 0:21:20Because of this ring, he meets Hobie.
0:21:20 > 0:21:23Now, tell me about the character of Hobie.
0:21:23 > 0:21:32Hobie was actually one of the harder characters in the book to write
0:21:32 > 0:21:36because he...
0:21:36 > 0:21:38he's quiet.
0:21:38 > 0:21:41He's sort of absent-minded, a little bit muddle-headed,
0:21:41 > 0:21:44but he's a good character, but he's a tiny bit...
0:21:47 > 0:21:49He's good, he's neglectful.
0:21:49 > 0:21:55He's good, but flawed in some ways. He's always sort of quietly
0:21:55 > 0:22:01working away in his workshop, but he is sort of a quiet anchor
0:22:01 > 0:22:06which is actually an interesting dilemma for a writer.
0:22:06 > 0:22:12You can't have a novel populated with all brilliant talkers,
0:22:12 > 0:22:17some people are quiet and strong and he is that,
0:22:17 > 0:22:21he is quiet and strong and he's a workman,
0:22:21 > 0:22:24he's broken through a brick allure - that's how he describes himself
0:22:24 > 0:22:28He's downstairs, he's not the businessman of the operation,
0:22:28 > 0:22:32he's downstairs restoring and preparing
0:22:32 > 0:22:40and polishing, but he is sort of Theo's anchor in a way and Theo
0:22:40 > 0:22:45ends up being partner in the shop, he ends up being Hobie's partner.
0:22:45 > 0:22:49So you have furniture restoration, you have prodigious drug use,
0:22:49 > 0:22:51you have the criminal underworld,
0:22:51 > 0:22:57you have detailed journeys from Las Vegas to New York.
0:22:57 > 0:23:02Is this the meticulous research of the finger on the button
0:23:02 > 0:23:05of the computer, or are you out there?
0:23:05 > 0:23:08Um... A bit both.
0:23:08 > 0:23:11I went to auctions at Christie's, but...
0:23:12 > 0:23:16Most of what I do is...
0:23:17 > 0:23:22The research is the fun part, that I don't consider work at all.
0:23:22 > 0:23:26I mean, the work doesn't really start until I have notebook out
0:23:26 > 0:23:29and, you know, getting it down on paper.
0:23:29 > 0:23:32I think it happens with all my books that I write about things
0:23:32 > 0:23:34that I'm interested in, I actually am interested
0:23:34 > 0:23:38in American furniture, I'm interested in Dutch painting
0:23:38 > 0:23:41and so, it didn't really seem like research...
0:23:41 > 0:23:45So, The Secret History, which is very much part of the whole
0:23:45 > 0:23:49kind of idea of Bennington where you went, and then, The Little Friend,
0:23:49 > 0:23:52which was set more in the South and where you were raised.
0:23:52 > 0:23:55And then, this book is very New York.
0:23:55 > 0:23:59Yes, I've lived in New York though on and off, I came to New York
0:23:59 > 0:24:04I think, when I was 24 years old, for the first time to live,
0:24:04 > 0:24:06it was after college,
0:24:06 > 0:24:10and I've been in and out of the city ever since then.
0:24:10 > 0:24:12It's sort of strange for me to think,
0:24:12 > 0:24:15but I've lived in New York longer than almost anywhere else
0:24:15 > 0:24:20I've ever lived in my life. I have real ties to New York and I
0:24:20 > 0:24:24feel at home here, now, this is my... Your real home. It really is, yes.
0:24:24 > 0:24:27Did you feel, in a sense, because there is this
0:24:27 > 0:24:30gap between the books, did you feel a huge weight coming on you?
0:24:30 > 0:24:34I've never known it to be any other way, though.
0:24:34 > 0:24:39My books have all taken a decade to write, and, in a way, it was. .
0:24:39 > 0:24:45I mean, I had a safety net. I didn't with Secret History.
0:24:45 > 0:24:53And I felt free to write what I wanted to write with Little Friend.
0:24:53 > 0:24:56Sometimes, you're not trying to reach the broadest possible audience
0:24:56 > 0:25:00Your job is really only to do the work and then
0:25:00 > 0:25:03leave it to do its thing and then start something else.
0:25:03 > 0:25:08So what do you think the role of a good literary novel is,
0:25:08 > 0:25:10what do you think the role of a book is?
