finding a theme

GILES GORDON 5

Finding a theme It is increasingly difficult for the average professional author to make a living from the writing of books. Literature may be literature but before it is that the author has to be able to survive, even if it is on a desert island, whether of the ocean or of the mind.

The non-fiction writer in comparison with the novelist, poet or dramatist - and most of our literature is still written by novelists, poets and dramatists - has it relatively easy. If he wants to write a biography of, say, Talleyrand he either comes to the subject with some particular expertise or he informs his publisher that he’ll need a substantial advance to keep wife and family and himself for the next three or four years while he mugs up the subject and writes the book. The publisher before committing himself will take a myriad matters into account. Likewise, with the large majority of non-fiction projects, where the writer is a professional author as opposed to a professional anything else: historian, for instance, who probably makes most of his living from teaching. He will adduce that there is a need for a book on a particular subject, claim to his publisher that those which already exist are either out of date or unreadable or both, and he will probably be

Giles Gordon.

6 Critical Quarterly, voL 22, no. 1

right. He'll assume, because he's interested in Talleyrand, that everyone else is or should be. He'll almost definitely be wrong but the publishing industry needs such staple product as a contribution to its turnover, and everyone will be tolerably happy, unless there are two other people engaged on biog- raphies of Talleyrand at the same time. (And, incidentally, as it becomes increasingly expensive for publishers to commission and publish non- fiction books, a central register has been established in London at the National Book League called 'Books in Progress' where any author interested in writing a particular book can record his or her subject and be put in touch with anyone else who has registered and is writing in a similar area This seems to me an admirable way by which to try to stop three people writing on the same subject simultaneously to the detriment of them all and to the majority of readers.)

How the novelist arrives at or decides upon his themes, if novels may be thought to be concerned with particular themes, is quite a different matter, more intuitive and arbitrary. Nevertheless, I'd like to try to set up a few guide lines. I'm not thinkiig about what tend in the book trade to be referred to as category fiction or genre novels. The authors of historical novels.have little difficulty in finding their themes, or at least their subjects. Their methods of doing so are closer to those of the biographer or historian than to the 'straight' novelist, I wouldn't say it is easier to write a novel set in eighteenth- century Aberdeenshire than in Hampstead in 1980. On the contrary. I would say that less soul-searching is required, more background reading and hard slogging. The writer of historical fiction can reasonably assume on the part of the reader certain things in common between them, that if the novel is about Mary Stuart and Bothwell the reader will have encountered other books about the Queen of Scots and vaguely remember who Bothwell is, even if in fact he or she has muddled him with Darnley or even Rizzio. Not the least of the pleasures of historical fiction is that readers feel at home in the worlds created - or recreated - although, paradoxically, they've never been there (unless they believe in reincarnation) whereas they may have been to Harnpstead (Mind you, I feel more at home in Suetonius' Rome as revealed by RobertGraves than I do in many contemporary novels set in North-West London where I live. And does it matter whether Suetonius was writing so-called fact or so-called fiction?)

So much then for historical novels. Similarly with romantic fiction, and with thrillers, and with hard core science fiction It seems to me that the writer and reader of thrillers inhabit a world closer to that of crossword puzzles and acrostics than either to literature or to flesh and blood. It is formula and convention that we the order of the day, the knowledge that a crime has been or will be committed and that there are so many suspects and so many

,

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clues, and even in 1980 nineteen times out of twenty the baddies are apprehended and the goodies triumph It's a curiously old-fashioned concept, the thriller, because its premise is that wickedness must take place before good can be achieved, the moral order reasserted

With genre or category fiction set aside, we're left with what charmingly still tends to be referred to as straight fiction, though that is what less and less it seems to be. It depends, I suppose, upon how you interpret the word straight. Whatever themes such novels may or may not possess, if they have beginnings, middles and ends they are rarely in that order.

The question I have set myself to answer i s what does the novelist do when he has finished his last book, when he's confronted with a bare desk, a hungry typewriter and a ream of A4 paper? It is, I assure you, a ghastly prospect. The future yawns ahead of him vacantly. Before he commits that first sentence to paper, he knows that he is about to perpetrate an event that will more likely than not affect his livelihood and that of his dependants for probably a twelve-month or more. For, once embarked upon, it is extraordi- narily hard to expunge from your mind the direction in which you are mov- ing, or your narrative is, your continuous streamer of prose. It is one thing to alter and revise as you go along, or to rewrite once the first draft is complete. This most of us who write novels do as a matter of course. It's very hard to change the basic thrust of the book once that first sentence, that initial image or incident or character, is set down.

