Philip Hensher: ‘It’s much less work’
Philip Hensher talks about The Northern Clemency being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Congratulations on being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008. You were a judge for the Booker Prize in 2001. How does it feel to be on the other side of the judging process?
It's much less work.
You grew up in Sheffield where The Northern Clemency is based. Is any of the novel autobiographical?
Some of it is, and some of it isn't. I think probably the funny parts are more like the things which really happened to me.
Why did you choose the title ‘The Northern Clemency'?
Well, the book really explains that. It's about clemency as distinct from forgiveness, a quality I came to associate with the North. It was just what the book was called and what the book was about. I like a title that a reader has to engage with.
A review in the Independent says that the novel 'provides an enjoyable nostalgia fest as well as an acute cultural history of provincial England'. Is that an apt description?
I don't know whether it's an apt description or not, though I wrote it in a spirit of memory rather than nostalgia. Nostalgia is an easier exercise than memory, and it tends to settle on surviving artefacts - music, films, souvenirs and so on. I wanted to summon up the real texture of life as I remembered it.
Some reviewers have said that you use food to reflect the changing social backgrounds in your novel. Why did you choose to chart social history through culinary trends?
Well, I always write about food, and want to get it right. I didn't really notice that the food was charting social history. I mostly just specified the food if the characters were somewhere where they were likely to be eating.
That's dictated by the time, the characters, the social setting and so on. I didn't draw up a gustatory chronology or anything. I just noticed that middle class characters would be marking a smart occasion with one sort of food in 1974 and another in 1990, so things like sushi and gastropubs start to make an appearance. Probably, deep down, it's nothing more than being a fundamentally fairly greedy person and food sticking in my mind.
Many Man Booker Prize nominated novels have gone on to become successful films. Do you think your book would work well on the big screen?
I hadn't anticipated my book being made into a film, or into a tapestry, or into a ballet. I thought it was probably rather good at being what it was. I rather dislike the idea that a novel can't be considered successful until someone has extracted some plot highlights and persuaded an actor to gurn his way through some additional and almost invariably anachronistic dialogue. Anyway, they would only add some atrocious soundtrack.
It is a big book at over 700 pages. How long did it take you to write it?
Almost as long as it took to edit it down from over 1,000.
Who or what influenced your decision to become a writer?
No decision. It just sort of happened. I don't know what else I could have done. It wasn't very much like a career decision.
Are you working on a new novel?
Yes.
What book have you read recently that you would recommend?
The Histories of Herodotus.
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