EXCERPTS OF INTERVIEWS WITH
GEORGE SAUNDERS and HILARY MANTEL
HILARY MANTEL
INTERVIEWED BY MIA FUNK
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
It’s fascinating in Wolf Hall the way you root us immediately in Cromwell’s POV right from the beginning. Can you speak a little about how this beginning came to you?
HILARY MANTEL
The beginning came in a flash – it unfolded cinematically as I wrote it – and immediately, all the big choices were made. When is it happening? Now. What is the point of view? His.
We are looking through the boy’s eyes – Thomas Cromwell’s. He thinks he’s about to die. He’s living second by second. His angle of vision is narrowed. There’s blood in his eyes. It’s the beginning of his story – but also the end.
So in a sense, the whole project was done in ten minutes. But it will take ten years to unfold its potential.
–
‘So now get up.’
Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now.
Blood from the gash on his head – which was his father’s first effort – is trickling across his face. Add to this, his left eye is blinded; but if he squints sideways, with his right eye he can see that the stitching of his father’s boot is unravelling. The twine has sprung clear of the leather, and a hard knot in it has caught his eyebrow and opened another cut.
‘So now get up!’ Walter is roaring down at him, working out where to kick him next. He lifts his head an inch or two, and moves forward, on his belly, trying to do it without exposing his hands: on which Walter enjoys stamping. ‘What are you, an eel?’ his parent asks. He trots backwards, gathers pace, and aims another kick.
It knocks the last breath out of him; he thinks it may be his last. His forehead returns to the ground; he lies waiting, for Walter to jump on him. The dog, Bella, is barking, shut away in an outhouse. I’ll miss my dog, he thinks. The yard smells of beer and blood. Someone is shouting, down on the river bank. Nothing hurts, or perhaps it’s that everything hurts, because there is no separate pain that he can pick out. But the cold strikes him, just in one place: just through his cheekbone as it rests on the cobbles.
The opening paragraphs of Wolf Hall, by kind permission of the author.
Copyright © Tertius Enterprises Ltd.
–
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Your use of the present tense in Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, A Place of Greater Safety and elsewhere gives immense energy to the text. In your memoir Giving Up the Ghost for crucial scenes you transition from first to second person. I was wondering if you could speak about these authorial choices?
MANTEL
The present tense is potent but I think you shouldn’t reach for it as a matter of course. You need a reason. I have come across a lot of novels recently where the use of the present tense is frustrating and limiting, and the better choice would have been the more reflective, distanced past tense – the calmer, more authoritative, classic storytelling voice.
I haven’t often employed the second person – but it is useful in a memoir, or any kind of personal writing where you are trying to speak directly to the reader and invite them in.
Such choices, I find, don’t usually require deliberation. You know automatically what the narrative requires. If you have made the wrong choice then the inherent falsity should strike you within a page, and you can think again. If you have any disquiet, I think it’s important to track it down. What gives a writer’s work distinction – makes it hers and hers alone – is a freedom in the early stages of writing, a process that allows the natural voice to come through; but then after that comes a period of intense work to clarify and polish – that’s the secret of style. The first five per cent – the original inspiration and drive – and the last five per cent – the close attention at the level of the syllable- these, to me, are what makes a piece of writing distinctive. In between, you depend on technical competence and hard work.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Although almost all of your early novels were set in contemporary periods, you are now widely celebrated as a historical novelist. Your research for the Thomas Cromwell trilogy must be immense. How do you know which account to trust, which is closest the truth? What are some of the questions you’d have like to have asked Cromwell, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, or indeed any of the other historical figures you’ve written about?
MANTEL
You would have to bear in mind that, unless they’d acquired perfect knowledge after their death, they might be as confused about some things as we are. No individual has perfect information, or the whole picture. With Thomas Cromwell, you would like to ask him about his early life – about the part that’s lost to history. And maybe about his religious beliefs. As for Henry – does he understand himself? He’s complex and full of contradictions and I doubt you’d get helpful answers. With all the characters, I think you’d just like ten minutes in their presence – it’s not so much specific items of information you want - you’d like to know how they present themselves. You’d like to see them in action.
As for ‘what really happened’ - you try to get back to the documents closest to the source, but then you must evaluate that source - always asking, why does the source want me to believe this? For example: one of the best sources for the human detail of Henry’s court, as well as the political manoeuvres, is Eustache Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador. He was a good writer, a fast thinker, a man you’d like to know – he was good company, and he was close to Thomas Cromwell. They were neighbours, and they were – almost – friends: for diplomats and politicians, friendship is always cautious and qualified by self-interest. The ambassador is well-informed, but sometimes, you feel, Cromwell is spinning him a line – and he knows not to trust him, but sometimes he has to. Apart from Cromwell, his contacts are mostly courtiers with a strong papist bent – the old aristocratic families, rather than the new men. They give him their own picture of what’s happening out there in the country at large – but they are not necessarily in the best place to know.. Again, he doesn’t speak much English – he talks to Cromwell in French – but does he understand more English than he admits? Another factor to consider: like any diplomat, he writes his dispatches to make himself look good in the eyes of his master – always pretending to know a bit more than he does. He has to present himself as an insider, a man who can cut through protocol and get straight to Henry- but in reality, he probably gets access only when it suits the king.
