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Interview bretonne de David Anthony Durham

Par Witch, le mercredi 8 juillet 2009 à 12:00:31

L'interview originale

Graendal : What was your feeling about Epinal – the welcome, the festival itself?

David Anthony Durham : I…I had a great time in Epinal, it was wonderful. The welcome was superb, the all time I’ve been in France I’ve been treated very well. Epinal, it was organized well, I like the way it is very much about the writer and the reader and there not a lot of other stuff going on, it’s a book-loving festival seems to me. Good panels, good food. I feel like I met so many people in French Fantasy and that feels good. I have a lot of invitations to … propositions to stay when I’ll come back and that’s good as well. So yeah I’m very happy. It was a good time.

Graendal : Does France hold a special place in your heart?

David Anthony Durham : You probably have read something so you

Graendal : Actually I didn’t write the questions so… maybe the person who did …

David Anthony Durham : Ok. It does of course because I wrote my first published novel while living in France. I was living in Albertville and I was there for 6 months, my wife got a job with a ski company that would do cater to British clients. She has this job for 6 months and she was pregnant and she said "Ok I’ll work for 6 months and we’ll go to France and you’ll write a book that will get published", I had written two before that, "you’ll write a book that'll get published but it’s your last chance because after that we’ll go back to Scotland, where we were living, and you’ll have to get a real job." So living in Albertville, I did write a novel, a novel about the American West and cowboys, t'was written in France, and it worked because that book get published just after the baby was… it got accepted just after the baby was born. So that one way France has a special place in my heart. But I’ve always, always admired French culture and cinema and literature so it’s …you know and I would I’ve liked to been published first in translation in France, hoped that would’ve happen but it took four books. But that’s Ok

Now they’re going to translate all your other books.

I hope so.

Graendal : By the way, have you met your French translator Thierry Arson?

David Anthony Durham : I met him last night in Paris. We didn’t talk too much last night but we have corresponded quite a bit by email. I think I’ve spoken most to him, more than any other translator and it sounds like he did a good job and sounds right that he’s doing the next book as well.

Graendal : When is it due the next book?

David Anthony Durham : It’s done, and it's been translated now and it’s coming out in the States in September and in France in October

Graendal : All right. I saw the cover on your blog.

David Anthony Durham : The US cover?

Graendal : Yes

The French cover is drawn by Didier Graffet, same as the first.

David Anthony Durham : There is a photo to an article - is it in Fantasy FR? - they have a photo of me and Didier Graffet with an early sketch of the next cover. I have a link on my blog if you ever want to see it.

It's gonna be a boat

David Anthony Durham : It’s gonna be a boat

Ca c’est un scoop

Graendal : Can you explain how the ideas behind Acacia came together in your head? Two books later, did you follow your original plan?

David Anthony Durham : It’s never easy to explain how the ideas came together if I could it'd be easy for lots of people to do it. I would say that there were a few ideas for the first Acacia that I had for many years before beginning to write them. And part of it was a family of four children who were loved by their father but whom their father, because of his love of them, who happened to be a king, didn’t tell them the truth about the empire that they benefited from. And that had been there for a while, it's actually modelled on my wife’s family, they're four siblings and the same ages and distribution. So in a way the Akaran children have parallels in my wife‘s sisters and brothers which is a little bit dangerous when I'm making them characters. I want to do things like with Corrin and she's modelled on Beth and Beth starts to go "wait a minute, what are you doing?" (laughs) And I say No, no, it’s not you anymore it was you for a little while, then it became, Corrin became Corrin, anyway.

Hopefully

Yes absolutely. Mena is, would have been my wife, Gudrun, has became Mena and she is good with a sword, so is my wife. Often though when I began writing a book I know how it begins and the basic ideas and I know exactly where it ends and usually one of the first scenes that I write is the last scene of the book. But I don’t know necessarily how to get between the beginning and the end and that’s the process of living with the book and characters day by day and starting to picture it that out and slowly putting it together. That mostly how it is with every book that I do and it was the same with The Other Lands which is the second book and I’ve already written probably the last lines, the last few lines of the third book but I have a lot more to do to get there.

Graendal : About the Acacia movie project, have you read the first draft that you have received?

David Anthony Durham : Yes (long silence) (Laughs)

Graendal : Is that all you have to say?

