Shared Words: An Interview with Author Nicola Barker
It’s a damp January afternoon, Nicola Barker is wearing tall
leather boots and a thickly-woven Peruvian cardigan which dwarfs her slight
frame. It’s been just over two months now since her novel H(A)PPY was awarded the Goldsmiths Prize for ‘fiction at its most
novel’ and she confesses that she’s been leading what she describes as a
“terrifyingly un-literary life” since winning the prize. Whilst the cash
injection might have been warmly received, Nicola seems blithely unfazed by
ideas of literary ‘success’. “Success isn’t a word or a concept that remotely
interests me,” she says, “I work because I love what I do and because I have an
agenda and am driven to express it. Success is all about other people’s
perceptions of you and the world. I’m interested in finding fulfilment in a
different and quieter way.” This is far from the author’s first rodeo; her
first collection of short stories published in 1993 under the title of Love Your Enemies. From there, Nicola
has gone on the be longlisted for the Man Booker Prize twice (Clear and The Yips), shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the
Hawthornden Prize for Darkmans and
was ordained “one of the 20 Best Young British Novelists” by Granta back in
2005.
Born in Cambridgeshire in 1966, the writer (she contests the
use of the word ‘novelist’) started writing from an early age, fashioning her
own makeshift books whilst in primary school. Barker’s parents then moved the
family to South Africa where Barker discovered the delights of the BBC World
Service. The unique narratives of the
special reports fanned the flames of love for cross-genre narratives in the
young Barker.
In her student years, Barker fawned over her “literary
parents”; Martin Amis and Angela Carter, interviewing the former herself as an
enthusiastic undergraduate student. When pressed for other literary influences
she shuts down, protesting “I write fiction more than I read”. And yet, H(A)PPY is a text that is steeped in
allusions to Sci-Fi and dystopian fiction(s).
Barker’s writing tends to take one of two forms; excessively,
obsessively long-form, or, shorter-form and written post-haste with a “manic
energy”. H(A)PPY falls into the
second of these two camps, birthed “joyfully and enthusiastically” in a
bungalow on Hastings’ Firehills with views of the town and sea. Written shortly
after the breakdown of her marriage, Nicola explains the process of writing the
novel as wholly consuming. “H(A)PPY
bought a great deal of disruption into my life. I didn’t sleep for about 8
months during the writing; maybe an hour or two a night. Sometimes it’s hard to
know if you are writing the book or if the book is writing you.”
H(A)PPY is raw, scornful, two-fingers up to
convention and quaint narrative resolution and deconstructs everything in its
sight, warts and all. It defies expectations through a daring exploration of
censorship and typographic trickery. Narratively, it’s textually broken and
semiotically bruised with coloured words indicating the breakdown of language.
Despite the strong air of an oppressive regime, Barker boldly
asserts that her text is a “utopia”;
perfectly formed and carefully controlled. In this far-off realm, all thoughts
are governed by a moderating ‘System’ which besets the text’s outsider
protagonist Mira A. Linguistic pinkening of Mira’s thoughts indicates emotion,
darkening shows dangerous conceptual ideas and greening suggests clandestine
notions of ecology and native cultures. Whilst these are not explicitly
elucidated in the text, one can roughly infer the groupings through dogged
perseverance of reading. Barker is keen to acknowledge that these
categorizations are not objective evaluations and she credits the reader’s own
interpretations. She hastens to add, “I’m a lover of the System!” and God only
knows that you’ve got to be to have produced something as rigidly organized as
this.
I ask Barker about the creative decision to colour her text
in this way; a decision which has proved an expensive headache for her
publishers but also defining in the run-up to the Goldsmiths Prize winner
announcement as “the novel with the colourful words”. “The colour is used in
the text to express emotion – that’s what’s interesting about it, not the
colour itself,” Barker says, “I find it funny how things we see in day to
day life become odd and innovative when they appear in a novel. It’s really all
just context”. Call it what you will, book-making, word-brewing, novel-stitching;
it’s in Barker’s blood. It’s knitted between the strands of her fancy angora
cardigan, it’s under her impish fringe, it’s on the bridge of the glasses that
she raises towards her head then places in her mouth at irregular intervals.