So this wonderfully entertaining source is only reliable up to a point. And you can run the same kind of analysis on any of the contemporary sources.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
You dealt with time differently in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, and your short story collection The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. And I imagine The Mirror and the Light, which spans yet another time frame, presents new challenges of momentum and resolution. Could you discuss the use of time in your books? Some writers I’ve spoken to have a structured, almost mathematical approach to their planning. Would you describe yourself as a planner or more instinctive?
MANTEL
The three parts of the Cromwell trilogy are very different. Wolf Hall spans 20 years or so – it concentrates on a period of about six of those twenty – but it also reaches back into mythological time, pre-history. Bring Up The Bodies is more tightly constructed and spans only 9 months: and of that 9 months, I concentrate on three weeks, and the story pulls the attention inward, to the day, the hour, and to the very second that Anne Boleyn’s head falls. At that stage, we’re operating breath by breath. The unit of measurement is a heartbeat. The Mirror & The Light is different again. It will take in 4 years, but the narrative will breathe, as Cromwell takes us back into his childhood and earliest memories.
There’s historical time – the fixed chronology – and then there’s novel time – the way the chronology is handled. I try to find the structure of my book through writing individual scenes – I don’t write from A to B, from March to April – I can move anywhere in the narrative. In the initial stage of writing any book, my thinking is non-linear. But at a later stage, it all has to be skewered down. Again I will be thinking of the individual scene – how it is structured – then how it fits into the whole. I think if control is too tight in the early stages of a book, you can miss its potential.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
And have the television and theatrical adaptations of your work––with their fixed time frames and economies of conveying meaning––influenced your editing process in any way?
MANTEL
I have been very much involved with the stage version – the scripts have evolved greatly between the version that went into preview in Stratford-on-Avon and the version presented on Broadway last year. I have learned a lot through that process. But I think that in the books, it’s up to me to present the fuller version – and there are many storylines and characters I want to pursue, which didn’t get into either adaptation.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
In your memoir Giving Up the Ghost you begin with an arresting image, vividly but simply described––that of your stepfather’s ghost coming down the stairs. I’m working on your portrait at the moment and, for me, there seems to be an old soul there. And you have a real sense of drama.
Of course in your books the past is very present. I was wondering if you feel these migraines, visions, connection to the past, relationship to your grandfather and other things you describe in your memoir, may have anything to do with the ease with which you move between worlds in your writing.
MANTEL
It’s true that certain barriers don’t seem very solid to me. Sometimes, in the aura that precedes a migraine, there is a disturbance that is very subtle – you may have repeated instances of déjà vu, for example, where the past seems to be replaying, to be on a loop. Or you may have a sense of a presence: you can sense it rather than see it. I accept that these are neurological phenomena, but they also expand your imaginative powers. Again, dreams are very important to me. I have good recall of them and I record them, and I know I am in a good place to write when my dreams become big and transpersonal. I am very curious about the nature of time and the boundaries of our individual selves.
Sadly, I think you lose some of your permeable, porous nature as you get into adulthood. You put on a protective layer. It’s good for you generally to be protected in that way – only it’s not so good for your art.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Power is a theme not traditionally at the heart of the literary novel.
And yet power, ambition, the politics of strategy and influence are endlessly fascinating. Why do you think these themes haven’t been addressed more in literary fiction and do you think this is changing?
Do you feel historical fiction and other genres are more suited for discussing power and those kind of conflicts? I know many who’ve enjoyed your works who’ve admitted they rarely read historical fiction. It could be said that your books have turned on a whole generation to a genre they had overlooked. What do you feel about genre labels in general and your place between historical and literary fiction?
MANTEL
I think that every time a novelist writes about a love affair, they’re also writing about a power relationship. Every time they describe a family, they’re describing a mini-state. There is nowhere in human experience, where power politics isn’t.
I think the historical novel is plural and multiform and at the moment, in good creative shape. But the kind of historical novel I write – which features real people, rather than using historical events as a backdrop – is less favoured. It imposes a burden of research, which can be difficult at a certain point in a novelist’s career – because to do it properly takes time. You can write that kind of fiction first – before you’re even published – or you can do it when you are established – but when you are in mid-career, your publishers don’t like it if you say, ‘My next book will take five years.’