David Anthony Durham : No I did read the script, the screenplay. It was ... interesting. I think it’s only the first attempt and they probably gonna revise it quite a bit. In some ways it takes the book and contains it down which is hard to do with that many pages. But also there is some stuff in it that I don’t recognize like “Oh Ok It’s interesting” and that's ok with me actually. If they can succeed in making it a film it’s gonna be their project and I kept ... I don't wanna, meddle too much you know, in that doing. I would like them just to make a film and a good film and if it looks a little bit like my book that's ok and I'd like them to pay me as well (laughs) that’s true !

Graendal : Do you have a few top choices (like actors) in mind?

David Anthony Durham : No, definitely not.
I feel really like that is actually a hard job they did casting a movie properly, usually when people do it or when they do it on my blog they're easy to pick famous actors into it to put them in the slots and I don’t really see it that way. I don’t know who would be and part of me feels that the best actors out there would be people I don’t know yet or maybe aren't that famous yet. Even Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson, he didn't picked the most famous actors, it wasn't like Brad Pitt or something like that and I like the choices that he made and he discovered and introduced a lot of actors. I hope they would do something similar with Acacia but I don’t have any, any suggestions.

Graendal : What are your thoughts on gender relations in the fantasy genre, cause female characters are not always very pushed forward?

David Anthony Durham : I don't think that some of the most classic fantasies of the last Forty years have necessarily done a very good job with that. I do think there is fantasy out there that's maybe not as widely read by women that is better at gender and empowering female characters but it's not necessarily as widely read. It’s important to me that I treat my characters, male and female, equally and that's certainly what I try to do in Acacia. And in some really important ways the female characters Corrin, Mena and another character in the new book more, are some of the most important characters in the book and they shape the fate of the Known World as much as any of the men.
I like that. I didn’t just do it because I want to correct the wrong, though they're simply alive to me and I like it that they can affect the world and fight to make decisions and mistakes just like the men.
I think it's an ongoing process just like having better representations of multi racial characters and racial diversity in Fantasy.
Think a lot has changed but there's still a long way to go to make our fantasies be better reflections of our real world.
Some people won't think that Fantasy should do that.
For me I do want to do that, I want to take all of humanity and its variety and mix them with the wizards and the dragons. Cause when I was growing up I would read The Hobbit and Tolkien and I’m an African American and a person of mixed Caribbean race. And I read The Hobbit in Trinidad visiting my father: so there I'm in Trinidad I’m looking up at the hills where these buzzards are flying around and there's wild fires on the hills and yet I’m caught up in Middle Earth reading about Hobbits, reading about a world that has all white characters except for the bad characters, for all the things black and I was perfectly caught up in it.
But I think how much better is it if those worlds can be as imaginative but also more inclusive, male and female, black and white and everything in between. Pfiou that was a long answer!

Graendal : Would you have a few names in mind concerning the kind of Fantasy that is not maybe the most popular but has more empowering female characters?

David Anthony Durham : First one that comes to mind it’s actually science fiction mostly than fantasy Octavia E. Butler. She should be read a lot more she was an amazing, amazing writer. Again I go to another science fiction, Kay Kenyon, she's probably not in French at all, I don't know if she's been translated or read much in Europe or enough in America either. She is good though and she ... in a way she writes Science Fiction like Peter F. Hamilton, I would compare her to him. But she doesn’t necessarily do it like, it's not a woman’s novel it's just the characters male or female are more complete. And I’m sure I can think of others.

It was a bonus question.

There's others writers, I just don’t know if they're over here at all, think of a writer of Nigerian origin, she's in the States, Nnedi Okorafor , probably not.

Graendal : Maybe

David Anthony Durham : Nalo Hopkinson, Elisabeth Bear ... They're out there.

Graendal : Thank you for advertising other people's books.

David Anthony Durham : I like to do that, I do that a lot on my blog

Graendal : Yeah that’s true from what I've read. Could you tell us a few words about the Wild Cards project and George R.R. Martin?

