With Child. Andy Martin

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BEFORE ‘A LOT OF WRITERS ARE LIKE THAT, THEY START WITH DIALOGUE’

       Three months later. New York.

      CHILD: About a month after I finished Make Me I started writing ‘Small Wars’, the short story for the summer. I wrote the first line, ‘In the spring of 1989 Caroline Crawford was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel,’ and I turned around … and you weren’t there. Weird. I wanted to discuss the approach to setting the story in the past … about how to let the reader know this isn’t the present day. I felt it best to just announce, ‘In the spring of 1989,’ and have done with it. I’ll have to get back in the habit of talking to myself. Instead of you.

      MARTIN: It’s like the end of a romance. There’s one immigration guy convinced I was having an affair. Wanted to know why I kept coming back to New York. I said I wasn’t working, it was just pleasure. How was it for you?

      CHILD: The earth didn’t move. Except when the subway went by under the building. I’m used to having a housekeeper knocking around the apartment. It’s similar. And you had a knack of getting out just before I started to feel physically oppressed. I mean, I understood why you wanted to do it, but sometimes I thought, why me?

MARTIN: It could have been … almost anyone. In theory. Maybe not Donna Tartt – too slow! But you were willing. I liked your economy of style – very degree zero. And you said, ‘I’m starting Monday.’ So naturally I hopped on a plane. I’m still trying to work out why you let me do it, though. I used to think it was something to do with an ageing boxer wanting a spectator for his last big fight. Or maybe a magician who finally decided to twitch aside the curtain and say, ‘OK, come back here and see how it’s done.’

      CHILD: Do you ever think there’s something crazy about writing twenty books about the same guy?

      MARTIN: Well, no crazier than nineteen, I suppose.

      CHILD: That’s why I did it. I thought it would make a change. I’ve been writing about Reacher for twenty years. I never had anyone watch me do it before. And it was a world first. A mad experiment. Literary criticism, but in real time. You were a wild card. What was the worst that could happen?

      MARTIN: I was sitting about two yards behind you, reclining on a psychiatrist’s couch, while you tapped away. Trying to keep quiet. I could actually make out a few of the words. ‘Nothingness’ I remember for some obscure reason. And ‘waterbed’. And then I kept asking questions. I couldn’t help myself. How? Why? What the … ? Oh surely not! A lot of people thought I would destroy the book. I was like the ‘person from Porlock’ who stopped ‘Kubla Khan’ in its tracks (according to Coleridge, anyway). ‘You’re killing Reacher, man!’ as some guy said to me (after half a bottle of bourbon, but still).

      CHILD: Here is the fundamental reality about the writing business. It’s lonely. You spend all your time writing and then wondering whether what you just wrote is any good. You gave me instant feedback. If I write a nicely balanced four-word sentence with good rhythm and cadence, most critics will skip right over it. You not only notice it, you go and write a couple of chapters about it. I liked the chance to discuss stuff that most people never think about. It’s weird and picayune, but obviously of burning interest to me. Previously only my daughter Ruth ever got it. Once we spent a whole drive to Philadelphia talking about a gerund we saw on a billboard.

MARTIN: And the way you care about commas – almost Flaubertian! I tried to be a kind of white-coated detached observer. But every observer impinges on the thing he is observing. Which would be you in this case. And I noticed that everything around you gets into your texts. You are an opportunistic writer. For example, one day the maid СКАЧАТЬ