That’s all for today
stephenkavanag6 asks:
Thrilled about your new book. I’m a massive fan. I was wondering which works by Henry James had particularly inspired you as a writer, and whether you were ever a bit daunted (like me) by his late novels? I’m guessing The Spoils of Poynton might be one of your favourites, having read The Line of Beauty!
Guardian contributor I find Henry James inspiring altogether. It's something to do with his double mastery. Both his insight into human behaviour and his deep interest in the novel as a form. I've certainly never tried to imitate him, though in The Line Of Beauty I did set myself the Jamesian task of writing a large social novel in the third person and all seen from the point of view of one character; and I found myself seeing parallels between the world I was writing about and the world of James's novels of the later 1890s. I think perhaps the book I find most fascinating from a technical point of view is What Maisie Knew – which is both the cleverest and the tenderest of all James's novels.
'I don't deliberately exclude working-class characters'
Chrishale asks:
Admire the novels but why such a narrow social spectrum?
Guardian contributor I'm aware I've often created protagonists who share my own interests and enthusiasms and tend to be solidly middle class. Often they are drawn into a more glamorous or wealthy social world which only slowly reveals its cruelties and deficiencies. I think the truth is that my novels present themselves to me mysteriously. I don't deliberately exclude working class characters but I am perhaps shy of trying to write in an inward way about characters from backgrounds that I have less experience of.
'At the age of 12, I became obsessed with Tolkien and PG Wodehouse'
mrudagawa asks:
What book was the first one which made you love literature as a child/teenager?
Guardian contributor At the age of about 12 I became obsessed with two completely different writers, Tolkien and PG Wodehouse. The latter I still think one of the funniest writers in English, the former I now find totally unreadable. I think at least a tremor of humour is a requirement for me in any writer I'm going to feel close to.
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'I tend to build up the world of a book from tiny fragments'
WizardofOz85 asks:
You mentioned just now that as you finish one novel, the first stirrings of the next one begin to set up camp in your mind. How developed do these ideas tend to be before you put pen to paper and begin constructing a narrative around that idea?
Guardian contributor To start with, the ideas are extremely nebulous. It might be just a matter of stray phrases or a glimpse of people in a location. I tend to build up the world of a book from tiny fragments, out of which the narrative eventually emerges. There is obviously a quite different way of working, beginning with a clear narrative outline. But to me that is what comes last. I never start writing the first chapter, however, until I have a pretty strong sense of the structure of the whole novel. I make very detailed plans and enjoy the security of knowing where I'm going. But equally it is important to leave room for improvisation and the unexpected. The things I discover in the course of writing a novel are often those which make it most rewarding for me.
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'I'm sorry to say my dancing days seem to be over'
Greycat69 asks:
I read that you discovered ecstasy at 40. Do you still take it? And if so, what music do you enjoy listening to when you do? Should it be legalised? And are there any downsides? eg does it influence your creativity at all?
Guardian contributor I'm sorry to say my dancing days seem to be over, but I had huge pleasure from them at the time. In my new novel The Sparsholt Affair I bid a formal farewell to the rave scene. In terms of creativity, I think there were both benefits in terms of insight and empathy, and downsides in that it was increasingly hard to write anything for days after a big night out.
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goldennuggets asks:
Do you have any explanation for the baffling lack of awareness regarding Ronald Firbank’s genius and do you have any plans to remedy this dreadful state of affairs by penning your own biography of the great man? It would be a joy to see two of England’s finest prose stylists coming together across the ages.
Guardian contributor I've been trying to raise awareness of Firbank since I discovered him 40 or more years ago. But it is hard to get people to take him as seriously as he deserves. He seems to me increasingly one of the most influential writers of the early 20th century in England. But I think there is an impression of him as merely camp or silly, which it is hard to erase. He himself described his work as witty, though and unrelenting - a view I would certainly share. I'm pleased to say that a full biography of him by Richard Canning is due to appear next year. And Picador will be issuing a special edition of The Flower Beneath The Foot, which I think is perhaps his finest as well as his most richly enjoyable book.
ChimneyStacks asks:
What are your thoughts on heterosexual people writing gay characters?
