Edward St Aubyn Meet the Author

Now it's time for Meet the Author.

An old man with great power -

he runs a media empire -

sees his influence crumbling away.

He's losing his grip, his family,

perhaps even his sanity.

What becomes of him?

Edward St Aubyn's novel,

Dunbar, is a retelling

of the story of King Lear,

as a contemporary novel.

Funny and melancholy by turns,

the author of the celebrated series

of novels about Patrick Melrose,

is back on his favourite territory,

dealing with a life touched

and changed by tragedy.

Welcome.

The inspiration for this story,

the start of the novel in a way,

was the idea that you should take

the King Lear story

and do something with it.

Now, is it easy to leave the thought

of that fundamental story behind,

and take off on your own?

At first, I suffered from a "Don't

mess with the Bard" angst,

because I was in the face of a sort

of monument of world literature,

but I was asked to be

inspired by Shakespeare,

not to be intimidated by him,

and it's impossible not to be

inspired by Shakespeare.

Anyone writing in English

is inspired by Shakespeare.

And in this case, a particular

pretext in King Lear,

I found that quite soon I left

the play behind, and became

involved in the novel,

and it was like all my novels,

I wanted to write the next

sentence and the next scene.

And you've got a central

character, Dunbar himself,

who is a media mogul,

an immensely powerful man,

who sees everything slipping away.

I mean, his power, but also his

mind, and we are with him

as he becomes entrapped,

really, in a world in which he can

no longer understand,

in which he tries to exercise power.

It's a very contemporary

story, isn't it?

Yes, I wanted to find the modern

analogue for a king,

and it wasn't a king,

obviously, or an elected politician,

but someone who is part

of the permafrost of power,

the people who are there decade

after decade, influencing

decisions, and elections.

And Dunbar is such a person.

But what the novel can do,

that is very difficult for a play

to do, except through monologues,

is to show the interior

life of a character,

and there are no monologues

in King Lear, as against Hamlet,

who is always rushing

front of stage to tell us

what he is thinking and feeling.

Lear can't do that because his whole

problem is he has no self-knowledge.

So characterising the mind

of someone in that situation

was a new opportunity.

And characterising the mind

when it is beginning

to break up, in a way.

I mean, he is losing it...

Yes.

As we would say, and he's

having conversations,

particularly with Peter in the place

where he is, not exactly

incarcerated, but living, that are,

ones that don't make any

sense any longer.

They make sense to us by inference,

but they are incoherent

in themselves, yes.

And Peter is a

professional comedian.

He's terribly funny.

He's also, unfortunately,

an alcoholic.

And in that sense I also

departed from King Lear,

because I thought there should be

a fool who was funny,

rather than a moralising monster.

How much sympathy do

you have for Dunbar,

because in many ways

he is a grotesque character.

You don't indicate any sympathy

for the kind of power

that he wielded or how

he weilded it.

On the other hand, there is human

sympathy for someone who is not

exactly cracking up but beginning

to fail in the way that he is?

The way in which his acquired power

is repulsive, but we feel compassion

for the way he's losing power,

and it's also true that

it's very difficult,

as you get closer and closer

to someone's mind and its workings,

not to feel a growing leniency.

And I suppose there's

a feeling in this story,

because of where it is set,

and the fact he's starting to,

you know, talk a fair bit

of nonsense, although he's still got

some of his faculties,

that we all feel that there

but for the grace of God,

or there is where we

are bound to end up.

So in that sense, you're confronting

the reader with a real truth

about our condition?

Yes.

I think that's true.

I think there is a huge contemporary

dread of losing our minds

before we lose our life,

and having years of mindless life,

and that is one of the great

phenomena of our time.

Although I don't think that Dunbar,

or indeed Lear was demented.

I think if they have

dementia as a proper

constitutional condition,

it weakens the tragedy,

it weakens the possibility

of recovery and self-knowledge,

which he does acquire.

He is temporally psychotic

through pressure.

And he escapes.

But to what, we don't know.

We don't know.

What do you think he escapes to,

any kind of redemption?

Is he going to be a less repulsive

individual in the way that he wields

power after this experience or not?

There has to be some redemption

in order for tragedy to exist,

because if there is nothing

but absurdity, if it is just about

the meaninglessness and bleakness...

It is just walking in the dark.

Then it is absurd and

absurd is not tragic.

To be tragic, there has to be

a gain in self-knowledge,

a gain in understanding,

a gain in understanding the nature

of love, and the nature of power

and how he's misspent his time.

And then to be deprived of those

insights, at inception, is tragic.

If that's what happens.

I'm not spoiling the book for you.

No, we're not in the business

of spoiling books.

But that terrible moment,

when you do have the ability

to see inside yourself,

in a way that you haven't before,

is one of the terrifying things

that we all probably will face

at some stage.

Absolutely, although some people

have, are doomed to be introspective

from quite an early age.

But I agree with you that,

that this is a story about someone

having self-knowledge thrust

upon them reluctantly, very late

in life, when their circuitry

is barely able to take the charge.

When you finish this story

about Dunbar and his experience,

and his wanderings and the bleakness

of the fells, and then what happens

at the end of the book,

did you feel a sense of satisfaction

about the way in which his life

had found its course?

Did it feel right?

It did feel, it felt poignant to me.

I was surprised by how

fond I became of Dunbar.

You didn't set out wanting

to become fond of him?

It just happened, in the course

of describing what he went through.

It became very poignant to me

that he got a glimpse

of something before he died,

that he never would have seen

without this immense stress

and destruction in his life.

And if we're lucky enough

to get that, you're saying

it is a very precious thing?

It is.

It is a jewel, yes.

Edward St Aubyn, author of Dunbar,

thank you very much.

Thank you.