Dutch language

How to pronounce transference in Dutch?

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good evening the director of this
Institute the Bali asked me to
impersonate him for a few seconds so
that's what I'm going to do on behalf of
you we all worked I welcome you all and
welcomes ABI welcome Idol I'm happy that
the series take place in this in my
Institute I hope that will continue for
a couple of years and I'm happy that as
many people today as there are and I
hope that in the future you will show up
for other events and now I give the word
back to Anam lady
welcome welcome ladies and gentlemen
this evening is all about
zadie as you know as you can imagine I
assume
Zelly doesn't need introduction but for
those of you who left under Stone the
last 10 or 15 years I will say a few
words about Sadie as any well for highly
acclaimed novels white teeth the
autograph men about beauty and NW she
wrote a collection of essays changing my
mind a beautiful long short story the
Embassy of Cambodia she introduced the
offer Tom McCarthy to wider audience and
she edited a book of short stories the
books of others and tonight she's here
and also seek contributes on a regular
basis to many magazines among them the
New York Review of Books none of your
books Quentin for those of you who've
been here before you know the spill I
will talk to Sadie for about 1 hour 1
hour 10 minutes depending on how much
fun we have I guess and then I will open
discussion to you there will be Q&A but
please ask questions
so no monologues no statements really a
question meaning a sentence ending with
a question mark Sadie I'm also full
disclosure Sadie and I met in 2006 in
Rome and we had a beautiful
we spent a beautiful afternoon on the
terrace unfortunately said he couldn't
remember and I just found out this year
forever
but at least in in my in my recollection
that was a beautiful afternoon and and I
suggest that we just follow up the
conversation conversation we are there
only this time it
audience and today I'd like to start
with your collection of essays and the
first essays about the book that's quite
important to you
Their Eyes Were Watching God though and
Neale Hurston wallets and basically in
this essay you explain why it's so it's
important to you what it did for you and
this very interesting remark you make on
page 12 I will read it for you
at 14 I couldn't find words or words I
liked for the marvelous feeling of
recognition that came with it with his
characters who had my hair my eyes my
skin even the ancestors of the rhythm of
my speech these forms of identification
are so natural to white readers of
course rabbit Engstrom is like me of
course Madame Bovary is like me that
they believed themselves about personal
and above personal identification where
at least belief that they are
identifying only at the highest
existential levels his soul is like my
soul he is human I am human right
readers often believe they are
colorblind yeah especially this last
sentence struck me because if this is
true and I think it's very well possible
this means that a white widow are many
readers because you yourself also stated
that that you thought you were
colorblind but you're not aware within
the world of literature of the existence
of the other of the cultural and
political other yeah I think the
aspiration that I understood when I was
young he's one of objectivity I was very
concerned with the idea of not being
deluded not being self diluted and of
aspiring to this objective plain of
literature and it was only in time that
I realized that what looked objective
was actually culturally specific but now
I see when I think about that essay I
tooked a little bit about it about what
happened to for instance Jewish writers
in the 50s who went from being like
Bella and Roth Jewish writers to being
American literature and this was
something also I aspire to to pass
you're kind of cultural Smith the
specificity into this general arena but
now I think that too is a kind of
oppressive thought why shouldn't your
specific cultural arena be yours and be
identified as yours it's a kind of
anxiety that makes you want to escape it
so I mean it's just the way I was
educated I was educating the very
British system in British literature
which I loved and adored but but it left
very little space for me to exist freely
without into imitating a certain voice
or a certain style or even a certain
consciousness as I get older I just get
less and less interested in in doing
that I think in doing what you described
was an interview that you said that you
wanted very much to get in the system
most other British writers want to get
out yeah I really think there's a line
in white teeth about being more English
than the English and I definitely wanted
to do that when I was a kid you know I
was very proud of knowing you know half
of Henry the fifth or being able to
recite bits of Keats and and then you
realize all of this is this
determination to please you know to say
don't worry I know I know everything
about this country I know everything I
couldn't no more I'm completely
assimilated to your ways I guess when I
went to America I started to feel
differently and on my most recent trip
back to England like the first day I
arrived that got back to my house and
I'm packing and I put on radio for just
getting my stuff together and there was
this conversation going on about
immigration and there were four I could
tell from their voices white people of a
certain age discussing this issue and it
went on and on and on and one of them
was an editor of a newspaper blah blah
and at the very end of it they decided
that you know if your grandfather was
English then you probably were you know
English in the profound part of me just
fell off really I just suddenly felt so
tired of it whereas in America you know
the day you arrived
that'll do basically and that that's the
beautiful thing about America it is the
beautiful thing about American I used to
think it was not true and there are many
problems with American life and American
integration but that is true that a
being American is such a flimsy concept
that basically anyone can have it in one
minute and I I kind of admire that like
it made me feel much freer really but
let's go back for for one second to this
concept of being colorblind isn't this
also the concept that'sthat's the white
we do and many readers assume that the
whole world is like white middle class
that is nothing outside it as you said
I'll in another interview that's that
some journalists said you're so hip by
by writing about mixed families my life
yeah when I first published there were
so many journalists who came to me and
spoke to me as if it was a kind of
affectation to be mixed-race like some
kind of trick I was playing on British
literature some gimmick of mine that I
had arranged for my parents to be black
and white mixed together it is it's
really a shock when you come from the
other side to realize how peripheral
people consider you to be because you
don't realize it of course when you're
living your own life you consider
yourself to be completely central to it
yeah and completely normal within it
and also various views are ascribed to
you I remember reading there's a funny
line in a bit of suburbia by Hanif
Kureishi who dealt with a lot of these
issues before I did and his character
says um just believe because I believed
in equality doesn't mean I wanted to be
the same as everybody else
Pacific is a great spirit and Kareem
like he does believe in racial equality
but doesn't mean that he still thinks of
himself as the best thing in town you
know he says incredible Iger test vein
cells exceptional yeah he thinks himself
as kind of exceptional and incredible I
I when I entered the publishing world I
it was a real vision suddenly realizing
how we were considered not only we
meaning people in my neighborhood people
of my background I hadn't really
understood where I stood in relation to
Britain only when you're only then
really cuz I I really thought that that
we we were the center of everything and
then I was informed otherwise but you
work especially in in white teeth and on
duty I mean the concept of assimilation
this is quite important place a big wall
yeah I I think him in my life it was um
it was such a complete assimilation it
was also intellectual you know I when I
think when I tried to go to college when
I was explained to me that I could go to
university and it would be free but I
had to used to jump through these
various hoops you have to pass your
exams you have to go to the interview so
I said about that as a kind of as a task
which was a about culture so I I read
everything about Cambridge I was
completely obsessed with walls from
Forster and all these things because I
might end up at the interview that the
professor wanted to talk to me about
Alice Walker and Toni Morrison so I
realized very complete cross-purposes
here because I've been making all this
effort to come and meet you and you're
coming to where you think I am it's only
when I got out of university that I had
a chance to think well what is it that
I'm actually interested in not just to
possibly get through these hoops which I
needed to get food because without money
that's the only way you were gonna get
anywhere you you had to pass the test as
they were sit in the same collection you
he whirled about Kafka and it felt as if
you are giving an answer to this
question or to this statement about the
colorblindness of some of the leaders in
this essay I'd like to read some of the
remarks you made about Kafka my people
well Kafka provided that I have one what
does it mean to have a people on no
subject of a more sentimental and less
able to articulate what we mean in what
for example does the continuity of
blackness exist or Irishness or redness
blood culture history genes and then you
NTSA words the question whether we mark
a statement Jewish alienation the
template for all our doubts what is
Muslim Ness
what's femaleness what is polishness
what is Englishness these days we all
find our anterior legs flailing before
us we all insects all wounded Seifer now
well it's it always seemed to me that
identity became is very popular word in
the 90s and I always thought it was I
always kind of chased underneath it
because it's an incredibly delicate line
like it seems quite clear to me that the
thing that joins for instance the
anti-semite and the Jew who feels Jewish
is this shared idea of what Jewishness
is no that does exactly the saying you
have to understand that there is a
collective identity in order to identify
it with it or be repelled or object to
it that fascinated me like when I when
you come from a family that's half black
and half white it's just very difficult
to believe in the essential nature of a
racial category because your life is
fractured from the very birth start so
but it's also how the other perceives
you and the other but how the other
perceives you turns out to be incredibly
random and I think this was in my life
was influenced by my experience with me
and my brothers we all obviously all the
exact same genetic makeup but I am pale
with the long nose my brother is doesn't
look mixed at all my middle brother you
would think he was fully black whatever
that means and my younger brother looks
like an Arab so so when you grow up in a
family like that and you're aware of of
the difference in ways and people
respond to you because of these
phenotype differences which are as far
as you're concerned absurd my brother is
my brother but I I don't get stopped by
the police I've never been stopped by
the police my brother is stopped by the
police continually and my younger
brother gets stopped by the NSA so it's
those kind of it's the start of it yeah
I'm not stopped so I get a part of you
has a kind of guilt or try think you can
trace all the way back to slavery you
know I would have been a house slave for
sure and my brother would have been in
the fields and it's understanding that
kind of the accidental nature of it and
also knowing now like I'm reading I'm
writing about slavery and I'm reading a
