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Now its time for Meet
the Author, with Jim Naughtie. | 0:00:00 | 0:00:00 | |
Fiona Mozley's Elmet is a story that
you might describe as contemporary | 0:00:07 | 0:00:11 | |
Gothic, raw and dark and lyrical
with a rich bit of melodrama, debut | 0:00:11 | 0:00:17 | |
novel powerfully enough to take it
to the man Booker short list in the | 0:00:17 | 0:00:21 | |
autumn, told by a 14-year-old, it
sets the here and now against a | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
brutal and more elemental past and
explores a complex and ambiguous | 0:00:24 | 0:00:28 | |
flesh ship between three members of
a family who are all in their own | 0:00:28 | 0:00:33 | |
ways different -- ambiguous
relationship. Welcome. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:48 | |
It's interesting that in trying to
write about the contemporary world, | 0:00:52 | 0:00:57 | |
trying to say something about the
contemporary world, you were drawn | 0:00:57 | 0:01:00 | |
to a wild past, a man who lives on
land that he doesn't own in a house | 0:01:00 | 0:01:07 | |
that was built with his own hands.
How did you come to feel that that | 0:01:07 | 0:01:11 | |
was the best avenue to write about
the here and now? I think contrast | 0:01:11 | 0:01:19 | |
is always a good two when trying to
talk about something very specific, | 0:01:19 | 0:01:25 | |
and I did want to address the issues
of today. I think those are brought | 0:01:25 | 0:01:30 | |
into relief by considering the
history of the place, kind of old | 0:01:30 | 0:01:38 | |
ways of living, different ways of
living, and I wanted to place those | 0:01:38 | 0:01:43 | |
things together and see what
happened. To suggest although we | 0:01:43 | 0:01:46 | |
think we are more civilised than
people were many years ago, that is | 0:01:46 | 0:01:51 | |
not necessarily true? Modes of
reality change, sometimes for the | 0:01:51 | 0:01:57 | |
better and sometimes for the worse
and I wanted to examine that. I also | 0:01:57 | 0:02:01 | |
wanted to suggest that the
boundaries of landscape have not | 0:02:01 | 0:02:03 | |
always been the same. Borders
change. They are mutable. By giving | 0:02:03 | 0:02:11 | |
the novel a older feel, I wanted to
suggest that not only things have | 0:02:11 | 0:02:18 | |
been different in the past but they
can be in the future. The question | 0:02:18 | 0:02:21 | |
of ownership of land and property,
it produces a very dramatic even | 0:02:21 | 0:02:27 | |
melodramatic ending which we won't
describe in detail, to spoil it for | 0:02:27 | 0:02:30 | |
those who haven't read the book, but
let's talk about the plot. It is | 0:02:30 | 0:02:35 | |
told by Daniel who is 14, and it is
a story that revolves around his | 0:02:35 | 0:02:39 | |
slightly older sister and their
father. It is a very tight | 0:02:39 | 0:02:44 | |
conception. The stage is not very
crowded. I wanted to include these | 0:02:44 | 0:02:51 | |
three characters and they are all
serving a different purpose, by our | 0:02:51 | 0:02:55 | |
very different in temperament and
very different physically. I wanted | 0:02:55 | 0:03:01 | |
to explore the relationship between
temperament and body and they are | 0:03:01 | 0:03:05 | |
all trying to look at each other and
thing, how do you work, I can't | 0:03:05 | 0:03:12 | |
understand it because I'm so very
different from you. The father is a | 0:03:12 | 0:03:16 | |
very Heathcliff type of figure.
Slightly unfair, but you know what I | 0:03:16 | 0:03:23 | |
mean, there is a strength and
fearsome strength about him. The way | 0:03:23 | 0:03:30 | |
he feels he can mould the world to
his purpose physically. Yes. He's a | 0:03:30 | 0:03:36 | |
masculine archetype, exaggerated and
deliberately exaggerated and there | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
is much about this book which is
deliberately excite you read it. -- | 0:03:40 | 0:03:45 | |
deliberately exaggerated. He
embodies everything which is | 0:03:45 | 0:03:50 | |
positive and negative about
masculine table top Cathy, the | 0:03:50 | 0:03:54 | |
daughter, she rolls her own
cigarettes all the time. She does | 0:03:54 | 0:03:57 | |
indeed. Her issue is that she takes
after her father in many respects | 0:03:57 | 0:04:02 | |
but not physically, she can never
match his strength. She is | 0:04:02 | 0:04:06 | |
constantly being underestimated by
those around her. Daniel is stuck | 0:04:06 | 0:04:10 | |
with telling the story which it does
worry touchingly and lyrically. When | 0:04:10 | 0:04:15 | |
you have described it justifies the
phrase which are used moment ago, | 0:04:15 | 0:04:18 | |
that it is a Gothic novel in many
ways. It uses extremists, almost as | 0:04:18 | 0:04:24 | |
if it is lit in bright colours and
dark moustache extremes -- extremes. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:35 | |
I do see this as a genre piece and I
was influenced by the narrative arc | 0:04:35 | 0:04:41 | |
of Westerns, I was influenced by the
setting of Yorkshire, and because | 0:04:41 | 0:04:44 | |
this plays with the genre there are
moments which are familiar in their | 0:04:44 | 0:04:49 | |
in their extremity and melodrama.
