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http://www.independent.ie/health/case-studies/battle-for-every-breath-chronic-obstructive-pulmonary-disease-copd-1541938.html
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Jackie Collins.
Jackie Collins.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner, 8th November, 2008.
When I was asked if I’d like to have lunch with Jackie Collins, my first thought, was ‘what will I wear?’ My second was a fear that she’d be a true diva; and that the conversation would dry before desert.
I wasn’t the only one feeling nervous that Saturday; the waitress who showed us to the lush gold seated alcove in The Shelbourne Hotel’s Saddle room, was in such a dither, that she assured us the setting was ‘romantic.’
“We don’t need romantic,” drawled Jackie.
Jackie looks great. I’d been told not to ask her age; and you’d never guess she was born in 1937. Her dark hair is thick and lustrous; her skin plump. She doesn’t have that stretched, expressionless mask that comes from too much ‘work’; her smile reaches her eyes; and her sultry laugh sounds genuine. I like her.
As we examine the menu, and decide on ‘gin and tonic salmon with Champ,’ we gossip. We discuss men; and particularly the two leads in Jackie’s new Hollywood blockbuster, Married Lovers. I loved the loyal, put upon Ryan. She’s in love with Don; a chat show host who is rather trickier.
“I’m bringing him back,” she tells me. “There is, definitely, going to be a sequel.”
We talk about our daughters. We each have three, and agree that our children are our best achievement. We discuss our Labradors. There are three in the book; and Jackie owns two. And, of course, we discuss sex.
“Men have this huge myth that women have to care about a man to have sex,” she says. “It is quite ridiculous! A woman can feel just as interested in sex as a man; and not want to see the man again the next day.”
Jackie has written an astonishing 26 books. She’s sold over 400 million copies. She’s also written screenplays, and produced films and mini-series. She wrote her first book in 1969; and it bothers her that, later, she got lumped in with the sex and shopping novels of the eighties.
“I never wrote sex and shopping. Hollywood Wives was about women who shop lifted. It was completely different. I am a storyteller and I don’t follow trends. I was writing before them. And I am writing after they have all way gone.
“They were writing cynically, and that doesn’t work. When Hollywood Wives came out a lot of Hollywood women said, ‘that is a book I could have written.’ I said ‘Why didn’t you?’ People don’t realise the slog of writing, and the sheer work of keeping the books out there.”
Jackie’s first novel exploded the myth of the double standard.
“All the books I read were by men. And all the women were in the kitchen or the bedroom. It was sex or cooking. I wanted my women to be really strong. It annoyed me that in a Harold Robbins book the woman would have an orgasm just looking at a guy. It was ‘no, no no. This is not right.
“I was way ahead of my time. When The World is Full of Married Men came out, an MP in England took out a half page in a Sunday Newspaper saying, ‘this is the most shocking book I have ever read.’ It was number one within two weeks. And I’ve never looked back,” she says, touching wood.
“I was on the Terry Wogan show with Barbara Cartland,” says Jackie with a chuckle. “She was all in pink and had a light between her knees which shone up at her face. She said, ‘Miss Collins is responsible for all the perverts in England.’ And I said, ‘oh thank you.’ What do you say? It was like being on a show with the Queen Mother.”
Jackie has always wanted to write. Expelled from her London school for truancy,
“and for waving at the resident flasher and saying, ‘cool day today isn’t it?” she joined her big sister Joan in Hollywood, acting, but thinking of herself as an out of work writer. “It was Hollywood or reform school,” she chuckles.
“I wrote stories from the age of eight. I wanted to be a journalist, but I was never encouraged. Everyone said, ‘you can’t be a writer or a journalist without having a degree.’ Hollywood was wonderful research.”
Jackie’s first husband was into drugs. Her second was twenty years older than her. An amazing man, he encouraged her.
“I had all these half finished novels stacked up. I’d write half, and think, ‘I am enjoying this book but I have a better idea.’ Subconsciously, I thought they would never get published so what was the point?
“My husband read one and said, ‘you are a great storyteller. You have to finish this.’ He was the first person in my life to say, ‘you can do it.’”
Passionate about writing, Jackie has an incredible work ethic. She writes six- sometimes seven days a week; she undertakes painstaking research; for Married Lovers she talked to prostitutes in Amsterdam; and to battered wives in Canada.
