0:00:02 > 0:00:03jumped by more than 40%,
0:00:03 > 0:00:04on its stock market debut.
0:00:04 > 0:00:06Now it's time for Meet the Author.
0:00:06 > 0:00:09Howard Jacobson is a master of the art of serious fiction
0:00:09 > 0:00:10that is also hilarious.
0:00:10 > 0:00:14He has won the Man Booker Prize and the Everyman PG Woodhouse Prize
0:00:14 > 0:00:15for Comic Fiction twice.
0:00:15 > 0:00:18No-one else has done that.
0:00:18 > 0:00:21The Dog's Last Walk and Other Pieces is a collection of his newspaper
0:00:21 > 0:00:22columns for the Independent.
0:00:22 > 0:00:26They sparkle with wit, plenty of erudition edition
0:00:26 > 0:00:31and the wisdom of a writer who seems to get even more curious
0:00:31 > 0:00:34about life and about all of us as the years go by.
0:00:34 > 0:00:44Welcome.
0:00:50 > 0:00:52Let's do the sensible thing and begin and the beginning.
0:00:52 > 0:00:57The first story in this collection of columns is called
0:00:57 > 0:01:00The Dog's Last Walk and you have chosen to give that title
0:01:00 > 0:01:01to the collection as a whole.
0:01:01 > 0:01:03Now, why?
0:01:03 > 0:01:06I've had the good fortune to have read it and I think I know why.
0:01:06 > 0:01:10But what is it about this story that touches you so much?
0:01:10 > 0:01:13It touched other people too, people stopped me in the street and said,
0:01:13 > 0:01:16you just made me cry.
0:01:16 > 0:01:18So I thought, "Ah!", I'm not used to making people cry.
0:01:18 > 0:01:21I didn't used to have the confidence to make people cry.
0:01:21 > 0:01:23I thought my job was to make people laugh.
0:01:23 > 0:01:25I never had the confidence to admit that I cried.
0:01:25 > 0:01:29I mean, I've been a blubberer all my life and I've denied it.
0:01:29 > 0:01:30You cry at the movies?
0:01:30 > 0:01:32I cry everywhere and I pretend not to.
0:01:32 > 0:01:33Don't want to admit that I cry.
0:01:33 > 0:01:37Just now, and this grand old age, I'm prepared to admit that I cry
0:01:37 > 0:01:40and I'm prepared to write to make people cry.
0:01:40 > 0:01:44Not that I did that deliberately, I just saw a scene that upset me
0:01:44 > 0:01:46a great deal and I wanted to write about it.
0:01:46 > 0:01:47Well it's a terribly touching story.
0:01:47 > 0:01:50You were with your wife sitting on a park bench
0:01:50 > 0:01:51and what did you see?
0:01:51 > 0:01:53I saw an elegantly dressed lady leading a big, very
0:01:53 > 0:01:58tired black labrador.
0:01:58 > 0:02:00Labradors have wonderful, wonderful heads.
0:02:00 > 0:02:02Dogs altogether seem to have a gravity that human
0:02:02 > 0:02:06beings rarely manage.
0:02:06 > 0:02:08But labradors particularly.
0:02:08 > 0:02:11This was beyond the usual sadness of a big dog.
0:02:11 > 0:02:15This looked to me, and I said this to my wife, this
0:02:15 > 0:02:18is his last day on earth, you can feel it.
0:02:18 > 0:02:21And the way his owner was walking him around,
0:02:21 > 0:02:24being very patient with him when he had to stop, bending down
0:02:24 > 0:02:27to him and stroking his head, told me that this was the last day
0:02:27 > 0:02:29of his life.
0:02:29 > 0:02:33Whether she would take him to be shot or what, whether he would just
0:02:33 > 0:02:36expire at the end of the day, but you could just feel it,
0:02:36 > 0:02:39between them, in their relationship, you could feel this was the last day
0:02:39 > 0:02:42they would spend together and it was unbearably
0:02:42 > 0:02:44upsetting to see it.
0:02:44 > 0:02:48I thought, will he even die in front of me?
0:02:48 > 0:02:54And I just wanted to describe his slow progress around the park.