I am not declaring myself as an expert on the processes of other novelists, or even of my own fictions, but I would venture to suggest that almost every professional novelist thinks along the following lines before starting a new book, whether he does so consciously or subconsciously:

1. Is there any particularsubject I have an urgent desire to tackle in fictional form?

2. Are there any people or characters who interest me to such a degree that I'd like to explore and investigate them within the framework of a novel?

3. Are there any themes, concepts or philosophies I feel compelled to reduce or raise to the power of fiction?

4. And, if desperate or lazy like most novelists: have exciting things hap pened to me that I can work up as fiction without the result being a libel suit from an erstwhile friend?

5. Lastly, and most interestingly, there is the novelist as artist. He or she who is as much interested in artefact as content, in the book, the novel as aesthetic object To whom content is subservient to structure and form. The novel as work of art

It goes without saying that when the novelist starts work, when the soar- ing and brilliant ideas in his head are reduced to dull words, many or all of


my five categories come into play in his mind and on paper. None of them is mutually exclusive. All five may be engaged simultaneously.

Once a novel is written and published, it is criticised by its readers. That is altogether appropriate and proper. The more interesting the novel is, the more it may and probably will be criticised. The reader will ask himself questions, and even discuss the book with spouse or friend or colleague or who- ever has also read it. Fiction provides common ground. What I think is rarely asked by a reader (as opposed to a professional reviewer, who ought to know better) is: why did Iris Murdoch or Angus Wilson or John Fowles write that book rather than another? Why did the novelist feel it essential to spend a year or more writing those particular 80,000 words, in exactly that shape and form and order? You may say - and I wouldn’t disagree with you - that that is the concern of the writer alone. I as a reader do not want to know about his personal problems, his private life whether of the mind or of the body. I want to be entertained and stimulated and my life enriched by the work of art he has produced. Which, as I say, is fine but it doesn’t make the problems any easier for the author.

There is the compulsion to write, of course there is. You must have it if you go on producing novels without being what is euphemistically known as a bestseller because the financial returns you’re going to achieve will be neg- ligible, vastly below anything approaching a living wage. And if you are compelled to write, if you insist upon sitting down at your desk every day or at certain regular times of the week, themes may not immediately seem the point. The sentences do come. They have to. But even then there are intuitive processes going on in the novelist‘s mind, although he may think he is only doodling with words, playing with ideas, remembering a snatch of conversation, an image, a smell, a concept, a man with a limp crossing the road, something seen on holiday in Ullapool or Istanbul.

About three years ago I finished my last published novel, Enemies. It took quite some time for my publisher to bring it out but it was hardly unique in that respect For a year thereafter I couldn’t decide what I wanted to write next. I assumed I’d never be able to write another novel. If you think of your- self as a novelist, that is the worst sensation that can happen to you. It‘s also one that most novelists experience regularly, a kind of literary post-natal depression Poems are one thing; they happen or they don‘t. Plays don‘t takeso long to write. A dramatist will come up withsomething, two characters can exchange the time of day. A play doesn’t tie up your life till doomsday. But a novel? It‘s like a continent. It’s vast, complex, apparently endless. If you’ve no idea of what you want to write, what you want to say, you can’t write, can’t say. You can write short stories, and satisfymg they are. But they are not novels, theyre a different animal Then one day, suddenly, out of the

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blue, I thought of something and began writing, a simple idea about the relationship between a couple who had been married for a decade. It may or may not have had autobiographical connotations. May or may not have had? Of course it did. I wrote one hundred pages, or ninety-nine to be accurate. I still possess the typescript, but the edges are yellowing.

Then I knew that I could hold it down no longer, a particular urge. In my head the following picture, the following lines had been nagging and gnaw- ing for months. Really months. They wouldn’t go away, they wouldn’t leave me. Day and night, whatever I was doing, the lines, the images would obtrude. I’ve no idea where they came from, or ‘even - to be honest- whether first I dreamt them:

1. A boy was playing in a park. 2. A man walked up to him and said ‘What are you going to be when you

3. The boy replied: ‘I’m going to build a cathedral’ 4. ’What, only one?’ replied the man. That‘s not very ambitious.’ The lines were there, four of them only, but they encompassed-

potentially - a world They constituted an image - or four images - a very history; certainly an anecdote, the basis of a short story, or a noveL As a novelist grows older, he is more guarded with his material, less prodigal with what seems or might be a good idea. I began analysing the four lines which looked as if they could, would serve as the basis of my next novel, and whether abortive or not only time and hard work would tell

Let us examine the lines one by one, look at the kind of questions the per- petrator of fiction has to consider before he dares put pen to paper. Each question asked and answered leads directly or indirectly to the subsequent one.

grow up, little man?’