She’s a publicist’s dream. She toured 26 American cities in a bus to promote Married Lovers; she’s been to Moscow. After our lunch she’s taking time out with her daughters; but she’s also going to update the blog for her, excellent, website.
When she’d nursed her second husband through terminal cancer, Jackie lived happily with a fiancée, until he, too died of cancer. Still living in Los Angeles, she is now, happily single.
“I have a man for every occasion. I have one who likes to go dancing; one who likes the cinema. I have constant friends and live like a bachelor. I am never lonely. I write better when there is nobody to disturb me. My life is fantastic.”
Reports that Jackie doesn’t get on with her sister Joan are, she says, not true.
“We’re great friends. We had dinner, in London, this week. She helped me when I’d left school, and I paid her back, years later, when her career was flat on the floor. I wrote her a screenplay based on ‘The Stud’ for nothing; got the movie made, and the late Erin Spelling, who saw it, took the character for Alexis in Dynasty. Our success has been equal.”
Jackie polishes off her salmon; she compliments the chef; says she loved the champ, but declines a desert. Drinking green tea, she says she’s health conscious, but absolutely not obsessed.
“I swim at home. I have an enormous gym, but it’s at the other end of my huge house. By the time I get there I’m too exhausted to work out,” she says, laughing.
Jackie can’t imagine a life without writing. She’s planned her next three books and is also writing a play. What, though, is the message of Married Lovers.
“The message of this, and of all my books is to be stronger as a woman. The fitness instructor, Cameron has left her abusive husband, and that was not easy. She left in the middle of the night and has set up her own business. Women should always be stronger. My books have been around for a long time, and that message is always relevant.”
Married Lovers by Jackie Collins is published by Simon and Schuster at 14.99 euro.
© Sue leonard. 2008.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner, 8th November, 2008.
When I was asked if I’d like to have lunch with Jackie Collins, my first thought, was ‘what will I wear?’ My second was a fear that she’d be a true diva; and that the conversation would dry before desert.
I wasn’t the only one feeling nervous that Saturday; the waitress who showed us to the lush gold seated alcove in The Shelbourne Hotel’s Saddle room, was in such a dither, that she assured us the setting was ‘romantic.’
“We don’t need romantic,” drawled Jackie.
Jackie looks great. I’d been told not to ask her age; and you’d never guess she was born in 1937. Her dark hair is thick and lustrous; her skin plump. She doesn’t have that stretched, expressionless mask that comes from too much ‘work’; her smile reaches her eyes; and her sultry laugh sounds genuine. I like her.
As we examine the menu, and decide on ‘gin and tonic salmon with Champ,’ we gossip. We discuss men; and particularly the two leads in Jackie’s new Hollywood blockbuster, Married Lovers. I loved the loyal, put upon Ryan. She’s in love with Don; a chat show host who is rather trickier.
“I’m bringing him back,” she tells me. “There is, definitely, going to be a sequel.”
We talk about our daughters. We each have three, and agree that our children are our best achievement. We discuss our Labradors. There are three in the book; and Jackie owns two. And, of course, we discuss sex.
“Men have this huge myth that women have to care about a man to have sex,” she says. “It is quite ridiculous! A woman can feel just as interested in sex as a man; and not want to see the man again the next day.”
Jackie has written an astonishing 26 books. She’s sold over 400 million copies. She’s also written screenplays, and produced films and mini-series. She wrote her first book in 1969; and it bothers her that, later, she got lumped in with the sex and shopping novels of the eighties.
“I never wrote sex and shopping. Hollywood Wives was about women who shop lifted. It was completely different. I am a storyteller and I don’t follow trends. I was writing before them. And I am writing after they have all way gone.
“They were writing cynically, and that doesn’t work. When Hollywood Wives came out a lot of Hollywood women said, ‘that is a book I could have written.’ I said ‘Why didn’t you?’ People don’t realise the slog of writing, and the sheer work of keeping the books out there.”
Jackie’s first novel exploded the myth of the double standard.
“All the books I read were by men. And all the women were in the kitchen or the bedroom. It was sex or cooking. I wanted my women to be really strong. It annoyed me that in a Harold Robbins book the woman would have an orgasm just looking at a guy. It was ‘no, no no. This is not right.