lot about slavery and realizing that a
quadroon for example was very often on
the blocks being sold treated like any
other slave or my children accordions
and they look like you so then you have
this new picture of slavery you remember
all right there were
people who look like arlen being sold
that's next to people who look like me
and people my brother of my mother that
was the reality of slavery some
quadroons a dark some a pale some passed
completely but they were sold because
contractually they were black by this
rule of one drop of black blood so that
to me is is fascinating when you see it
the reality in your family of what these
racial laws involved and what they had
to absurdity they had to overcome in
order to be enacted it is hard to take
seriously at the same time you know that
there's no such things as politics
without communality it's there's a line
and we're talking about our friend
neutral friend Daniel Kalman there's a
wonderful piece in his new book where he
tries to describe what it self is and he
describes it neurologically as this kind
of incredible mass of instincts and
impulses moving moment by moment and if
you ask me honestly what I think a human
is I believe that I believe us what
itself is this kind of very imprecise
collection of impulses but if you want
to go to Parliament if you want to stand
in the street in a March you can't stand
up and say well I miss this very
complicated mix of neural impulses that
come and go and I never that won't work
you have to identify yourself you have
to say I'm a Jew from Amsterdam or I am
a mixed race woman from Kilburn this is
part of what politics involves so it's a
compromise with reality but it's not the
truth as far as I'm concerned no I don't
think it's a truth of experience we come
not saying by accepting effect that's
identity is coincidental that's all an
accident that you can construct your ego
on it so it makes no difference no
matter how pale I am I am a black woman
in the world I behave as a black woman I
am treated as a black woman that is my
political reality but my existential
reality is a different matter altogether
but part of the problem with communities
who have been oppressed is that we don't
get to have existential realities
because we're too busy stopping
ourselves being killed or strung up or
guests or whatever so we are forced to
talk the politics of identity all the
time whereas white people clique in the
last century had this luxury of saying
well what is the self anyway what the
hell is itself well for me it's
time for people like me to also say to
indulge in this matter of what is itself
because it's a question that relates to
everybody not just white people an issue
of political identity connected to the
identity you have as an alpha
what can you separate this I I think
that's the only put clay that I have is
when I'm writing but when I'm writing my
impulses towards the concept of freedom
which includes existential freedom which
includes the freedom to say that this
language of identity isn't sufficient
for me to describe my reality and in an
ideal world wouldn't be sufficient for
anybody but it's a necessity that you
have to use in order to make change
let's move to Nabokov and Middlemarch
a novel you write also first will match
this one footnote in your essay on
middle minds I'd like to quote it's junk
billion I think that's a nice
introduction when we speak about that
when we start speaking about dialogues
and I walk off and maybe buy it and
that's no first maybe George Eliot
herself because she says something about
the task novel a novelist has Eliot
speaking of Dorothea's mind describes
this process this way quote the reaching
forward of the whole consciousness
towards the fullest truth the least
partial good it's a fine description of
what all good novelists try to do after
their own fashion I like this this quote
by Eliot a lot but could you explain a
bit what you think she meant by it I
think what I know Eliot she understood
the literature is a very broad church
and that that's grasping towards full
consciousness or the least partial the
least partial the least mediated truth I
think that's what she was very
interested in when you read Middlemarch
it's full of people who are profoundly
deluded deluded about the nature of
happiness deluded about what their life
should consist of what vacation they
could pursue and Thoreau theory is one
of the most deluded at the beginning but
the end she becomes Larkin called the
less deceived by the very end compared
to everyone around her she's got to a
point where she's given up various
idealisms fantasies ideas about the
relations between men and women that's
one of the major ones I think and it's
become less deceived which can in some
ways I think looks like a reduced
position it's less romantic like at the
beginning of Middlemarch
she's this idea of what a great man is
she wants to attach herself to a great
man he has a great project and her life
is kind of secure with this dogma that
she's kind of structured her life around
that she must dedicate himself to a
great man with a great project and it
all falls apart because his project is
and he is very repressive to
her so what she's left with at the end
is in some ways less she has less to
rely on but she has this freedom of at
least knowing she's not deceived and to
me that's kind of the greatest freedom
you can hope for but it's it's a hard
one to sell obviously Procopio they're
taking from people certainty and giving
them something which looks like I'm
seventeen uncertainty or profound doubt
but it's a great faith in it and is this
what the novelist is doing what you
think the novelist should be doing I
think it's a big part of the job
saying yes maybe this but perhaps not I
think that's a large part of it has been
for me the kind of relinquishing from
Dogma and a certain freedom from it but
I'm doing it again but but they were
also you know a lot of liberal parties
in their lip so I was trying to write
about the idea for instance that empathy
is will save everything and save
everybody which he really did believe
she thought if you knew how the squirrel
felt or if he knew how the villager felt
he would behave differently and you
would become moral but I think time has
proven that you can know a great deal
about people and you can emphasize in an
abstract way a great deal and it doesn't
make that much difference to how you
behave I know that children make clothes
in Bangladesh but I still buy those
clothes for example so empathy has its
limits
and that's where legislation comes in
that's where novelist can be yourself
yeah but do you believe it's really
possible to to know what the other
person feels do you know it's possible
for me to know zadie you know it's
possibly know can be really also just me
imagining who the other is I you know
there's a kind of novel where it really
doesn't matter like the novels of Austen
for example comic novels novels I loved
as a child Austin's not about knowing
anyone really it's about knowing the
gestures of people and judging them by
those gestures and by their actions and
that's an extremely comic and enjoyable
way to write but there's nothing for a
moment existential in Austin you know
it's it's a novel of behavior and a
society and the comedy of society and I
think incredibly satisfying novels can
be written at that level and in fact the
other idea which someone I write to like
foster wallet so I wrote about in that
but tries to get to this almost
Christian idea if you need to know not
only what people do but what they do in
their souls you have to know you're
right about Foster Wallace that's you
know if you are as weel as he is yeah
and I I think I think it's incredible
the struggle of writing that he
performed but I don't think it's
actually perhaps a concept that the
novel can contain really it's it isn't
possible really to know what goes on
despite what Jesus says in the heart of
somebody if you're not that person and a
novel that that really needs to know
that ties itself in knots of
self-consciousness now like some of
Wallace's stories which are about they
become I know you know that I know that
you know that I know that you know that
I know that you know you know that that
is an infinite loop and in the end it
might be more useful to direct yourself
outwards and and not fixate so much on
this internal matter but you can't know
anyway you set up a discussion in this
book also between Nabokov you admire him
but you didn't follow his advice on
dialogues and all and by its the French
thinker about reading mainly he
proclaimed famous leaders that they
offer died
and you basically you let Nabokov win
you believe you say in the end at the
end of the after of us say you say that
for an offer you cannot follow by
because he gives the reader too much
freedom you should follow Nabokov that's
that you you the reader is maybe not
created by the offer but you should have
to feeding us an offer that you are
manipulating that you are in charge in
control of the reader I think but I mean
that's really funny but that was
published a few years ago about buts
essays on the novel did you ever read
that he was writing these lectures in
Paris because he allows me a pleasure of
reading yeah he's intending to write a
novel so so he announced his intention
I'm gonna write a novel and then he
started writing essays lectures about
this thing that he was going to do who's
gonna write a novel and he started
giving the lectures and they extended
extended it's all this plan I'm gonna
write a novel this is what a novelist
I'm about to write a novel wait I'm
gonna write a novel and then when he
died they found the actual plan for the
novel which is print at the end of the
book it's like one phase long and it's
horrifying it's like man with power
won't know power switch of power freely
it's like this try agrammatic
structuralist disaster and i thought it
was very it's very moving and it is a
kind of wonderful one-page novel but
it's it's what happens when you
disappear into theory know when when
theory is all that you can see you
theorized the life of the thing and all
he could see in the end was this kind of
movements of power structures it's like
a fairy tale almost so I think it's a
matter of survival to choose naviga
favor boy if you're a practitioner of
fiction because nabek off allows for all
kinds of things that bar does allow for
it theoretically like joy resource but
he really enacted them like he really
believed in them but what I think is no
I don't read nabek off anymore and I
wonder sometimes whether he's a young
person's writer no because you're so
amazed by the pyrotechnics and the
technical control and but there's also
this may be such a thing as too much
control you know and I do find that when
I try and read him now that it's
a little I see I see yeah the smaller
novels I still really love but I I don't
I can't read are there really and evenly
sir i i i don't know i some part of me
group grew out of him not that he isn't
a genius but he's just not for my moment
in my life i guess what you're saying
that illusion that to read a knows that
often knows what the reader is reading
is important because without it you we
cannot continue our job basically we
cannot yeah and also number course
doesn't have this reality fetish this
obsession with what is it true is it
true in your heart is it to him it was
all artificial and that's what was
wonderful about it was just incredible
act of artifice so he kind of bypasses
with wallace what's the kind of almost
christian argument that wallace has
there's something very catholic in the
in the religious sense about wallace he
always was seeking this eve truth that
he felt that fiction didn't access the
fiction was artificial or sinful in some
way now because didn't care about any of
that and wallace thought he was immoral
you mix wallace now it might but for you
reality is is quite important when
people responded to NW you latest novel
with the comments that it is a bit
experimental you disagree it you said
what does it mean to add experimental
prose for me important was that that
this way of writing would get me closer
