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The Dark Heart of Glasgow: Interview with Louise Welsh
by Anna Battista
The bus number 44 runs and rattles along Glasgow's streets. It crosses the
city going from the west to the south, rushing from the trendy West End,
through the chaotic city centre, to the quieter south. Along its route
through the West End, the bus passes through Hyndland Road. If you're a
lucky voyeur, you'll then be able to look inside the windows of the various
sand coloured buildings divided in expensive apartments. Look! There's a
red painted room, that looks sexy, there's a white one, that looks dreadful
and boring. There's a vase of flowers here and three rows of darkened
windows there. I wonder if this is what Rilke saw. The bus jerks, the
driver noisily brakes, I wake up from my slumber. After a few minutes, the
bus starts moving towards busy Byres Road.
"It was raining. A faint drizzle that was almost a mist. The pavements were
shiny with rain and the reflected orange glow of the street lamps. I
trudged solidly on, putting the cod respectability of Hyndland further
behind me with every step." Louise Welsh, The Cutting Room
"I set the book in Glasgow because this is where I've lived for a long
time, for fifteen years," Louise Welsh, author of The Cutting Room
(Canongate), explains. We are sitting outside the Tinderbox café in Byres
Road. It's a wonderful afternoon, cold, but sunny. "I do know the city and
I like it a lot," Louise continues, "For example, when I describe Kelvin
Way, I try to recreate it through my imagination because it's a street I
know well since I walk up and down it quite a lot. I think the story grew
in my head in this city, but cities are very much the same. I've been in
London recently and I feel that the book could actually be in London as
well. When I had it in my head I visualised Glasgow. I think people might
visualise their own city while reading the book. Glasgow in the book is
just a place where Rilke moves very well." The Cutting Room was released in
Great Britain at the end of last year and it won Louise raving reviews on
many newspapers and magazines. The novel also won the Saltire Scottish Book
of the Year Award, the British Crime Dagger Award and was nominated for
Best First Book from the newspaper The Guardian and for the 2003 Orange
Prize alongside Donna Tartt and Zadie Smith.
Set in Glasgow, this sort of crime-gothic novel is the story of Rilke, a
gay auctioneer who comes upon a collection of graphically violent
photographs and tries to find more about the owner and the supposed victim.
In his search, Rilke meets policemen and pornographers, book collectors and
auctioneers, transvestites and erotica experts, and makes a discovery
journey to planet human nature.
Rilke's adventure starts in a sort of secret room of a house located in a
Glasgow area called Hyndland. Here he finds shelves and shelves of assorted
erotic novels, mostly books published by Parisian Olympia Press, funded in
the '50s by maverick editor Maurice Girodias. Before turning into a
brilliant writer, Louise worked as a second-hand book dealer and she seems
to know a lot about people's tastes in books. "I started a second-hand
bookshop with a friend when I left university," Louise recollects, "We
rented a little bit of space and then a little bit more and we bought a lot
of novels. The shop was in Glasgow, just off Byres Road, it was a really
lovely shop and a good experience for me. We used to sell almost anything:
we stocked a lot of specialist Scottish books, art books, some antiquarian
books and current novels as well. We mainly sold a lot of literature. We
also had a lot of Olympia Press books. From time to time they would turn
up, though never the very rare ones. I think the Olympia Press books are
quite well known now, relatively known I mean, so the ones everybody were
looking for became rare. I also think they had small print runs so there
wouldn't be any of them to begin with and they were kind of disposable too
at the time, so a lot of them would have got lost, thrown away because they
were paperbacks and relatively cheap at that point."
I wonder if, while working at the bookshop, Louise had to find a weird book for an eccentric
client, "Oh gosh!" Louise exclaims, concentrating to find that odd title in
her memories, "I can't think of anything now. They would always seem quite
strange at the time and now I can't remember any! But you would find odd
books in people's collections." Perhaps the inspiration to write a novel
came to Louise by being in constant contact with all these books. "I did
read a lot," Louise nods, "I have always read since I was a child. I read
constantly and used the library a lot. We didn't have a lot of books in the
house because my dad was in the forces and we often had to move, but we
used to go to the library and, when I had the bookshop, I just read, read
read! It was great! I think reading does improve your writing, it really
does. I love Robert Louis Stevenson, he is definitely one of my favourite
writers, but I really like William Burroughs, Muriel Sparks, Raymond
Chandler and lots of other authors. Sometimes your favourite author is just
who you're reading at the time. There are so many fantastic books out there
and there is so much coming out in twenty years' time, think about how many
books there will be then! If I had to recommend someone an author to read,
I'd recommend Stevenson because, next to Shakespare, he is the writer in
which there is more truth and I think that is something that would appeal
to everybody. I would recommend something like Treasure Island 'cos I think
everybody could read that book and everybody could enjoy it, it has got
adventurous parts and sad parts, there's a lot of hope in it and it says a
lot about human nature, so I think everybody could enjoy that book. I don't
like books such as Bridget Jones's Diary, but I can see why people might
love it and even with books I don't like, I tend to think 'Probably they've
got some merit…' so I would say that as long as people read something I'm
quite happy!"