“I was way ahead of my time. When The World is Full of Married Men came out, an MP in England took out a half page in a Sunday Newspaper saying, ‘this is the most shocking book I have ever read.’ It was number one within two weeks. And I’ve never looked back,” she says, touching wood.
“I was on the Terry Wogan show with Barbara Cartland,” says Jackie with a chuckle. “She was all in pink and had a light between her knees which shone up at her face. She said, ‘Miss Collins is responsible for all the perverts in England.’ And I said, ‘oh thank you.’ What do you say? It was like being on a show with the Queen Mother.”
Jackie has always wanted to write. Expelled from her London school for truancy,
“and for waving at the resident flasher and saying, ‘cool day today isn’t it?” she joined her big sister Joan in Hollywood, acting, but thinking of herself as an out of work writer. “It was Hollywood or reform school,” she chuckles.
“I wrote stories from the age of eight. I wanted to be a journalist, but I was never encouraged. Everyone said, ‘you can’t be a writer or a journalist without having a degree.’ Hollywood was wonderful research.”
Jackie’s first husband was into drugs. Her second was twenty years older than her. An amazing man, he encouraged her.
“I had all these half finished novels stacked up. I’d write half, and think, ‘I am enjoying this book but I have a better idea.’ Subconsciously, I thought they would never get published so what was the point?
“My husband read one and said, ‘you are a great storyteller. You have to finish this.’ He was the first person in my life to say, ‘you can do it.’”
Passionate about writing, Jackie has an incredible work ethic. She writes six- sometimes seven days a week; she undertakes painstaking research; for Married Lovers she talked to prostitutes in Amsterdam; and to battered wives in Canada.
She’s a publicist’s dream. She toured 26 American cities in a bus to promote Married Lovers; she’s been to Moscow. After our lunch she’s taking time out with her daughters; but she’s also going to update the blog for her, excellent, website.
When she’d nursed her second husband through terminal cancer, Jackie lived happily with a fiancée, until he, too died of cancer. Still living in Los Angeles, she is now, happily single.
“I have a man for every occasion. I have one who likes to go dancing; one who likes the cinema. I have constant friends and live like a bachelor. I am never lonely. I write better when there is nobody to disturb me. My life is fantastic.”
Reports that Jackie doesn’t get on with her sister Joan are, she says, not true.
“We’re great friends. We had dinner, in London, this week. She helped me when I’d left school, and I paid her back, years later, when her career was flat on the floor. I wrote her a screenplay based on ‘The Stud’ for nothing; got the movie made, and the late Erin Spelling, who saw it, took the character for Alexis in Dynasty. Our success has been equal.”
Jackie polishes off her salmon; she compliments the chef; says she loved the champ, but declines a desert. Drinking green tea, she says she’s health conscious, but absolutely not obsessed.
“I swim at home. I have an enormous gym, but it’s at the other end of my huge house. By the time I get there I’m too exhausted to work out,” she says, laughing.
Jackie can’t imagine a life without writing. She’s planned her next three books and is also writing a play. What, though, is the message of Married Lovers.
“The message of this, and of all my books is to be stronger as a woman. The fitness instructor, Cameron has left her abusive husband, and that was not easy. She left in the middle of the night and has set up her own business. Women should always be stronger. My books have been around for a long time, and that message is always relevant.”
Married Lovers by Jackie Collins is published by Simon and Schuster at 14.99 euro.
© Sue leonard. 2008.
Juliet Bressan.
Juliet Bressan.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner. 1st November 2008.
I’m interviewing Juliet Bressan in the garden at The Merrion Hotel. But as we start talking about her debut novel, she keeps glancing over my left shoulder. After a while she whispers that the playwright, Harold Pinter is sitting sipping wine two tables away.
That is extraordinary. Because Harold Pinter features in Snow White Turtle Doves; Bressan’s romance set in the world of peace campaigners. Pinter’s presence in Dublin is key to the plot.
We feel compelled to share this with him. Excited, Juliet gives him a signed copy of the book. She invites him to her launch, and though he declines, he does so kindly, and is gracious.
It took Juliet two years to complete Snow White Turtle Doves. She has since completed a second novel, and is ready to start her third. It’s surprising it didn’t take longer, as Juliet is a doctor; a mother of two teenagers, a health columnist and a script advisor for RTE’s The Clinic. Just how did she find the time?
