Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame

by Robin Robertson

  Thorn Gunn was born in 1929 in Gravesend and has lived since 1954 in California. His first book of poetry was Fighting Terms (1954) and his most recent Boss Cupid (2000).

  Hugo Hamilton was born and grew up in Dublin. He is the author of five highly acclaimed novels, Surrogate City, The Last Shot and The Love Test (Faber), Head-banger and Sad Bastard (Seeker), one collection of short stories and a memoir, The Speckled People (Fourth Estate). He has worked as a writer-in-residence at many leading universities, including most recently at Trinity College, Dublin. He has just returned to Ireland from a DAAD scholarship in Berlin.

  David Harsent’s most recent collection of poems, Marriage, was shortlisted for the Forward and T. S. Eliot Prizes. He is currently working on the libretto for a full-length opera for the Royal Opera House (music by Harrison Birtwistle).

  Carl Hiaasen’s novels include Strip Tease, Basket Case and, most recently, Hoot. He seldom leaves his home state of Florida, except when he is forced by ruthless publishers to go on book tours.

  Michael Holroyd has written biographies of Lytton Strachey, Augustus John and Bernard Shaw, and also an autobiography, Basil Street Blues, he is president of the Royal Society of Literature.

  A. L. Kennedy was born in the north-east of Scotland, home of mortification. She is the author of several novels and collections of short stories and also writes for the press, film, TV and stage. She is now, and will remain, thoroughly ashamed of herself.

  John Lanchester was born in Hamburg in 1962. He was brought up in the Far East and educated in England. His first two novels, The Debt to Pleasure and Mr Phillips, have been translated into more than twenty languages. Fragrant Harbour, his most recent novel, was published in 2002. He is married with two children and lives in London.

  James Lasdun’s most recent book is The Horned Man, a novel. He was born in London and now lives with his family in upstate New York.

  Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including The Fortress of Solitude. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  Michael Longley’s most recent collection, The Weather in japan (2000), won the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Irish Times Poetry Prize. He received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2001 and the Wilfred Owen Award in 2003. A new collection, Snow Water, will be published in 2004.

  Thomas Lynch’s books include Grimalkin & Other Poems, Still Life in Milford, The Undertaking, and Bodies in Motion and at Rest. He lives in Milford, Michigan, and Moveen, Co. Clare.

  Patrick McCabe’s novels include The Butcher Boy (1992) which was the winner of the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literature Prize, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was a highly acclaimed film directed by Neil Jordan, and Breakfast on Pluto which was shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize. His new novel, Call Me the Breeze, was published in September 2003. He lives in Sligo with his wife and two daughters.

  Elizabeth McCracken’s most recent publication is Niagara Falls All Over Again. She has been shortlisted for the National Book Award and awarded prestigious grants by the Guggenheim Foundation, amongst others. Granta recently counted her amongst the 20 best American writers under 40.

  Val McDermid was born in Scotland. She has published eighteen crime novels, a short story collection and a non-fiction book. Her books are translated into over twenty languages and have won many awards, including the Gold Dagger, the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the Grand Prix des Romans d’Aventure.

  Bernard MacLaverty was born in Belfast but now lives in Glasgow. He has published four collections of short stories and four novels (Grace Notes was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). He has written versions of his fiction for other media – radio plays, television plays, screenplays.

  Duncan McLean has published fiction (Bucket of Tongues, Bunker Man) and non-fiction (Lone Star Swing: On the Trail of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys) and written for TV, radio and theatre. He runs an off-licence in the Orkney Islands.

  Glyn Maxwell’s latest book of poetry is The Nerve (Picador, 2002). He lives in New York City, and currently teaches at Princeton and Columbia. He is Poetry Editor of the New Republic.

  Claire Messud was born in the United States in 1966, and educated at Yale and Cambridge, her first novel. When the World Was Steady, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1996. Her second novel, The Last Life, won the Encore Prize. She lives in Washington.

  Karl Miller has been literary editor of the Spectator and the New Statesman, editor of the Listener, and founding editor of the London Review of Books. From 1974 to 1992 he was Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. Among his books are Cockburn’s Millennium, Double, and two instalments of autobiography, Rebecca’s Vest and Dark Horses. His life of James Hogg, Electric Shepherd, has just been published.

  Deborah Moggach is the author of fourteen novels including Tulip Fever, Final Demand, Porky and Seesaw. She has also written two books of short stories and several TV dramas. She lives in London.

  Rick Moody is the author, most recently, of a collection of stories, Demonology, and a memoir, The Black Veil.

  Andrew Motion is the Poet Laureate and Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College. His most recent collection of poems is Public Property (2002); in 2003 he published his biographical fantasy The Invention of Dr Cake.

  Paul Muldoon is the author, most recently, of Moy Sand and Gravel, for which he won the 2003 Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize.

  Julie Myerson was born in Nottingham in 1960 and is the author of Sleepwalking, The Touch, Me and the Fatman, Laura Bluntly and, most recently. Something Might Happen. She lives in London with the writer and director Jonathan Myerson and their three children.

  Edna O’Brien is the author of twenty-three books including House of Splendid Isolation, Down by the River and, most recently, In The Forest. She is the recipient of the American National Arts Gold Medal for Literature and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts.