to to the truth say something truthful
about our reality so for your reality is
highly important i think i mean when i
think of someone like joyce and
particularly ulysses he really felt that
was a book of realism his argument was
that in in a normal course of a day you
go through so many experiential states
that the only way to convey it was with
as many kinds of prose in that sense i
completely understand the argument the
end of you is like a nostalgic modernist
piece or whatever but but at the same
time I do think part of what I've been
doing which I seem to can't help is
it's not the most formally exciting
thing but is inserting my people into
that history my idea yeah my people
people like me people I recognize my
community into that literary history
which may seem a pointless experiment to
other people but I guess I I don't feel
it pointless because I keep I have done
it a few times on beauty is like a 19th
century novel but populated by people I
would recognize I guess there's maybe
some child part of me which wants to go
around just correcting it or adding
after the fact there are other examples
like Sarah waters English writer gay who
has been doing something even more
peculiar I think which is writing novels
not only historical novels but in the
tone of the period and inserting gay
women into them which is even more to me
like a kind of childish fantasy same as
mine of what if the Canon wasn't the
Canon what if it was rewritten in in my
image I think I'm gonna say childish I
don't mean it as an insult
I just mean that writers always
responding to some kind of childhood
trauma no trying to recreate something
or remake something maybe it's just your
own family mothers and fathers repeated
over and over but I think you can also
do that in the kind of canonical saying
very spawning - a kind of trauma or some
kind of absence or something you wanted
to fix or change when you were a child
writing is a great opportunity - to do
that to rewrite literally something that
disturbed or annoyed you it's a perfect
function for the author well I don't
think it's always conscious but I think
I think I found it interesting that you
said quite it's what has some self
evidence that's about my people whereas
when you quoted Kafka he said I
basically I cannot identify with my
people I know I think it's a thing with
middle age I feel it more and more
strongly yes yes I particularly after my
father died I suppose and all this
effort to be English or to be associated
with the English kind of died with him I
don't know my my family is black all my
family's black all my remaining family
is black and originally
African and it became a concern of my
interest of mine I guess it kind of
returned to me maybe that's a I'm sure
people in the audience have similar and
a parent died something changes or some
element of your identification changes
and I think that's just what happened to
me I just got tired of trying to be
something you could never be anyway
English yeah it doesn't matter to me
anymore
and now you ask somewhere in between the
US and and black and English or what's
what's I think to name it all the things
I remember and I was young I my mother
went back to Africa and like a lot of
black British and black American people
of her generation felt very connected
and wanted to return she married African
for a while they didn't work out
Ghanaian but she had a whole life in
Africa and I think my generation always
thought you know there's something
nostalgic or you know our home is here
why you dreaming of a fantasy life in
Africa which you never knew which is 200
years removed but but I think it's a I
think it's a genuine instinct maybe it's
a genetic pool or even if it is
nostalgic or I don't I don't have
contempt for it anymore I think it's
something that people really do feel as
they get older they want to be in some
idea of home even if it's a very distant
place they feel the connection with it I
feel it too so yeah an interview in 2011
for a magazine called the literature you
said a novel shouldn't be an essay it's
ideas if it has them should be a bit
more diffusely spreads I don't care
about staging debates anymore I don't
think I ever really did it was just
easier than writing properly that's much
harder than to write
truthfully chaotically without a neat
plan without always manipulating your
reader in one way one other the Smollett
bit the small bits I still like now of
those three books aren't the ideas for
the capital I it's the small human
moments summit at work as a way to Alex
Lee turned them getting drunk or the
three siblings in on beauty meeting by
accident in
streets for me those things last and the
rest just fades like a certain kind of
journalism
I titillating almost because here
it's like the idea it's just a small
human moment that lasts for you out when
you read Beckett's at the three novels
you out first it's I think it might be
true of my writing certainly in in those
books that's absolutely true I don't I
can know there's lots of arguments of my
teeth I have no idea what they are
anymore I don't remember any of them and
I guess they don't interest me anymore
but but the idea of certain people in it
interest me in for instance in the
Embassy of Cambodia the characters and
that closest to what I'm talking about
in that department of people who seem to
I don't know it's ridiculous live in
some fake way but live but but I think
there is another kind of writing it's
not mine
but that is deliberately essay a stick
in form in the novel which I think is
really wonderful it's just it's not my
type of writing but I've just told
someone earlier about that new Ben
Lerner book which is absolutely a kind
of atheistic novel and taeju Cole as
well has written a similar kind of thing
where the ideas are explicit I think
those books are beautiful I think what
annoyed me was the opposite where the
ideas are kind of fake Lee submerged you
know as themes it's like the way we were
taught in college to draw out themes you
then write novels in the same way that
really does allow me but um but ideas
explicitly expressed and really gone
into I think that kind of writing is is
wonderful
but I I think I come across it when I
gave that interview and I've read a lot
of those novels and I think they're
really really beautiful but they're not
that they don't hold up characters as
symbols of ideas they don't really have
characters of course that's the other
thing they avoid that whole problem but
I guess I'm still concerned with the
problem of characters of course we've
got a denied effect that's on beauteous
and novel filled with ideas yeah or do
you dislike thinking about it this way
it is but I still think the best parts
of it when you're writing or not when
you're trying to
make an argument but when a whole scene
presents itself as a scene in the middle
of one beauty I think where how it goes
back to his father in London I remember
one editor maybe the English editor
wanting to remove it entirely and the
Americans are willing to keep it and I
as usual had no strong opinions really
one way or another but in the end it
stayed anyway and that scene is a kind
of I suppose it is out of place in a
novel because it's just a scene no no
debate is being made but those bits I do
like now because I think they come from
a different instinct where you've
managed to suppress one part of yourself
and allows another part which is maybe
more generous or more open to exist I do
like the world yeah open to the world
exactly it's interesting before we talk
further about beauty that you said one
other to said that should should be
taken out the other said it can be left
and you had us always no opinion I found
it hard to believe it seems you're so
disconnected I don't know but I think as
a student I was very you know I just I
know I when I turned up in college I
felt very under educated so it was very
much of the opinion that whoever has
something to tell me I will take that on
board so I just was my natural instinct
to to be a student that's the thing and
it never really went away it just that
instinct before authorities never really
went away and it's so different from not
even after all the success no it's never
changed and I was reading a long essay
by mouth guard in in the New York Times
recently the travel piece it's so funny
and there's a moment where he's in some
bar in the middle of nowhere and
Nebraska or something and he's with his
photographer and they're playing darts
and it's photographers he's never played
thoughts for his bogey was trying to
tell him explain to him house third door
and it's just a pretty nice paragraph
and then suddenly he says and then he
started trying to tell me how to throw
it and then I realized I hate
hate people telling me what to do so I
just started throwing the darts in any
direction I thought that's so now
scarred that he that's really a part of
him that if the moment you say to him do
this he's like no you I'm gonna do
this whereas I'm exactly the opposite if
I'm told how to third
I will throw it exactly as he tell me to
throw it I don't have the instinct that
that my knowledge is more than the other
person's that's not that's never how
I've been my instinct is to hear
everybody's opinion and then listen to
them and listen to all of them and then
I will try and pick the best opinion but
I I I assumed that that the other people
know I do have seen that and in some
ways it's a it's a benefit because it
means you're always open to editing it
doesn't matter who's giving editing I
don't even have to be particularly
qualified I'm interested in in the
reader the readers experience but of
course there comes a point and there
should come a point where you say no
this is this much I know and you can't
touch it anymore otherwise could become
a democracy yeah it becomes a democracy
and you can't write that way but but I I
don't know I I hate the friction
antagonism I guess my parents were very
you know I came from a divorced family
and I hated that kind of thing so I'm
all it's my habit to always try and find
some middle way but in effect that you
really like
Kunal Scott's work yes is this a sign
that's that you would like to be like
him that's if somebody tells you photo
dots this way that you say no I
will do it my way no I think the
transformation of of novelists with now
Scott is exactly seeing something you
could never do in a million years do
that to your family to your wife to your
children to your mother
but that's an ethical question looks
like a technical and literary because
he's doing both things at the same time
so I I really when he first started
publishing my met other novelist that
was the conversation I heard over and
over because what he was doing was
taking the lowest hanging fruit anyone
could do it if you if you were willing
to do it but who would be willing to do
it you need to risk everything and
that's what that's what fascinates
Norman is probably for readers it's
perhaps less interesting but for
novelists absolutely fascinating that
someone would do the thing which no one
does which is tell the truth all of it
all the time that's what it looked like
yeah you even said that it doesn't
matter that it's sometimes booing but
booing no but can be good yeah bottom
can be good for sure like we live in a
culture where you're hyper entertained
continually entertained
your mind like most days of the
week so to be forced to be in this state
of boredom keeping that first book with
a hundred and fifty pages about buying
beer or whatever it is it's almost like
a meditative state is so unusual it's
very hard but but uh I don't think it's
just the confession is its many
different things in those books but but
there was a vocational interest for
novelists like old that's what would
happen if I told those but you're not
saying that that we that novelist should
bore their witness more often no or I I
think what he's done is something that
can be done once no it's not a
repeatable experiment I would be
ill-advised for novelists all over the
world start writing intimate together
yeah but um but it was a provocation I
