0:00:00 > 0:00:03Now its time for Meet the Author.
0:00:03 > 0:00:05A man is adrift after a storm at sea.
0:00:05 > 0:00:07Lost, convinced it's the end of him.
0:00:07 > 0:00:10We don't know who he is, how exactly he came to be
0:00:10 > 0:00:13there, and nor, for much of the time, does he.
0:00:13 > 0:00:15That's the story of Cove, the latest short novel
0:00:15 > 0:00:18from the pen of Cynan Jones, who's developed a highly distinctive
0:00:18 > 0:00:20style in books like The Dig, that lets him turn his
0:00:20 > 0:00:26characters inside out.
0:00:26 > 0:00:28Like this man, drifting alone in his kayak, looking
0:00:28 > 0:00:31for land and safety, who says that his memory is now
0:00:31 > 0:00:35like a dropped pack of cards.
0:00:35 > 0:00:36Welcome.
0:00:51 > 0:00:54In a way, Cynan, this book is a simple description
0:00:54 > 0:00:59of absolute terror, isn't it?
0:00:59 > 0:01:00It is.
0:01:00 > 0:01:04It's a man blinded by a flash of light, if you want to call it
0:01:04 > 0:01:06that, and in the thrall of that with an underlying idea
0:01:06 > 0:01:11that there is much more than his own encapsulation in that
0:01:11 > 0:01:14sudden moment, sort of thing.
0:01:14 > 0:01:16It's a really difficult thing to try and transmit in writing.
0:01:16 > 0:01:19He loses everything.
0:01:19 > 0:01:22He thinks he's going to lose his life.
0:01:22 > 0:01:26He loses his mind in some ways, but there's a wonderful moment
0:01:26 > 0:01:30where he sees the label on a bag in the kayak.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33And he says, with his name on it, and he says it's
0:01:33 > 0:01:34like looking into an empty cup.
0:01:34 > 0:01:36It's all gone.
0:01:36 > 0:01:41How difficult was it to imagine what that feeling is like?
0:01:41 > 0:01:44I think a lot of what I do comes from the process that I have
0:01:44 > 0:01:48of building a story in my mind before going near the desk.
0:01:48 > 0:01:52So I like to start writing after I can see something,
0:01:52 > 0:01:55and I write as if I'm remembering.
0:01:55 > 0:01:58I don't want to discuss what we learn at the beginning
0:01:58 > 0:02:01of the book too much, because it might spoil it
0:02:01 > 0:02:04a little bit for people who are going to read it.
0:02:04 > 0:02:07But I think what we can say is that it's a picture of someone
0:02:07 > 0:02:12who is utterly alone for the whole story, in practice.
0:02:12 > 0:02:16That's a very difficult thing for most of us to imagine, isn't it?
0:02:16 > 0:02:26It's difficult for people to imagine.
0:02:27 > 0:02:30It's a very difficult thing to write, which I realised as soon
0:02:31 > 0:02:32as I started trying to write it.
0:02:32 > 0:02:33Why?
0:02:33 > 0:02:35Because there's no reference points.
0:02:35 > 0:02:37Previously my books have been about people with very solid
0:02:37 > 0:02:38ground under their feet.
0:02:38 > 0:02:41And what I wanted to do, because I believe you should always
0:02:41 > 0:02:43be learning when you write, was to take that ground away,
0:02:43 > 0:02:46take the relationships away, take the location people had
0:02:46 > 0:02:48in previous novels away, and write about a character who was,
0:02:48 > 0:02:50as you say, utterly alone.
0:02:50 > 0:02:52At that point, how do you bring the otherness into a narrative?
0:02:52 > 0:02:55It does ask the question, I think, are we ever alone?
0:02:55 > 0:02:57Which sounds slightly cliched, but is it possible,
0:02:57 > 0:03:00with the consciousness that we have, to ever really be alone?
0:03:00 > 0:03:01And the book really asks that.
0:03:01 > 0:03:04And his contact, for example, with a sunfish that comes along
0:03:04 > 0:03:06and is about as big as his boat.
0:03:06 > 0:03:09It turns out not to want to attack him but to be with him,
0:03:09 > 0:03:13and possibly steers the thing in a helpful direction.
