A. L. Kennedy’s new novel, “The Blue Book,†is set on an ocean liner, and involves a relationship between a man and a woman who used to work together as spiritual mediums. In The New York Times Book Review, Wendy Lesser wrote that the book’s mysterious strands come together in the end: “There are no sleight-of-hand tricks practiced on us here: we are promised a certain kind of novelistic satisfaction, and Kennedy fully delivers.†In a recent e-mail interview, Ms. Kennedy discussed what (if anything) she’s learned from critics, the keys to writing about sex and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:
You once said that in your novels, “There’s always an interior something that happens â€" which a particular school of thought doesn’t classify as a plot.†If you had to briefly outline the plot of “The Blue Book,†how would you put it
Two people decide to trust each other enough â€" and themselves enough â€" to love each other properly and be honest and to use all of themselves to be with each other. That’s the interior plot. The exterior plot is: “There are three people on a boat, one woman, two men â€" go figure.†My feeling would be that you can write as many men as you like walking into rooms with guns; if you don’t care about anyone involved, it’s not really going to swing.
What kind of research did you do about magic and mediums
I slowly worked my way far enough into the magic! al fraternity to read their books on cold reading and how to impersonate psychics and produce mentalist’s effects. I even went on a cold reading course â€" cold reading is the term for the range of techniques people use to give the impression they know you and have special insights about you. I then went to see all kinds of tarot readers and crystal ball readers and palm readers â€" they were mainly dreadful and sometimes actively malign.
Do you generally do a lot of research for your fiction
For any book I go through a research process that covers three years, so that I can know the people and have them constructed before I start working with them.
Writing about sex is widely considered a difficult task, but you do it with seeming confidence. Do you consider it more challenging than writing about other things Do you approach it differently in any coscious way
I think the thing is not to approach it differently â€" the same rules apply. It’s a physical activity, so you have to get the details right, you don’t want the reader saying to themselves, “You did what, now†That kind of breaks the mood. And â€" like any other activity â€" the importance is in the character and the feeling. The sex has no inherent meaning without the characters providing it. And I think you need to not be embarrassed â€" you’ll never necessarily meet the reader and the reader is a grown-up person (if it’s one of my books) and has thoughts and has performed activities in the area and will hopefully go with you if you’re being honest and in some way feasible within the bounds of human nature.
The novel moves very fluidly between the first, second and third person perspectives. Was that a feature from the start or did it emerge as the solution to some problem in ! the struc! ture of the book
This was a feature I knew I would have to use. I needed the book to speak to the reader as a medium would, and to give some impression of how a stranger can tell you about yourself at least fairly fluently without actually knowing anything â€" that demanded the second person. The first and third came from character considerations and the fact that the plot was trying to be a little surprising here and there.
Campbell Mitchell A. L. KennedyOn your Web site, you quote from reviews of your books and offer teasing rejoinders. Do you read all the reviews of your books
I got vey confused by the reviews of my first book. They all said different things, they disagreed, it was too late to change anything, it felt weird. The bad stuff seemed convincing and the good stuff crazed and it referred to work that was a couple of years old by then, so I gave up reading the reviews for years. When I first put up a Web site, I went through some of the coverage on the books produced â€" the idea was to give readers a proper sense of what the people who liked a book liked and what the people who hated it had hated. And there was a section for fabulously unclear and badly written reviews, which only seemed fair; they help no one, after all. Then, as each book came out I’d have one horrible day doing the same in miniature. As time went by and standards went down, the “unclear†section got larger. A couple of books ago, I gave up again. I mainly hang out with actors and they don’t read the stuff ever, which I think is wise.
Have you ever learned anyt! hing spec! ific about your craft from reading a critic’s reaction to your work
From a professional critic, no. I’ve never expected to. In the U.K., the critical culture can be fairly moribund and dominated by an oddly ill-informed set of academic assumptions. There’s less and less space or money for serious criticism. From critics â€" which is to say, people who look closely at my work and are true and wide-ranging readers â€" yes, I have. But paying too much attention to external opinion â€" fashions, theories, trends, friends â€" puts you a couple of years behind your own timeline, because critics only ever follow. That whole scene can take you away from your center and your voice, while making you self-conscious. It’s a toxic combination. And an adult writer can’t always be expecting this little fantasy undergraduate workshop to tell them what to think. If you’re the author, it’s your decision to find out what you think and what you want to say and then get on with it If it were a group effort, your name wouldn’t be the only one on the title.
You started performing stand-up comedy several years ago. Was that a longtime goal
I drifted into stand-up sideways by being asked to speak at political meetings and, not being a brave and adventurous activist, I only ever felt qualified to provide the comic relief. Plus, political disenchantment and matters of life and death can sometimes be re-examined through humor. It can be a way of not losing hope.
Did you have favorite comics when you were young, as you had favorite prose writers
I’ve always loved good comedy; it’s storytelling, it’s imagination in action, it can be a great, human thing. And I’ve always had favorite comics â€" Dave Allen, Max Miller, Pet! er Cook and Dudley Moore, Marty Feldman, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Bill Hicks, Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, Steven Wright and Lenny Bruce. There’s a long, long bit that Bruce did about a comic wanting to play better rooms and getting his wish that is truly wonderful â€" it’s maybe not even actually funny, it’s some weird, horrible, magnificent, clear-eyed narrated nightmare.
Do you feel yourself improving as a comic, the way you might have felt significant improvements as a young fiction writer
I do almost nothing in clubs now. It demands a constant effort to keep up a schedule of gigs and I have so many readings and events that I just couldn’t fit anything else in without giving up writing. I tour a one-person show and I deliver comedy monologues, I suppose you would call them, on BBC radio. I would hope the delivery, phrasing, subjects, angles and speed are improving. In a way it’s the same skill set I use for writing, it’s ust applied differently and while being stared at by possibly drunk strangers. Every author should do it. You don’t get respect unless you earn it as a comic. Writers tend to get respect whether they’ve earned it or not, which is very unhealthy for us.