“I’m just knackered,” she says with a laugh. “I write every night until three or four in the morning; or I get up at 5.00 am. I seek time when there are no distractions.”
It is surprising that Juliet didn’t pursue a writing career, since she’s always been better at English than science. Her brother lectures in English at Oxford, but Juliet doesn’t regret her choice.
“It was the 1980’s,” she says. “Back then women were encouraged to do something practical. My parents wanted me to be independent and strong, and to be able, always to support myself. In those days if you were good at school you did medicine.
“And I’m very happy that I did. I like my job. I’m good at it. The patients like me and I have a fun time. Medicine was right for me. It’s well paid, so has given me the freedom to pursue writing.
“If I’d gone into journalism, which is not well paid, I might never have been able to try my hand at fiction. If my writing career takes off I will have to pare down my medical career; but I will not give it up.”
Born in Salford, Greater Manchester to an Italian Father and English mother, Juliet moved to Galway when she was five. She attended NUI Galway, and then she began to train in paediatrics in Dublin. Meanwhile, though, she married her first husband, and had two daughters; Molly and Jessica, now 19 and 16.
“It was a conscious decision,” she says. “Having children early is the best thing to do scientifically. It is the optimum time. You have a better obstetric outcome.”
It didn’t occur to Juliet that going against the grain would be such a bad idea socially.
“All my friends were concentrating on their careers and I was breastfeeding a baby. Bringing the children up was really hard and it did affect my career. I was on call at night, and was often up all night. I ended up crying in the loo when I was meant to be in outpatients.”
Juliet changed tack; did a Masters in Public Health, and fronted the then new drugs services.
“I loved the drama of it, and enjoyed working with the very deprived people nobody else wants to work with. I then trained as a GP in order to further my work with addiction.”
These days Juliet works in the Drugs Aid Services for the HSE for three days a week.
“I took a conscious decision that I wanted to be a writer, so I pared back my medical career. I’m not a shining light in the field of science,” she says. “But I have a small private practise too, in Performance Arts Medicine. That’s really cool.”
Why, though, write at all, when the returns, for most people are pretty poor?
“I can’t not do it,” she says. “Around my 40th birthday I realised that I would never be happy unless I was writing a book.”
Snow White Turtle Doves is set before, and during the Iraq war. It captures that uncertain time remarkably well; a time when the peace movement came to the fore, and captured the imaginations of many.
The story centres on the penniless activist Harry, and the two women who love him. There’s Isabella, his love from school and college days, who is fed up that he puts his cause ahead of their relationship. So she swaps Dublin for Manhattan, and stars in The Playboy of the Western World.
That leaves the door open for Sinead; a doctor who once worked in Iraq, and so joins the cause. Will Harry have the gumption to leave Isabella and create a life with her? Apathy, misunderstanding, and tragedy hit the hapless trio, before finally, a happy resolution is found.
How did Juliet get the idea?
“I went on a lot of peace marches at the time,” she says. “I went to London, and to America, and I talked to people in the anti war movement. It was a very passionate time.
“A lot of my friends who are now professors in Dublin had trained in Iraq. It was a good place to work in the 1980’s and they were all devastated when Bush declared war. A lot of them were active in the anti war movement because they had friends and colleagues out there.
“One night, when the war was about to start I was driving into town from my home off the South Circular Road. The news said that America was going to bomb Iraq tomorrow; then John Kelly played Bob Dylan’s Master’s of War. I burst into tears.”
The writing seems to have come easily. But then, Juliet had always dabbled; she has always written poetry, and her health columns, and stint as Health Writer for the now defunct IQ have all helped.
“I have learned loads from working on The Clinic too,” she says. “Working with real writers; writing drama, I have learned so much. I’ve learned how to create a scene of drama, how to arouse emotion, and how you can waste a lot of time writing, ‘pools of shimmering light.’
Hating literary pretentiousness, Juliet loves reading about romance in war.
“I love Casablanca; I love Mary Wesley, and I simply adore Sebastian Faulkes. He is the most brilliant amazing writer. Take Green Dolphin Street. I just love, love, love it!
“I wanted to tell the story of two women who loved the same man. What would happen if he cheats on her, there’s a baby, and the original partner becomes the devoted godmother to the child? I’ve heard of this happening, and I think it is fascinating; this ability to forgive and to overcome.”