1. A boy was playing in a park. Who was the boy? Any boy or one central to the story, the hero even? His

name? How old was he? Child or teenager? What was his background? What was he wearing? What kind of boy? What was the time of year, the season? Indeed, the time of day? When did the incident take place? In the present, or in the past? If the latter, when: century, decade? Where was the park? In what country? In a city, or in the country? If in a (named) city, what part of the city? Was it a private park - someone’s grounds - or a public park? Why was he playing there? Was he on holiday? Was it the weekend? What was he playing? Who was he with? Friends, parents, teacher? On his O M ?

2. A man walked towards him and said: ’What are you going to be when you grow up, little man?’

Who was the man? Where had he come from? Where was he going? Had


he set out to confront the boy, or was their encounter accidental? Either way, why did he approach the boy and speak as he did? How old was the man? What was he wearing? Was he related to the boy, or a friend, or a stranger? Was the boy surprised that the man spoke to him, either at all or as he did? To what degee did that depend upon their relationship at the time of the meeting? Would the boy respond openly to a stranger asking that question? What was the man going to do with the information? Or was he just passing the time of day?

3. The boy replied: ’I‘m going to build a cathedral.’ Was the answer premeditated? Was the boy boasting, or being cheeky?

Fantasising, or being factual? Trying to get rid of the man (‘Don’t talk to strange men’), or intrigue him? How did the boy expect the man to respond? Did he expect to be believed? Would the man be better off if he did believe the boy, if he was satisfied by the answer? Was it the answer (or kind of answer) he expected? By ‘build a cathedral’ did the boy mean design it, as architect, or as mason or as someone else involved with the creation of a cathedral?Did he mean a real cathedral, and if so (as it were)Gothic or twen- tieth century, or somewhere in between; or even in the future (a rocket ship?), or a model of a cathedral?

4. ‘What, only one?’ replied the man. ’That’s not very ambitious.’ Was the man genuinely surprised by the boy’s answer, or was he being

ironic? Trying to retain his dignity? Did he regard the boy’s reply as serious, or was it part of a game between them? Did he believe that the boy would build a cathedral? Or did he believe that the boy believed he would, if he did? How did the man‘s relationship with the boy alter as a result of the boy’s reply to the question?Did the man‘sresponse (‘What, only one?) suggest that he’d no idea of what the boy was talking about? Or that he was pat- ronising him? Likewise, ’That‘s not very ambitious’: is it ambitious to aspire to buildingone cathedral? What is ambition in any case? Could the boy have said what he did? Would the idea have been within his experience?

What happens next? The chapter that follows these words is - for better or for worse - how I

coped with responding to my self-imposed questions. Some, you will see, I chose not to answer directly. The chapter in fact stands apart from the rest of the book in certain respects, hence my calling it a preface. The forty-five chapters and epitaph that follow take up its themes, its ideas. It acts as a kind of coda (if a coda may for once come first) to the body of the book, both in terms of content and technique, the fictional treatment of pretty intractable ma teriaL

I said I’d no idea whence my theme came, and that is so. But visiting cathedrals has always been one of my passions. All art (if I may be so bold) is

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triggered off by something autobiographical in the artist, body, mind and soul. My father is an architect, and when I was born was architect to StGiles’ cathedral in Edinburgh, hence my first name. He was for a period Basil Spence’s partner, and Coventry cathedral - the old and the new - has, since Spence designed it, fascinated me as a concept. On holiday as children my brother and sister and I were driven each summer miles up and down Eng- land to visit the great cathedrals. I collected cathedrals then as later I collected Shakespeare’s plays in performance. For a period of my life, until it was clear that I would never master Latin orGreek, I wanted to be a minister but nearly twenty-five years later I realise I was in love exclusively with the theatrical elements of organised religion. I continue to be thrilled by cathedrals, indeed more so now because they can be considered dispassion- ately, as buildings. W h y are they so special? Could they (the great Gothic ones) have come into being had the cathedral builders not believed in aGod, or assumed that they believed? The fundamental question my novel asks is: could a mighty cathedral be built by men and women in an age when people on the whole don’t ’believe inGod? If so, what is the point of that building, how does it describe the life of its creator?

W. Somerset Maugham wrote in his notebooks in 1896 when aged twenty-two: ‘It is not in a cathedral, or confronted with any mighty human work, that I feel the insignificance of man; then I am impressed rather with his power; his mind seems capable of every feat, and I forget that he is an insignificant creature crawling on a speck of mud, the planet of a minor sun. Nature and art, even against one’s will, persuade one of the grandeur of man; and it is only science that reveals his utter insignificance.’

The Preface to Ambrose‘s Vision: Sketches towards the Creation of a Cathedral by Giles Gordon (Harvester Press: 1980) follows on the next page.

finding a theme

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