Not necessarily pro/against – although this does tend to dominate the topic, my supervisor is a big fan of Edmund White, and she told me that his view on the subject has morphed from a liberal one towards actively discouraging people at readings from trying if they aren’t certain they will get it right – there’s a similar argument about straight people playing gay roles on the screen, and due to the toxicity of gay representation in that medium I find I agree more with the “gay people should tell gay stories” view more. However I don’t like the idea of delimiting people’s creativity – I read Earthly Powers by Burgess recently and his gay protagonist Toomey was extravagantly genuine. Could heterosexual perspectives on gayness be enlightening rather than demeaning? (Also I know this is bloated already but your books mean a great deal to me, please write lots more at any expense).
Guardian contributor I always stoutly defend the right of novelists to describe characters of any kind they please. And after all, I write about straight characters now and then myself. I grew up reading certain writers like Iris Murdoch who was very interested in sexual ambivalence and often created gay characters, usually from a cultured or academic background. I'm not sure how many straight writers I've read who create gay characters successfully from the inside, though I agree about Anthony Burgess and Earthly Powers. My larger feeling is that as conceptions of sexuality change more rapidly, writers of all kinds will be more interested in exploring than in defining sexuality. So I expect interesting things to happen over the coming ten years.
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'I always take a keen interest in the appearance of my books'
HaveOneOnMe3 asks:
Recently, the Guardian published a piece on book cover design. I really want to read The Folding Star but I’m having difficulty tracking down an early edition that has a beautiful cover, and I’m obstinately disinclined to buy the cheap edition currently on the shelves (physical and digital). Your books – as objects – aren’t beautiful (in my view), which is odd because you’re clearly an aesthete. Do you have much say in this matter when it’s time to publish, and does(n’t) it bother you?
Guardian contributor The original hardback of The Folding Star had a very beautiful jacket, especially painted for it by the great Howard Hodgkin. I always take a keen interest in the appearance of my books, so I'm sorry you don't think they look good. Often it takes a long time to arrive at what seems to me to be a mysteriously right image. The view of an avenue through a wrought iron gate on the cover of The Line Of Beauty seemed to me ideal. I like to choose titles for my books which don't reveal their full meaning until the end of the novel, perhaps not even then. Similarly, I like jackets which evoke something of the atmosphere of a novel without giving away too much about it.
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riddararaddir asks:
When starting a sentence, are you ever scared that you won’t find a way to end it; thereby ending your career as a writer?
Guardian contributor I often take a long time to start a new book. And I often pause for a long time before starting a new sentence. But once I have started it, I'm always pretty confident of getting to the next full stop. There are usually big gaps in the writing of a novel, which is one reason why they take me three or four years to write. But I've never lost my confidence that I would reach the end. And I'm always pleased when I do finish a novel to find the first stirrings of another one coming into my mind. I think one consequence of being a very slow writer is that I don't start on a scene without being pretty sure that it will be part of the finished book. I very rarely abandon a chapter or an episode, though of course in a final edit there will be nips and tucks.
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Eric Henwood-Greer asks:
I am incredibly excited for the new book. Earlier this year it suddenly occurred to me that it had been around six years since The Stranger’s Child so I was thrilled when I googled your name, and saw the announcement of the novel coming out in October (I won’t be waiting for the Canadian release in March...) Your books have meant so much to me, ever since I came across The Folding Star as a 15-year-old.
You wrote a great piece, some 10 years back, for this paper about your reaction to seeing the screen adaptation of The Line of Beauty. I’ve also read in an earlier article that some time earlier, the BBC had scripts ready for an never made miniseries of The Swimming Pool Library (I can only imagine how that would have worked on TV in the mid 90s!). I’m always fascinated by seeing my favourite novels adapted into other mediums (sometimes even more fascinated when they go disastrously wrong). So my question is, is there one of your works that you think would be particularly suited to adaptation (into any medium – from movies to opera)? And one that you think would particularly be difficult to adapt?
Guardian contributor I still hope that The Swimming Pool Library might be filmed. As you say, a brilliant three-part adaptation of it was written for the BBC in the early 90s by my friend Kevin Elyot but sadly was never made. I think The Stranger's Child and my new novel the Sparsholt Affair would be difficult to film because they cover wide timespans and their narratives go off at surprising angles. Film tends to require a degree of resolution and I find myself increasingly interested in leaving significant areas of the narrative in my novels unresolved, the mysteries of what happened in the past never fully explained. But I think a really imaginative director might be able to make something of those books.