Just then Harold Pinter, leaving the garden, pauses to thank Juliet for the book. When he’s gone, I ask her just why she decided to make the playwright part of her plot.
“He was in the Dublin at that time, but it was that fantastic Nobel lecture that really turned me on to him,” she says. “He spoke of the sudden death of democracy. The way he analysed it was perfect.”
Snow White Turtle Doves by Juliet Bressan in published by Poolbeg at 10.99 euro
© Sue leonard. 2008.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner. 1st November 2008.
I’m interviewing Juliet Bressan in the garden at The Merrion Hotel. But as we start talking about her debut novel, she keeps glancing over my left shoulder. After a while she whispers that the playwright, Harold Pinter is sitting sipping wine two tables away.
That is extraordinary. Because Harold Pinter features in Snow White Turtle Doves; Bressan’s romance set in the world of peace campaigners. Pinter’s presence in Dublin is key to the plot.
We feel compelled to share this with him. Excited, Juliet gives him a signed copy of the book. She invites him to her launch, and though he declines, he does so kindly, and is gracious.
It took Juliet two years to complete Snow White Turtle Doves. She has since completed a second novel, and is ready to start her third. It’s surprising it didn’t take longer, as Juliet is a doctor; a mother of two teenagers, a health columnist and a script advisor for RTE’s The Clinic. Just how did she find the time?
“I’m just knackered,” she says with a laugh. “I write every night until three or four in the morning; or I get up at 5.00 am. I seek time when there are no distractions.”
It is surprising that Juliet didn’t pursue a writing career, since she’s always been better at English than science. Her brother lectures in English at Oxford, but Juliet doesn’t regret her choice.
“It was the 1980’s,” she says. “Back then women were encouraged to do something practical. My parents wanted me to be independent and strong, and to be able, always to support myself. In those days if you were good at school you did medicine.
“And I’m very happy that I did. I like my job. I’m good at it. The patients like me and I have a fun time. Medicine was right for me. It’s well paid, so has given me the freedom to pursue writing.
“If I’d gone into journalism, which is not well paid, I might never have been able to try my hand at fiction. If my writing career takes off I will have to pare down my medical career; but I will not give it up.”
Born in Salford, Greater Manchester to an Italian Father and English mother, Juliet moved to Galway when she was five. She attended NUI Galway, and then she began to train in paediatrics in Dublin. Meanwhile, though, she married her first husband, and had two daughters; Molly and Jessica, now 19 and 16.
“It was a conscious decision,” she says. “Having children early is the best thing to do scientifically. It is the optimum time. You have a better obstetric outcome.”
It didn’t occur to Juliet that going against the grain would be such a bad idea socially.
“All my friends were concentrating on their careers and I was breastfeeding a baby. Bringing the children up was really hard and it did affect my career. I was on call at night, and was often up all night. I ended up crying in the loo when I was meant to be in outpatients.”
Juliet changed tack; did a Masters in Public Health, and fronted the then new drugs services.
“I loved the drama of it, and enjoyed working with the very deprived people nobody else wants to work with. I then trained as a GP in order to further my work with addiction.”
These days Juliet works in the Drugs Aid Services for the HSE for three days a week.
“I took a conscious decision that I wanted to be a writer, so I pared back my medical career. I’m not a shining light in the field of science,” she says. “But I have a small private practise too, in Performance Arts Medicine. That’s really cool.”
Why, though, write at all, when the returns, for most people are pretty poor?
“I can’t not do it,” she says. “Around my 40th birthday I realised that I would never be happy unless I was writing a book.”
Snow White Turtle Doves is set before, and during the Iraq war. It captures that uncertain time remarkably well; a time when the peace movement came to the fore, and captured the imaginations of many.
The story centres on the penniless activist Harry, and the two women who love him. There’s Isabella, his love from school and college days, who is fed up that he puts his cause ahead of their relationship. So she swaps Dublin for Manhattan, and stars in The Playboy of the Western World.
That leaves the door open for Sinead; a doctor who once worked in Iraq, and so joins the cause. Will Harry have the gumption to leave Isabella and create a life with her? Apathy, misunderstanding, and tragedy hit the hapless trio, before finally, a happy resolution is found.
How did Juliet get the idea?
