Michel Faber Meet the Author


Michel Faber

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Now on BBC News it's time for Meet the Author.

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France celebrated novelist to poet. Michel Faber's success has come in

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many genres but after the death of his wife Eva, he decided to write a

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book of poems, Undying: A Love Story., which follows the last

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stages of her illness and describes the raw day by day process of his

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own grief afterwards. Welcome. As a novelist, was it difficult to

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commit yourself, especially under this very painful circumstances, to

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a poetic form? I didn't feel I was committing myself to anything. In

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the aftermath of either's death, these poems came to me. I had no

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conception that I was going to put them out there. They were just

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suggesting themselves to be written. It seemed perverse not to write

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them, given that they were coming to me. I didn't feel that I would put

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them out there, but when I started reading the mad at literary

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festivals, I noticed that they were connecting with people and I thought

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that maybe this was something which wasn't essentially private, maybe

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they could be shared. Reading this very direct, Frank, sometimes brutal

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poems was, in a strange sort of way, giving people consolation, because I

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was talking about things which are almost forget -- forbidden to be

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talking about. -- Even though there's a lot

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of grieving poetry out there, it tends to be quite

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decorous and, and beautiful. And you wanted some

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of this to be raw. I wanted it to be

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raw and, in fact, I I could have gone on writing

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the poems until now. But I stopped writing

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them at the end of 2015, because I felt

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I'd the stage in my grieving where there

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was a risk I would just write

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a beautiful poem that happen to have grief

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as its subject, rather

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than feeling grief and needing to express it

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in They were private expressions

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of your own feelings, some kind of reassurance,

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some kind of record, I suppose, But you'd always thought

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of them are something Well, I have a long record

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of writing things and not I wrote for 25 years

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without submitting anything. So, yes, if I had thought

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that they were just me talking to myself about what I had gone

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through, I wouldn't There is anger in there,

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there is unbearable sadness. And there are those

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moments after your wife's death that everyone

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will Things, for example,

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like the death of a cat. Which takes you back in a weird

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way to your human loss. And it's the kind

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of thing people think about but don't often say,

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let alone write down. The poem that was particularly

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significant on that level is... There is a poem

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called You Were Ugly. Which talks about what happened

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to her body as a result of And that's a taboo, you're really

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not allowed in our... And when I read that poem out

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on the radio about a year ago, someone phoned in the radio

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station and said, look, I'm not But I am consoled that

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someone has expressed this thing which I've

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been thinking and felt that I wasn't allowed to

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think. Will this take you into

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poetry as a medium? No, this will be the only book

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of poetry that I write. I'm under no illusions

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that I'm a good enough poet to write

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poems about anything Does that mean that

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you will return to fiction? As you say, you had a long

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period where you didn't You know, you're sort

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of famously almost reclusive as a writer in that

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sense, for a long time. Will this have that same

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effect on you or not? Well, when Eva was ill,

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and she knew she was going to die, she was very, very

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upset with my decision, which I had already made, that I would

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write no more novels. But I would be astonished

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if I wrote another novel for I do want to write

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a novel for children. It's something I

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haven't done before. With each book I wanted to do

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something that I have I also think that in the world

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as it currently is, a There are writers,

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thinking earlier about Thomas Hardy, who lived

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to the late 20s, but wrote his last novel

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in the mid-1890s, and spent the rest

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of his life writing poetry. No, you say you're not

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going to do another novel, another volume of poetry,

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but it does seem as if the moment you've reached in your fiction

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writing and with this break, because

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of the circumstances you find yourself in,

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it is time for something completely And something I also want to do

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is figure out whether I can I'm so used to

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inhabiting that little sanctum sanctorum and

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creating works of art, which is an alternative to hanging

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out with real human beings things that ordinary

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people know how to do. When you're not writing, when you're

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not sitting in that quiet I will occasionally read

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a book about music. It's an extraordinary thing to hear,

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in a writer of your celebrity and accomplishment,

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saying he no longer reads fiction. Do you ever feel guilty

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about that or is It makes, in some ways

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it makes things a lot easier because it means when I meet

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another writer and I haven't met their work, haven't read their work,

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it's not that I'm choosing You can say I haven't read

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anybody else's either. I haven't read anybody

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else's either. So that's a sort of

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socially convenient. But maybe in the future

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I would like to become the sort of So whether you're writing

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poetry in the sadness after your wife's death,

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or whether you are contemplating a move to

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fiction for young people, or listening to music, you're always,

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finally, looking for a new horizon. Yes, but maybe the ultimate

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new horizon is to become Because that has been

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my mission in a way. Because I started off very,

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very alienated, very strange. And I didn't want to

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become an alienated It's frightening in a way

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for me to become more connected, because as you become

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more connected with other people, And if you're a solitary fringe

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dweller, you're protected Whereas once you welcome these

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people in, life is harsh. But it's a risk

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you feel you now have I feel it's a risk

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I now have to take. Well, not have to take,

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but want to take. Michel Faber, author

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of Undying: A Love

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