"I scanned through the novels. Yes, here it was, the first edition of
Burroughs' The Naked Lunch in its slip case. I had never handled it
before. All the Henry Miller was here, too. The Olympia novels were just a
start." Louise Welsh, The Cutting Room
"I was writing in my own time, but I was also working," Louise tells me how
she started writing, "Then I got a couple of things published in a small
magazine and I thought 'I'm quite good at this!' So I wrote a lot more and
nothing really got published, but I had a portfolio. While I was a
second-hand bookseller, I also did articles for bookselling magazines. One
of my friends and I used to go to creative writing classes together. It was
then that I read about the creative writing course starting at Strathclyde
University in Glasgow and my friend said 'You MUST join, you MUST!' and she
really made me join it! Without her help, I wouldn't have done it. I really
enjoyed the course, as it helped me writing more seriously. It's true that
you can't teach people what to write. You see, people have to be able to
write already to do a creative writing course, but such a course can give
you more confidence, it can put you in an environment where you meet lots
of other writers and it can give you a lot of support because, even if you
can write to an extent, there will still be things that you will be doing
in the wrong way and can be improved."
"I personally got a lot of support
during the creative writing course I followed. Someone came to review my
work every fortnight, she was very talented and took my work so seriously
that I really had to do well. I felt I had to please her, because she was
taking the time to read my stuff and that was a privilege and encouraged me
to keep on writing. It took me probably about 18 months to get a rough
draft for The Cutting Room, then another additional six months for editing
it. All in all it took me probably about two years. I usually write in
complete silence if can. I've got a very small flat, the kitchen or the
bedroom are quite quiet but if it's noisy, as sometimes there are children
playing in the back courtyard, I put on some music, something slow and
classical probably. I think that writing is so hard that if there is any
distraction you start to go towards the distraction. I often wrote The
Cutting Room in the morning. Once I started really getting into it, when I
got a grant and later the contract, I just worked all the time, so
sometimes I would be writing at night. I get tired quite easily, so I can't
write much beyond ten o'clock at night, but I can get up at five in the
morning and work. There are times when you just have to carry on writing
during the night because you feel you're enjoying it, you feel like you're
getting somewhere. "
"Bits of the novel came really quickly and other bits
were just quite slow as for part of the time I was writing and working at
various jobs as well. I can't remember the specific bits where I got stuck,
but there were certainly points, the parts where your character has got to
make a choice and you don't know what he or she is going to do and you
really almost have to wait for the characters to tell you what they are
going to do. So, when I didn't know what would happen, I had to go away
and think, even stop writing for a few days. You see, sometimes, while
writing, I get anxious and think 'Am I going to be able to do this?' and
then I happen to dream the answers! It's just really strange but that's
what happens. I don't think it's unusual, it happens to a lot of writers. A
mathematician once told me that she dreamt and solved equations! I think
it's just because you think about it so much that the solutions to your
problems are in your head and when you relax and let go, they all come out.
It happens with musician as well: they wake up and they know what to do
with the score. I didn't really know what was going to happen to the
characters while writing. I had an idea for the first few chapters and the
next episode would come as I was writing another chapter. For example, as I
was writing chapter three, I got an idea to write chapter five and it went
on like that. A lot of the time I was wondering what would happen, which is
good because, hopefully, the readers will wonder what will happen as they
go along as well."
"I'm twenty-five years at the auction house, forty-three years of age. They
call me Rilke to my face, behind my back the Cadaver, Corpse, Walking Dead.