“I went on a lot of peace marches at the time,” she says. “I went to London, and to America, and I talked to people in the anti war movement. It was a very passionate time.
“A lot of my friends who are now professors in Dublin had trained in Iraq. It was a good place to work in the 1980’s and they were all devastated when Bush declared war. A lot of them were active in the anti war movement because they had friends and colleagues out there.
“One night, when the war was about to start I was driving into town from my home off the South Circular Road. The news said that America was going to bomb Iraq tomorrow; then John Kelly played Bob Dylan’s Master’s of War. I burst into tears.”
The writing seems to have come easily. But then, Juliet had always dabbled; she has always written poetry, and her health columns, and stint as Health Writer for the now defunct IQ have all helped.
“I have learned loads from working on The Clinic too,” she says. “Working with real writers; writing drama, I have learned so much. I’ve learned how to create a scene of drama, how to arouse emotion, and how you can waste a lot of time writing, ‘pools of shimmering light.’
Hating literary pretentiousness, Juliet loves reading about romance in war.
“I love Casablanca; I love Mary Wesley, and I simply adore Sebastian Faulkes. He is the most brilliant amazing writer. Take Green Dolphin Street. I just love, love, love it!
“I wanted to tell the story of two women who loved the same man. What would happen if he cheats on her, there’s a baby, and the original partner becomes the devoted godmother to the child? I’ve heard of this happening, and I think it is fascinating; this ability to forgive and to overcome.”
Just then Harold Pinter, leaving the garden, pauses to thank Juliet for the book. When he’s gone, I ask her just why she decided to make the playwright part of her plot.
“He was in the Dublin at that time, but it was that fantastic Nobel lecture that really turned me on to him,” she says. “He spoke of the sudden death of democracy. The way he analysed it was perfect.”
Snow White Turtle Doves by Juliet Bressan in published by Poolbeg at 10.99 euro
© Sue leonard. 2008.
David Guterson.
David Guterson.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner 15th November, 2008.
The Other Opens with a race. It’s 1972. Neil Countryman and John William Barry are running neck to neck, until John William pulls away to win. Teenagers from differing backgrounds the boys form a fraught yet intimate friendship.
The boys were born in the same year as their creator, the award winning writer David Guterson. Neil attended the same school on the island off Seattle; like Guterson he became a teacher, and had a drawer full of unpublished novels.
“A lot of the biographical details correlate,” says Guterson, when we meet in Brooke’s Hotel in Dublin. “Like me, Neil married young and had children relatively young. Like me he has spent all his life in the place where he was born.
“He shares the ambivalence of my teen years. He shares my reckless adventurism, my romantic view towards nature; the hiking trips; the getting lost and the stupid mountaineering. It was fun,” he says. “My first three books were in the third person, and it was fun to go to the first person voice of someone whose sensibility is at least close to my own.”
In the novel, the boys remain friends, but increasingly go their separate ways. Whilst Neil follows convention, marries, and has children, John William breaks from his prosperous background, becoming increasingly eccentric, until he retreats from the world as a hermit, living in the wilderness. Neil becomes his only link with the world.
“The novel is partly about the deep passion of teenage friendship,” says Guterson. “And the way you can loath a friend, and be jealous of them, and yet love them. All those passions can be embodied in the same individual, in a way that you never feel as an adult.
“But it is more about the duality within the self. John Williams’ rejection of the world is some kind of shadow. It stems from this recognition of an alter ego; a shadow figure in myself.
“I have an ongoing monologue with myself. I participate in the world I am in. I’m in this hotel drinking my tea and I’ve had breakfast here with a warm croissant, but there is a part of me saying, ‘this is wrong. The world is not fair. The only reason there is all this comfort is that someone else is suffering.’ I walk around with that critique playing as a voice in my head.
“How do you come to terms with that? Let’s say one voice took precedence? If you let that shadow emerge you would end up in neurosis. You would end up psychotic; you would end up like John William. Or you could live like Neil, with a sense of compromise, but ordinary happiness at the same time.”
Guterson is happy. He loves family life, yet he can imagine being a hermit.
“A writer stands in a paradoxical relation to society,” he says. “He sits in a room with the door shut in isolation, but there is a duality. If you don’t know people; if you don’t know the issues that inform your times, you can’t write.”
