Julian Barnes / Features / Untitled Books

Writing is both a passion and a necessity.

Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes, acclaimed author of Arthur and George, The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters and most recently his family memoir Nothing to be Frightened Of, tells us how he writes.

I feel guilt about the books I haven't read rather than the ones I do.

Where are you right now?
Sitting at my computer, of course. Oh, I see what you mean: in my study in north London.

Where do you write?
Here. Surrounded by walls painted a bright Chinese yellow, so that the sun seems to be shining even on the drearest day.

How do you write?
On an old electric typewriter, an IBM 196c. I have two of them, one for back-up, as they break down a lot. The worst time was when both broke down simultaneously, and I had to try writing bits of my novel Arthur & George on this computer. It didn't work at all.

What keeps you writing?
Writing is both a passion and a necessity; without it I become melancholy.

Who do you write for?
Those who want to read what I have written in the way it was written, and understand it as such, rather than for those who come with readerly presuppositions based on other books.

Do you discuss your work with anyone?
Never - at least until it is finished. I have two readers whom I rely on at that stage.

How do you know if your work is good?
You don't. All you know is that you have convinced yourself it is sufficiently good to sent to your publisher.

Do you have any unwritten characters in mind?
Not as such - that's not how I tend to write fiction.

Which book do you wish you'd written?
A logically impossible question, unless you allow me to remain me while writing someone else's book. We can only write our own books; to write those of writers we admire, we would have to be them. Would I like to be Flaubert, Turgenev, Edith Wharton, Evelyn Waugh? Yes, but only for a few days.

What is your literary guilty pleasure?
I don't feel guilt about any literary pleasure. I feel guilt about the books I haven't read rather than the ones I do.

Which writer made you want to write?
No specific writer - more the understanding of what writing could do to the reader.

Who's the most exciting author writing today?
An impossible question, I'm afraid. But I never miss reading Richard Williams on sport in the Guardian. He is wise, knowledgeable and moral - by which I mean I almost always agree with him.

If you weren't writing you'd be...?
Ideally, I'd be on a walking holiday in Italy, ending each day as the sun begins to set over another small Umbrian town which contains a family-run hotel with an unpretentious but nourishing restaurant. Actually, I'd be paying the bills which are piling up to my left as I type, or making a subsidence claim. Or putting off both and making dinner instead.

What next?
It's a secret, even from those two early readers of mine.

Friday, 4 July, 2008