Readers Place

Matt Haig interview/review

Matt Haig applies the Page 69 test (Marshall McLuhan suggested you should choose your reading by turning to page 69 of a book and, if you like it, read it!) to his book (americareads):

Okay, my page 69 is mainly white space because it comes at the end of a chapter. Mind you, the white space itself is pretty representative of the book not only because of the short chapters but because when the main character, the eleven year old Philip, is prescribed Diazepam for panic disorder I use blank pages to illustrate his state of mind.

Anyway, there is one sentence on page 69. The sentence is this:

“And I was pointing at Uncle Alan but not looking and my body was shaking and Mum was holding me and spit was out of my mouth hanging and I was in her jumper my face was and I closed my eyes and smelt her warm jumper and it was a nice smell like flowers.”

This is a key point in the book, when Philip finally believes his father’s ghost and is convinced his Uncle Alan is a murderer (there’s a lot of Hamlet stuff going on). It is the first night Uncle Alan stays with Philip’s mother, and the first time Philip expresses his anger.

You will notice there are no commas. There are no commas in the whole book because it is all from the perspective of Philip, and I figured Philip’s thoughts would be too fast to accommodate much punctuation. I am well aware this might put people off the book but the truth is when I wrote with commas and apostrophes it didn’t feel as good, so I changed it. In the UK where I live there is a lot of debate about grammar, especially in education, and knowledge of correct grammar is obviously significant and necessary but in my view there is not enough emphasis put on imagination. After all, Shakespeare was inconsistent with punctuation and even spelt his own surname six different ways and he seemed to do okay.

Another thing that this whole page 69 exercise has made me realise is how many chapters end with Philip needing a hug. Here he ends up in his mum’s jumper (sweater). In other chapters he fantasises about being embraced by his History teacher, Mrs Fell, or his girlfriend (Ophe)Leah.

For instance, page 162 ends: “The bell went and Mrs Fell just looked at me with sad shoulders. I wanted her to hug me and to put my head in her warm boobs for ever. But that wasnt going to happen so I picked up my bag with my weapons in it and I went out.”

So, ultimately, I have no idea how many people would want to read the book after reading page 69. People who love blank space or loose punctuation or maternal hugs or – preferably – all three, are, I suppose, the perfect page 69 readership.

Extract from Questions that Journalist frequently ask Matt (the whole interview can be found at www.matthaig.com): What prompted you to write novels? What have been the defining moments in your career so far? Nothing beats that first phone-call when you find out your book is going to be published. But generally the best moments are those when everything just clicks and the idea for a novel is suddenly complete in your head. It feels like reaching the top of a very steep hill and finally being able to take your backpack off.

As to the prompt, well I’d always had ideas for stories but had never sat down to do it. It was a few years ago when my long-term girlfriend’s mum was diagnosed with cancer and we took quite a bit of time off to be with her. It was at that point, I decided to put something down on paper. Who are your biggest literary and non-literary influences? Anxiety is my main influence. I think, really, anxiety is the key mood at the beginning of the twenty-first century, so being a naturally anxious person helps capture that kind of feeling. Shakespeare is my most obvious literary influence, I suppose.

Do the ideas for your stories come first – and the link to Shakespeare later – or do you have a conscious project to recast Shakespeare for the modern age? With The Last Family in England the initial idea was to tell a story of a family. The dog stuff, and the Shakespeare stuff, came later. With The Dead Fathers Club it happened very naturally. It was a father-son story that migrated slowly towards Hamlet. I believe all writing is based on other writing, and if you’re conscious of where it’s coming from you should acknowledge your sources.

Once I was being honest about it, it gave me a free reign to mine all the big and limitless themes that are in the plays. In The Dead Fathers Club you write from an adolescent’s perspective. Why does this age group hold such a fascination for authors? I suppose it’s the age between innocence and experience, and as most fiction deals with character transformation to some extent you’re on fertile ground from the start. I think it also helps with observational stuff, to put yourself inside a younger mind, because the world instantly looks a bit newer.

On the page, Philip’s narrative is a hyperactive, unpunctuated stream of consciousness; disorientating at first, but inevitably drawing the reader into Philip’s nightmarish world. Was this the intention all along, and were there any editorial upsets over this? No. It wasn’t my original intention. I experimented with various different ways of expressing Philip’s state of mind but this one somehow worked best. And thankfully, my editor didn’t have a problem with it.