1) In terms of subject matter, it seems like your book is ideally suited to being published by Dedalus - how did you come to work with them?
When I wrote my first novel Music, In A Foreign Language I sent an outline and the first couple of chapters to 4 publishers – 3 “big-name” ones and Dedalus. The “big names” threw it on the slush pile and never replied. Dedalus wrote back, asked to see the whole novel, and published it. They’ve kept my books in print ever since, have worked really hard to get my books translated into other languages, and have been very good to me. The book world in general these days is like every other business: people like you when you’re giving them what they want, but there’s no loyalty or commitment, and you can get dropped at a moment’s notice without a thank-you. Dedalus, I’m very happy to say, are more like I imagine the book world to have been in less corporate times: they’re a small, independent company who care about quality. I’ve also had one or two foreign publishers like that – my Greek publisher Polis, for example, whom I respect very much.
2) The Secret Knowledge is full of references to cultural theorists like Adorno, Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin, but there's a sense of their influence waning, or their message being lost, as the narrative approaches the present day. Do you think theory, or ideology, is becoming more remote in the modern world?
To deny that one is ideological is to accept the prevailing ideology. Western democratic capitalism has come to be seen as a “natural” state of affairs, so that to support it is considered a non-ideological stance. Without saying whether one thinks it good or bad, one can question the assumption that it is “natural”. War, poverty and rape are ubiquitous features of human existence throughout history: I would not wish to declare them “natural” (though I would certainly call them bad). I grew up at a time when there existed highly institutionalised ideological structures to which one could easily attach oneself as a form of self-identification: there was a clear division of left and right. I’ve never been a party person in any sense, I don’t self-identify through attachment to organised systems of thought - be they religions, football teams, sub-cultures or political parties. I suppose I might regret less the demise of political organisations if they had not been replaced in mass consciousness by forms of self-identification that to my mind are in many cases merely trivial. The category of “politics” itself becomes reduced somewhat in the way that musical categories these days are a hundred kinds of popular music plus “classical”. When I began writing I did not think myself a “political” writer, but I can see that this was only because my concept of the political was so restricted. As time has gone on I would say that a strong urge for me is to have some influence on the way that people think – not telling them how to think, but encouraging them to think – and that, to my mind, is political, in that it is a belief in the possibility of art to make a difference, just as picking up litter or saving energy makes a difference. Not a big one, but that doesn’t matter.
To speak specifically of the figures in The Secret Knowledge, I would say that Walter Benjamin in particular remains an object of great interest and indeed reverence; part of the theme of my book is the way that a person’s intellectual insights can so easily become abbreviated under the romantic spell of biography. As a story-teller it is my job to engage with the spell, but as a philosopher I would like to engage with the insights also. The task of the novel is to accommodate both story-telling and philosophy, without offering any kind of conclusion, as a text-book or monograph would. Arendt is a somewhat fleeting presence in the book, but my sense is that she remains widely read and studied in intellectual circles, if not to the same degree as Benjamin. Adorno is someone whose high reputation suffered some slippage, but appears to be making a comeback: he is one of those figures like Thomas Mann, whose dominance provokes a posthumous backlash, but who is eventually remembered as someone worth listening to, once adulation can be replaced by critical engagement.
3) The opening sections of the book are based in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. What did you use for research, when you were trying to recreate the ambience of the period?
Nothing in particular. I’ve been to Paris a few times, I’ve read Proust, Gide and various other French writers. If any Parisian from that time could read my book they’d say I got everything ridiculously wrong. But I’m writing for people today, and my job is to make things sound convincing. The big wheel was inspired by one that came to Newcastle a few years ago, an old-fashioned one in French Belle Epoque style that operated at the Quayside during some sort of festival of international food, I think. Turns out there really was a big wheel in Paris in 1913 – I found a picture of it to go on the cover of the book. But I didn’t know that when I wrote it, so the one in the book is different.
4) Was there a historical model for the character of Pierre Klauer?
No, his name popped up in a story that I wrote years ago, and I eventually decided I should create him as a character.
5) Klauer's mysterious 'life-after-death' suggests a hidden, behind-the-scenes account of twentieth century protest - are conspiracies (or conspiracy theories) something you're interested in as a writer?
Yes. All of my novels form a kind of series – they’re independent and can be read in any order, but there are themes that recur, and there’s a running story buried in there that involves a conspiracy to change history (keyword Rosier). Conspiracies interest me because they are a theory of history (one alternative being “cock up”, another being class consciousness – others are available). Blanqui, who fascinated Benjamin and is mentioned in The Secret Knowledge, is interesting because he brings together the themes of conspiracy and multiple worlds. Blanqui’s Society of the Seasons inspired Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday (one of Borges’s favourite books, and read by one of the characters in my novel).
6) How much license did you give yourself when portraying historical characters such as Adorno and Arendt? Do you feel that there is a duty for the author to stick close to the historical record, or can you bend them to the story as you would with completely fictional creations?
There are a lot of details relating to Benjamin, Adorno and Arendt which I got from their biographies and their writings. But that only gives you a skeleton: the job of a writer is to create a person, and that has to be a matter of interpretation or invention. I’m not a biographer or historian: the characters in the novel are “my” characters. This certainly creates a moral dilemma, because you always feel a loyalty to truth, and to the fact that these were real people that you’re playing around with, whether they’re from the 20th century or the 10th. Certainly there is an easy trap of taking an historical figure as a ready-made entity, like a costume that you can put on a dummy (a bicorne hat, arm inside the coat, “Not tonight Josephine” – job done). Equally there’s the trap of trying to borrow greatness – a bit like those stories that borrow ancient myths as a way of supposedly adding importance or dignity. I won’t claim to be free of those traps, they’re there for everyone who goes down that sort of route. But for me what is interesting is to engage not only with the biography of an historical character, but also with whatever they did that makes them worth remembering. If you write about philosophers then that means thinking about their philosophy.
7) Which current authors do you most enjoy reading?
Of late I’ve spent most of my time working on a scientific problem, which means I’ve mainly been reading research papers (many of them very old, which is nice, and creates the same sense of contact with the past that a novel can). The novel I’ve most enjoyed recently was Nicholas Royle’s First Novel. I’ve also just read a novel that Dedalus will publish next year by a new writer – Fontoon by John Schoneboom. It’s a surreal, anarchic comedy that is brilliantly written and extremely funny – definitely one to look out for.
8) What will you be working on next?
I hope to write a non-fiction book about astronomy, then 2 more novels that will bring my series to its conclusion.
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