think novels like that I have to appear
every now and then it's very healthy for
everybody else okay
I didn't take it a spoke a what's
interesting I let let's go to UM beauty
and I hope I won't just pull out some
ideas but more than that on in the
beginning you make a interesting remark
about Howard and his wife Kiki and she
says to him the professor Hickey has
kissed the back of his head and stood up
too much recording to our living si
suggested softly is this this difference
between working in academia or writing
and living is this is this for you still
a concern well I think the kind of
teenage writer who's really a reader and
most writers are just obsessive readers
who caught the habit that's always the
concern when you were young right when
you're fourteen you think well why am I
in my room reading arthur c clarke i
probably should be at the party getting
girls or whatever that don't dare to go
down yeah you go so you stay in your
room so this this gap between people who
do and people who observe becomes quite
intense I think but there are writers I
think you're one of them who managed to
combine the two so the idea is I go and
have the adventure and I will write
about it so I will travel forth and in
America particularly that kind of
Hemingway model is very and for the
English Graham Greene you know to go
he was 24 he went to Liberia for example
that model always makes me feel very
guilty because when I was young and was
free to travel I didn't want to and now
that I can't it's too late so I feel bad
about it but I don't know I thought I've
seen someone else earlier what makes me
feel better is thinking about those
those writers many of them women in
England over 500 years who had no
possibility of going anywhere even had
no freedom in it and had to write like
Austin did you know in a little book in
the living room then cover it with a
piece of blotting paper it's kind of
it's good to know that you you can write
without experience or that all
experience in some ways is useful even
the most intimate supposedly feminine or
domestic experience well that's why it's
yeah that's what he's the point he made
yeah that's what he's proven I guess but
um I I do feel then that I I have been
less involved than I could have been
that writing has taken up a lot of time
I could have spent and writing it's not
the same as living it doesn't seem to me
that it is maybe it is but I you know
it's very a very safe way to live you
know you stay in your room almost always
or in a library and you just write and
it goes on and on but no like I'm about
to may have some adventures I'm going to
the Gambia in a few weeks which I by
myself you know just to to go and see so
things that I never would have done when
I was younger
mainly because I was so concerned always
with this thing of wasting time I just
really couldn't bear to be away from my
death for a minute in case I wasted time
I once went to a therapist a few few
times I went to therapy to discuss his
obsession with and then I stopped seeing
him because was a waste of time I
couldn't stand
walking there took off an hour and then
the air and then I couldn't bear it so
I'm trying to I'm trying to get over
that and realize that you know there is
time away from your desk which is also
useful time but waiting time you said in
an interview that one of the advantages
of being a mother is that you are more
if you are better with time that you are
that you don't want to lose time by
writing paragraphs that you're going to
throw away anyhow so yeah but it's also
come even more fixated and feeling
filling every moment with you know
reading or I never really thought of it
as a pathology but now when I when I see
myself for instance coming to Amsterdam
for 24 hours packing you know six books
and a Kindle for New Yorkers a New York
Review of Books like when and when am I
gonna read this stuff tonight when I get
back to the hotel like the cocktails
yeah it's and not being able to walk
down the street or do anything without
also doing something useful I I think
it's uh I don't know where that came
from he must have been in my family but
it's I don't have any way of just not
doing things I I can't have to fill
everyone that makes her feel guilty yes
it makes me feel guilty I can't bear the
thought of not working in some capacity
and should leave live your parents for
them I mean writing itself seems to be
such an indulgence that if you do have
the luxury of doing it for a living you
better just kind of do it all the time
that's my feeling about it basically
even though you can imagine but you one
day you stop writing you do something
else you just do what I would do I'd
have to teach I suppose oh yeah I'd have
to do something practical something
about abuse you gain you more women and
men when you are no longer in the sexual
universe when you're supposedly too old
or too big or simply no longer thought
of in that way apparently a whole new
way veins of male reactions to you come
into play one of them is humor I found
this very interesting your sake
basically as low as a man sees the woman
as sexual objects he is a human that
sees a person without any sense it's
absolutely true
I was a teenager I was I was a very
overweight very unattractive
supposedly according to everybody else
and I could be funny I was finally I
could make men laugh and it was all
funny then when I cleaned up and went on
dates if you try and be funny the man is
looking like what do you do why are you
doing that why are you telling me jokes
at dinner I really know today and now my
brother is a stand-up and you see it
with women comedians no not so much
anymore but it's still if a woman
comedian goes on stage she has to deal
with the reality of her physical person
in the first five minutes otherwise
she's dead in the water and that's
because men just not capable of
responding to women as a humorous as a
width it's more what it's more of the
whip I just it's not in our culture the
idea of a woman being funny it's a very
hard thing you have comic actresses for
sure there's never been any doubt about
that but I mean the person who comes on
stage speaks with their own mouth about
their own ideas in a way that is witty
it's not a way that men are ever used to
relating to women I think it's a very
unusual procedure which is why women
stand up so heroic and amazing when
they're funny that they're as good as it
gets because it's just such an unusual
position for a man to be in his job is
supposedly to make you laugh although
many women will know it's not that funny
when you go on a date and he's not
actually that funny at all
but yeah it's it's it's a very
interesting thing and I think part of it
is like when I think of the British
female stand-ups who were successful
they had to basically negate six they
had to either not be sexual in any way
will be old that sometimes helped there
was there's one in America called Mar W
was black and she was young in fact but
she's to dress as an old woman with six
year old enough people yeah yeah and
then she became funny to people but it's
only now I recently with people like
Tina Fey and you get the idea of a woman
who is a wit who is really funny funny
all the way down funny in all dimensions
I think women have been able to be funny
on the page which is a great liberation
but in person I think it's it's very
hard yeah because the men doesn't see us
a sexual human being anyone
shall be I I think that because when
you're laughing you are the audience and
I just don't think men know how to be
the audience to still nuts even after
all those years of things but even after
all those years that's that's quite sad
maybe can be sad workshops something
like that me go back still same book to
Kiki a character I love and Kiki is
giving this imaginary speech to a guilt
of black imaginary guilt of black
American mothers since he is saying and
there's no big secret not at all you
just needs to have faith I guess and you
need to counter the dismal self-image
that black men receive as their birth
lights from America that's essential and
I don't know get involved in
after-school activities have books
around the house and sure have a little
money and a house without work yeah I
mean I think it's of course he's a
middle class or upper middle class woman
is this party is this a bit it's hard to
describe I know I know because I live in
the largely white world it's very hard
for white women to realize how black
women feel about raising children in
America and in England its and the way
we talk amongst ourselves it's just
immediately particular if you have a boy
then the crisis is on there's a great
line of 2-packs in an interview he gave
towards the end of his life where he
says that a black man in America has
only a short time to be equals it at his
full power and it's when you're young
it's when you're 15 or 16 and and I
guess misbehaving as far as the rest of
the world is concerned but that's when
you actually still have the energy to
misbehave and to tell people to off
and to kick back but he says by the time
you're 30
they take the soul out of a man they
take the soul out of him and it's he
says when you go in America you see any
black men over 30 opening them and then
you don't see it because they're really
beaten down and I think a lot of black
parents feel that they know it to be
true they know what happens in the
schools and it's a very heartbreaking
situation it's better for the girls for
sure but for black boys it's just
extremely tough it's tough to be in a
classroom where you are aware that your
teacher is in some way afraid of you
that's a very hard thing I think to deal
with when it happens very early on yeah
yeah
six seven you're cute and charming but
you're nine ten you're a problem and
that is quite destructive I think so
and it's cookies advice it's feasible
advice is a middle-class woman's advice
and even then with everything in place
within your household
once your children go onto the street
it's a different matter you can't
control what happens on the street and
the reactions of other people to your
children and as we've seen in America
the reaction of police to your children
so there's a great feeling of anxiety I
think of how to protect your children at
the end of the book a young man a young
black man Carl comments on the on the
blackness of the family of Kiki and he
says you are Carl laughed bitterly but
that's joke around here men people like
me are just toys to people like you and
just so just some experiment for you to
play with you people aren't even black
anymore men I don't know what you are
you think you're too good for your own
people this is a kind of central anxiety
in black life I think in America and to
take it back to slavery is not to excuse
it but it's just try and give some
context like the most punishing aspect
of slavery as far as I'm concerned more
than being whipped or starved or raped
or whatever is the the constriction on
reading right was incredibly important
to white slavers across America that
black people were not allowed to read if
you were a slave was found reading they
were beaten if a master was found
allowing a slave to read they were
punished it was a crime so it's quite
hard to imagine a community who grew out
of a legacy of it being a crime to read
it's I think it's it's almost
unimaginable the kind of legacy that
creates it's a crime to read and
certainly when I was growing up even
then this connection
or disconnection between education and
black life is so profound though that as
you become educated you are in some way
considered in a defensive manner to be
moving away from your community because
this link is so strong between the idea
of a black person as someone of action a
physical being but not an intellectual
being so all the kind of words that I'm
sure they exist here as well like
coconuts a very popular one when I was
young black on the outside white on the
inside which was something you were
accused of being if you were educated or
at least there's kind of suspicion
around this kind of education but when
everything you see of educated culture
is white it's hard to find your place