I don’t see myself as confined within genre. The people I write about happen to be real and happen to be dead. That’s all. It’s interesting to think what expectations people bring to historical fiction.
Particularly with the Tudors, it’s hard to avoid the expectation of romance, and of pre-digested narrative that conforms to the bits of history that people remember from school. And so some readers find it’s too challenging, and post abusive reviews. They don’t locate the deficiency in themselves, or like to have their prejudices disturbed. The form tends to conservatism. So you can find that you have, in fact, attracted the wrong reader. Correspondingly, if you manage to break down a prejudice against fiction set in the far past, that’s very positive.
I think it’s important not to confuse the role of the fiction writer with the role of the political journalist.
You need distance to see the shape of events. So for me, near-contemporaries like Mrs Thatcher can only have a walk-on part.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
I’m interested in your writing process. You’ve described a non-linear approach, your novels as evolving from disparate scenes, perhaps closer to the process of a playwright or screenwriter. Also, as you were discussing before, your books are strongly visual and rooted in a character’s POV.
I mentioned I would be interviewing you to my theatre friends and they all enjoyed your work. I mean, some of them don’t read a lot of novels because they think they don’t have enough drama or
they’re too interior, but your books gripped them immediately. They like the way your exposition is embedded in the character’s experience and doesn’t slow the action in a way that feels uniquely suited to theatre and television. Do you think this is one of the reasons your books have adapted easily to the screen and stage? At the same time, you write these great characters, you give readers a lot of Cromwell’s interior life, things he cannot possibly say. This must have created challenges for the dramatic production. How did you overcome them?
Are there things you’ve learned from watching actors at work which will make their way into future books?
MANTEL
I hope to write something about my recent experience of theatre – a small book, a big essay, who knows? But it seems worth exploring. I’ve always wanted to work in the theatre, but my ill health held me back. You can’t offer yourself as part of a team unless you can keep up with the team.
Two years ago I began to feel very much better, and that opened up an opportunity for me.
I do develop my books in scenes, and write a lot of dialogue – though book dialogue is different from stage dialogue, which is different from TV dialogue – and that is different from radio dialogue – I’ve explored all these facets. I think I am covertly a playwright and always have been – it’s just that the plays last for weeks, instead of a couple of hours. An astute critic said that A Place of Greater Safety is alike a vast shooting script, and I think that’s true. It shows its workings. When I am writing I am also seeing and hearing - for me writing is not an intellectual exercise. It’s rooted in the body and in the senses. So I am part-way there – I obey the old adage ‘show not tell.’ I hope I don’t exclude ideas from my books – but I try to embody them, rather than letting them remain abstractions.
In my reading of him, Thomas Cromwell is not an introspective character. He gives us snippets of his past, of memories as they float up – but he doesn’t brood, analyse. He is what he does. But that said, you are right, he is at the centre of every scene. With the weapon of the close-up, it was possible for Mark Rylance, on screen, to explore the nuances of his inner life. He is very convincing in showing ‘brain at work.’ He leaves Cromwell enigmatic but - in a way that’s beautifully judged- he doesn’t shut the viewer out.
In the theatre, what happened was that Cromwell was on stage the whole time. I think in the first play, he had half a scene off; in the second play, it was about 30 seconds. So nothing happens without him. If he’s not talking, he’s watching. We were immensely fortunate in casting Ben Miles, who had the fitness and the dedication to sustain the role – frequently performing both plays in one day – and who had the intelligence and the charisma to carry the audience with him. He explored the character deeply and he has been my ally in building the third book.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
You were raised Catholic and went to convent school. Can you talk a little about this and your eventual religious alienation?
MANTEL
Two things happened together, when I was about twelve. First I started to cast a critical eye on the Catholic church as an institution. Then I asked myself if I believed its teaching, and the answer
was no. My disbelief had been growing in the dark, unknown to me.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
And yet even though you’re no longer part of the Church, religion is an important source of conflict in your books. Why do you think, at a time when more and more of us belong to no religious faith, that religion remains such a fascinating theme?
MANTEL
If you are to write about the C16 you have to be able to understand the centrality of religious belief and the sincerity with which people held their differing views, and the reasons they persecuted each other so assiduously in the name of mercy. I can easily grasp this because religion was so central to my childhood. I took everything in, I was asked to believe, and I agreed.
Nowadays I don’t understand faith too well. But I understand hope. And I think they are more closely related than I once imagined.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Has your view of religion changed in the writing of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy?
MANTEL
I’ve acquired a lot of information. I’m not sure if my personal outlook has changed. The trilogy is a work in progress and so am I.