0:03:13 > 0:03:17Now, is that an example of what we all do when we do think
0:03:17 > 0:03:19we're alone, we create patterns in a random universe to try
0:03:19 > 0:03:20and make sense of it?
0:03:20 > 0:03:21Absolutely.
0:03:21 > 0:03:25And I think it's also a result of growing up where I grew up,
0:03:25 > 0:03:27when you're constantly surrounded by the natural environment
0:03:27 > 0:03:29and the things in nature.
0:03:29 > 0:03:31And you do, regardless of how cynical you always sound about not
0:03:31 > 0:03:33having a spirituality, you simply create
0:03:33 > 0:03:35narratives through them.
0:03:35 > 0:03:39You see a lot of the world play out, a lot of human conditions play out,
0:03:39 > 0:03:42in cameo, in small ways, in the world around you.
0:03:42 > 0:03:44And I think something like the sunfish device, yes,
0:03:44 > 0:03:48you'd give it meaning, wouldn't you?
0:03:48 > 0:03:51And the other thing that you get from these natural descriptions,
0:03:51 > 0:03:54which are wonderful in the book, is that sense of unchannelled power
0:03:54 > 0:04:02that is just going to have its way with you, whatever you do?
0:04:02 > 0:04:03You're much smaller than it.
0:04:03 > 0:04:06That's something which you recognise as soon as you're out on the water.
0:04:06 > 0:04:09There's a sort of safe zone where you feel quite comfortable,
0:04:09 > 0:04:13quite connected, but there's a distance from land when that
0:04:13 > 0:04:16platform of the kayak, which is the only land
0:04:16 > 0:04:22under your feet, becomes very obviously frail.
0:04:22 > 0:04:24Have you ever had, at sea, a moment of terror that
0:04:24 > 0:04:28touches on this story?
0:04:28 > 0:04:31I mean, have you felt that moment of being, as it were, adrift?
0:04:31 > 0:04:33Yes, and it's very sudden.
0:04:33 > 0:04:36You can be entirely calm, but at the next moment there's just
0:04:36 > 0:04:39a lurch in the boat, a tip in the boat.
0:04:39 > 0:04:43Your line catches on something, and the boat sort of halts.
0:04:43 > 0:04:47The only reaction is an animal one.
0:04:47 > 0:04:51I've had a long time growing up being on the sea in different ways.
0:04:51 > 0:04:53The experience that he goes through with the dolphins happened
0:04:53 > 0:04:55when I was 16, night fishing.
0:04:55 > 0:04:57A friend of mine essentially passed out with the cold,
0:04:57 > 0:05:00and they came and they played around the boat.
0:05:00 > 0:05:03I've been in the boat when it has hailed, and you hear
0:05:03 > 0:05:04the hailstones hissing around you.
0:05:04 > 0:05:08I've been tipped out of the kayak in a very sudden squall.
0:05:08 > 0:05:08You amalgamate these experiences.
0:05:08 > 0:05:13They last for a very long time.
0:05:13 > 0:05:16They simmer for a very long time before they find fruit
0:05:16 > 0:05:19into a novel, I think.
0:05:19 > 0:05:22It sounds from what you say, about the way you come to a story
0:05:22 > 0:05:26through memory after you've been through the idea in your own head
0:05:26 > 0:05:28meticulously, that you paired it down almost like a sculptor starting
0:05:28 > 0:05:31with a bit of stone and getting down to its essence.
0:05:31 > 0:05:34Is that how you see it?
0:05:34 > 0:05:37Yes, to throw away any what I call "passenger writing".
0:05:37 > 0:05:41And I think that's driven by a great trust in the reader.
0:05:41 > 0:05:45I write because I love to read, it's a side effect of that.
0:05:45 > 0:05:47So trusting the reader to have that creative ability themselves to build
0:05:47 > 0:05:51the rest of the picture means I then pair it back to a point where you're
0:05:51 > 0:05:56just triggering the mind.
0:05:56 > 0:05:59One of the things you've done as a writer, long before
0:05:59 > 0:06:03you got to this book, is to dispense with quotation
0:06:03 > 0:06:07marks in the normal way in which people speak.
0:06:07 > 0:06:09And you represent the man here from the third person -
0:06:09 > 0:06:12he is he, but it's quite often you.