Guterson looks younger than his 52 years. He’s trim, good looking and full of conviviality. When I first met him, back in 2003, he talked about his four children. His third son, a History Graduate aged 23, is with him in Dublin. But he’s since adopted Yerusalem; a seven year old from Ethiopia. And it’s all to do with his restlessness on reaching 50.
“The kids get older, they move out. We hit 50, life was moving was on, and we wondered were we really, psychologically, ready for that next stage of life. And we thought, ‘not really. So why don’t we put it off for a while and adopt. And have another ten years of this lifestyle with kids around the house.’ So we adopted, and staved off the empty nest thing.”
Guterson’s first novel, the hugely successful Snow Falling On Cedars, wasn’t published until he was forty. Yet he feels, strongly, that he was born a writer.
“I think a natural feel for language has to be something you are born with, in the same way that some people are born with a feel for maths. You either get language or you don’t. Beyond that, you learn as you refine yourself, and learn what life’s meaning is about.
“I wrote two novels that were never published and I started a third. They weren’t very good, and I never sent them to a publisher. I wrote for 20 years before Snow Falling on Cedars, and I didn’t stop because I enjoyed it. It was fun. After a certain amount of pages I’d realise this isn’t very good, but I will keep struggling with it anyway. I will push it to the end.’”
In The Other, John William makes Neil a wealthy man. Neil gives up teaching, but doesn’t let his wealth change him. And this mirrors Guterson’s attitude to the money that first book, and the film it spawned, brought in.
“I was making a lot of money all of a sudden, but what did that mean? It’s not like I’d been unhappy living as I had been living. But we were renting, and we did buy a house and that was nice.”
The Gutersons have a kind of play farm, with an orchard and ¼ acre of lavender. But their tastes remain simple.
“Happiness, to me, is an ordinary day at home. I get up at 4.30 am. I have tea; start a fire and do my writing. Then the girls get up. They have breakfast and go to school, then I go back to work.
“When I finish writing I will go outside for some fresh air. The girls will join me there after school. Then we’ll have dinner, and I’ll read a book. To me, that is blissful.”
Guterson is not a prolific writer. He doesn’t like pressure, so he goes for one book contracts.
“In between books I don’t know what the next book is going to be at all. Different ideas come to me, but they don’t excite me at all. I have to be patient. They come and they go. Then something sticks.
“After each novel I say ‘I will step away from the novel and write some short stories or criticism.’ But I don’t. I go to the next novel. I am 300 manuscript pages into my next one now.”
Guterson does write poetry though. And he reads it. He loves the poems of Seamus Heaney.
“His poems are straightforward. Mine would be too. My poems are about moments. They try to get at feelings.”
Guterson experienced just such a moment last week; when he was walking on the Dingle Peninsular with his son.
“We were at 4,000 feet, and looking at this sweep of a view. There were sheep, rocks, walls, water and cliffs. I am thinking, ‘this is so beautiful that I never want to die.’
“But I have to die. The beauty of the world aches. I have happiness, but it is poignant.”
The Other by David Guterson is published by Bloomsbury at 16.99 euro.
© Sue leonard. 2008.
Ends.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner 15th November, 2008.
The Other Opens with a race. It’s 1972. Neil Countryman and John William Barry are running neck to neck, until John William pulls away to win. Teenagers from differing backgrounds the boys form a fraught yet intimate friendship.
The boys were born in the same year as their creator, the award winning writer David Guterson. Neil attended the same school on the island off Seattle; like Guterson he became a teacher, and had a drawer full of unpublished novels.
“A lot of the biographical details correlate,” says Guterson, when we meet in Brooke’s Hotel in Dublin. “Like me, Neil married young and had children relatively young. Like me he has spent all his life in the place where he was born.
“He shares the ambivalence of my teen years. He shares my reckless adventurism, my romantic view towards nature; the hiking trips; the getting lost and the stupid mountaineering. It was fun,” he says. “My first three books were in the third person, and it was fun to go to the first person voice of someone whose sensibility is at least close to my own.”
In the novel, the boys remain friends, but increasingly go their separate ways. Whilst Neil follows convention, marries, and has children, John William breaks from his prosperous background, becoming increasingly eccentric, until he retreats from the world as a hermit, living in the wilderness. Neil becomes his only link with the world.
