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Imaginales 2008 : les interviews !

Par Linaka, le 05/07/2008 à 14:00

Notre entretien avec Sean Russell (en anglais)

When did you start writing ? Who or what brought you to this passion ?

I started writing when I was ten ; well, earlier, probably. Yes, I think - even not seriously - but I did write and I wanted to be a writer since the age of ten. But I really started to write in my twenties : I wrote a lot of poetry. And then, around the age of thirty, just before I turned thirty, I suddenly had this desire to write novels. I started my first novel when I was twenty-nine.
I think that there were things I wanted to say, that I didn't think you could really express properly in poetry. You can do different things with a novel. So I became interested in writing novels.

What incited you or pushed you toward imaginary literature ? Why does it attract you ?

I always read science-fiction when I was young, when I was in highschool. And then I read Tolkien, which had an enormous impact on me when I read it. My first novel was actually a little mainstream political novel which was terrible, and fortunately no one ever published it ! But I did learn something writing it, and after I did that I thought : « I need to learn something about narrative skills », but I didn't know how. So I said : « Well, let's just write something that will never be published, that I'll just write it to learn these narrative skills ». And because I read fantasy and was such a fan of Tolkien, I thought : « Oh, write a fantasy ! ».
My plan was to write something short, and I had a real interest in Chinese and Japanese literature at that time, and history, and so I thought : « Why don't I base a fantasy novel in an Asian setting that is sort of drawn from these different cultures ? » And then you make an Asian world out of it. So I started writing what I thought was an eighty-thousand-word novelette, which became a two-hundred and fifty-thousand-word novel, and became The Initiate Brother.
And that book which I'd never thought I would even try and get published, a couple of friends of mine said they wanted to read it. I let them read the manuscript, and I could tell by their reaction that they really liked it, because they didn't say : « Interesting ». They started asking many many many questions about it, and I could tell that they had been really captured by it. So I thought that maybe somebody would buy it, and I tried to sell it.

What book would you first advise to someone, for him to discover fantasy ?

Oh, I think that depends on age ; young readers are probably not ready for Tolkien. My son got started reading fantasy with The Spiderwick Chronicles. And he went from The Spiderwick Chronicles to Harry Potter, from Harry Potter to the Redwall books, and then to Tolkien.
I think that Tolkien's books are the one that capture people's imagination the most when they actually read them, but I think you have to be a certain age, you have to be able to read at a certain level before you can read Tolkien.

What book have you read lately ?

I've been reading research, just doing research, lately. I haven't read any fiction probably in a year... Is that true ? No, actually, I read one of Jane Austen's novels past six months ago, probably : Persuasion. Right now I'm reading a diary written in 1794, of a British officer who served in Corsica in 1794. That's obscure readings !

Some writers need to get completely isolated from the rest of the world to be able to write ; is it the same for you ? How do you work ?

It would be nice to be completely isolated from the world, but unfortunately when you have a family you can't do that. So what I try to do is isolate myself for a period of every day. I have a study upstairs in my house, which is very quiet - we live in a very quiet street. My family has learned not to interrupt me.
So I do isolate myself in a small room. Sometimes I wear headphones and listen to music, and that isolates me a little bit further. I can actually work pretty much anywhere, as long as it's quiet ; the only thing I cant' bear are interruptions and noise.

Do you believe fantasy has its place at university ? Do you think it should be studied in college ?

I think that there are some fantasy writers who are tremendously accomplished writers, who could be studied at any level. I think that Ursula Le Guin is a tremendously good writer, I think that Jeffrey Ford is brilliant, I think that, although it's much more traditional kind of fantasy, Patricia Mac Killip is one of the best prose stylist working ; she's a wonderful writer.
I think that there are fantastic writers working in the genre. And I think that now at university anyway they tend to study genres of fiction, it's much more widely studied, at least in North America. So yes, I think in an English literature course or French literature course, they should broaden them out, and people should be interested in all the literature that's been written and that's of any quality.

