{"id":11814,"date":"2015-10-08T03:41:21","date_gmt":"2015-10-08T03:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/?p=11814"},"modified":"2015-10-08T03:41:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T03:41:21","slug":"in-which-i-contemplate-why-it-would-be-awkward-if-i-had-or-were-to-have-met-beckett-rosa-luxemburg-and-milk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/2015\/10\/08\/in-which-i-contemplate-why-it-would-be-awkward-if-i-had-or-were-to-have-met-beckett-rosa-luxemburg-and-milk\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I contemplate why it might be awkward if I had met or were to meet Beckett & speculate on Rosa Luxemburg and milk"},"content":{"rendered":"

I will soon be appearing at 2 events at IFOA in Toronto. In anticipation of these events and the festival (which is an inspired and wonderful affair that this year features a focus on Catalan writers and poetry) I answered some questions and plumbed some philosophical quandaries and questions of milk consumption.<\/p>\n

5 Questions and Answers for IFOA.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

IFOA:<\/strong> Your anticipated second novel,\u00a0Martin John<\/em>, expands on a character from your first novel,\u00a0Malarky<\/em>. Why did you decide to delve deeper into the character of\u00a0Beirut?<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/a><\/p>\n

Anakana Schofield:<\/strong> A conflation of circumstances led to this. The first was the cheeky insertion for pure devilment\u00a0<\/em>of a single footnote in Malarky<\/em> that read \u201cSee Martin John \u2013 a footnote novel\u201d not knowing whether or not I\u2019d ever actually write that novel. I had material that I\u2019d chucked out of Malarky<\/em>, which initially was a parallel narrative of two mothers and sons.<\/p>\n

Then came an urgency to respond to the plethora of reports of clerical sexual abuse during recent years, which I felt left me with no choice but to address some aspect of deviancy, somehow, in fiction.<\/p>\n

I guess in both examples \u201cresponse\u201d was the impetus.<\/p>\n

In Malarky, the Beirut\/Martin John we met is an endearing man. In Martin John<\/em>, Martin John has become something other. He departed or reversed (since we met him older in Malarky<\/em>) very far from where we started with him.<\/p>\n

IFOA:<\/strong>\u00a0In addition to fiction, you also write essays and literary criticism. How are these different forms of writing connected?<\/p>\n

Schofield:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m a reader before I am a writer. My thinking on literature and reading towards what it is I want to write are very much informed by reading and writing criticism. I\u2019m also over interested in very random topics, so essays and the blogs, which I pen for the London Review of Books<\/em>, help me explore these curiosities. I\u2019m fortunate to have editors who encourage and support my rambles.<\/p>\n

IFOA:<\/strong> Your website lists reading, the weather, bird flu and labour history as some of your preoccupations. How do these interests inspire your writing?<\/p>\n

Schofield:<\/strong> I suppose they are four quarters of a whole. Basically I have a hearty appetite for what most would consider entirely redundant information. There\u2019s very little that I\u2019m not curious about.<\/p>\n

IFOA:<\/strong>\u00a0If you could meet any author, living or dead, whom would it be?<\/p>\n

\"Schofield,<\/a>Schofield:<\/strong> I think Rosa Luxemburg. I would like to discuss her cold baths, high consumption of milk and fury with that printer in Paris described in her letters. Then we\u2019d progress to the spindle statistics in Poland and she could educate me on Marxist matters. But mostly it\u2019s the milk that intrigues me. Nietzsche went heavy on the milk. I haven\u2019t checked, but did they both have bad acne?<\/p>\n

I think one should be careful of meeting one\u2019s heroes; they may disappoint and sadly are not the only<\/em> person who ever understood you. They can be tired, short tempered and bad mannered. Apart from the ones who are lovely. All are best met on the page methinks.<\/p>\n

For example, if I met Beckett, we would sit next to each other beside a coal shed on uncomfortable chairs and discuss the weather and possibly sigh a great deal. Essentially I don\u2019t need to meet him because I\u2019m perpetually sighing a great deal and have seen plenty coal sheds. Also he\u2019d smoke, which would make me cough, then he\u2019d offer me whiskey and my left kidney wouldn\u2019t like that. It could be very awkward for us.<\/p>\n

IFOA:<\/strong>\u00a0What is the best compliment a reader can give you about your work?<\/p>\n

Schofield:<\/strong> To read it or attempt to read it or to read widely. I\u2019ve a few favourite readers: one wrote me a lovely email that said she was going for a walk to think about Our Woman<\/em>. Another is Bill in Ohio and he took to Google Maps and did all kinds of additional research to understand Malarky<\/em>. I also rather enjoy the very angry man who wrote invoking the mafia, hookers and my mother in one line. I\u2019m quite acquainted with some of my readers through social media and they are splendidly intelligent, jovial and patiently answer my random queries on things like bad foot pain and weather reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I will soon be appearing at 2 events at IFOA in Toronto. In anticipation of these events and the festival (which is an inspired and wonderful affair that this year features a focus on Catalan writers and poetry) I answered some questions and plumbed some philosophical quandaries and questions of milk consumption. 5 Questions and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[229,603,618,769,797,1011],"class_list":["post-11814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-beckett","tag-ifoa","tag-interview","tag-martin-john","tag-milk","tag-rosa-luxemburg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anakanaschofield.com\/website_66900629\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}