Writing is hard work, acclaimed British writer James Meek assures me.
A journalist of 20 years, and a writer with two short story collections and four novels to his credit, Meek has won awards in both journalism and literature. That’s why it’s hard to buy that a writer of his caliber would struggle with words, but he would beg to differ.
Presented as an “occasional journalist at the literary café at Cairo’s 41st International Book Fair, the British writer has covered several events and wars, including the war in Iraq, the Chechen conflict, Guantanamo Bay prison camp practices and tax-evasion by wealthy individuals in the United Kingdom. Meek was also on staff in The Guardian until 2005.
“I always wanted to be a writer, Meek told Khaled Alkhamissi, Egyptian author of “Taxi at the discussion. “I knew if I wanted to be a writer, I had to get a typewriter.
Thus, 12-year-old Meek struck a bargain with his mother, “I would wash a window every week for three months, if I got a typewriter.
While he may not have kept his end of the bargain, by the age of 17, Meek had made good use of the typewriter and sent out his first novel, written from his home in Dundee, Scotland, about Afghanistan, to several publishers.
“Thank goodness they rejected it, said Meek about his first oeuvre, “It was very bad.
Last year, he won the Prince Maurice prize for his latest novel “We Are Now Beginning Our Descent.
Being published is a thrill, Meek says. He describes the excitement of receiving the box of books with one’s name, of seeing his books on a bookshelf. “But it is not everything, he asserts.
Waiting for the next book to be published is even arduous than the first. “It begins as hope. Then, it becomes stubbornness, until eventually Meek found he “became a mad writer that won’t give up.
“Descent found Meek writing about the country he imagined from his typewriter in Dundee.
Arriving in Afghanistan to research his novel was like being in medieval Europe. Not simply due to the architecture, or ordinary tools, or absence of literature, Meek said. “It was just people’s faces; the way people look at you makes you think people can write their own religion in ice.
“Like this, he says, chiseling his palm.
Like most ordinary westerns arriving in a third-world nation for the first time, Meek was initially seeking the “exotic and exciting. He found that in the subsequent stage in his travels he saw “deeper patterns in human behavior; the same patterns of struggle and honesty, generosity and corruption.
The final stage is the journey back, says the author who now lives in London, when you realize “how little you know of your own country, of how complex the everyday life actually is.
“I think that Britain is very strange and exotic, he says in a humor becoming signature, “more than Egypt. You’re very normal here.
While journalistic pursuits have driven him to many a shore – Meek refers to war as God’s way of teaching America geography – his novels are not about places.
His novel “The People’s Act of Love is a tome on people, Meek insists, not on Russia. Winner of the Ondaatje Prize and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award, “Love was also long-listed for the Man Booker Prize.
“Why 1919? Alkhamissi asked him in the café, “Why Siberia?
The simple questions lay open a very interesting answer.
“Three amazing situations generated the characters, which then generated the story.
“The stories are mine; I made them up, says the writer, but the situations are real.
One of the plotlines involves a Christian fundamentalist cult that believed sex was so bad, said the author, that the only means of purifying oneself was castration.
A second one centers on the practice of taking “a naïve companion as food along Siberia; the idea being that when food ran out, this person would have served as a “walking lunch.
Another peculiar situation that amazed the author was that of the lost army of Czechoslovakia who found themselves stranded in Siberia, before crossing over to the Atlantic and finally reaching home.
“I knew I’d only write one novel on Russia, Meek said, “and the only place these situations crossed was in Siberia, in 1919. So it had to be then, it had to be there.
To much hum-haw at the café, Meek declared, “I do as little research as possible.
“I don’t like to think of it as a necessary part. Novelists make it sound like an essential stage.
A novel is a mix of research and experience, of getting answers to questions one did not ask, says Meek.
“It is about putting oneself in the way of information rather than letting it get in the way, said the author.
The self is one of the primary tools that informs the imagination, “use your own experience to inform your imagined characters.
On further advice to budding authors, Meek provided “Read. Read. Read.
“If you read a book and think I can do better than that, then that’s the wrong book, he says, “but if you read a book and think I cannot do better – then read that.