0:02:54 > 0:02:56It's also a wonderful illustration of how a piece
0:02:56 > 0:02:58of writing and reflection, of newspaper column length
0:02:58 > 0:03:02in this case, can come from one little observation,
0:03:02 > 0:03:05one moment, you know, a flash on your eye of something
0:03:05 > 0:03:09and then everything begins to weave itself around that one sight.
0:03:09 > 0:03:12Absolutely.
0:03:12 > 0:03:15That's always been my way of doing it, the only way I can do it.
0:03:15 > 0:03:20I couldn't come as a columnist, if there had been a war
0:03:20 > 0:03:22while I was writing, although there were some,
0:03:22 > 0:03:25I didn't know how to deal with them.
0:03:25 > 0:03:27I want to make something little big rather than, you know,
0:03:27 > 0:03:31leap on the back of something that is big.
0:03:31 > 0:03:33That's the challenge for me, start with nothing and let the words
0:03:33 > 0:03:37do it, let one's observation do it, let the words do it,
0:03:37 > 0:03:40see where they take you.
0:03:40 > 0:03:43It's a wonderful skill to be able to fashion
0:03:43 > 0:03:46a column that is touching, funny, may be profound
0:03:46 > 0:03:48if you're lucky.
0:03:48 > 0:03:52But also has a kind of wordplay that gives it a simple aesthetic pleasure
0:03:52 > 0:03:55as a piece of writing, it has a beginning, middle and end,
0:03:55 > 0:03:56beautifully turned sentences.
0:03:56 > 0:03:57And that's what you really love, isn't it?
0:03:57 > 0:04:02The rhythm is everything, get the rhythm of a joke wrong,
0:04:02 > 0:04:05comedians know that.
0:04:05 > 0:04:11A joke, the timing and rhythm is everything and so it is in
0:04:11 > 0:04:13the writing something like a column.
0:04:13 > 0:04:17I can just start with very little and I the words do it.
0:04:17 > 0:04:20I am, if you like, a servant of the words.
0:04:20 > 0:04:23They are my words, but sometimes they don't feel like my words.
0:04:23 > 0:04:25Where do they come from?
0:04:25 > 0:04:26A mysterious feeling.
0:04:26 > 0:04:28Of course you feel that the world is a mystery, that's quite
0:04:28 > 0:04:30a good start, isn't it?
0:04:30 > 0:04:32It's much more fun than knowing everything.
0:04:32 > 0:04:35If you're going on an exploration, saying, how did that come about,
0:04:35 > 0:04:38why do we feel like that, why do people behave like that?
0:04:38 > 0:04:43And more important I think than ever at the moment
0:04:43 > 0:04:47because post the social media, and I can't stop banging on about it
0:04:47 > 0:04:51because I feel it will be the death of humanity in the end.
0:04:51 > 0:04:54Mark my words, if we're around 100 years, I said it,
0:04:54 > 0:04:55it will be death of us.
0:04:55 > 0:04:58But social media thrives on assertion.
0:04:58 > 0:05:01I know this or even worse than that, I think this, I feel this,
0:05:01 > 0:05:04this is my opinion.
0:05:04 > 0:05:06I don't really have opinions.
0:05:06 > 0:05:08It may look like I have an opinion but first
0:05:08 > 0:05:10and foremost I'm a novelist.
0:05:10 > 0:05:12I am ironical, elusive, equivocal, you can't find me,
0:05:12 > 0:05:17I don't want to be found because I'm not there.
0:05:17 > 0:05:21Me, me, is not there.
0:05:21 > 0:05:23You're sometimes very irritated as well, particularly with social
0:05:23 > 0:05:24media in all its manifestations.
0:05:24 > 0:05:27There is a wonderful column in which you talk
0:05:27 > 0:05:29about being invited to join one of these networks and of course
0:05:29 > 0:05:33you don't want to take part in it and you imagine the person whose
0:05:33 > 0:05:35name has popped up saying you are invited to join
0:05:35 > 0:05:38the network waiting.
0:05:38 > 0:05:45"Has he not responded yet?"
0:05:45 > 0:05:47This whole idea of a world of emotion that is out
0:05:47 > 0:05:50there but completely beyond you.