Caravaggian asks:
What is your opinion on the place of pederasty (as distinguished from paedophilia) in the gay world today?
Given that your novels deal at times with pederastic themes; and given that the big elephant in the room of gay discourse today is man/boy sexuality, which nobody dares talk about; and given further that pederastic love represents a most significant aspect of gay sexuality since the Greeks and beyond; what say you about this important ‘Love that dare not speak its name’?
Guardian contributor In the Folding Star I wrote about a man in his early 30s obsessed by his 17 year old pupil, someone he barely knows or understands. But my interest increasingly has been in inter-generational relationships between men in their 20s and 30s and figures twice their age. In my new novel the Sparsholt Affair I set up a symmetrical pattern where the seduction of a 55 year man by a 23 year old one is later echoed by a 60 year old man finding himself the love object of a man of about 30. I'm fascinated by the idea in gay life of an older man acting as a guardian and guide to the rituals and mysteries of the gay scene. And also to the possibility, as in my novel The Spell, of a younger man rescuing an older one from the doldrums of middle age.
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happyinherts asks:
The Line of Beauty is one of my eight desert island books. I can live without the gramophone records but not without the novels. But I am haunted by the thought that I may end my days cut off from the rest of the world, waiting for rescue and not knowing if Nick Guest survives to inherit the Clerkenwell building or if he perishes from Aids. Please tell me Nick’s fate so I can enjoy my desert island.
Guardian contributor People are sometimes frustrated when I say this but the truth is everything I know about the character is included in the book itself. I like to end a novel on an ambiguous note and whilst the reader will probably take away a strong sense of mortality from the end of The Line Of Beauty, I deliberately left it open to speculation what the results of Nick's test would be.
tinears asks:
Do you have a favourite minor character in any of your novels (not including the sympathetic-looking man with short grey hair in The Spell)? Mine is currently Gareth the able historian in The Line of Beauty.
Guardian contributor I often enjoy writing minor characters the most. There's less need to be fair to them. Sometimes they are, I hope, amusing monsters. I think perhaps Lady Partridge in The Line Of Beauty is my favourite - because of her complete heartlessness towards others and her ridiculous snobbery.
imnotyourgirlfriend asks:
The final chapter of The Line of Beauty is one of the most brilliantly written passages in English I have ever read. How many drafts were there? And did you write it last, first or in the middle of the process?
Guardian contributor I wrote the last three pages on a hot June day with people enjoying themselves in the sunshine outside. I closed the curtains, put in earplugs, had a strong coffee and wrote the ending of the book very fast. I seem to remember it was hardly revised at all. I know I was in a rush because I wanted to finish the book before going on holiday the next morning.
Alan Hollinghurst is with us now ...
Alan Hollinghurst webchat – post your questions now
Ever since he debuted in 1988 with is novel The Swimming-Pool Library, Hollinghurst has been on the UK’s most highly regarded authors. His 1994 novel The Folding Star was a disturbing study of desire; 1998’s The Spell, a comedy of manners set around the interlocking affairs of four men; The Line of Beauty, a story of London reeling from the Aids crisis and dominated by Thatcherite politics, which won the 2004 Man Booker prize (and prompted the Daily Express headline “Booker Won By Gay Sex”); and 2011’s The Stranger’s Child, a meditation on literary memory that follows the impact of a mediocre poet’s work in the generations after his death.
His new novel, The Sparsholt Affair, spans several generations and key periods of uncertainty and change in British society, from Oxford in the second world war to contemporary London. Like many of his books, the book maps the gay world before and after the 1967 Sexual Offences Act and explores the separation in romantic experience between older and younger gay men. In his review, Alex Preston wrote: “It’s funnier, more warm-hearted, less waspish than any of his books so far, but still undoubtedly the work of a master.”
Hollinghurst’s interests include Henry James, Alice Munro, Wagner, crosswords and architecture. He also apparently a very good dancer (“I think I’m really rather marvellous”). So we can ask him about any or all of these things when he joins us on Monday 2 October at 12.30pm BST. Leave a question for him now, or join us then.
And if you can’t join us on Monday, Hollinghurst will also be talking about The Sparsholt Affair at a Guardian Live event on Wednesday 4 October in London.
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Thank you very much, I enjoyed my first ever webchat.