hi and welcome to watchmojo.com i’m your
host leila at the opening night address
of the 10th sydney writers festival
andrew O’Hagan declared that the
failures of our imagination are behind
the conduct of our wolves today this
advocate of literature and imagination
joins us how has exploring your origins
through writing change to relationship
to them you start off as a describer of
the place that you know and that you’re
interested in but you’re really much
more a citizen of the water within you
out of a particular country I think it’s
important to remember that I like the
idea that you can take a bit of Scotland
around in your shoes with you wherever
you go people are going across the world
trying to represent Scottish effort and
application for hundreds of years I
suppose I’m just I’m just part of that
mob if you put yourself in the shoes of
someone reading a translated version of
one of your novels in a faraway land how
do your stories represent Scotland in
and of themselves Scotland has changed
so much over the last hundred years and
I think is a novelist I’ve had a natural
interest in trying to chart some of
those changes in the political realm and
in the religious sphere and and just in
domestic life to the average dreams and
hopes of every day for I feel strongly
that those changes have been represented
across those three novels of mine
written so far a matter to me to try to
get working class lines between covers
cuz realities changed for them so much I
read in a profile that your work perhaps
takes risks and sustaining certain
Scottish stereotypes true or false a
good writer isn’t as someone who avoids
stereotypes stereotypes exist as real
things in society I mean for some people
the idea of a drunk Scottish person she
just never appear in a novel but as
cautious people do like to drink you
take the cliches and you take the
stereotypes and you manipulate them and
remake them and investigate them but you
don’t just ignore them upon graduating
from University what led you away from
Scotland to London England a love of the
bright lights wanting freedom from oh
the ties that the past represents I
don’t mean manacles I don’t mean that I
felt Shackleton scholar and I mean I
realized it was the sort of person who
probably find their voice the father
away I got from my childhood it felt
very natural to me to just get on a bus
I remember when I was young reading
people
James Joyce and Samuel Beckett seeing
how they were hounded by people who
thought it was a betrayal of them to
move away from Dublin but I’ve never
understood that mentality you don’t
belong to your country you know you
belong to the world thank you very much
for example some croutons and a pleasure
to talk to you
host leila at the opening night address
of the 10th sydney writers festival
andrew O’Hagan declared that the
failures of our imagination are behind
the conduct of our wolves today this
advocate of literature and imagination
joins us how has exploring your origins
through writing change to relationship
to them you start off as a describer of
the place that you know and that you’re
interested in but you’re really much
more a citizen of the water within you
out of a particular country I think it’s
important to remember that I like the
idea that you can take a bit of Scotland
around in your shoes with you wherever
you go people are going across the world
trying to represent Scottish effort and
application for hundreds of years I
suppose I’m just I’m just part of that
mob if you put yourself in the shoes of
someone reading a translated version of
one of your novels in a faraway land how
do your stories represent Scotland in
and of themselves Scotland has changed
so much over the last hundred years and
I think is a novelist I’ve had a natural
interest in trying to chart some of
those changes in the political realm and
in the religious sphere and and just in
domestic life to the average dreams and
hopes of every day for I feel strongly
that those changes have been represented
across those three novels of mine
written so far a matter to me to try to
get working class lines between covers
cuz realities changed for them so much I
read in a profile that your work perhaps
takes risks and sustaining certain
Scottish stereotypes true or false a
good writer isn’t as someone who avoids
stereotypes stereotypes exist as real
things in society I mean for some people
the idea of a drunk Scottish person she
just never appear in a novel but as
cautious people do like to drink you
take the cliches and you take the
stereotypes and you manipulate them and
remake them and investigate them but you
don’t just ignore them upon graduating
from University what led you away from
Scotland to London England a love of the
bright lights wanting freedom from oh
the ties that the past represents I
don’t mean manacles I don’t mean that I
felt Shackleton scholar and I mean I
realized it was the sort of person who
probably find their voice the father
away I got from my childhood it felt
very natural to me to just get on a bus
I remember when I was young reading
people
James Joyce and Samuel Beckett seeing
how they were hounded by people who
thought it was a betrayal of them to
move away from Dublin but I’ve never
understood that mentality you don’t
belong to your country you know you
belong to the world thank you very much
for example some croutons and a pleasure
to talk to you
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