Aye, well, I may be gaunt of face and long of limb but I don't smell and I
never expect anything." Louise Welsh, The Cutting Room
The auctioneer Rilke is the hero of Louise's story. He's a deranged but
positive character. "I really like him!" Louise proclaims, "It's very
strange 'cos a lot of people don't. I can't imagine not liking him, but I
read a review and this woman said 'despite the revulsion you feel for him,
you can't help feeling sympathetic'. I was at a party one evening when a
woman said 'your character is horrible, what a horrible man he is' and I
asked what she didn't like about him. She said 'It's not because I'm
homophobic…' and I thought 'Oh, I bet it is, I bet!'" Louise laughs and
continues, "I really like Rilke, I'm fond of him and I'm pleased with him.
I would actually like to revisit him at some point and do something else
with him, somewhere along the line, it would be good."
After reading
Louise's novel, you might convene that the characters who deserve being
hated are probably the antiquarians with their greedy manners and their
scheming plots rather than the main hero. Chapters such as the ninth,
"Caveat Emptor", give a good insight into the world of bidding and auctions.
"I was very lucky because I worked in that world while I was dealing in the
second hand bookshop, so I did know a lot about it," Louise explains, "But
there were specific things that, once you sat down and thought about them,
you didn't know in as much depth as you needed to know so I went to speak
to an auctioneer and to other people in the trade. People are very generous
with their knowledge sometimes, so I was very lucky. I would say that I did
a research while writing the novel, but my research wasn't based on books,
but on talking to people. I didn't model my characters on people I know,
though I think that aspects of them are embedded in the characters. You
couldn't really model a character on anyone in particular because, in a
way, you couldn't know a person that well to get in their skin, to get to
know what their hopes and dreams are in the way you get to know the hopes
and dreams of a character you're writing about."
"The staircase was practically perpendicular. As I climbed, gravity seemed
to increase, pressing firm and insistent against the lid of my skull. With
every step, the pressure grew. And it seemed that the rungs beneath my feet
began to take on an elastic quality, shifting with my tread. As the ground
moved further away, my body began to sway." Louise Welsh, The Cutting Room
Halfway through the novel, the reader will be confronted by an unexpected
sex scene, but also by one of the most tense moments of the whole story.
Rilke finds himself following bookseller Steenie through the maze of his
very gothic bookshop basement. While describing the characters climbing
staircases and ladders, Louise has recreated the suspense you could find in
a Robert Louis Stevenson novel. "At a certain point of Kidnapped, the
main character is asked by his uncle who wants him to die to go up a long
staircase," Louise explains, "There is a lot of suspense involved in the
scene, it is a very frightening moment. Suddenly, there is a flash of
lightening and the boy realises that there are no other steps there. I have
always admired that part of the book, so I tried to recreate the
atmosphere, although the scene in my book is very different. Robert Louis
Stevenson is masterful and it would be impossible to compare yourself with
him, but I wanted to try to get the atmosphere he got in his novel."
Perhaps it was the suspense in that part of the book that convinced
Scotland based publisher Canongate to buy the title, or perhaps it was the
story itself or the main characters. "Canongate is an Edinburgh-based
publisher. I was at a Canongate party with another Glasgow-based writer, Zoe
Strachan, when I asked a woman from the publishing house if she would have
been interested in looking at the book," Louise remembers, "She said yes,
so I sent her the first ten thousand words, and they requested more and
then they requested another lot, I think they requested about thirty
thousand words in all. They bought the book on the basis of that. That was
great! That was ideal because it just made writing the novel like a proper
job, I had to sit down and do it because people were waiting. I was really
surprised by the success the book got. The week the book came out I felt
really tense, really worried. I hadn't actually worried until then. I was
probably more worried about finishing it, as it seemed such a huge task.
The idea of getting published was just too bizarre, very remote. So when
the book came out, I sort of decided that it would probably disappear
because a lot of first novels, even if they get good reviews, don't
necessarily get a lot of commercial success and when the second book comes
out, and that's more promoted, then the first one can sell again. It was
very exciting for me getting all that attention, all the big newspapers in
Britain wrote about the book, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, The
Independent, it was really fantastic, they all gave me good reviews. Then
lots of little newspapers followed. I've been lucky, very lucky. I think I
got all that good feedback because The Cutting Room was picked up by The
Guardian before it came out and they did a big feature on their Saturday
magazine about it. My dad is now the keeper of my unofficial archive: he
goes through the Internet practically every day. He puts my name into the
search engine and sees what comes up. That's very nice!"
The Cutting Room is now being translated into eight languages. "I'm really
really pleased about this, " Louise enthuses, "I thought perhaps the sexual
content would restrict it, but it doesn't seem to have, so that's good!
