JJ Marsh interviews Simon Gough, author of The White Goddess: An Encounter
Simon, we approached you as a Book Club
choice because a sense of ‘place’ is essential to Triskele Books. The
White Goddess: An Encounter is very much a love affair with a place.
Why is Deya so special to you?
A sense of ‘place’ has always been of
paramount importance to me; it informs and defines not only the character of a
locality but the behaviour and mindset of those who belong there, which in turn influences me, and everyone
with any sensitivity who merely visits an iconic locality. Deya has a
particularly powerful sense of place because it’s a microcosm of so much that
is beautiful, harsh, benign, and actually downright dangerous.
Even as a ten year-old boy, driven
through the night to my grand-uncle’s house on the north coast of Mallorca,
waking up and wandering outside for the first time in daylight, in 1953, I was
awe-struck by what I saw: ‘As
I stepped through the fly-screen that morning, I stepped from the cool, shaded
Englishness of the house into a silent, baking world more ancient than anything
I’d ever seen, into a landscape which seemed to draw in it’s breath even as I
stared at it. Behind the house, from as
far to my left to as far to my distant right, a massive wall off grey and
yellow and orange mountains, flecked with red, cut us off completely from the
world beyond…’
Mallorca must have changed a great deal
since 1950’s and 60’s - the period covered by your book. Do you see positive sides to this, or does it
depress you?
Change is inevitable everywhere; it’s
one’s own perception of it that has to expand.
No amount of being depressed about such things will ever bring them
back, so one either has to accept the changes or leave, never to return. Mallorca,
for all its high-rise hotels, new roads and redevelopment, is still a
remarkable island, about the same size as Norfolk, and yet with 4,000-foot
mountains, the remains of ancient civilisations, a wonderfully unpredictable
climate, fertile plains and spectacular panoramas. All these are still there,
and most important of all, the people
haven’t changed; as long as you smile – and particularly if you make some
effort to speak the language – the Mallorquíns
are warm-hearted, honourable, polite, and make the firmest of friends.
You wrote this book long after your
last visit. How much research did you
have to do on the people and the times, particularly on the Franco regime?
Surprisingly little. When you live
through such vivid, unforgettable times, among people who are so unique that
you can still recall their every gesture and inflection, portraying them is
almost a doddle, because they seem to
do all the work. For instance, if I was writing Robert’s or Beryl’s dialogue,
and I’d got it wrong in my head, my pen simply wouldn’t move until I’d got it
right by their standards. The chronology of events was the most difficult part,
because I chose not to consult any biography which covered the dates in
question; my memories of those times were mine and mine alone, and I was
determined that they shouldn’t be distorted or contaminated by the memories or
opinions of others - who weren’t even there at the time anyway. Luckily, I had
all Robert’s and Beryl’s and other peoples letters to me from those days, as
well as contemporary accounts of my own to refer to. As for living in Madrid
during Franco’s regime, my friend and mentor there was the journalist Alastair
Reid, who dinned into me the ‘do’s’ and ‘don’t’s’ of how to behave until my
head spun. The rest was simply memory.
Tell us something about your reasons
for writing the book, which in terms of ‘pigeon-holing’ and genre isn’t easy to
categorise. Has this caused you any difficulties?
No – but then, I’m not the poor
unfortunate librarian who has to pigeon-hole it. I suppose the reason it’s
difficult to categorise is because it’s a hybrid of novel, auto-biography,
biography and love story. To me, though, it was simply a book that I had to
write. One day in 1989, having been given five years to live by one of those
old-fashioned medical consultants who seem to relish doling out
‘death-warrants’ to shocked patients (who more often than not did precisely as
they were told, and died, dead on time), I simply sat down and began to write a
book in an attempt to use whatever creative powers I had to try and outrun ‘The
Person From Porlock’ as I called him - the spectre of death.
To do so, I retraced the footsteps of
my life in search of the root cause of this potentially fatal illness. The book
is a fragment of the autobiography of a complete and utter nobody who simply
happened, by sleight-of-birth, to have been brought up among a great many
‘somebodies’ – their profound influence on his life, and the strangely
catalytic effect of his life on theirs. It’s written in narrative form in order
to avoid (like the plague) any chance of it being mistaken for yet another Me-Me-Memoir.
At first, I called it an Auto-bi-fantasy: Auto- because it was unavoidably (and infuriatingly in many ways)
about myself; fantasy, because who,
after so many years, could perfectly describe every conversation and event of
so long ago, and bi-fantasy because
the story is told, entirely subjectively, from the viewpoint of a middle-aged
man using his memories as stepping-stones to reach back to the instantaneity of
his youth and undo the harm that was to lie in wait for him in years to come.
As for pigeon-holing the book, if in
doubt - and you’re feeling generous - give it a shelf to itself. Others will join it, I’m sure (or it will
join others). Personally, I think it’s a good thing, every now and then, to
find a book which is in some ways not quite like any other.
Did the book achieve its goal from your
perspective? Have you tackled those long-buried, unresolved events of your
life?
Having buried my past alive by the time
I was 21, and not looked back until I was almost fifty, the feeling has been
like excavating a mass grave – but of people and events that live on in my mind
as vividly today as they did at the time. Had I been a novelist, I could never
have invented these characters in all their depth and realism. It’s entirely
due to their help that I’ve so far managed, at least partly, to come to terms
with my early life.
You mention how your great-uncle was
susceptible to criticism. How does it affect you?
I rather like it. Few people are perfect in anyone else’s eyes
- still less in their own. I write
because I’m incapable of not writing;
I write with all my energy, integrity, (for what it’s worth), and with all my
heart. Even though I’ve more or less
written something every day since I
was at school, I’m still serving an apprenticeship, and I expect to be
criticised. The difficulty with
criticism of a published work is that there’s nothing I can do to correct it
until a second edition appears; meanwhile, all I can do is stew in my own
mistakes.
You’re published by Galley Beggar
Press, a small new independent enterprise.
What are the advantages for you, the author?
To be published at all these days is
pretty miraculous, especially for a hitherto unpublished author (except in the
dim and distant past.) For Henry Layte,
Eloise Millar and Sam Jordison to take the risk of publishing The White Goddess : An Encounter as
their first book took huge nerve and commitment - and a great deal of money. With
a Second Impression already out there, it’s a tribute to their belief in the
book, and to the general public’s growing belief in them - as publishers who
have taken enormous care over the design, presentation and printing of a book
they truly believe in. Their success
(and their fate) lies squarely in the hands of Book Clubs like Triskele – of
people who love to read books which are not
safe, formulaic and mass-produced, but original, bespoke books, full of new
interest, whose very existence has been fought for by independent publishers
like Galley Beggar. They deserve all the
support they can get. Their website is
at www.galleybeggar.co.uk
We understand there will be a
second book. Will it be a sequel to The White Goddess: An Encounter?
Yes.
The day after I finished The White
Goddess : An Encounter, I went back to my barn and started on the sequel,
which is now half finished.
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