Michael Frayn Meet the Author


Michael Frayn

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Collected Columns.

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Few writers have equal success as a novelist and a playwright.

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Michael Frayn is one of that rare breed.

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He made PG Wodehouse laugh, he's written farce and serious

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drama, and a clutch of prize-winning novels.

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He's also a celebrated newspaper columnist,

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in the Guardian and the Observer in the 60s and 70s, and then again

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in a later flowering in the 90s.

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And a new collection of those newspaper columns is just out.

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Welcome.

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Michael Frayn, it's a long time since you became a columnist.

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Was it deliberate or accidental?

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It was a long series of accidents.

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I was a reporter on the Guardian, and I was supposed to be writing

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a reported-type column, interviewing visiting dignitaries

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and whatnot, and I just couldn't get around to collect enough material

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to do three columns a week, so my former boss, the news editor,

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made this brilliant suggestion that I should do what other funny

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columnists had done, which was introduce some

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fictitious characters.

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I've been making it up ever since!

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I discovered making things up is much, much easier.

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You've mentioned characters who can be created.

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Do they then take on a life which has an energy

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of its own, and can lead

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you on and give you ideas, as it were, as if they're a part

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of your mind you haven't been conscious of?

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Well, it does.

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Fictitious stuff is pretty much, in fact is a lot better

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than real staff, really, because they don't put in awkward

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wage demands and whatnot, but it's also because the world

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inside your head is much better organised than the world

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outside your head, and the danger of writing fiction is it all seems

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too organised, and too easy.

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What an idea for something is, for a fiction, is something

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organised into a plot, into a story.

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Definite characters, definite places.

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And I've often thought that writers of fiction ought to be required

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by law to go out occasionally and do a bit of real newspaper reporting,

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because when you get out there and look at the world outside,

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it's not at all like the world inside your head.

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It's all muddled and curious, nothing fits together,

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nothing leads to anything else.

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People will know your work on stage, Noises Off, consistently voted one

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of people's funniest and favourite plays,

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which of course is a picture of everything falling apart.

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Do you have that sense of chaos around us which we're always

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struggling to try to put back together and are doomed never

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to quite succeed?

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I think this is what human activity is, an attempt to reverse the second

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law of thermodynamics, which says that everything

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is gradually sort of falling to pieces, to simplify it slightly!

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Yes!

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And to try and stop things falling to pieces.

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I mean, at the simplest level, just trying to keep your house

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organised and stop it falling down, that takes a lot of effort.

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To actually keep society running takes an enormous amount

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of intellectual and physical effort.

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But why is the human struggle to do that,

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which may be doomed, so funny?

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Why is anything funny?

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I think it is some mismatch between our hopes and intentions,

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and reality.

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The basic joke that, the archetypal joke of someone

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slipping on a banana skin, what's funny is not that they slip

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but that they think they're in control of the situation,

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walking in a dignified way, and suddenly it's gone.

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You've been making people laugh and making them think in plays

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and books and in newspaper writing from many, many years now.

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Looking back to those newspaper times, what was the joy

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of writing a column of 800, 1000 words, finishing it,

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and seeing it on the page in the Guardian, the Observer,

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or somewhere else?

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What's the thrill of it?

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One of the joys of writing a funny column in those days is that

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newspapers were much smaller, and on the whole more impersonal.

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Most of the news in the serious paper, like the Guardian

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or the Observer, was impersonal news about the world.

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For someone to be expressing personal opinions and being flippant

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about things that other people were taking seriously,

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it stood out quite sharply from the stuff around it.

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A wonderful playground to be able to operate in?

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Absolutely wonderful playground.

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Nowadays, papers have changed.

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They're so vast, there are many, many personal columns,

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and it's much more difficult to make your personality

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as a columnist stand out in a newspaper.

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There must be something satisfying about filling that space,

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having a comic idea, a sense of absurdity,

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a sense of rage about something that you want to expose,

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not in a pompous way, but by making people laugh at it,

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and knowing that if you find the right words and the right

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structure, you can do it and tie it up with a ribbon in that little

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space at the bottom of the page?

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It's a very special feeling, isn't it?

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Well, it's very nice when it works.

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When it goes...

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It's like writing a book - when it's working, it seems

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to be writing itself, but you have to do a lot

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of preparation for that.

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When it goes wrong, it's horrible.

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I often thought you really earn your royalties with the things

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that don't work, and I certainly had days when I was writing that column

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when I just simply could not do it, and had to go to bed,

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get up very early in the morning and write it in desperation

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before my deadline first thing in the morning.

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But it never failed.

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I think it was Douglas Adams who said, "I love deadlines.

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I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass."

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You can't miss a newspaper deadline, that would really be the end.

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I don't think I ever did.

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But you'd come right up against them, and that's lovely.

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Very close, yes.

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A whooshing sound comes very close.

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Finally, do you think of yourself, looking back, people will enjoy

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these collective columns as they've enjoyed your successful novels

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and plays, of course.

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Do you think of yourself, at root, still, somewhere in your head,

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as a newspaperman?

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Those first couple of years I spent as a reporter won't cut very deep

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into my personality.

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Actually doing serious newspaper reporting,

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looking at the world and trying to make sense of it,

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is an education in itself.

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The idea of trying to write short for newspapers, trying

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to catch people's attention in the opening paragraph,

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I think is not a bad training for all kinds of writing.

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And just because it's fun doesn't mean it doesn't matter?

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All the best things are fun!

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If your job's not fun, you should be doing something else.

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Michael Frayn, thank you very much.

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