H(A)PPY is firmly rooted in Paraguay. The
theme was first introduced to Barker through her engagement with a BBC World
Service special report which narrated the tragic story of a nine-year-old girl
who has been abused and raped in her native country. The girl was subsequently
declined an abortion and was forced to see the pregnancy to full term. To
Barker, this embodied a “future-future”, a paradoxical and unreal reality,
predicated by the actions of a country perceiving its actions as progressive.
Through her research of Paraguay, Barker was introduced to Guarani and was
captivated by the language’s elusive absence of written form, which aided its
erasure under colonization. Fragments of texts both on and in Guarani are
scattered through the novel as Barker tries to artistically emulate the fading
cultural memory of the language.
Barker’s research on Paraguay informed her decision to
preface H(A)PPY with the suggestion
that the reader should familiarize themselves with Agustin Barrios: The Complete Historical Guitar Recordings.
This considered, Barker is keen to point out that this does not mean to listen
to Barrios whilst reading, but to supplement the process of reading, in-between
actively sitting down and engaging with the book. Barrios’ most acclaimed track
‘La Cathedral’ was the strongest influence on Barker, and she avows that this
song “represents rhythm and structure of novel”. Barker was fascinated by
Barrios as a character, a Paraguayan who engaged with the guitar in a
distinctly Western manner and later had plastic surgery to reduce his “native”
lip. “To me, Barrios represents Paraguay as a nation,” she says, and I can’t
help but think that Barker must identify with Barrios to an extent, as an
artist who is hyper-critical of both her own work and her own externally
projected image. We discuss Barker’s identity as a fiction writer and her
deeply-held fear of becoming a literary cliché. Her face faux-crumbles with an
air of resignation, “I hate myself!” she says, crossing her arms.
Nowadays, Barker is adjusting to life outside London
following her move to Hastings. She touches on this only briefly as an
intensely onerous period of transition. She tells me she finds solace in her
spirituality now. Whilst Barker does not overtly acknowledge geography as an
influence on her writing, (“Where I write doesn’t really matter,”) she has
undertaken both literary and religious pilgrimages. “The last one I took was to
the little church where Julian of Norwich had her anchorage,” she says, “It was
so lovely and quiet and full of light, I brought home a hazelnut as they leave
them there for pilgrims. It now sits on my desk and reminds me of Julian and
everything she represents.” As for her literary pilgrimages, Barker recently
ventured to T.S. Eliot’s flat in London, run by Barker’s former editor Clare
Reihill. Barker talks of the relics of her literary heroes with the spirit of a
Teen-Pop enthusiast at their first gig. “I got to look at Eliot’s bed and his
suitcases and his old typewriters, one still had a piece of paper in it that
he’d doodled on. There was his copy of Ulyysses on his kitchen table and his
drawings and his study and his photos of Ted Hughes and a million-other
wonderful, precious, intimate things. It was breath-taking.”
Like her writing, Barker is an unstoppable bubbling paradox
of contradictions. She rattles off ideas at 100mph with an unquenching,
unrelenting work ethic, declaring “I never stop working. Fiction is a kind of maddening,
dripping tap that can’t ever be fully closed”. She is bashful and highly
self-critical, whilst standing her ground. “Nothing I do is especially
considered. Spontaneity is key. Change is good. Challenge is good.” She is
sharply-spoken, spiritually switched-on; speaking of “souls” and “deadening
evils”. She is unflinchingly comfortable in her own skin and whilst this may
veer on hardheaded stubbornness, she is genuinely charming.
I ask Barker whether she has any advice for young writers in
2018. She pauses, takes a deep breath and then smiles resolutely, “Be brave.
Don’t be too serious. Have fun. Eschew ambition, which is the death of
creativity. Please yourself. Challenge yourself. Confound yourself. Declare
all-out war on your ego. Write about what you don’t know. Be generous. Always
try to have low expectations but high ideals”.
***********
2b.
Critical Commentary
This interview was written following
my involvement in the Goldsmiths Prize towards the end of 2017. Whilst I’d
initially been hoping to interview Nicola in person, I contacted her publicist
on behalf of [smiths] magazine and we agreed for the interview to happen over
email. These questions are pasted below:
·
Has life changed for you since winning the Goldsmiths Prize?