0:06:12 > 0:06:15He becomes somebody who is out there, but is also inside of us.
0:06:15 > 0:06:20I mean, you find that mechanism useful?
0:06:20 > 0:06:24I think it's a great myth of narrative that you have
0:06:24 > 0:06:26to pick one or the other.
0:06:26 > 0:06:30We don't live like that.
0:06:30 > 0:06:32We're constantly panning and closing up to ourselves, I think.
0:06:32 > 0:06:33Shifting perspective?
0:06:33 > 0:06:35Shifting perspective constantly.
0:06:35 > 0:06:37And what I wanted to do, with the tense changes,
0:06:37 > 0:06:40those devices you talked about, was to create a sense of ebb
0:06:40 > 0:06:43and flow, of left and right paddle, of peak and trough.
0:06:43 > 0:06:44I needed the whole...
0:06:44 > 0:06:46I needed the surface, the narrative layer,
0:06:46 > 0:06:49to be shifting like the water.
0:06:49 > 0:06:52And if you want the reader to be inside the kayak,
0:06:52 > 0:06:56not to say inside the man, then that all helps,
0:06:56 > 0:07:00because it declared as the way you tell the story.
0:07:00 > 0:07:01I think so.
0:07:01 > 0:07:03I mean, I think, having written it, the way I feel
0:07:04 > 0:07:06about it is quite filmic.
0:07:06 > 0:07:07I see it visually.
0:07:07 > 0:07:09I can see the camera spilling out from the boat,
0:07:09 > 0:07:11I can see the close-up of the hands.
0:07:11 > 0:07:14But not necessarily through the eyes of the character,
0:07:14 > 0:07:15if that makes sense.
0:07:15 > 0:07:16No, indeed.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19Sometimes you are, but in the way that the camera can do that.
0:07:19 > 0:07:20It's a shifting focus.
0:07:20 > 0:07:23Read us a little bit, including that full description.
0:07:23 > 0:07:26Maybe the moment which is a crisis in the book.
0:07:26 > 0:07:28And this is not giving anything away, I mean,
0:07:28 > 0:07:31he's clearly somebody who believes he's going to come to grief
0:07:31 > 0:07:33as a result of a storm, an amazing flash of lightning.
0:07:33 > 0:07:40Just read that passage to us?
0:07:40 > 0:07:43The first lightning strikes out somewhere past the horizon.
0:07:43 > 0:07:45At first, he thinks it's some sudden glint.
0:07:45 > 0:07:49The thunder happens moments later, and he feels sick in his guts.
0:07:49 > 0:07:53A metallic sheen comes to the water, like cutlery,
0:07:53 > 0:07:56like metal much touched.
0:07:56 > 0:07:59And you've seen that yourself?
0:07:59 > 0:08:03I've been there, and not gladly, not hit by lightning.
0:08:03 > 0:08:05But I've certainly been on the water when the electricity
0:08:05 > 0:08:10about you changes.
0:08:10 > 0:08:13And it's this extraordinary collective process -
0:08:13 > 0:08:15you go beyond thought, in some respects.
0:08:15 > 0:08:17The hairs on your arms go up.
0:08:17 > 0:08:19You feel that you are, as you said earlier,
0:08:19 > 0:08:21in the thrall of something far bigger than you.
0:08:21 > 0:08:24Do you think that what we should feel, as we get to the end
0:08:24 > 0:08:27of the story, is relief at the strength of,
0:08:27 > 0:08:36you know, the human spirit, whatever we call it?
0:08:42 > 0:08:45Or is it one of, I don't know, terror at the forces that we're
0:08:45 > 0:08:47never going to be able to tame?
0:08:47 > 0:08:50What I was trying to do, because there is never just one
0:08:50 > 0:08:52ending, you always choose the one that's strongest after
0:08:52 > 0:08:53you've written several.
0:08:53 > 0:08:56What I was trying to do was to put those questions to the reader,
0:08:56 > 0:08:59for them to answer, depending on the characters or the state
0:08:59 > 0:09:01of mind after the book or the general state of mind.
0:09:01 > 0:09:05So I think there is very much room for both, and that was hard
0:09:05 > 0:09:06fought for in the writing.
0:09:06 > 0:09:07Cynan Jones, thank you very much.
0:09:07 > 0:09:12Thank you.