When I think about my book, I also think about another book, The
Confederacy of Dunces. That's a very good book but its author, John Kennedy
Toole, worked for ten years on it and, in the end, I don't know if it was
because the book didn't get published, but presumably other things happened
as well, he killed himself. His mother campaigned for another fifteen years
and eventually his book got published and it was a huge hit. So, even if I
have one success ever, well, I won't care because I had a good time. At the
moment I don't even consider myself a novelist! It's very strange, but I
consider myself as someone who's written one book and needs to write
another. When we were doing the creative writing course we used to ask
ourselves 'do you consider yourself a writer?' I cannot even be sure that I
can make a claim to that. As long as I manage to do another book, then I
don't mind what genre my book is put into. I definitely love the crime
genre and I love gothic books, so I would be happy to be included in any of
them really."
"I had an idea of what I was going to do next. My game is knowledge and
contacts." Louise Welsh, The Cutting Room
At present Louise is busy writing but also teaching creative writing: "I
teach a class for visually impaired people and I teach an evening class
with writer Zoe Strachan at Glasgow University. It's not really like real
teaching, it's more facilitating and making everything easy for people who
want to write, giving feedback on their work. But you must make sure that
teaching doesn't impact too much on your work. If you teach too much you
can't write because teaching takes a lot of time. For the time being I
probably want to keep it on that level, but there is always the financial
struggle. So, it's OK at the moment but, then, a couple of years down the
line, you might have to do it as a job."
A new novel is already in the
works for Louise: "I'm hoping, I'm really hoping, to finish the first draft
by October. This book is going to be different from the last one and that
is just the way that it is because writers must be true to what they have
to write. You just have to write what you can write and my publisher is
fine, they don't say 'Please write something that was the same as the last
one.' Perhaps they will look at the new novel and say, 'Well, we don't want
it,' but you must try not to twist yourself into a commercial writer. You
have to keep some integrity. I'll work on the book in France. I'm going
there for two months, March and April, as I've been given a grant from the
Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award to go and stay on my own at the house
where Stevenson met his wife. Every year a writer is sent to this place in
France. I couldn't have afforded it myself, so I think it's just fantastic!
It's a privilege and it's really lovely, but it's scary as well. So, I MUST
work on my book while I'm there and finish it. You see, I got a grant from
the Arts Council when I was writing the first book, and then I felt that it
wasn't just me, but also other people who were expecting the book from me
and I couldn't let them down."
There are no plans for a collection of short
stories, but they aren't excluded from Louise's agenda: "At present I have
a couple of short stories sitting there. Short stories are difficult
because it's like trying to write the depth of a novel in such a short
area. I never feel my short stories are as good as I want them to be. I had
bits and pieces published in magazines but I think I would go over them
again and really edit them. For the most part my stories were published on
small magazines or journals. Some stuff was published for example on
Cutting Teeth, a story was also featured in the Sunday Times at Christmas
time, which was fun because it was a thriller ghost story. I would love to
collaborate to an anthology, I think it would be good fun." There might be
also a movie taken from her first novel in Louise's future. "The book has
been optioned," she reveals, "But 90% of the films that get optioned never
get made, so I'm keeping this in my head and think they haven't actually
started to make the film yet. But if it goes ahead, it should be directed
by a Scottish guy and Robert Carlyle will play Rilke."
"It was an envelope. Just a buff-coloured, thick-papered, document
envelope. Straight away I knew it held photographs. I could feel them, the
weight, the uniform size, photos not good enough for an album. Two thick
rubber bands secured the folds, one pink, one blue. Pink for a girl. Blue
for a boy. I pulled the bands off, slipping them tight around my wrist,
they caught in the hairs of my arm, swift visions of mad nights. I kept
them there, a taut reminder, and slid the photographs into my hand."
An ambulance rushes along Byres Road, its siren deafening the passers-by.
People rush here and there under a rare and beautiful Glasgow sun. A 44 bus
collects people at a bus shelter not far from where Louise and I were
sitting. I jump on the bus. I sit upstairs, fantasising in my mind of
meeting Rilke on this bus. I turn around and scan the other passengers. A
father and a child, a student, a young man in a smart suit. None of them
looks like the image of Rilke I have now formed in my mind. I open Louise's
book at the first chapter and start to reread the novel. Chapter one: NEVER
EXPECT ANYTHING. By the time I have read the first page, the bus has
reached Hyndland Road and I'm still dreaming of being able to meet Rilke
and to help him in his quest.
Special thanks to Louise Welsh for her patience in answering all my questions!
Issue 13, April 2003 | next article
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