·
How does the experience compare to other literary prizes?
·
How did the process of writing H(A)PPY compare to your other books?
·
How do you mark literary success?
·
Did you make any significant omissions to the novel over the editing
process or did it remain fully-formed?
·
Do you think your experimental manner of blending colour with language
will pave the way for more experimental works?
·
Was this something you have previously encountered in fiction?
·
You recommend reading the novel whilst listening to Agustin
Barrios: The Complete Historical Guitar Recordings. Are you able to listen
to music whilst writing?
·
You’ve said that you’re a “great believer in boredom, challenge and
suffering” (inews.com November 2017). Could
you elaborate?
·
To what extent does your environment shape your writing?
·
Where did you write H(A)PPY?
·
Have you ever undertaken a literary pilgrimage?
·
Do you have any advice for young writers/creatives in 2018?
·
What’s the best book you’ve been gifted?
·
What do you work on in-between novels?
·
You mentioned in your acceptance speech for the Goldsmiths Prize that
your victory was influenced by your tiny fringe, in a nod to Goldsmiths’
notoriously trendy haircuts. Who do you think has the second-best fringe in
contemporary fiction?
As these interview questions were
written for publication in [smiths] magazine it was crucial that they were not
too jargon-y, specialist or textually weighted to her novel given that the
magazine is not specifically a literary magazine. In this way, the interview is
much more accessible for those who are not necessarily from a literature
background. Furthermore, I thought that the inclusion of the light-hearted
final question would help to lighten the tone although it was somewhat of a
tonal risk. This considered, given that the interview was conducted over email
I felt it was a risk which was buffered by the lack of face-to-face contact.
Whilst researching Nicola’s previous interviews in the Independent, the
Guardian, the Newstatesman and Granta, I admired the TLS model of their ‘Twenty
Questions with…’ which lends to more succinct responses which helps with an
ease of reading and thus, better circulation of the article. I decided to
combine the experience of attending the event ‘Nicola Barker in conversation
with Tim Parnell’ in late January 2018 with the email interview. I took
thorough notes whilst in attendance which allowed me to gauge more of her
personality and character which a flat email correspondence could not.
Although the interview is
presented as if the author was present for their responses, it is an unfaithful
claim as the quotes attributed to Nicola here are a balance of those from the
email and from the evening. There is an ethical question raised here by
presenting the exchanges in an inauthentic context. For me, the combination of
the two experiences in this way was an important creative decision. This
decision was made to enrich the writing for the purpose of submitting for
assessment. Hopefully this contributes towards a more interesting read than the
interview or the review of the event would have done singularly.
Having recently undertaken a
two-week work experience placement at the Observer New Review, I spent a lot of
time performing tasks such as transcribing interviews and reproducing them in
appropriate formats for features of both long and short-form length. The act of
chasing up interviewees for additional questions or asking them to elaborate on
a certain topic further is common-practice and this is something which I have
actively assisted journalists with. The style of writing in these write-ups was
very meticulous in keeping the ‘house style’ of the Observer and I was
encouraged to stay away from excessively emotive adjectives when introducing
the artist in the opening few lines. This manner of writing and the way in
which the Observer selectively integrated quotes in short-form journalism has
informed the way I approached writing this piece and has made me aware of the
power of pared-back language when appropriate.
The way in which my piece is
structured pays close attention to temporality. The opening line “It’s a damp January afternoon” places
the exchange clearly, if unfaithfully, in the present tense and sets the tone
of the piece. This is then followed by a brief biographical section on the
author which is written in a factual manner before allowing a more personal
exploration of character and personality. The structuring of my analyses in
this way allows for my judgements to be founded on the objectivity of Nicola’s
past and makes these verdicts appear more informed. Towards the end of the
piece we switch to ‘Nowadays’, which shows an arch to the description of Nicola
throughout her career and carries the narrative away from discussions of
fiction and to the current state emotional/spiritual status of the author. The
final question (which asks about advice for young writers in 2018) allows for
the piece to conclude on an optimistic tone which looks forward and is rousing
for the intended audience of creative Goldsmiths students and aspiring writers,
encouraging a positive message.
890 words.
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