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All In His Imagination - Page 3

© Paula E. Kirman

David: He was just there. I don't mean to sound arty and mystical about it, but I didn't have to come up with him at all, the voice was just there and the book . . . when you write with a certain voice, the voice actually dictates the content because a certain kind of person will talk about certain stories and a different voice will talk about different episodes. It was just there; it was the weirdest thing, it was as if that book was just whispered in my ear by somebody else and I just transcribed it, and I know that that sounds like bullshit but there is no other way to describe it. I mean, I wrote the thing in eight months. I've never written a book that fast in my life, and I sent it off to my publisher with a great deal of apprehension, thinking maybe this is like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, it's like all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy; maybe I've written something that is really terrible, and I think it's really good.

Paula: The last time you published two novels close together like that was between How Boys See Girls and Affair with the Moon (1993; Random House), and I remember how you told me how much you hated Affair with the Moon.

David: I still do. At the reading last night somebody tried to buy it, and I said, "You go and put that book back and buy How Boys See Girls, buy Lost Between Houses, buy anything, don't buy that book!" That was a difficult thing because that was a real piece of autobiographical fiction, but that was also fuelled by greed for fame and greed for praise because How Boys See Girls had done quite well and I was just really hungry to get more praise.

Paula: Lost Between Houses did very well too.

David: Yeah, it did really well, but I have outgrown my need for fame and acknowledgement. I mean, that's why I quit television. You really do outgrow these things, you know. Unless there's something wrong with you and you have to open shopping plazas for the rest of your life to get a pat on the back, you really do outgrow it. And so, when I wrote it[Sparrow Nights] it had nothing to do with getting it published. An Affair with the Moon had everything to do with getting published and getting more acknowledgement . . . this book was a pure exercise in imaginative fiction and I can't tell you how different a ballgame that is for me. It was an exercise in imagination.

David Gilmour

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