There Comes A Point When You Can

The Reason I Wouldn't Dare To Write A Western Is Simply Because That Seems To Be So Much A Part Of American Culture. Maybe If I Want To Write A Western Enough I Should Try To Overcome That Fear, But I'll Certainly Feel Like I'm Trespassing. I Feel That That Is So Much A Part Of American Foundation Myth, It's Part Of The Myth Of America, The American Vision Of What America Is, Which People Have Glorified And Then Challenged And Then Vilified.

Throughout My Career I've Struggled To Encourage People To Read My Books On A More Metaphorical Level. I'm Less Attached To My Settings Than, For Example, Saul Bellow. The Setting Of A Novel For Me Is Just A Part Of The Technique. I Choose It At The End.

It Never Occurred To Me That Our Lives, Until Then So Closely Interwoven, Could Unravel And Separate Over A Thing Like That. But The Fact Was, I Suppose, There Were Powerful Tides Tugging Us Apart By Then, And It Only Needed Something Like That To Finish The Task. If We'd Understood That Back Then-who Knows?-maybe We'd Have Kept A Tighter Hold Of One Another.

I Don't Have A Deep Link With England Like, Say, Jonathan Coe Or Hanif Kureishi Might Demonstrate. For Me It Is Like A Mythical Place.

But I Really Wanted To Find It For You. And When It Looked In The End Like It Wasn't Going To Turn Up, I Just Said To Myself, One Day I'll Go To Norfolk And I'll Find It There For Her.' 'the Lost Corner Of England,' I Said.