“The novel is partly about the deep passion of teenage friendship,” says Guterson. “And the way you can loath a friend, and be jealous of them, and yet love them. All those passions can be embodied in the same individual, in a way that you never feel as an adult.
“But it is more about the duality within the self. John Williams’ rejection of the world is some kind of shadow. It stems from this recognition of an alter ego; a shadow figure in myself.
“I have an ongoing monologue with myself. I participate in the world I am in. I’m in this hotel drinking my tea and I’ve had breakfast here with a warm croissant, but there is a part of me saying, ‘this is wrong. The world is not fair. The only reason there is all this comfort is that someone else is suffering.’ I walk around with that critique playing as a voice in my head.
“How do you come to terms with that? Let’s say one voice took precedence? If you let that shadow emerge you would end up in neurosis. You would end up psychotic; you would end up like John William. Or you could live like Neil, with a sense of compromise, but ordinary happiness at the same time.”
Guterson is happy. He loves family life, yet he can imagine being a hermit.
“A writer stands in a paradoxical relation to society,” he says. “He sits in a room with the door shut in isolation, but there is a duality. If you don’t know people; if you don’t know the issues that inform your times, you can’t write.”
Guterson looks younger than his 52 years. He’s trim, good looking and full of conviviality. When I first met him, back in 2003, he talked about his four children. His third son, a History Graduate aged 23, is with him in Dublin. But he’s since adopted Yerusalem; a seven year old from Ethiopia. And it’s all to do with his restlessness on reaching 50.
“The kids get older, they move out. We hit 50, life was moving was on, and we wondered were we really, psychologically, ready for that next stage of life. And we thought, ‘not really. So why don’t we put it off for a while and adopt. And have another ten years of this lifestyle with kids around the house.’ So we adopted, and staved off the empty nest thing.”
Guterson’s first novel, the hugely successful Snow Falling On Cedars, wasn’t published until he was forty. Yet he feels, strongly, that he was born a writer.
“I think a natural feel for language has to be something you are born with, in the same way that some people are born with a feel for maths. You either get language or you don’t. Beyond that, you learn as you refine yourself, and learn what life’s meaning is about.
“I wrote two novels that were never published and I started a third. They weren’t very good, and I never sent them to a publisher. I wrote for 20 years before Snow Falling on Cedars, and I didn’t stop because I enjoyed it. It was fun. After a certain amount of pages I’d realise this isn’t very good, but I will keep struggling with it anyway. I will push it to the end.’”
In The Other, John William makes Neil a wealthy man. Neil gives up teaching, but doesn’t let his wealth change him. And this mirrors Guterson’s attitude to the money that first book, and the film it spawned, brought in.
“I was making a lot of money all of a sudden, but what did that mean? It’s not like I’d been unhappy living as I had been living. But we were renting, and we did buy a house and that was nice.”
The Gutersons have a kind of play farm, with an orchard and ¼ acre of lavender. But their tastes remain simple.
“Happiness, to me, is an ordinary day at home. I get up at 4.30 am. I have tea; start a fire and do my writing. Then the girls get up. They have breakfast and go to school, then I go back to work.
“When I finish writing I will go outside for some fresh air. The girls will join me there after school. Then we’ll have dinner, and I’ll read a book. To me, that is blissful.”
Guterson is not a prolific writer. He doesn’t like pressure, so he goes for one book contracts.
“In between books I don’t know what the next book is going to be at all. Different ideas come to me, but they don’t excite me at all. I have to be patient. They come and they go. Then something sticks.
“After each novel I say ‘I will step away from the novel and write some short stories or criticism.’ But I don’t. I go to the next novel. I am 300 manuscript pages into my next one now.”
Guterson does write poetry though. And he reads it. He loves the poems of Seamus Heaney.
“His poems are straightforward. Mine would be too. My poems are about moments. They try to get at feelings.”
Guterson experienced just such a moment last week; when he was walking on the Dingle Peninsular with his son.
“We were at 4,000 feet, and looking at this sweep of a view. There were sheep, rocks, walls, water and cliffs. I am thinking, ‘this is so beautiful that I never want to die.’
“But I have to die. The beauty of the world aches. I have happiness, but it is poignant.”
The Other by David Guterson is published by Bloomsbury at 16.99 euro.
© Sue leonard. 2008.
Ends.
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