  Maggie O’Farrell was born in Northern Ireland, and grew up in Wales and Scotland. She has worked as a waitress, chambermaid, cycle courier, teacher, arts administrator and journalist. She is the author of two novels. After You’d Gone and My Lover’s Lover; her third. The Distance Between Us, will be published in spring 2004.

  Andrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968. His most recent novel is Personality. He recently received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

  Michael Ondaatje’s works include Anil’s Ghost, The English Patient, In the Skin of a Lion, Coming Through Slaughter, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, and his memoir. Running in the Family. His works of poetry include The Cinnamon Peeler and Handwriting. His most recent book is The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film.

  Sean O’Reilly was born in Deny in Northern Ireland. He has published a book of short stories. Curfew, and a novel, Love and Sleep. A new novel, The Swing of Things, will appear in February 2004.

  Chuck Palahnuik’s best-known novel to date is Fight Club, which was made into a major film. His other works include Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Lullaby and Choke. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

  Don Paterson was born in Dundee and works as a musician and editor. He also teaches on the Creative Writing M.Litt. at St Andrews University, his most recent book of poems is Landing Light (Faber 2003).

  D. B. C. Pierre is a British author born in Australia and raised in Mexico, the UK and USA. He has since worked in the arts in a dozen countries worldwide, finally settling in London to write his first novel, Vernon God Little. He is currently writing in Ireland.

  Darryl Pinckney, a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, is the author of a novel, High Cotton.

  Charles Simic has published sixteen collections of his own poetry, five books of essays, a memoir, and numerous books of translations. He has received many literary awards for his poems and translations, including the MacArthur Fellowship and the Pulitzer Prize. Voice at 3 A.M., his selected an
d new poems, was published by Harcourt this spring.

  Matthew Sweeney’s most recent publications include Selected Poems (Cape, 2002), and a children’s novel, Fox (Bloomsbury, 2002). A new book of poems, Sanctuary, is forthcoming from Cape in September 2004, and he is currently finishing a much-delayed book of stories.

  Rupert Thomson is the author of six novels, Dreams of Leaving, The Gates of Hell, Air and Fire, The Insult, Soft, and The Book of Revelation. His seventh novel, Divided Kingdom, will be published by Bloomsbury in September 2004.

  Adam Thorpe’s latest novel, No Telling, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2003, as was his fourth poetry collection, Nine Lessons from the Dark. He lives in France with his wife and three children.

  Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of the novels The South, which won the Irish Times First Novel Award 1991, The Heather Blazing, winner of the 1992 Encore Award, The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, shortlisted for the 1995 Booker Prize. He has also written a number of non-fiction books, including Homage to Barcelona. He lives in Dublin.

  William Trevor was born in County Cork in 1928. He is the author of many novels, most recently The Story of Lucy Gault, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 1977 he was awarded an honorary CBE for his valuable services to literature, and in 2002 he received an honorary knighthood. He is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and now lives in Devon.

  Alan Warner is from Scotland, has lived in Ireland for six years and has written four novels: Morvern Collar, which was made into a feature film, These Demented Lands, The Sopranos and The Man Who Walks (all Vintage). A fifth novel, The Oscillator will be published in early 2005 by Jonathan Cape. Alan Warner was one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2003.

  Irvine Welsh is from Edinburgh. His first novel, Trainspotting, was published in 1993. Since then he has written a collection of stories, The Acid House, a number of film and drama projects, and five further novels, most recently Porno (2002) which is being filmed. He currently lives in San Francisco.

  Louise Welsh was born in London in 1965 and read history at Glasgow University, and completed an M.Litt. at Strathclyde and Glasgow University. She spent much of the last ten years as a bookseller in Glasgow. Her first novel, The Cutting Room, was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award, won the CWA John Creasey Memorial Dagger, the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award and jointly won the 2002 Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award. She lives in Glasgow.

  Hugo Williams was born in 1942. He writes the Freelance column in the Times Literary Supplement. His Collected Poems were published by Faber in 2002. No Particular Place to Co is reprinted by Gibson Square Books.

  John Hartley Williams has published eight collections of poetry. His last collection was Spending Time with Walter (Cape, 2001). A romance, Mystery in Spider-ville, was reissued by Vintage in 2003. His most recent publication is North Sea Improvisation – available from the poet at www.johnhartleywilliams.de

  James Wood was born in 1965. He has received acclaim as one of the most prominent critics of his generation. From 1991 to 1995 he was Chief Literary Critic of the Guardian, in London, and since then has been a Senior Editor of the New Republic in Washington DC. His reviews and essays appear regularly in that magazine, in the New Yorker and the London Review of Books. He has published one novel, The Book Against Cod, and a collection of essays, The Broken Estate; a second collection, The Irresponsible Self, will appear in 2004.

  Acknowledgements

  My grateful thanks go to the writers who agreed to open all these old wounds and generously take part in this second humiliation, and to those others I invited to contribute but who thought, quite sensibly, that once was more than enough.

  I also want to thank my agent, Derek Johns, and my editor, Nicholas Pearson, for their encouragement and assistance.

  About the Author

  Robin Robertson is the author of two books of poetry, A Painted Field (1997) and Slow Air (2002).

  Epigraph

  ‘The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.’

  Pauline Kael

  ‘We are all strong enough to bear the misfortunes of others.’

  François La Rochefoucauld

  Copyright

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  First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Fourth Estate

  Preface © Robin Robertson 2003

  Individual Contributions © the authors 2003

  A catalogue record for this book is available in the British Library

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