William Boyd Meet the Author

Now it's time for Meet the Author.

William Boyd isn't much at home with

the short story is the novel. Events

and collisions of events that take

you straight to the heart of things.

Is a collection with a novella

surrounded by eight short stories.

They have a loosely interlocking

theme and the characters and all the

weight of their past as they try to

find the confidence to look ahead.

Disordered lives, meat and drink to

a writer like William Boyd.

You've published collections of

short stories before and it strikes

me that maybe you find writing a

short story when you're in the

middle of a whacking great novel,

some kind of relief, a change of

pace?

It is true because I think

different mental gears are engaged

when you write a short story as

opposed to a novel and sometimes you

get an idea which can't function as

a novel and you think it'd make a

perfect short story and the other

thing is you can experiment with the

short story anyway you want with the

novel, because of it all goes

terribly wrong you haven't a year!

Like admitting that starts to

unravel.

To participate from time to

time as of great interest.

He talked

about what makes a great short

story, what does make one?

It is

very hard to define. I think there

are seven types. I constructed this

taxonomy but the key one is the

Anton Chekhov model, at the end of

the 19th century developing this

slice of life, without the

beginning, middle and end,

presenting an episode of the

character and often very open-ended

and I think that now is the dominant

kind of short story. Eight piece of

a life presented.

And you like that

for them. You are often concerned

with random things, chance

happenings and random recollections,

one life that is seen backwards or

two lives in one story, that make up

a life. So fragments come together.

It is obviously an idea that you

enjoy?

Yes, and in a short story you

can fragment narrative and present a

series of shorts and the reader

makes the plot. There is something

about the form's generosity in which

you can take a series of random

incidents and because it is short

and very discreet it does the work

itself. It brings it all together in

the way that a lyric pawn might.

Let's talk about the central story

and it is about a 24-year-old girl

in contemporary London whose life is

if not a mess, but a life that is

not really going anywhere. She is

sort of floating and doesn't know

where the tide will take her.

Probably another reason for writing

short stories as you can do the key

and know very well. I wandered

around London looking and I see

young people and in a way construct

short stories for them and I am

aware of people drifting a lot

nowadays, trying out different jobs

and locations and moving, different

ambitions, so I tried to distil this

contemporary phenomenon of drifting

through life.

There are some

interlocking ideas and the character

who pops in another story but they

are not really bolted together in

any serious way. But this theme of

fragments or to floating around them

and some magnetic way coming

together is something that pops up a

lot, and the chance happening, the

last story, a man whose name is

mistaken for somebody else and he

ends up in a kind of romp across the

Highlands. It is an adventure story

about because of a mistake.

You

could say that good luck and bad

luck is a theme that runs through

all the stories and probably through

all my novels as well, something

that obsesses me, the way life can

turn so quickly and personal

happiness can be fragmented so

suddenly. I always feel inclined to

point that out to people who don't

take anything for granted because it

can all go horribly wrong, and the

short story allows you to take these

little moments and seaweed in

narrative can turn are life can turn

like that.

It is almost like a

collection of lyric poetry, a

collection of individual pawns.

I

take great care in the order they

are set out in the book, just as a

port doesn't just throw the work

down.

What thinking goes into that?

Some of it is pragmatic because you

don't want three first person

singular stories together, and

another one as you want to set a

tone of voice at the beginning of a

collection, to say here is how I see

the world and fewer more examples,

so it depends on the stories you

have to hand.

One of the great

things about short story collections

is you get this cataract of

characters, somebody new coming

along every 20 minutes whereas the

novel you have to deal with a gap

you create and then follow them

through. Here you can pick someone

up and follow them for a bit and put

them down, a man whose life is

defined by the things he has stolen,

largely from friends. Many of them

rather than but all none the less

acts of theft.

It is an example of

things you can do in a short story,

can you define a life by the things

a person has stolen. I wouldn't

attempt a novel like that, and

different sets of mental gears are

engaged. It is a different type of

writing in a way.

And two people on

here look at their lives in reverse,

which again is something you can

pull off in a 30 page story.

Exactly, and it doesn't become

tedious, and the conception is quite

intriguing because they view

backwards is always clear and

distinct whereas ahead is a

shimmering void of potential.

And it

is fair to say that in this volume

what you're suggesting is dispute

about the world, but quite a bit of

wry amusement?

I think I am

essentially a serious comic writer.

I see the world as a kind of absurd

comedy and inevitably as a writer

constructing stories are telling

stories about characters, that point

of view filters down and I always

quote Nabokov, who said that a good

laugh is the best pesticide.

You

have Scottish background and the

Scottish with a rich edition is

still love people with a much darker

conception about what the world does

to people and the vengeance wreaks

on individual psychologies.

It does

and I assume, I was born in Africa,

my parents are Scots, and my

formation is entirely Scottish.

There is a strong ironic absurdist

view of the world which is also very

Scottish and very Russian

interestingly. Nothing makes much

sense you might as get on with

things.

And after a long career as a

writer with continues with your

writing as furiously as ever. That

hasn't cooled at all for you.

Absolutely. Sometimes I can't

believe my good luck, to be still

writing, still having my books

published. My first novel was

published 35 years ago. I never take

it for granted and again to quote

Anton Chekhov, to be a free artist

is possibly the best thing you can

possibly be on this small planet.

William Boyd, author of The Dreams

of Bethany Mellmoth, thank you.