All In His Imagination - Part Two - Page 6
© Paula E. Kirman
David: Oh no, but there was an awful lot of "How am I looking?" in my interviews, an awful lot of me talking about what interested me rather than what actually they were about. I think it was a shortcoming. I mean, you can use that to an advantage in a novel, but I don't spend a lot of time looking at old tapes but every so often one of my children gleefully will show me. What I'm really doing in those interviews, is I am talking about myself and I'm not really that interested in my guest.
Paula: I never picked up on that.
David: Well that's good. I was quite popular at it, but my sense of that it was somehow a vehicle for self-mythologizing - I always had that feeling that I was somehow more interested in how I was making myself look than I was actually interested in getting the truth out of the person I was interviewing.
Paula: So I guess in closing, I should ask you the same thing I asked you last time - how do you feel now in terms of the future, in terms of writing more novels?
David: I think I have discovered how to write fiction. I think without any question about it: I am 51 years old, and I have finally published a novel, a real novel, a work of fiction and I suddenly have understood how to write fiction and now I think I can write a novel a year. Because now I am relying on my imagination, no longer trying to plumb my life; not only plumb my life but organize my life in such a way so that it makes it compelling reading. That's much harder than writing fiction. The reason is: when you write autobiographical fiction, C must come from B, which must come from A. When you write fiction, the only thing that matters is that there is no particular line you have to follow, is that B can come from A - it just has to organically make sense but it could go anywhere. I never actually trusted my imagination enough to write fiction, to use it to write fiction, and I actually, suddenly do now.
You know what? We don't have to remember shit anymore -- we can make it up!To read an interview with David Gilmour from 1999, click on the links below:
