John Niven reads at Lit Cologne.
Photo: Image
Mr. Niven, your book “O Brother” describes very well how you can become a member of an expert club if you have experienced suicide in your environment. Do you agree that there is something that psychology calls post-traumatic growth?
Yes. As the Buddhists say: With suffering comes wisdom. Suicide is one of those subjects where you get a PhD after it happens. You read a whole shelf full of books, think about it a lot and try to come to terms with it. If you had known earlier what you know later, perhaps you could have changed something. But that’s not always the case. For some people a point has been reached, especially for men around the 40 who, like my brother Gary, feel like they have failed in life. You still have a lot of way to go. But you’re old enough to have lost sight of who you were when you were young. This makes you feel stranded in the middle of your life.
It wasn’t until I wrote the book and was able to take a step back that I realized I was pretty close to a dark place myself. I was over 30, had burned all bridges in the music industry, and there was no guarantee that a book of mine would be published or that, if it was published, I would be successful enough to make a living. Interestingly, Gary’s life was looking up at this point. I had come down to earth. But for whatever reason, unlike my brother, I had some life skills, skills and enough strength to help me get through it.
Interview
John Jeffrey Niven, born in Irvine, Scotland, in 1966, studied at the University of Glasgow and initially worked as a music manager for various record companies before devoting himself entirely to writing in 2002. His first work, “Music from Big Pink,” was still playing in the music scene, around Bob Dylan. In 2008, his novel “Kill Your Friends” became an international bestseller, which was also made into a film. A deeply personal story of his has recently appeared on the German book market: “O Brother”.
Why did you write a double biography about yourself and your brother and not a book about all three siblings?
My sister is like an ally to me and as such is already present in the book. But she was a small child when we were teenagers; and when I left home to go to university, Linda was only ten or eleven. My brother and mother have inspired characters in some of my novels, and my sister often complains, “Why aren’t I in your books?” I then say, “Because you’re too sensible, too nice, too decent. A writer can’t use that.”
They seem to look at the working class with more empathy than Didier Eribon and other authors who were also able to leave their background behind them.
People in Britain like to be accused of being a champagne socialist. I always say: “I’m a Prosecco Marxist.” Maybe I’m kidding myself, but I still see myself as a Scottish working-class child, a socialist. This is part of my being. I didn’t know what garlic was until I got to university. Then you meet middle class people having dinner parties and going to nice restaurants. And after a decade you suddenly realize that you yourself are one of these people.
I don’t think it matters how much money you make. I am lucky to earn a lot and I like to pay a lot of taxes. Politically, my views are still more like they were when I was 17 or 18 years had. Everyone should have champagne and Rolex watches.
Homoptobe You don’t particularly find it problematic to insult your brother.
It’s not my job to make a judgment about it in a book. That was the way he spoke. And we’re getting into dangerous territory when you write in parentheses that this is terrible language. Anyone with any taste and sense knows that you shouldn’t say something like that. But as a writer you have a responsibility to portray people as they are.
I’m currently writing a novel that features an incredibly flawed, working-class character not far from my brother. You take these archetypes of life, and one of the mechanisms by which comic literature works is exaggeration. Some of the most terrifying characters in literature are the funniest.
Why do you make the construction of your story clear in “O Brother” and repeatedly address the reader directly?
A lot of the writers I like work with this breaking of the fourth wall. Nabokov does it, Martin Amis does it. Every now and then I want to touch the reader on the shoulder, as if I were saying: We’re in this together. My father never read a book in his life. But my mother has always been a voracious reader and doesn’t differentiate between trash and good stuff. I remember her taking me to the public library when I was five and getting my first book. I am passionate about the reading experience, the contract you have with the reader, and the responsibility of being a writer.
It’s also a way of saying: Never trust the narrator. You are very self-critical in the book.
Although my brother comes off badly in the book, no one comes off worse in it than me.
Why did you feel the need to say parting words that Gary never said in the final inner monologue?
I worried about the last chapter, and I still do. My agent in the UK said, “You can’t put yourself in Gary’s shoes last night and claim to know what he’s thinking or feeling.” I understand that. At the same time, I knew my brother very well, and I think that all the reasons and feelings he had at the end of his life are accurately portrayed. All survivors wonder what exactly happened in the last few hours. It was a kind of catharsis for me to try to answer that question for my brother.
The other reason was technical. It may be arrogant, but as a novelist I felt like I had this other equipment at my disposal that a non-fiction writer might not have to step into someone’s shoes. And at the very end I wrote down what I would like to believe. At that point I was like, sue me, shoot me, I don’t care. I just had an instinct to wish Gary some peace at the end of these 400 pages of taking readers through his life.
I also read this approach in the last chapter as an act of empathy. On the other hand, you agree with Graham Greene, who said that to be a writer you need an icicle in your heart.
Joan Didion also said that we writers always betray someone. You always pulled out the notebook – that’s the job. When I describe in the book walking from my brother’s deathbed to the bathroom to take notes, I can imagine it seeming icy cold, but I knew at the time that I had to write about it at some point.
You have always relied heavily on comedy in your novels. Are you becoming a different, more serious writer now?
I don’t think I can do that. I found it difficult to write “O Brother” because my default setting is comedy. I’d rather write three novels than another non-fiction book. In a novel, as soon as I know who the characters are and how they talk to each other, I enjoy it. I find it much more difficult to maintain the tone of a non-fiction book.
I also thought for a while about turning my brother’s story into a novel. But the feeling prevailed that this had to be non-fiction. Maybe not every reader has had someone in their family whose life ended as dramatically as my brother’s, but many know what it’s like to have a difficult, chaotic relative or friend, so that at any moment the phone could ring with something again did crazy things.
Our story about two boys from the same working-class household, who grew up almost identically and yet developed so differently, is about how one became the black sheep of the family. At some point you realize that you can’t fully answer all the questions, but it’s interesting to explore them. This book will hopefully remain a one-off. I’m almost finished with my new novel, a kind of black comedy. We will then be on the safe side again.
John Niven: O Brother. A. d. schott. Engl. v. Stephan Glietsch. btb, 400 S., br., 24 €.
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