In your view, what are the essential qualities a good journalist and good culture journalist needs to possess in today's world?
First of all, skepticism. The curiosity to scratch a few levels below the surface, to question assumptions, to look not just at the center of the picture but at the corner of the frame. Second, context. The knowledge that comes from a lifetime of reading, watching, listening, not just to historical essays and political broadcasts, but to the literature and art of the world that often are the hidden manifestations of social truths that underlie current events.
As a co-founder of Granta, a renowned literary magazine, how did your experience in journalism impact your approach to writing fiction, -two
novels so far?
Responsible journalism marries context with observation. Fiction adds imagination. But a fiction writer who has had the good fortune to dabble in journalism builds observational muscles that serve the choice of words that go into his fiction. Conversely, the exercise of playing in the fields of fiction opens the journalist to a literary vocabulary and method that can often help convey his reportage of the real world. I co-founded Granta at the age of 23, with more arrogance than expertise at either journalism or fiction. But we were reading junkies, addicted to the beauty of words. And we were lucky, in the early 1980s, to find writers in the UK, US, and elsewhere who let us publish them and study at their feet. I left Granta in 1987. In the subsequent decades, I’ve written five novels (although only two, alas, are in print), many short stories, a bunch of journalism, and about a dozen opera librettos. All that writing owes a debt to the word habit I developed reading and working at Granta with some of the great writers of those times.
Septimania explores themes of Jewish identity and heritage. What inspired you to weave these themes into the story of a secret kingdom?
There’s an interesting argument to be made that in Judaism culture and religion are separable in ways they are not in Christianity or Islam. As the grandson of two rabbis, but the son of a philosopher and a social worker who brought me up to question religious belief, I have never tried to hide my Jewishness, any more than I’ve tried to hide the fact that I have two arms and two legs. Yet the link to Jewishness that binds me is neither religion nor attachment to Israel, which has attracted many other secular Jews. Instead, it is literature—the stories that have come from Jewish obsession with asking questions, with never being satisfied by writ or dogma. These stories were woven to explain the contradictions, to prop up the contradictions in Biblical texts. The first chapter of Genesis ends with God having created all creatures male and female. And yet chapter two begins with Adam alone. What happened to his first wife? To answer this, scholars and others built a secret kingdom of stories as rich as any Greek or Norse mythology. My love of these stories has led me to literatures that are not Jewish by origin, among them The Thousand and One Nights. Scheherazade knew that telling tales was vital to her own survival. As other Jews look for the survival of Jewish identity in adhering to religion or building a separate nation, I wonder whether our immortality as a people will be in the stories we can’t stop telling.
Septimania blends fact and fiction. Can you discuss the role of storytelling in exploring historical possibilities and also the role of faith and reason in your novel?
When quantum mechanics entered the lexicon of Physics in the mid-20th century, certainty went out the window. Quantum mechanics classically only applies to very small things, saying in part that we can know either the location or the motion of an object, but never both at the same time. Yet I love the freedom from determinism that the quantum fiction writer has to wonder about larger objects, like people. My universe is one of possibilities, not certainties. Historical facts, in particular, are squirrely sub-atomic thingies that seem to change shape depending on whether the victor or the conquered, a man or a woman, a Swede or an Ethiopian, is observing them. While I don’t suggest that my novels be taught in history classes, I believe that students of history might do well to read them to question some of the assumptions of the word “fact” or the supposed dichotomy of faith and reason.
The protagonist of Septmania, an organ tuner, has a deep connection to music. What role did music play in shaping the narrative and atmosphere of the novel? What instruments do you play and how do they influence your entire life and your literary and journalism creations?
I began playing the violin at age 5 and studied for a year at the Guildhall School of Music in London before going on to university, initially to study physics and mathematics. Over the years, I’ve played jazz, bluegrass, and rock with a variety of bands and excellent musicians who went on to have serious careers ranging from the Brodsky Quartet to Pink Floyd. Notes, numbers, and words are the building blocks of my world and form the languages that I use as I try to make sense of this universe—to tune the world, as my organ tuner hero, Malory, would have it.
Can historical fiction, like Septimania, offer insights or lessons that can be applied to understanding the complexities of current world affairs (Gaza-Israel) (Ukraine-Russia), Geopolitical tensions, climate change, global economy and US elections?
I’m not sure about insight or lessons in Septimania. At least I hope I’m not offering insights and lessons. Although I believe in many things quite strongly, I’m not a fan of bludgeoning readers with blunt opinions. I am, however, a fan of complexity and humility. I’ve seen many of my friends become US Constitutional experts when Trump was impeached, Immunologists when the Covid vaccine was launched, and subsequently Kremlinologists and experts on the Middle East. I worry that these friends, and many others who get their news from 15 seconds on social networks, are absolutely certain they are on the side of the angels. They reduce everything to single rights and single wrongs. My confused hero in Septimania asks whether there is, indeed, one God, one true love, and one rule that guides the universe. Or whether there are seven of each. Monomania or Septimania. I don’t know which disease is the true diagnosis of the universe. But I like the question.
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