within it you know it's very hard to
understand what a black intellectual
it's very hard to imagine but there are
new book and also in reality we do have
black intellectuals I've been trying to
write an essay about it saying someone
earlier about this idea of the
exceptional Negro which is a kind of
popular trope in in slavery and in
popular culture and for instance in
Jewish culture the idea of an
exceptional people it's a very different
concept the idea that there's one man
who's president this is not actually
role models that are not really
effective for a whole people because
it's a kind of stopgap in terms of
self-esteem I hope people need to feel
that they have so essential and
self-esteem it's just not enough this
idea of a role model here a role model
there and also when the role models of a
certain kind when I was growing up to be
constantly told that so-and-so 100
meters or so it what difference does
that make to me I'm not gonna run 100
meters so it's not it's a structural
problem that goes all the way through
the educational system and it's changing
and it will change but to me the legacy
of that kind of law are crime to read
it's just the same as if you have a
tormal individual family I know maybe
other people know in families where for
instance this historic sexual abuse may
be going back even four or five
generations these things linger they're
passed from father to son
they just are five or six generation yes
it's a culture within a family and it
painful and I think whole communities
can suffer these kind of traumas and
it's a struggle always to remove
yourself from I think it's totally
possible I think individuals can free
themselves at any point but there are
also structures that make it difficult
to make that freedom possible and
they're also ancient resentments which i
think is what karl is expressing their
paranoia spheres within the community
that are really deadly and I always felt
them as a mixed-race person I get this
kind of abuse from both sides I always
wondered why and now again reading these
slavery accounts and understanding what
a mixed-race person meant they were a
crime they were a scandal so a
mixed-race girl like me meant that
something had gone wrong and what's so
interesting is if you were look like me
and you were the child of the a white
man you were allowed to live but if it
was your mother who was white they
killed you so then you see how these
these terrible legacies continue this
kind of stigma that you're not quite to
be trusted I think that lingers over
mixed-race people it was a part of the
system and it continues and how many
more generations do we need I don't know
but I see progress all over that
particularly when I'm new sleepovers
when I'm in America I see these kind of
something I didn't see in England I
guess these young black people who were
just so varied in their interests so
they will Cavan go it kinds of art forms
or it the filmer to poetry they're too
hip what there's everything the
scientists the engineers it's like and
what you mean really is that there's an
emergent middle class on way or another
and is on such a scale that there's a
lot of people are in emergent black
middle class and that's so exciting
I love to be there for that reason just
because the numbers are so that you feel
that you're part of this big group which
is kind of new for me rather than just
be the big group of an emerging middle
class just emerging mat kids who were
just interested in everything you feel
at liberty to explore whatever they want
to explore in whatever direction they
want to explore it that to me is so
exciting before we go to another novel
and I would like to quote Howard's on
statics and flour because I think it's
also connected to this discussion and he
makes an interesting remark and I wonder
where you stand on it he's a teacher is
when one expert
and then he's saying to his class Howard
asked his students to imagine prettiness
asked the mask that power wears to
recast aesthetics as a rarefied language
of exclusion he promised in a class that
would challenge their own beliefs about
lead enter few Manatee of what is
commonly called art art is a Western
myth announced Howard for the sixth year
in a row I was talking with some younger
people earlier about Dutch painting you
know this theory of Dutch painting that
it's exactly the excess of money from
these various bloody colonial adventures
which allows for this flowering of
exquisite art because you have to spend
your money on something it's not enough
land in Holland to spend this money on
so art became the object of this money
so in that way that that Walter Benjamin
quote for every document of civilization
being a document of barbarism well it's
true enough now about a lot of
Enlightenment art Renaissance art but
and I heard those arguments in college
and I was free they were fascinating to
me and it was a wonderful thing to hear
them and understand them and to
understand the history of these
masterpieces but but what didn't happen
to me was a denial of them as
masterpieces I don't feel that I think
the beauty is an essential element of
art I think it has power structures
within it and disguises barbarism all
the time
but it doesn't mean to me that Vermeer
isn't a great painter and has I didn't
know how to say not only a social
practical reality the way the painting
was made what conditions it was made
under what country was made under what
political system but also an existential
reality which is something different
which is what happens to me when I stand
in front of Vermeer which is a kind of
sacred relation which i think exists
basically all so it's not really
defendable position but that's just how
I feel about it
why it's not refundable because it's not
it's not you know it's in academia it's
not no it's I guess it's not fashionable
whatever but I I think that beauty is
real it's a real part of people's lives
it's a an effective experience and no
matter how much Theory you read about
the emptying out of beauty or the the
kind of political redundancy of beauty
it just doesn't it doesn't change the
fact that people stand in front of a
mirror and they have this feeling what
are you gonna do about it I'm having the
same feeling standing when reading books
yeah I have the feeling all the time
it's a I remember reading I think it's
William James who talks about that he
feels he's someone who has these kind of
ecstatic experiences of beauty a lot he
writes about varieties of religious
experience I have always felt that from
a child that I had this slightly
embarrassing
experiences every day finding something
you know really very beautiful and what
I come home when I'm always trying to
tell my husband about he said oh did you
have another transcendent experience a
bit yeah
so you're saying the opposite I mean
it's not the powers that be that decide
what's beauty for you you are able to
decide for you again I was talking to
some people earlier about the Canon I
even though I learnt to to deconstruct
it and to be suspicious of it and to
know that it was constructed in a
certain way to push certain ideas and
that is all true and what I would like
to do is add to that Canon say there is
also this book they were these books in
Africa these of these books in India and
Russia and to extend this Canon but it
doesn't to me mean that the cannon
itself was without worth I was forced to
read Shakespeare Milton Keats Chaucer
first forced because that was the Crick
ulam but it was to me a great gift so I
can't really think of these things as as
oppressive because to me they were
beautiful that's not what he was saying
we know how it is nor so and I do not
agree okay
but the irony of course of how it is
that when he sees beauty in a young
woman when young women or not even only
in young women
he becomes being that that is with use
to his dick yes wife makes a comment
that's that his dick is basically an
embarrassment for his own intelligence
but this is what I just remember in
college we had a lot of it was a high
time of theory and a lot of my
professors were really French terry
heads so we go to these classes I don't
think they realized how where we were
coming from or at least where I was
coming from so I cut up in class never
going to deconstruct and ridicule the
whole of Western culture but of course I
just arrived so I was like oh okay no to
Tolstoy okay forget that
so that they were destroying something I
hadn't even got to yet it was they were
really destroying it and how but I
noticed in their private lives they were
listening to bark they had beautiful
paintings on the wall they were having
affairs with girls half their age so for
some reason they were still involved in
this world of beauty but we were to be
you know austerely taught that it was
all nonsense and that's really where how
it came from that memory of this strange
double life they seemed to be living you
did an interview of it's in McEwen for
the believer two thousand five and you
talk also in his interview you made a
remark that struck me also in with
regard to this book and with regard to
NW you said to Ian McEwan I'm a writer
who never writes about sex it's so far
for my own fictional world whereas in
beauty and W so my question is used to
write but I'm definitely doing this
meeting with C McEwan the human yeah I
think it's from Nabokov as well on them
one of the two things that navikev
teaches when you're young is no dialogue
and sex only in the most kind of you
know not explicit 6 because that's
vulgar in some sense so there is a
course of sex in a liter but there's so
many metaphors you might miss it you
know and if you're trying to read it as
a dirty book it's quite hard to find the
actual sexual pages you know I
I guess I just it's it's a kind of part
of as I got older just wanting to be
more honest and to be less civilized I
think I just got tired of being a
presentable or wanting to be presentable
and I think sex is a part of that in the
books there is more of it in NW as well
that's true why do you feel so attracted
to to dialog by the way I mean you're
very good at it and also to accents
accents are so important to you it's so
important now I'm so happy I just didn't
I thought it was in bad taste to write a
lot of dialogue that was the kind of
lesson of my college years that that
dialogue was something that you that
children's books had laurels but when I
started writing white teeth it just I
just kept on writing dialogue and then
it it's just so much easier for me to
write though I enjoy doing it and I have
I guess I have a good ear and I think
there's a kind of writing where a good
ear is really the major part of it also
in critics no like someone like James
Wood he's an incredible percussionist
he's like a great drummer he has a good
ear so the music of language is
important when you're writing not for
everybody but but for me it's important
and now I'm happy to you know I don't
look a gift horse in the mouth anymore
I'm happy I use whatever skills I have
but this excellence this the way you use
dialogue it's also connected to class
two ways to all kinds of yeah issues
yeah I guess there I tooked it before
but right it's like like Don DeLillo I
always admired so much when I was in
college but he always sounds like on the
low and but that's because the kind of
things that are my concern are not Don's
concerned he's concerned with the
structures of societies and with a
certain thread of paranoia and
information and but when I start to
write I would I want to be concerned
with those things but the moment I put
person on the page my thought is yeah
but what does he come from
what newspaper does he read what does he
buy his shoes I can't help it
and I think I was very like a lot of
British people just hugely preoccupied
with class when I was a
and I'm just remembering actually when
when I used to wait for the bus to go to
school like my best friend was a
Nigerian girl who was also you know
somewhat out of the class system in
England just didn't really exist and
we'd sit on the bus stop and as people
went by we had this game where we'd
guess where they went on holiday
what newspaper they read what car they