0:25:10 > 0:25:13Or the reader free to interpret anything they want,
0:25:13 > 0:25:15but what do you think? When you want people
0:25:15 > 0:25:18to read your books, what do you want them to read them for?
0:25:18 > 0:25:23Well, first I want them to...have fun.
0:25:23 > 0:25:30Reading's no good unless it's fun, but what I always want is
0:25:30 > 0:25:34the one quality I look for in books and it's very hard to find,
0:25:34 > 0:25:39but I love that childhood quality of just that gleeful, greedy reading,
0:25:39 > 0:25:43can't get enough of it, what's happening to these people,
0:25:43 > 0:25:49the breathless kind of turning of the pages, that's what I want in a book.
0:25:49 > 0:25:52But I also want something that's well constructed, too.
0:25:52 > 0:25:57I like to be able to drop down and... Dickens goes so fast,
0:25:57 > 0:26:00he goes like lightning but, at the same time, any sentence,
0:26:00 > 0:26:04you can lift up and it's a marvel and it's a miracle,
0:26:04 > 0:26:08so to me I want those two qualities, the two qualities of any great art,
0:26:08 > 0:26:11density and speed, density and speed.
0:26:11 > 0:26:14But you also bring secrets. You bring secrets.
0:26:14 > 0:26:16Your books are about secrets.
0:26:16 > 0:26:18I guess they are, I never thought about that, but I guess
0:26:18 > 0:26:21all books are about secrets. Yes. All books have mysteries
0:26:21 > 0:26:25at their heart, every book has some secret, there's always a secret
0:26:25 > 0:26:30In this one, what you say, though, is that life is catastrophe.
0:26:30 > 0:26:34Well, um, it is, sorry to say!
0:26:37 > 0:26:40Sometimes it is catastrophe.
0:26:40 > 0:26:47Well, it doesn't end well for any of us, you know, the last act is ..
0:26:47 > 0:26:50Has to be. Yeah.
0:26:50 > 0:26:53"Only here's what I really, really want someone to explain to me.
0:26:53 > 0:26:57"What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted?
0:26:57 > 0:27:01"What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons,
0:27:01 > 0:27:04"leads one wilfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance
0:27:04 > 0:27:08"away from health, domesticity civic responsibility
0:27:08 > 0:27:10"and strong social connections
0:27:10 > 0:27:14"and all the blandly held common virtues, and instead,
0:27:14 > 0:27:18"straight towards a beautiful flare of ruin, self-emulation, disaster?
0:27:18 > 0:27:21"Is Kitsey right?
0:27:21 > 0:27:24"If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward
0:27:24 > 0:27:28"the bonfire, is it better to turn away, stop your ears with wax,
0:27:28 > 0:27:32"ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you
0:27:32 > 0:27:35"set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully to the norm,
0:27:35 > 0:27:39"reasonable hours and regular medical checkups.
0:27:39 > 0:27:41"stable relationships and steady career advancement,
0:27:41 > 0:27:44"the New York Times and brunch on Sunday,
0:27:44 > 0:27:47"all with the promise of being somehow a better person?
0:27:47 > 0:27:52"Or, like Boris, is it better to throw yourself head-first
0:27:52 > 0:27:56"and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?"
0:27:56 > 0:28:03So this one is just about out, so are you into the next groove
0:28:03 > 0:28:05Are you into the next book?
0:28:05 > 0:28:10I have an idea and I'm constantly grappling round in my pockets
0:28:10 > 0:28:14for my notebook, I'm thinking of things that I need to write down,
0:28:14 > 0:28:19so I won't forget them, it's very evanescent when it's at this stage.
0:28:19 > 0:28:20But is it exciting at this stage?
0:28:20 > 0:28:22Yes, it is exciting at this stage.
0:28:22 > 0:28:24And then you hit the long stage in the middle
0:28:24 > 0:28:28where it's all very difficult. It's what Eliot says, you know
0:28:28 > 0:28:32"Between the dream and the reality lie the shadow."
0:28:32 > 0:28:37I mean, you have the difficult stage after the...
0:28:37 > 0:28:40But you like the shadow. Oh, I do.
0:28:40 > 0:28:43Donna Tartt, thank you very much. Thank you.
0:29:03 > 0:29:06Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd