More interview meme
Jun. 10th, 2003 10:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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brandnewgun:
1. If the only way you could publish your novel was for five of the books on the BBC Big Read top 100 to be permanently deleted from the public consciousness, would you do it? And if so, which five?
Oh, you go straight for the jugular and no mistake! Fair enough, the easy bit first - which five books I'd eliminate, assuming I'd do that in the first place. I've limited myself to the books I've read:
- Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks), because there are plenty of other powerful and absorbing WW1 novels.
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Louis de Bernieres), because the last quarter of the book more or less ruined it for me, and the author is an arrogant right-wing bastard (*cough* allegedly).
- A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens), because he can afford to lose one - he wrote enough. [OK, I haven't actually read this, but I've seen the Muppet film.]
- A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving), because it really wasn't as good as the author thought.
- The Twits (Roald Dahl), because I never liked it as much as his others.
Now, the hard bit: would I? Well, if this were the only way that I could ever get any novel published, then I might. But if it applied only to the particular novel I'm working on now (and let's assume I've finished it and torn my hair out trying to get it published by, er, conventional means), then probably not. I'd move on to the next one (which is, in any case, clamouring for my attention), and leave the current one for discovery years after my death - say, by my biographers :-)
2. When did you last hit someone? Who, and why?
I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure it was more than 20 years ago (I'm 28). I remember one fight I got into when I was about six, but I really didn't go in for much in the way of hitting (despite being a big, strong child).
3. Can gods die?
I'm very fond of the notion advanced in Pratchett's Small Gods, that a god has to have believers to survive. I'm an agnostic, though, so I won't be contributing to any deity's relief fund.
4. You, a room full of ten-year-olds, and one hour. You must speak for the whole hour, but you can't tell the truth. What lies will you tell the kids?
I'm weaselling out of this one somewhat (and also assuming that they'll listen and not heckle too much...): I'd tell them stories. I'd tell them about the time I rumbled a gang of international art thieves who were using my garage as a base of operations, and about the time I lost my way during the interval at a pantomime and got mistaken for the understudy of one of the performers who had fallen suddenly ill and had to improvise the whole second half of the show, and about my pet snake and the time it got loose and bit the bishop, and about how I was actually the first Irish woman to visit the moon (although it was all hushed up afterwards for security reasons), and about how ... is my hour up yet?
5. In what ways do you think you're better than the average person?
The Inner Radzer divides her time between thinking she's the dog's bollocks - far better than anyone ever was or will be, in every conceivable way - and thinking she's the crappiest heap of crap ever to sully the space-time continuum with her odious presence. The Outer Radzer can't justify either position, and dispassionate thought on the subject is somewhat difficult for her.
OK, if I have to pick something, I'd say that I believe that the extent to which I consider the consequences of my actions is probably greater than average, and I would defend the proposition that this is a good thing. That's as far as I'm prepared to go :-)
brandnewgun:1. If the only way you could publish your novel was for five of the books on the BBC Big Read top 100 to be permanently deleted from the public consciousness, would you do it? And if so, which five?
Oh, you go straight for the jugular and no mistake! Fair enough, the easy bit first - which five books I'd eliminate, assuming I'd do that in the first place. I've limited myself to the books I've read:
- Birdsong (Sebastian Faulks), because there are plenty of other powerful and absorbing WW1 novels.
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Louis de Bernieres), because the last quarter of the book more or less ruined it for me, and the author is an arrogant right-wing bastard (*cough* allegedly).
- A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens), because he can afford to lose one - he wrote enough. [OK, I haven't actually read this, but I've seen the Muppet film.]
- A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving), because it really wasn't as good as the author thought.
- The Twits (Roald Dahl), because I never liked it as much as his others.
Now, the hard bit: would I? Well, if this were the only way that I could ever get any novel published, then I might. But if it applied only to the particular novel I'm working on now (and let's assume I've finished it and torn my hair out trying to get it published by, er, conventional means), then probably not. I'd move on to the next one (which is, in any case, clamouring for my attention), and leave the current one for discovery years after my death - say, by my biographers :-)
2. When did you last hit someone? Who, and why?
I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure it was more than 20 years ago (I'm 28). I remember one fight I got into when I was about six, but I really didn't go in for much in the way of hitting (despite being a big, strong child).
3. Can gods die?
I'm very fond of the notion advanced in Pratchett's Small Gods, that a god has to have believers to survive. I'm an agnostic, though, so I won't be contributing to any deity's relief fund.
4. You, a room full of ten-year-olds, and one hour. You must speak for the whole hour, but you can't tell the truth. What lies will you tell the kids?
I'm weaselling out of this one somewhat (and also assuming that they'll listen and not heckle too much...): I'd tell them stories. I'd tell them about the time I rumbled a gang of international art thieves who were using my garage as a base of operations, and about the time I lost my way during the interval at a pantomime and got mistaken for the understudy of one of the performers who had fallen suddenly ill and had to improvise the whole second half of the show, and about my pet snake and the time it got loose and bit the bishop, and about how I was actually the first Irish woman to visit the moon (although it was all hushed up afterwards for security reasons), and about how ... is my hour up yet?
5. In what ways do you think you're better than the average person?
The Inner Radzer divides her time between thinking she's the dog's bollocks - far better than anyone ever was or will be, in every conceivable way - and thinking she's the crappiest heap of crap ever to sully the space-time continuum with her odious presence. The Outer Radzer can't justify either position, and dispassionate thought on the subject is somewhat difficult for her.
OK, if I have to pick something, I'd say that I believe that the extent to which I consider the consequences of my actions is probably greater than average, and I would defend the proposition that this is a good thing. That's as far as I'm prepared to go :-)