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 scarlett thomas interview
Collective: It could be said that your novels are very high concept. Do your interests shift organically, like Ariel's with regard to her articles, or do you first focus on an area of interest – consciousness, for example – and dive into researching it?
Scarlett Thomas: My novels are high concept. I guess big ideas interest me more than, say, the minutiae of domestic life. I am a bit like Ariel with her magazine column actually – never thought that before, but you're right. I begin every book thinking it's going to be about artificial intelligence and then watch it mutate into something else, and that seems to work at the moment. One problem with high concept books is that you can lose sight of characterization, and the ideas can take over. I used to not mind this, but I am becoming increasingly interested in exploring characters and the depths of their lives, as well as philosophical ideas. My next novel will have a lot about love in it, for example, which is not like me at all. Collective: How much new research was involved in writing The End Of Mr Y, and how much of it covered existing interests of yours? Scarlett Thomas: It was very interesting writing this novel because there was a definite point where all the new stuff I was researching (consciousness, the 1890s, Apollo Smintheus, connected minds etc.) completely collided with a bunch of stuff I've known for years (Derrida, Baudrillard, theories of language, psychoanalysis etc.) It was very exciting because I realized that it all went together, and that the book would be a lot deeper as a result. I am a great believer in gathering together all your obsessions and seeing if you can make a novel out of them. Someone once asked me if that meant each person only has one novel and my response was that, a) your obsessions should change and shift all the time if you are a writer but that, b) your core obsessions never change, and most novelists write about the same thing over and over again anyway. I seem to keep writing about being trapped. But next time I am going to use Nietzsche to try to escape. Collective: The Troposphere is a fascinating, unique place. Is the version we read about how you originally conceived of it, or did it take a few drafts to get the feel of it right? Scarlett Thomas: The big moment for me when I was planning this novel was when I thought the word “surfing”. I'd been reading this crazy book about the Zero Point Field… Actually, it was a crazy time, now I remember it. My then partner and I were staying with my parents, and we spent the whole time doing mind-reading experiments with my brother, who was also living there. My brother and I would go shopping to the local esoteric book shop and consume book after book on telepathy, homoeopathy and so on. In fact, at the time I was considering becoming a practicing homoeopath. Anyway, there is a theory that says that the reason homoeopathic remedies work is because they have effects in the Zero Point Field: a place where all matter is connected. Someone did this experiment where they kept cutting bits from a fish's brain, but it could still remember things, and there was some speculation that maybe memory was stored outside the mind… All I thought at the time was Poor fish! But although I could see holes in all those ideas, for fiction it was fascinating, and such a good way to explore my themes as well. But it was the moment when I wondered what it would be like to go surfing in this place that really enabled me to build the Troposphere. Collective: Is it a concept that you adapted from existing theories, or is it entirely your own invention? Scarlett Thomas: See above! Collective: I certainly haven't read another campus novel like this one. Do you think it's fair to say that you enjoy subverting literary traditions ( e.g. the detective novel, the road trip, etc.)? If so, what is it that you find intrinsically worthwhile about that approach to writing? Scarlett Thomas: If you don't subvert you are merely repeating what someone else has done. Collective: Does Ariel's love for Derrida mirror your own view of him? Scarlett Thomas: Yes, although Derrida can be frustratingly sensible. If I'm completely honest I think Derrida is a much more careful thinker than Baudrillard or Nietzsche, but I love them more because they are so nuts. Actually, Baudrillard wasn't that nuts, he was just provocative. Nietzsche really was nuts, but a complete genius. He talked about love and passion in relation to thinking and living and dying and some of it doesn't make sense, but the Zen Buddhist part of me is kind of compelled by things that don't make sense. I've read too many koans. Collective: One of the most fascinating parts of the book for me (possibly due to my lapsed/collapsed Catholicism) was its exploration of deities and religion. Could you expand on the thinking that informed this part of the Troposphere? Scarlett Thomas: I've always been very suspicious of religion, and although there have been times in my life when I have really needed something like that, it has never, ever stuck. There are so many paradoxical things about religion. Some paradoxes are good (like the virgin birth – which is kind of a koan in itself) but others are just stupid. Surely an all-powerful, completely wise being would not require worship? The God I discovered in the Catholic Church in particular seemed very keen to be worshipped: very insecure, in fact. If I'm going to pray to something I'd ideally like it to not have issues. Anyway, the novel includes a lot of inversions, for example - what if everything isn't just language at all, but actually real? (Which is poststructuralism on its head, kind of). With the religious side of it I was interested in the idea that rather than God making us in his image, we make him in our own image. There's a lot of quiet Zen Buddhism in the novel – but again not the sort that says that if you wear the right thing and eat the right thing and join a hierarchy then you'll be freer and wiser than people who don't. But Zen isn't a religion really, because rather than ask you to believe in something, it invites you to believe in nothing. Collective: You've gone back to the beginnings of consciousness and the tree of knowledge. Where do you go from there as a novelist? Scarlett Thomas: Ha! Good question. I did wonder about that when I was writing the novel. But actually the ending of the novel only shows you how trapped you become when you give up your life for language and meaning, and you can have all the meaning you want but all it gives you is stories (like the Genesis story) that are always fiction, and always disconnected from fundamental passion and experience. So in fact, there are loads of places to go next. Tragedy, love, passion, the end of the universe… It's all coming soon.
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The End Of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas, out now published by Canongate.
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