Interview

Someone once told me that you used to read a book a day.

I read an enormous amount and, in large part, quiet mindlessly. I love to read the way people love to watch television, and I kind of nod out over it. If I'm depressed I pick up a book and I feel better.

Do you write sitting on a chair and at a desk?

I tend to write first drafts lying on a bed, stretched out. Then, as soon as I have something to type out, I go to a desk and a wooden chair, and from then on it’s all at the typewriter. How do you write?

At a desk with a fairly hard chair and lots of things scattered around.

But don’t you think you'd write differently if you were all naked and wrapped in velvet? [laughing] There are all these stories about Goethe, or maybe it was Schiller, who used to write with his feet in warm water. And Wagner, who only composed in silk robes with incense and perfume in the room.

Was there a particular book that you read when you were young that made you want to become a writer?

The book that made me want to become a writer was Martin Eden by Jack London — and it had a suicide at the end! I read it when I was thirteen. I couldn’t possibly have the same thrill reading that novel today — Jack London isn’t a satisfying enough writer for an adult person living now.