–
GEORGE SAUNDERS
INTERVIEWED BY MIA FUNK
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
If I were to fall asleep and wake up in one of your books, what would be some of the first signs that I was in a George Saunders story?
GEORGE SAUNDERS
Well, I'm not sure. What I mean by that is, that I am so involved on this side of it – the writing side – that I'm not entirely sure what the experience is for the reader. My intention is to make it a wild and meaningful ride for the reader, one she can't back out of or disengage from. To do that, I find I have to be very responsible about the internal logic. This is especially important in stories that are as strange as mine. The logic has to be impeccable so that the reader doesn't find an excuse to say, "Ugh, weird; it doesn't pertain to me."
I want the strangeness to be meaningful and essential: not just decorative or freaky. The strangeness in the story has got to have something to do with some genuine and perhaps hidden strangeness in reality.
I think many of my stories work on this principle: everything is just as it is in our world (they physicality, the psychology, etc) except for one distorted thing. The effect, I hope, is to make the reader (and me) see our "real" world in a slightly new light. Kind of like if you woke up in a word where, every few minutes, peoples' heads popped off. But otherwise everything else was normal. What would that story be "about?" Well, it might be about, for example, our reaction to illness, or to trouble, or about coping mechanisms. And it would be about those things because, other than the heads popping off, people behaved just as they do in this world. A little like a science experiment where all of the variables are held constant except one. We are trying to look into the question of what a human being really is, and a story can be an experiment in which we say, "OK, let's destabilize the world in which this creature lives and then, by its reaction to the disturbance, see what we can conclude about the core mechanism."
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
It sounds like a scary and weirdly interesting place. How did you first find your way there?
SAUNDERS
For me, the way in is always paying attention to the phrase-by-phrase progress of the story – the prose style and velocity and so on. And the intention is always to keep the reader on the line – make the story so interesting and relevant that she can't stop reading. Everything else we talk about with respect to prose (character, theme, politics) is only achievable if you keep the reader in the world. So the trick is: make prose that compels. And strangely, trying to do that leads to all sorts of other requirements, like logical rigor, truthfulness of view, a compassionate narrative outlook. Somehow, working toward these things has the effect of making the prose more compelling. Which I guess makes sense – prose that is honoring these things is also honoring the reader, saying, in effect, "I know you are interested in being spoken to by someone who respects you and believes that you are just as smart and engaged and experienced as the writer." Who wouldn't like that sort of friend?
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
If somebody were to break into your study, open the bottom drawer of your desk, and read all the things that you've rejected and have been hiding from the public eye for years, what would they find?
SAUNDERS
They'd find that I have seven huge Doberman Pinschers guarding my study, and that there are vipers in the Drawer of Rejects.
No, ha ha. The things of mine that get rejected, I usually rework until they don't get rejected. If I do discard something, it's usually because there was something about the initial conception that was too over-determined for it to be redeemed; the politics were too on its sleeve or its humor too reductive. I've also discarded some things that were too earnest and "classic." But my working assumption is that if something isn't working, turning your mind to the question of why it's not working (and really allowing whatever answer you come up with) will help you bump the story up to some higher ground it's been trying to attain all along. It's like if you were at dinner with a friend and something felt off. If you ignored it, and said, "Well, so much for this friendship" – that would be a waste, and a failure. Whereas if you just said, “Hey, feels like something is off here – do you feel that too?" – then something is going to happen. And whatever happens (even if it's not entirely comfortable) is going to be more intense and energetic than what was happening previously. So, same in a story. If it stinks, I try to turn my mind as openly as I can to the question, "Hey story: why do you stink?" And sometimes that prompt can even be dropped directly into the story itself, in some form.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
It’s true. Sometimes the hardest thing to get from somebody is the truth. Few of us have the courage to come right out and say “something’s off.” We tend to dress up things, sugarcoat.
SAUNDERS
Right – and in terms of stories, that tendency works against us. The sooner we can discern and respect the actual energy of the story, the easier it is to exploit that energy – to really use it.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
It’s interesting the way your stories come at the truth from this other angle: a polar bear who goes around all day with an axe in his head; escapees of Eastern European pogroms settle in a Chicago which is gentler, but only slightly, from the place they escaped; a son who lives with his parents who are dead but don’t know it. It’s like all your stories are that good friend reminding us––You are this, but you don’t know it.
SAUNDERS
I have this notion that the story exists, perfectly told, somewhere in the subconscious. But as we try to tell it, we sort of drop and break it – it comes out to us in fragments. What we’re doing in revision is trying to find that original story. And the way to do that is to listen very carefully to the story, as it tries to communicate with you via its internal energy. The advantage of this approach, I guess, is that you don’t really know what you are trying to say when you start out, and ideally you’re never quite sure – what you’re saying hopefully can’t be reduced. So that requires a little bit of faith.