drove and these are all class questions
right so this is how we'd entertain
ourselves so Daily Mail reader marks us
box shoes New Yorker or Italy The Times
etc so this is like maybe it's a game
you could only play in England where
every single thing you do makes this
incredible difference yeah to who you
are and I guess we were just like
students of it like since we don't
really were not really on this students
off of the human species yeah of other
people's class and what it meant yeah in
nwu you you make a beautiful remark
about this English education connected
also to Iowa any guesses how class
consciousness is connected to it you're
saying no writing even after so many
years in this country the English
fondness for torturing children with
irony remains strange to him yeah so is
this is this torture
but maybe every nationality is not very
fashionable to say now but maybe every
necklace he has its own genius or
particular habits and the English it it
is comedy that there's an incredible
high level of comedy in England
everybody's funny everybody push people
working-class people people in the
middle everybody's funny and and
exercises the humor all the time but in
a very kind of brutal way and I think
when you go to America as a British
person it becomes funny what they are
funny but they have a time in a place as
far as they concern for humor and it's
not with children for example and it's
not at dinner parties so you have to
learn that you can't compose like that
all the time
you can't like the fun that English
people have with words like but you
probably can't stay here either
in America you say that you're thrown
out of the house like it's an outrage so
in England that's just a you know it's
just a rhythm in the scent it's just
something you say it before you ask
whatever the groceries so it's it's
learning that that's not an everyday
matter and the kind of attitude the
English take to their children of I had
I can't imagine like the way my husband
plays games with my oldest child and he
they play any kind of game and he always
beats her and he just won't stop doing
that and in America you just you you
can't do that you can't just play tennis
with the five world and just continually
beat them and beat them at monopoly and
beat them at everything and just keep
them safe for them well you know you
lost again you can't do that but see
consciousness I want to I yeah it's just
normal it's just what you do with your
children England I I think it's not
normal in other countries yeah speaking
of comedy and I only in the end of the
collection of essays you write about
your father who was dying and at last
months of your life you go to see him
and you bring DVDs of Fawlty Towers
together with him you watch for the
towers and so very touching touching
paragraphs because basically don't speak
to him anymore you're just sitting there
and watching comedy lots of you
described him as a man who his biggest
love was comedy yeah he loved he loved
comedy we had a lot of comedy records
which i think is maybe unique to england
and perhaps new york where people just
sit around listening to comedy audio
comedy not even television probably just
listening to people being funny yeah he
loved comedy and yet a very
sophisticated taste and he liked very
dark comedy which I also like I mean
it's a great joy to me now my brother's
a comedian unexpectedly so it's kind of
reentered I like I'm like yeah I get to
see a lot of comedy and he's you know
he's pretty famous in England now so and
meet other comedians I always thought
that comedy was like but when I meet
comedians I feel like they're like
writers but in a very intensified way
it's like the difference between
cappuccino and expresso they're like
very concentrated comedy but I could
write nine novels about England and
Eddie Izzard could do one routine there
basically be the same thing it's just
like a kind of concentrated version I
admire them for that and I'm also kind
of fascinated by their the arc of their
careers how quickly they become kind of
self disgusted it's a very interesting
process now I can ask my brother about
why that happens yeah but sometimes you
appear to be self-disgust hi I am a lot
of the time but I think with with
novelists you can kind of survive it
longer.we and I thought it was a huge
arity of me but talking to comics it's a
very natural reaction they they want to
make you laugh but then when you laugh
where they expected them to laugh they
kind of hate you for it they really hate
you for it because it's there's no
satisfaction there anymore it's a it's a
strange thing my brothers on the road a
lot and he'd always much rather do a
film or a TV show than stand-up exactly
for that reason I think because
everybody's laughing at you oh you're so
funny but I guess a part of you the pod
that's in every writer and every
creative person is saying these idiots
they're just it's like Groucho thing I
don't want to belong to any club and
have someone like me as a member it's
that first very big Woody Allen joke at
the beginning of Annie Hall it's a very
profound part of comedy so the more they
laugh the more you hate them yeah also
you talk about self-disgust regarding
with regards to young women somewhere
you say that it's it's impossible for a
young woman not to experience times
months weeks filtered self-disgust and
that was definitely my experience I
guess what worries me now is that
because the age of being a young woman
is infinitely extended now you have to
be a young woman into your 40s and 50s
and 80s yeah but this period of
self-disgust never ends whereas before
you could just forth you could just be
like ah it and just wear purple
tights and just hang around do whatever
you like and actually have fun so it
depresses me that that that that period
of adolescence is now meant to yeah
infinitely extend because it's no joy
for the women who were
it I don't think and how about you were
self discussed did it diminish or not
really not with the work I but I I guess
I stopped expecting it to to go away
with the writing I I don't know why why
is that should be there must be some gap
between the writing and me that can't be
closed but I can think of more extreme
like there's someone like I don't know
there were writers are like calm toy
being for example who is such a
beautiful writer but so serious in the
first canto being the Irish writer
whereas if you ever met Colin there's
absolutely hilarious he's he's like
literally like a stand up so the gap
between calm and his writing seems to me
one of the most extreme that I've ever
seen like you wouldn't know that the man
you meet is the man who wrote the books
but it seems absent of self discussed
there's a kind of I don't know why the
gap seems to be healthy for him but for
me I do feel a kind of a gap between me
and the book maybe it's getting a bit
smaller I think perhaps the problem was
when I was young this imitation of
wisdom you know that's one of the things
the novel is meant to contain novels are
so wise and when you're young when you
start young people always saying to you
good you've got such an old brain you
must be there an old woman hiding inside
you Americans worry though that that's
like you said an interview we get tired
of these imitations of wisdoms yeah I
did feel that I did feel that it's you
know tickly white teeth the write about
generations of families and then what
did I know about any of that nothing at
all
but isn't this what novelist or imitate
is it's not an imitation exactly is it
it's it's a kind of remix it's all the
books you've ever read regurgitated
through your sensibility and
transference thing yeah that's a foot
mixer and it interests me like writers
like McCarthy and other kind of
theoretical writers are so horrified by
this idea like they claim it as a
revelation like Oh didn't you know
novels aren't a expression of a single
soul they're just language or just text
as if it were a revelation but I think
to be shocked by that to consider it a
scandal in the French since you first to
have to believe in the other thing but I
never believed in the other thing I
always thought it was text and a mixture
of text I was always aware of that I
never felt I was sitting down and you
never believed in your own wisdom no I
never got his right
that's quite healthy the sole document
that never took my mind for a moment to
me I thought I've read all these books
and this is the result that's that it
just seemed to me what I was doing so I
so when I read the kind of supposedly
radical theory which is scandalized by
that fact coming out of bar coming out
Foucault I think but what's the scandal
there is no scandal it's always been
text has always been regurgitated and
reproduced and that's what text is a
decimal uncle he also there's no scandal
don't think it's a maybe a little bit I
think the thing that I do feel is that
all those texts are passed through this
thing which is ineffable which is your
Sensibility
whatever that means it's different
coming through me than it is coming
through you that or calm or Daniel
Kalman or whoever something changes as
these books go through you and that's
all you can hope for one one big than
many but one big difference between on
beauty and NW Eastern is the role of
Technology how it is somebody we hates
mobile phones it's part of the plot you
could say and in NW this one chapter the
chapters and numbers and have names and
one chapter is called cult technology
and your any rights I have it for work
it's for work I don't pay for it I've
got to I have got to have it for work
and actually it makes a lot of things
easier it's my work phone otherwise I
wouldn't even have one well I don't have
one at all actually
so I mean I don't know what realm I mean
I'm in the realm but this is a
dependence on technology it's part also
it's quite important to the main
character the dependence on technology
and the the possibility of communicating
with others almost everywhere any place
any time is this a liberating see I
think it's wonderful if you can handle
it
just as an alcoholic would say I love a
great that you have a martini but I
can't drink one and that's how it is for
me I can't do it personally I can't do
it but I'm very happy
exists and but when I'm writing about
technology I'm writing to other people
like me who also have it find it
problematic to exist in it all day long
I'm not trying to force an opinion on
anyone else I'm just saying I have this
feeling do you have this feeling if so
listen let's discuss it that's all but
I'm perfectly willing to believe that
people who have the feeling I have are
dying out or no longer exist that's
completely possible it's just me and if
Franzen and four other people I don't
mind never but that's how I feel
personally yeah but we who describe
Natalie the one of the four main
characters in in NW us as an addict and
I I think natalie is like a to me she
was a kind of Nightmare version of
myself like my worst possible projection
someone who just doesn't really exist
that's that's how I thought about
Natalie it just doesn't really have any
life outside of what she thinks people
are thinking about her
he's just so been so intent on getting
ahead and getting out of her family that
she's just kind of lost so it's kind of
a horrifying section to read to write
sorry just because I guess it was like a
partly confession partly it was just um
it was unpleasant to write yeah it was
unpleasant just because when you're
writing the worst version of yourself
part of you always thinks well is that
actually me in reality but this was one
of the tasks you had set for yourself to
be more honest it's also why you wanted
to move away from the more conventional
realism so yeah and also I yeah I
I mean I love comic fiction and I
recognize that that I I do like to write
it and I just wrote for example a short
story is not published yet for The New
Yorker which is just the funniest thing
for me that I've ever in it's just a
funny story and I loved writing it but
when I was writing in W I wasn't feeling
very humorous and I wanted to express
that part I think a lot of people when