0:05:50 > 0:05:55Beyond me and expressive of views I can't bear,
0:05:55 > 0:06:00and certainties that I can't.
0:06:00 > 0:06:02There is this or there is that.
0:06:02 > 0:06:05You and I know that everything interesting is not a thumbs up
0:06:05 > 0:06:07or thumbs down, it's everything in between that.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11All the great writing that you love is writing about that middle ground,
0:06:11 > 0:06:15the lack of certainty, the difference between good and evil
0:06:15 > 0:06:22that is often not as big a difference as you think.
0:06:22 > 0:06:25You know, the ambiguities that are in every human being.
0:06:25 > 0:06:27Absolutely, and the other thing that's started to crop up quite
0:06:27 > 0:06:30recently I think is this idea of the importance of sincerity.
0:06:30 > 0:06:32We've had it with several of our recently elected leaders.
0:06:32 > 0:06:38At least he tells what he believes.
0:06:38 > 0:06:42No virtue in saying what you believe if what you believe is trash.
0:06:42 > 0:06:45Writers aren't sincere, they are never simply only
0:06:45 > 0:06:50themselves, they have to find other ways of being all the time.
0:06:50 > 0:06:55Well, that brings us conveniently to another project
0:06:55 > 0:06:57which is near fruition, a novel, a story coming out
0:06:57 > 0:07:04in April, inspired, provoked, whatever the appropriate word is,
0:07:04 > 0:07:06by the election of Donald Trump, an event that clearly moved
0:07:06 > 0:07:07you to do something.
0:07:07 > 0:07:11What did you want to do in this story, which is called Pussy?
0:07:11 > 0:07:14The day that Trump won the election, that astonishing night,
0:07:14 > 0:07:17I went to sleep thinking he'd lost, as I've done on several other
0:07:17 > 0:07:18occasions that year.
0:07:18 > 0:07:22I woke up in the middle of the night with a goblin sitting on my chest,
0:07:22 > 0:07:24unable to breathe and I realised what had happened.
0:07:24 > 0:07:27The following morning I just began a fairy story.
0:07:27 > 0:07:29You can only tell it as a fairy story.
0:07:29 > 0:07:31To my mind, you can't do this as real.
0:07:31 > 0:07:35A traditional fairy story?
0:07:35 > 0:07:39A kind of Grimm's fairy story, a ferocious fairy story about this
0:07:39 > 0:07:41character called Fracassus and about his birth
0:07:41 > 0:07:45and how he is destined to run the free world.
0:07:45 > 0:07:48What is fascinating about him is that he has no words,
0:07:48 > 0:07:50this is a person with no words.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54That's the phenomena that we're seeing over there at the moment.
0:07:54 > 0:07:57How can a person thrive, how can a person be listened to,
0:07:57 > 0:08:01believe he has the right to govern, but worst of all, how can he be
0:08:01 > 0:08:02elected when he has no language?
0:08:02 > 0:08:05Language is what we know, we who read and write,
0:08:05 > 0:08:13language is the way you think, the way you think yourself out
0:08:13 > 0:08:16of prejudice, the way you think yourself to enlightenment.
0:08:16 > 0:08:17Without language, you're locked in.
0:08:17 > 0:08:19Did you feel better when you finished it?
0:08:19 > 0:08:22I felt a lot better, partly because I was excited that
0:08:22 > 0:08:28I'd written something at this speed.
0:08:28 > 0:08:30The columns had helped me, all those years writing columns
0:08:30 > 0:08:31had helped me to write.
0:08:31 > 0:08:35Normally I'd take two years to write a novel.
0:08:35 > 0:08:37Here was a novel written, it isn't a full-length novel,
0:08:37 > 0:08:40it's a novella, but it's 50,000 words, written in a few weeks.
0:08:40 > 0:08:43The columns helped me to do that.
0:08:43 > 0:08:46Well, people can read Pussy next month and for the moment they can
0:08:46 > 0:08:49enjoy your columns under the heading of that melancholy little story that
0:08:49 > 0:08:51opens the collection of columns, writing, The Dog's Last Walk.
0:08:51 > 0:08:52Howard Jacobson, thanks very much.