Where does this human fascination for the myth, the fantasy, the imaginary come from ?

I think that (I was saying this last night) the brain is a pattern-making machine. I think that it has a very strong tendency to make a pattern, and the structure of a story is a pattern. We have a natural desire to make stories and I think we have a natural desire to want to hear them. One of the things about being humans is that we make up our own narratives of our lives.
We have a narrative of how our life is going to go : « I want to be a writer » or « I want to be a doctor » or « I want to do this », or « I want to learn to do this ». And we create narratives of our lives, and sometimes we re-write them. So we decide, there are changes : « I don't want to do that », or « I don't want to do this ». And the narrative gets changed, just like a writer changes his story when he's writing it. And sometimes the narrative gets shattered, things happen in people's lives, they get ill, or have an accident, people die, all kinds of things that are worse, all kinds of things happen that shatter the narratives. People go through these periods of crisis, and then they re-build a different narrative.
I think narrative is part of the human brain, the way speeches are part of the brain. Chomsky said that the human brain was wired for speech, and I think that the humain brain is wired for narrative.

Do you build your imaginary with the real world around you, or mostly with your past readings ?

The first six books I did were a blend of the historical novel and the fantasy novel. So the first two books, The Initiate Brother and Gatherer of clouds, were based on 10th century Japan and 7th century China. I drew elements out of those cultures for inspiration to create the culture that I made for that story. And then the Farrland books, the next four books that I did, they are based in 18th century Europe. So I drew from history for those.
The Swans War series is more of a high fantasy, and you know, high fantasy draws heavily from medieval references, whether people realize it or not. It may have a quasi-medieval feel, but they are less historically based than the previous books. But I guess I have just got a fascination with history, so I tend to always go there when I start making a world.

Is there a place among all the places you created that you cherish the most, a place where you'd like to live in ? And is there a character that you love more than the others ?

I don't know if I'd want to live there, because there are things of the modern world I like. The world of the Asian books, The Initiate Brother and Gatherer of clouds, I think is a very charming world. I think that part of the reason those books were popular was because of the world. The story and the characters too, but I think that the world, people immerse themselves in it, and there they want to live. I got a lot of letters of people frequently saying that they just read the books because they loved being there, and they would just go back and pick them up and re-read sections of them, just to be there for a while. It was like : « Oh I'll just go back and have a little quick visit. » I like those worlds, it was an enchanting kind of world.
My favorite character I think was Randall Spencer Emmanuel Clarendon, who was the dwarf, but not dwarf as in elves and dwarves, it's just a very short person. And I think he was my favorite character, he touched me in some way. He was also an unusual character, he arrived whole. I didn't re-write him at all ; he stepped onto the stage, and I knew everything about him. It's just one of those experience that you have. I knew that he was going to tell everyone his lifestory, and that he was going to lie. And that his real story was something else. So he's, I think, my favorite character. If ever I went back and wrote another Farrland book, it would be about him.

Now this is a question almost mystical : do you believe in the presence of the fairies, the lutins, in a world which is hidden to us but from where all our legends come from ?

Well, that's a good question. I think that I actually sort of wrote a book about this. Our perception of the world has changed throughout history. The world of the fairies and the world of magic existed because people believed in it, at a certain point in history. And when their beliefs began to change, through the Enlightenment and through the science and so on, that world of fairies and magic began to disappear.
In the Farrland books that's one of the themes. In this age of Enlightenment and science, the magic begins to disappear, and it begins to disappear because people no longer believe in it. But in those books it's almost as though reason drives it away.
I think that's sort of true to our own culture, I mean if fairies ever really exist, I think they existed because people believed in them, just the way certain theories of science exist because we believe in them. They may not be true in the future, it may be proven that things we believe in now in terms of science were wrong. That's happened over and over again. But right now that's part of our world and how we perceive the world. So I think it reflects that.