get to this mid stage of life which I
hear all of my friends saying which is
is this it I think a lot of people have
that right
up till your forties you're on this
treadmill of school college then job
maybe you have some kids maybe you get a
dog you get whatever you get your house
or your flat or but at some point you
just have to work out what the it
was all for and I think it's a very hard
moment in people's lives and Leslie
isn't able to do it and she can do it at
all in this way she's looking for
extreme situations extreme sex
yeah an extreme anything any to have the
feeling of being alive yeah
and that I hear a lot from my students
even this sense of not really feeling
alive which i think is a very curious
feeling I don't know if people felt that
in 1850 or 1720 and if it's a new
feeling
but people if it's a new feeling maybe
it's a new feeling people saying often
in extreme events no it was like a movie
it was like TV show it didn't feel real
they came through the door I didn't feel
real people say this all the time you've
been in newspapers every day
you didn't feel real fascinated as a
continuing disconnection yeah even at
the most extreme moments of their lives
it didn't feel real I have no answer to
why people have had this feeling so
often these days but it's fascinating
and used to feeling that natalie is
getting closer and the answer to reality
at the very end no to have a genuine
relation with her friend yeah but it
yeah but it involves too much so instead
they take the easier option of Gough
ganging together and finding a scapegoat
well at the end he says also that she
should give something back
Natalie and then you write but not least
the Natalie Blake's instinct for self
defense for self-preservation are simply
too strong yeah that's what it is
because part of it is to I found getting
old is that you have to give up this
very precious idea of your identity you
know you spent so long building in and
this person I like this I like that I do
this I do
and it doesn't really to me anyway I
found it didn't really amount to very
much but sense of oneself what really
made a difference is your actual
relations with other people how you were
with them how they were with you and how
you actually acted in the world this
kind of sense of tastes I like these
things I like this music I like these
clothes and something that my generation
was really offered as as a kind of
salford if you have a lot of good taste
you're a person congratulations I don't
think it works and I think at 40 at 50
nobody cares whether you bought the
first Radiohead album it doesn't make
any difference a dozen you've just gotta
actually get a life as opposed to a
lifestyle it's the it's the difficulty
is the sense of competition between self
preservation surviving and the feeling
the sensation of being alive can these
two things go together I think it's very
hard like I mean I read like people like
Martin Buber this kind of mystic Jewish
philosopher I agree with him in the
abstract I love this idea that you might
never treat anyone as a thing or an
object always treat them as a person as
you are a person and have a complete
relation with them on the other hand
very tiring to do that all the time like
it's very hot bobble yeah it's
impossible most of the time you go run
to your mother's house you treat her
like an object it's too hard to treat
your mother like your actual mother it's
like an inconceivable thing to have to
do all the time so I think you'd do it
in a partial way but I guess you hope to
do it a bit more often than you do
usually you're kind of I find the mystic
as boring as the next person no one
wants to be mr. cool time but I kind of
aspire towards that kind of relation I'd
like to enter then I will open the the
conversation to the audience with a
quote from really beautiful book not the
other books are not beautiful the
Embassy of Cambodia there you say you
write about the main character they made
their own arrangements weather back home
or here the key to surviving as people
in fattest opinion was to make your own
arrangements
yeah I I mean I like that but best of
all my books which is kind of a bit of a
disaster as it's only 69 pages but uh
she those emotions that fratty has I
think the reason I like them is because
I've really tried to allow her to be her
so have her own thoughts so she there's
all kinds of things I don't agree with
that she she doesn't really understand
what the Holocaust was she doesn't
really understand what her Oshima was
she has these very kind of defensive
ideas about people about being of her
own people staying within her own circle
but it was very liberating to really try
and engage and imagine that person and
allow them just to exist without
correcting them or saying as a narrator
oh by the way fatty was mistaken about
this Oh
in fact you she should think this or it
was like a kind of fact of for me
personality suppression and I'm very
curious as to whether you could do it at
a longer length it's quite hard to do
because we all have perfect if you want
to express so it's easier to do it in a
short story just to to kind of batten
yourself down but when I finished I was
really proud we have the feeling you
didn't manage to do this in on beauty or
piety for a 9'w not in the same way Phi
2 to me is the the person I I really
feel for most and I had a very odd
experience about a month after I
finished it I was in the pret amante in
New York and I went to order a sandwich
and the girl behind the counter had
patented phatu and I was completely I'd
never met anyone with that name and I
was completely alarmed that she looked
exactly as far to would look and so I
thought it was a kind of benediction you
know I have a kind of slightly like
magical feeling about that but I haven't
had otherwise yeah mr. Koh feeling
exactly yeah are you finished it for two
or do you think because sometimes
characters come back no way with my
husband my adapting into a movie in fact
we just finished the script yeah so I'm
hoping it will be in a film yeah and
then maybe later maybe Mir maybe more
yeah
maybe more questions from the audience
if you stand up somebody will come to
you with a mic and as I said before
please a question so as many people as
possible can ask questions maybe we
exhausted them all right listen no
questions
it's that's the first time yes question
okay lady I don't know if it's a fair
question you mentioned how Natalie was
perhaps your it what was it your
nightmare version yeah who would i rebe
from my teeth oh I read it's kind of a
fund I'm fond of her and I was
definitely like area's the teenager this
certainly I'm aspects of me there so I
think it was a fond memory I guess when
I wrote her I was about 20 22 so it
wasn't that far off from being her one
way or another but she's an she seems
like a nice girl bit ridiculous in some
ways but I think that was a fund picture
I think if went like Elliot wrote
Dorothea in a middle March she was so
far from Dorothea when she wrote it but
you can look upon your younger self with
fondness no I think that's a nice thing
to do and I was glad to glad to do it so
she was a mix of me and a lot of my um
slightly nerdy friends of the period
other questions
yep hi thank you for the wonderful
interview and I think the thing gets
stuck with me the most was a remark to
have to freedom to have profound doubts
that it's not given to everyone but you
were also saying that you were all to
music and more people are getting there
what is the most the biggest development
you see where you see that people have
more rights to have freedom to have
profound out I think you see in in art
and in action no I I don't think it's
the problem the problem with the case
for extreme doubt is it's not you know
you can't really put banners behind it
it's not something you can shout about
whereas the the picture for dogma and
for certainty is very noisy and
everybody can see it and it's perfectly
obvious when it appears but I don't know
whenever I see like weird afropunk
artists or wherever I see like a funny
woman or women directors women doing all
kinds of strange and unusual art
practices I see freedom there I see
freedom whenever people are weird often
the weirdness is a great freedom but I
think in a mainstream culture you kind
of take for granted but in a minority
culture you can't really risk it you're
so hot I think so much time defending
the idea that you are a person
historically you have to defend the idea
that you're not an animal or an object
or something that can be bought and sold
you haven't really got time for you know
German Expressionism you've got time for
that
but when you do get time for it's a kind
of statement of your freedom also a
statement of economic freedom as well
because there's another it's a luxury so
I I do see signs of it but it's to me as
I said profoundly connected to education
and that itself is profoundly connected
to who gets to be educated to what level
and for how much money because
everything in my life was made possible
by a post-war free education system
nothing could have happened without that
so that's kind of my my concern and
focus expression yes I Thanks
thanks for this evening I have a very
well practical question now what are you
currently working on and what can we
read in the near future um well I have
this uh I I write this story for the
year which is about this urban myth
perhaps true that um the day after 9/11
in New York Michael Jackson and Marlon
Brando and Elizabeth
got in a higher car and drove to Iowa I
think if you ever heard this story in a
panic to escape what they saw as the
apocalypse so I've written a story about
that which which was a great pleasure to
me to write it's been in my mind since I
heard the story and 15 years ago
whatever it is so it was a joy to write
so that's that's the main thing and then
I guess I'm finishing a book of essays
I'll be out in in January I think yeah
in some interviews he also referred to
science fiction project is this yes I am
writing I've started a science fiction
of and I started another novel too and
they're kind of I'm having this
competition of nausea so I get sick of
one and I switched to the other one and
back and forth it goes so I don't know
which one I'm gonna hate less but I'm so
finished we'll just have to wait and see
yeah next question yeah well maybe in
this line do you somehow feel that you
are becoming more and more the writer
that you really are or are you
reinventing yourself all the time I have
felt the few things I've written
recently shorter things that the thing
before that or maybe that I just stopped
being in a print this eternal apprentice
and started feeling that that this is my
job and and I do it okay and yeah I have
had that feeling a little bit but it's
it's funny like I've read a long piece
of the New York recently about two
comedians who aren't famous here but in
America called Key & Peele
we were both biracial as I say in
America and when I was given the project
I had you know I'm 40 almost and I still
if I'm given a project like that instead
of just doing the work as on and so
wonderfully does week in week out I have
a huge you know freakout I try and not
do it I try and pay back the money I
throw all my toys out of the pram it
never stops that and then I finally I
think oh no I can do this it's just an
essay I've done it before
but when it's completed these days I'm
happy with the end result you know I
think even though I wish I could shorten
the drama so this list
but I'm pleased when when I finished and
see that technically in terms of putting
an essay together and that I can do that
now without feeling each time I'm sure
if any of your writers in the audience
you get that feeling every time like how
I don't know I'm not sure I can do this
it's not like playing the piano where
you know you can play the piano it's
writing it's always a bit like well can
you who knows who knows if you could
write this piece nobody knows until it's
on the page you know start from scratch
every every time that's how I feel yeah
with this anxiety of can I can I write
an essay I don't know can I write
yesterday's and I think it's something