There's a lot of touching the | 0:04:49 | 0:04:58 | |
landscape involved in this. Elmet is
a place to this day, but it was the | 0:04:58 | 0:05:04 | |
last Celtic kingdom? That's right.
In around the seventh and eighth | 0:05:04 | 0:05:11 | |
century, it was the last kingdom
that kept... In England, that is, | 0:05:11 | 0:05:17 | |
that kept its Celtic heritage, and
that was a term which is problematic | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
in many respects, but there is
something separate and distinct | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
about it. Ted Hughes has written
about this. Ted Hughes came from | 0:05:23 | 0:05:31 | |
that soil and he did write about
this, do that influence you? Yes and | 0:05:31 | 0:05:35 | |
no. -- deed. I read his poems as I
was drawing to the end of the | 0:05:35 | 0:05:43 | |
project. But I think that they did
influence it in some respects. The | 0:05:43 | 0:05:49 | |
passion that he instils in the
relationship between people and | 0:05:49 | 0:05:54 | |
their surroundings, physical
surroundings, is one of his great | 0:05:54 | 0:05:58 | |
characteristics, and that is clearly
what you are trying to get to here, | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
there's a great deal of lyricism in
the course of a story which is | 0:06:01 | 0:06:07 | |
sometimes quite dark and spare and
even brutal, and the plot, but you | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
imbue this with a lyrical top | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
even brutal, and the plot, but you
imbue this with a lyrical top. I was | 0:06:15 | 0:06:19 | |
aware there were so much darkness in
it, so much which was a pleasant and | 0:06:19 | 0:06:22 | |
I really wanted to counter balance
it with some lightness -- on | 0:06:22 | 0:06:26 | |
present. I wanted the description of
the place and the family | 0:06:26 | 0:06:32 | |
relationships to have a warmth and
in terms of the landscape is so much | 0:06:32 | 0:06:35 | |
about physicality and I wanted it to
be a landscape that you could reach | 0:06:35 | 0:06:39 | |
out and touch, something that
appealed to all the human senses. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:44 | |
Without going into the details of
the climax of the book, there is a | 0:06:44 | 0:06:47 | |
sense with which there is a victory
of sorts but nevertheless the book | 0:06:47 | 0:06:51 | |
has a feeling of something that has
been lost. There is a sense of loss. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:59 | |
So much of the book is about a lost
world, people trying to recover that | 0:06:59 | 0:07:03 | |
lost world. You are still in your
20s. Just about. So, this is a book | 0:07:03 | 0:07:12 | |
that to some degree must be seen as
one that speaks of your generation. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:18 | |
Do you think the sensibility you are
bringing to this is one which is | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
quite common? That there is a
feeling as people of your age look | 0:07:20 | 0:07:26 | |
forward, that it is inescapable that
something has gone? I think so. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:34 | |
Certainly in terms of forging a home
and finding a place to live, that is | 0:07:34 | 0:07:39 | |
one of the greatest challenges. That
is at the centre of the story. It is | 0:07:39 | 0:07:45 | |
a book set in Yorkshire but I
started writing it in London, so it | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
has a double identity. First novel,
you end up on the man Booker short | 0:07:48 | 0:07:55 | |
list, alongside the winning book and
authors like Paul Auster, | 0:07:55 | 0:08:00 | |
extraordinary. Yes, it is. The
enormity of it only hit me at the | 0:08:00 | 0:08:11 | |
ceremony, because part of me had
been trying to shut it down, and | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
just take it one step at a time, but
when I got to the ceremony and all | 0:08:14 | 0:08:18 | |
those people around me, that is when
it dawned on me, that my life had | 0:08:18 | 0:08:22 | |
changed. To put it crudely, it must
be encouraging, you want to write, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:29 | |
you are doing a Ph.D. Part-time at
the University of York. | 0:08:29 | 0:08:32 | |
Fundamentally you want to write
fiction and that is not bad way to | 0:08:32 | 0:08:36 | |
start. Yes, it is a pretty good way
to start, and one other thing is the | 0:08:36 | 0:08:41 | |
short listing has done for me is
allowed me to be more daring in the | 0:08:41 | 0:08:44 | |
future. There is an issue with who
gets to write, the sort of fiction | 0:08:44 | 0:08:49 | |
that different people get to write
and feel entitled to write and this | 0:08:49 | 0:08:52 | |
short listing allows me to be brave
in the future, I hope. Fiona Mozley, | 0:08:52 | 0:08:56 | |
author of Elmet, thank you very
much. Thank | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 |