Do you think you're going to write again something happening in the Flattery family's world (like in Beneath the Vaulted Hills) ?

I don't know, it's hard to predict what I'm going to do. I think you have to do the books you're passionate about. If I ever come up with an idea that I just think is irresistible and needs to be written, I will. And as I said earlier I will probably go back to do something in which Randall Spencer Emmanuel Clarendon would be the character. But at this point, I don't have a plan to do that – but on the other hand, I don't have a plan not to do it either.

What was attractive for you in that period of time, the 18th century ? What kind of research did you have to do ?

I'm not sure why I'm interested in that period ; I wrote a historical novel recently, that's set in 1793, so I'm still kind of writing about that period. I don't know if I can explain why. I think that the Enlightenment has always been a period that fascinated me because human history changes so radically at this time. It's so important for the world that we live in today. If you don't understand the Enlightenment, you can't understand how we got here.
The Age of Reason has always been almost like a myth for me, a myth that you need to understand, to understand our culture. So I think that's probably where that fascination comes from. So much of the basis of our world now grew out of that short period.
I did quite a bit of research for those books, not as much as I've done for the historical novel that I just did, because then you really have to be accurate. Whereas when you're writing a historically based fantasy, when you're really creating a world that is just sort of borrowing from history (I was really inspired by history) you don't have any obligation to be accurate in any way, other than accurate to the spirit of it. But I still did quite a bit of research all the same.

Will the fourth and last book be published in French soon ? What about the translation ?

I know that Lionel Davoust has just about finished the translation. I don't have a publication date, but the publisher will be here today, so we could ask them !
I suspect the translation is wonderful because of the response to it, but my French isn't good enough to be able to read it and know, which is a little sad (laughs). I'm hoping that one day my son will read them in French and let me know if the translations are good.

Is it easy for you to change, from alternate story to high fantasy to oriental novels ? Do you plan to write other books very different from your successes ? What genre do you prefer ?

I don't think that there was any difficulty, actually, in changing from those different forms - they're not that different in actual fact. When you start something new, there's always a learning process, and you do need to alter the way you're approaching it, in some way. But I don't think it's that difficult. Changing genres in a big way is a difficult thing to do, and there's a lot to learn.
And yes, I see myself writing different things in the future, I don't want to be stuck in one genre or even two genres for that matter. I've really liked to be able to just write things that I'm passionate about. You know, I was lucky doing this historical novel that I've just done because no one wanted me to do it, everyone told me not to do it. There's a long history of writers from science-fiction and fantasy deciding to branch out and do other things and failing completely. So people like my literary agent were very concerned that this could happen to me. I feel really fortunate that in fact this book has done well. But there's a lot of pressure to not do new things, and I think that that's bad for a writer, I think as a writer you need to try and do new things and do fresh things and keep it all interesting for yourself and for your readers too.
There are genres that I don't particularly like, but no, I like fiction, I like literary fiction, I like historical fiction, I like science-fiction, I like fantasy. I think crime fiction is very formulaic but there's some tremendously good writers in crime fiction too, who manage as they say, to transcend their genre. When I kept time to read fiction, which I almost never do in these days, I've liked to read widely.

Is this the first time you've come over to France ? And what do you think about it ?

I don't know how many times I've been to France ; quite a few times. I love France, I've travelled here quite a bit with my wife. Last year we travelled together as a family, I came with my son. France is a wonderful country, it has all the things I like : great scenery, great food, great art.
We are art gallery fanatics, and France has fabulous art galleries, so we come and visit them. We have friends here, that we come to see. Coming to France is a delightful experience, we do it every year, I think.

Pages de l'article

1. Notre entretien avec Sean Russell
2. Notre entretien avec Sean Russell (en anglais)
3. Notre entretien avec Michel Robert
4. Notre entretien avec Tad Williams
5. Notre entretien avec Tad Williams (en anglais)
6. Notre entretien avec Robin Hobb
7. Notre entretien avec Robin Hobb (en anglais)