to do with sentence making it's always
it's always this sumzero task to me it
seems that way so there's no cleft
no where's other things I used to do
like play the piano or sang or I played
the viola
least I knew that I could do those
things and you get a new piece of music
and you learn it and but writing always
seems to me like degree zero and you
always got to start from them you teach
it only non-fiction writing no I teach I
kind of teach novels to people I know
want to write and some nonfiction a bit
of philosophy but but they write essays
for me like critical essays and I fix
the grammar okay yes yes
you took briefly about American black
mothers and how difficult it is for them
to raise their children because they
worry because it's not self-evident that
the children will find a way into
society can I ask a personal question do
you worry about your own children and
how they will find their way into
America no I mean what I feel now that I
have children I look back at my parents
didn't understand some of the oddness
like it never like my father's a white
old man with black children and I never
really thought that was odd for him I
thought was odd for me I didn't think it
was odd for him and now I'm a black
woman with effectively if you look at
them white children and it is very odd
and and it's an odd experience for the
first two or three years every time they
walked into the room I'd be like really
I really couldn't get over it so now I
kind of retrospectively see what my
father experienced and also what my
mother experienced having children who
didn't look like her either because of
course it's a very deep genetic
expectation that your kids will look
like you and it's very odd when they
don't I think that you can underestimate
it so to me it's very interesting just
realizing that for my parents they never
showed it but they must have been
constantly this surprised and this not
alienation exactly but this kind of
curious almost comic gap which you don't
expect between you and your children so
that there's all kinds of I don't think
it's a sad or tragic scenario I just
think it has lots of comic possibility
like when I'm forcing my children to eat
ackee and saltfish or or listen to
Jamaican music I'm aware it's absurd at
some level that they looks absurd as
little blond children eating a kiss or
fittin but for me it's important and I
hope for them would be in some way
important but yeah it's a it's a funny
absurd and moving matter but it but it
also I don't worry about them because
they're middle-class children who look
white they didn't have to worry about
anything I worry about them in a
different way that they'll become the
kind of kids that used to drive me mad
when I was at school I worry about
entitlement and not understanding their
advantages that's what I worry about in
a slightly over powering way probably
because your husband is beating them all
the time
yeah he's them understand that their
entitlement is limited yeah and I also
think it's not healthy like I had a
friend I was talking to a white Jewish
girl and her parents and her
grandparents had come through the camps
and her parents with children of those
people and so had this very strong sense
of being survivors and being restrict
and they gave to my friend a constant
lecture about how lucky she was you're
so lucky you're so lucky you're so lucky
and she said don't do that to your child
because there's nothing the child can do
with it it's not helpful they know they
are lucky but telling them every day
you're so lucky if no idea is so lucky
it's very diminishing to them right
because they they're really born with
this guilt that oh well I'm already not
I'm wrong in
why because I'm I have they're not you
basically as the bottom line I think
that's a lesson for all parents they're
just not you and they're also not their
grandparents they're their own thing and
you just have to allow them to be that
thank you yep hi um you said at one
point that as you got older you started
feeling more connected to and maybe
writing for or about what you called
your people people from your community
background people you recognized and so
I wondered what you've heard back from
these people in these communities about
your work because you said in the
literary community these narratives and
characters can seem quite an olive quite
novel or contrived but I wondered what
feedback you've gotten from people who
maybe feel represented in your work it
depends like I guess the feeling I have
most strongly it's not just about a
racial thing the thing I feel more and
more strongly is about writing about
people of my class I guess the class I
grew up in which is a very mixed group
of people in England the working class
is cross through religion through race
it's those people like I feel this urge
to write about and to remember and to
remember the conditions of our childhood
and that they existed because it's all
being kind of removed now the very
conditions of our lives don't exist in
England in the same way but when I meet
people you know everyone's when I'm in
my neighborhood everyone's got an
opinion like everyone's got an opinion
so I hear a lot and it's all different
kinds of things like I'm everyone white
teeth came out I went to Brixton to read
to a black woman's group and they loved
all the book apart from the section in
the hairdresser's which they hate it
they were like don't everybody talks
about hair don't talk about her hair
it's like okay so it just depends but I
I don't kind of I don't mind like the
risk you take is is the risk of
inauthenticity right so before I read
white teeth for the first time in New
York and bars are mobile in like 2000
and this autumn of 2008 just about to go
on stage and this Chinese guy turned up
with a letter which said from the
Bengali people
why is he Chinese weird and I opened it
mistakenly before I went onstage it was
a list
all these mistakes they've made about
Bangladesh some Bangladeshi culture as
they are thank you
but uh but that's the risk right that is
the risk if you're going to write about
people who aren't like you who are
you've seen or know or friends with or
had some you're gonna make that take
that risk and what's the worst thing
that can happen you would get something
wrong somebody says shame on you that's
not how we are I don't mind that I'd
rather take the risk than just write
about just I don't know mixed race women
from Wilson for the rest of my life I
don't care about the authenticity
problem someone wants to write a bad
letter or a blog on internet or whatever
to me fiction is the risk of being in
other people that's the risk and if
you're not willing to take it if you're
flowe bear and thinking but women I
don't know I'm not a woman I don't know
if I should do this then you can forget
about Madame Bovary so I don't I don't
believe in that kind of straight
identification I think it's a risk it's
a jump some things will be right some
things will be wrong but it's worth it
for the things you gain which is this
little moment of connection so I some
people like it some people hate it but
it doesn't stop me I guess do you do
research sometimes but the thing about
research
how can you research Bangladeshi people
it doesn't also that kind of research
always makes me laugh because for
instance if you're writing you writing a
Muslim character for example or a young
Jewish boy if you're not Jewish or
Muslim it is the idea that you read the
entirety of Quran and then give that to
your Muslim character we all inhabit our
identities in a partial faulty way right
most Jews don't know the whole Torah
most Muslims don't know the whole Quran
most Christians know hardly anything of
the Bible we exist in this in this half
world so when I wrote white teeth I did
read the Quran for the first time from
front to back but it's like icebergs it
should be you know the tip of the
iceberg you don't need all of that
research it's quite useful to have it
there in the background somewhere in
your head but I don't make notes or
autograph member you go to the Torah
fingers might occur quite deeply too
couple of personal personal quest
occupation yeah it wasn't really for the
book I went a little bit loopy I think
but also it's I think it's a way of
knowing something I think it's Penelope
Fitzgerald said that when you're writing
novels you become quite stupid because
you spend so much time in a novel not
really reading the news not really
keeping up a novel is also a way to
learn something so like the little I've
learned over 15 years it's been in part
due to the novels like learning about
Rembrandt or learning about the Kabbalah
so I do research to that extent but I I
don't think there's such a thing as the
Bangladeshi people I guess as a single
entity I don't really believe in it next
question if there any any last question
okay
and at the beginning you were talking
about the the notion of colorblindness I
found people get very angry when you
tell them they're not colorblind do you
have an idea why that is um yeah yeah
it's absolutely true they get so angry I
just think it's such an unusual position
to be in for someone who isn't of color
like for instance my husband's family a
little bit like that it's not like
they're Northern Irish uh from an almost
entirely homogeneous community I know
they absolutely think of themselves as
colorblind but it's very hard for them
to conceive of being victims of
prejudice on on the part of their color
of faith of course they can imagine but
on part of their colour it's just a kind
of inconceivable world for them so they
don't really count it as a real factor
and I guess the people who think of
themselves colorblind tend to also think
that prejudice is just a matter of a few
words or certain actions and they don't
see this kind of systemic way of
responding to the world but but I also
don't think colorblind is a flattering
thing what I like about people is
precisely the distinctness I don't want
someone to love me because they're
colorblind I want them to love me
specifically because I am a black woman
from London I want that to be part of it
so I everybody's details whether they
are like what they are they're the
content of their character and the color
of the skin are relevant to me I love
them for those things not despite them
or in spite of them I don't really
understand that as a as a piece of
flattery I don't want to be tolerated or
loved in spite or something nobody I
guess no nobody really wants that if
there's an urgent last question this is
your chance otherwise we are going to
call it an evening
I guess not okay thank you for being
here
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
I'm sure we're gonna thank you thank you
all for coming and see you the next time
good evening

good evening the director of this

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transference::noun | Spocien Dictionary

transference

noun

/'trænsfərəns/

transferring ownership

Type	Words
Synonyms	transfer
Type of	transaction, dealing, dealings
Has types	alienation, conveyancing, conveyance of title, lease-lend, lend-lease, conveyance, quitclaim, secularisation, conveying, secularization
Derivation	transfer

transference::noun | Spocien Dictionary

transference

noun

/'trænsfərəns/

the act of transfering something from one form to another

Type	Words
Synonyms	transfer
Type of	change of state

transference::noun | Spocien Dictionary

transference

noun

/'trænsfərəns/

(psychoanalysis) the process whereby emotions are passed on or displaced from one person to another; during psychoanalysis the displacement of feelings toward others (usually the parents) is onto the analyst

Type	Words
Type of	displacement
Has types	countertransference

How to pronounce transference in Dutch?

transference::noun | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

Related words

transference::noun | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

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transference::noun | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

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