David Anthony Durham : Yes, thanks for asking about that. I’m excited and kind of scared. Wild Cards is a series that George R.R. Martin had edited and written in since, I think 1986, there are some 22 books in existence and they’re really collaborative novels. George edits them and chooses each time who's writing in them. It might be by nine writers or a pool like thirty or so that he chooses from and we collaborate on coming up with the story and characters and just try to make it all work together. It's partly a matter of writing fiction it’s also about creating characters that... potentially create a character that some one else might use that character in their story It's Science Fiction, the idea is: in the 1940’s there was an alien spaceship released a virus over New York City that changed everything because anyone infected by it. Most of them died like nine out of ten just turn in a puddle, muck and out of that 1%, 9% of that 1% were horribly deformed and maybe have animal characteristics or you know or just a trunk, an Elephant trunk coming out of their nose just lots of strange, strange stuff. And then about 1 % of that 1% become …there is a combination of superheroes essentially cause a few of the people that get affected have super powers, and lot of mutants. And then the majority of the population is still Ok, is normal. And the series follows an imagined version of history since then from the 40's right up until now that what Wild Cards is. And yeah George has recently approached me to create characters and write for it. And I pitched ideas for the next book called “Fort Freak” and he accepted so I’ll have a three part-story in that which it’s great, wonderful, terrific and also very scary because I don’t want to make George mad or disappoint him so I'll try to do good work on it.

Graendal : What is your opinion about the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader and other electronic book devices?

David Anthony Durham : Mmm. I don’t have any strong opinions, if there's a way of to get people and keep people reading that's fine with me. I don’t have any of those. I love listening to audio books I do that often when I’m taking walks and getting exercise I'm listening to audio books. When it comes to reading books I like to have a book in my hand, a real book but I know people love, some people love that media so I hope it takes off maybe it’s a part of the future and that’s ok with me.

Graendal : As a writer, what do you think about the future of the publishing industry?

David Anthony Durham : (Laughs) I hope it’s around for another forty years or so, until I’m done, at least. I think that, of course it’s changing and in the process of changing and adapting to new media and different reader expectations there gonna be success stories and failures and it's a little bit hard to know exactly how things are gonna turn out. I do believe though, that people will always need stories and storytellers it’s, in a way I think it's one of the first things that defines us as human beings: we sat around a fire and someone told stories and at least we communicate that way There will always be room for writers it's just, it's yet to be seen exactly what it's gonna look like in ten years, in twenty years. I hope to be flexible enough to change if I need to.

Graendal : To be a full-time writer is it a dream or a constant struggle in your opinion? There can be a third way I guess!

David Anthony Durham : It’s a dream if you’re making enough money. For many people it’s a struggle. In my case I have, I've moved between being a full time writer and then deciding I needed to take a teaching job then moving back to being a full time writer and then taking another teaching job. I am in the process right now of quitting my teaching job and becoming a full time writer again. I hope that works out it feels as, though the book have had success enough that I could make a case for why I should write a lot more and produce more that might be the best thing for my career. I could be wrong, there's lot of risks but I personally want nothing more than to make my living writing books that people read. So for me it's a dream and if that includes a lot of struggle that’s Ok.

Graendal : What can we expect in the future from you?

David Anthony Durham : Very good books.

Graendal : We hope so

We'll wait you.

David Anthony Durham : I will try to, especially if I have readers, to continue with for example Acacia. For one thing the second book in Acacia series called “The Other lands” is coming out in the States in September and in France in October, it's very quick and Le Pré aux Clercs is very enthusiastic about it and I love that. After that I’ll be going to work on the third book to close out this first trilogy. I would be happy to revisit Acacia in future books, especially if people want to read about it, there's plenty of ideas, there's a whole world, there's so much potential. I would like to return sometimes to writing historical fiction which is what I did for my first three novels. And I want to write a bit for young adults audience too, whether it’s fantasy or historical I’m not sure, but that's an important group to write to, for me cause when I discovered loving reading I was fourteen, thirteen and I was reading Fantasy and it changed my life in lots of ways. So you can expect all of that. And that would be nice if one of these books one day may be got made into film, I hope for that too. That’s it.

Graendal : If you should pick one memory from this trip, what would it be?

(Laughs)
Know me …kidding

David Anthony Durham : Well ... I shouldn’t say that...

Graendal : Yes you should

Yes you should
(Laughs)

David Anthony Durham : That's not an easy question to answer because there are so many wonderful memories. I have to say though it was pretty nice to be taken care of by such attractive young ladies.
(Girls Laughs)

David Anthony Durham : It's true

Me? Come on! Oh no. No!

Graendal : Thank you very much

David Anthony Durham : It’s my pleasure, thank you

  1. L'interview traduite
  2. L'interview originale

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