David Gilmour's Open Book, Part Two - Page 2
© Paula E. Kirman
Gilmour: When How Boys See Girls came out my daughter was really offended about it. She said "I am not going to have any friends in school after this. This is certainly not something I want to know about my father; it's not something I want my friends to know about my father." So she wasn't really happy about it but I must add the happy point is, she's in university now, and she called me at the end of her second year last year and she said, "I re-read How Boys See Girls and I can't believe a guy wrote this. This is like a women's book. I never would have believed a guy could say all this stuff." It worked out in the end. I was a little embarrassed for her but it's a very powerful sexual story that is based on a real event and if you're a writer and you want to write well you go to where the heat is. If the heat happens to be sex or the heat happens to be real estate, well, then that's where you go.
Kirman: So then how would you react to those people who are going to take a look at Lost Between Houses and say "Oh, there goes Gilmour again bragging about what a wild guy he's been. Who cares?"
Gilmour: First of all, this is about a fifteen year old kid. Second of all, these are not diaries, in other words, this is not a point by point account of what happened. When I refer to a novel as autobiographical, I refer to it as being an honest portrait of an interior experience. For example, Back On Tuesday [Coach House, 1986] was about a guy who kidnapped his own daughter and went to Jamaica -- I never kidnapped my daughter. How Boys See Girls was about a guy who has a sexual liaison with a street vendor he met on the street -- I met a street vendor once; I never even slept with her, I never even got my hands on her. They were completely fictional works that were based on a real incident. It's the same thing with Lost Between Houses; this stuff didn't happen but it is filtered through the actual sensibility of the kid who is in the story, but the events per se happened to me, happened to other people -- in other words, it is not strictly a record of me. The only thing that makes it autobiographical is that is it truly filtered through my sensibility.
