Q2. McCullough replied that she was, ... not in the least influenced by characters
or places in her novels, ... they only live while I ’m writing about them.
Q3. I think it’s just genetic, it’s absolutely genetic. I was just able to write.
Q4. Before I started the Roman novels I saturated myself in extremely scholarly
works and read all the ancient sources – in Greek and Latin if I had to. I have to
set eyes on a place, I want its topography, its ambiance, its atmosphere. Setting
and place are not as important as characters – they are what moves everything.
I ’m a writer who is really involved in characters. I would never situate a plot in
terms of place.
Q5. When I finish a book I am amnesic for the event, I don’t remember how I
feel. Yet the state of consciousness changes simply because I ’m there, I ’m in it.
I ’m not me, I ’m them. I t’s like a brown study.
Q6. No. [ No book or poem she has written has ever changed her life.]
Q8. I read to know. I think the greatest novel ever written is by Herman Broch,
The Death of Virgil – wondrous imagery and feeling for the technique of language
as well as the soul of language. I like James Joyce very much. I like some Patrick
White but not all. Tom Robins is a genius. He’s probably stoned out of his mind on
pot the whole time, but that doesn’t matter, then I absolutely like blood-curdling
whodunits.
I adore science fiction movies – the more blood in a movie the better I like it, it’s
probably the medical side of me. I don’t like art cinema.
Theatre can be magic, I ’m an observer and when you’re an observer you read the
written word.
McCullough expressed distaste for computers; the damn things think they’re smarter
than I am, and I know I ’m smarter than they are. So they tell me I can’t do
something. And I go, fuck that! I work on top quality paper, I double space, I
work on a carbon ribbon. My typewriter fights me back, so I don’t get RSI
I ’m so organized in my mind before I start ... I f I peel potatoes I do it properly. It
doesn’t matter what I do, it has to be done properly. I am the world’s greatest
nitpicker.
Q9. I didn’t begin to write, I always did write. It was usually triggered, I
remember, by beauty of some kind, a flower or the stars, or moon or a sunset. I
was a very forward baby, I spoke whole sentences at nine months ... but I don’t
remember very much of my early childhood at all.
ron
(Ron)
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