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| Edited By: Pratik Ghosh |Source: DNA |Updated: Dec 05, 2017, 01:59 PM IST
Nothing is sacred for American writer Paul Beatty, the winner of the 2016 Man Booker prize as he goes about ridiculing himself, the institutions in America, its histories and social and political movements at a session at the ongoing Zee Jaipur Literature Festival. In a freewheeling interview, the author of The Sellout talks about the fears of a nation manifested through Donald Trump, his writing process and the machinations of the publishing industry. Excerpts:
Well, I think of myself as a decent writer. When I set out to do The Sellout, I began with making fun of myself, making fun of things I really care about and also question myself whether I am really invested in the things I "believe" in. I mark myself as a writer, as an American. I am, of course, invested in some level, but that self-ridicule is a start. I think people see that a little bit and they perhaps realise that I am, in a weird way, impartial. I wrote a poem once that kind of freed me. It was about me making fun of myself. I have the same faults that other people have and I try to remember that. I am not always the most articulate or the smartest person around. I embarrass myself all the time. I once read a biography of Malcom X. It said all these things about Malcom — his homosexual relationships, he lied about this and that — but it made me respect him even more. I mean, this guy is a regular person. It's so hard to be a regular person and do extraordinary stuff. All the frailties made him real.
When I heard the news, I was still pretending that I hadn't won. I didn't want to process the news at that moment. I was catatonic. Then the first thing I said was, "Oh s**t!'' I was having dinner with my wife in London when they announced it and I, kind of, blanked out in disbelief. It's such a huge, huge honour! I didn't write for this kind of recognition, necessarily… I was so glad, so satisfied.
I am in India now, so you can see the change. On a serious note, I don't know yet. It's too soon to say. I am getting a lot of requests to attend literary workshops, to speak at book festivals and I am not very comfortable doing such stuff. I am not a very good speaker. I am a very slow writer and I am easily distracted, so I am yet to figure out how to integrate this stuff with my own writing process. I am taking a little time off. I am in India for two weeks. It's not that people recognise me on the streets. But it's nice to have won the Booker, and my peers are very happy with me.
I don't think this is unique to England. I talked to editors and they said that they love the book but they can't publish it. I don't know what that means. I could be romanticising the nature of the relationship between the writer and the editor and the publisher. The problem is that publishers don't realise that writing is a process. It's not about the hot work at the hot time. Writing is like movies in a certain way. Scriptwriters get better with time. A young writer's first novel may not do really well, and then it becomes hard for them to get the second book published. I don't know how the publishing industry works. When I wrote this book, I told myself, I have written a good book. I am pretty harsh on myself. I know that these are things that make people uncomfortable. In the US, people are not used to being made uncomfortable about who they are, who they think they are. It's not like I am writing something new, I am not creating sensibilities. I am creating some prose and turning over some rocks, maybe. I just want to write a book that can't be ignored. Even Oneworld had turned my book down. And, I think somebody came to them and said, 'Hey, you need to pay attention to this book.' Sometimes, you need to look at things twice. It has happened to me a couple of times. I didn't understand a book the first time I read it. Tony Morrison's book The Bluest Eye took me two reads to get it. Most people don't give a book a second chance. When I first read it, I wasn't ready to deal with it.
It's just the way I write. I am not the sort of person who looks up too much. There is a certain kind of people I respect and admire but nothing or no one for me is beyond reproach, including my mom. I see the frailties, weaknesses, the funny things, the what-ifs and I understand the need to sanctify things — just look at history, we have done it everywhere. This need makes you feel that you are in this world for a reason. It doesn't bother me that I am not in this world for a reason. I'm here and I want to do what I want to do. Once an actor friend told me that she was really lost, she has lost the meaning of existence and I told her that I was glad that I don't feel that way because then I would be frozen, really unnerved. I don't think of myself as a disrespectful person, but I am trying to work out what these things mean. I think it's very dangerous to be real reverential about things.
I try not to talk in sweeping terms — like, what the general feeling is about Trump. I'll tell you one instance from my personal experience. I was doing cross-country through Nebraska and Wyoming last summer, wearing a really nice Bernie Sanders shirt because I am his supporter, and I wondered why were people looking at me. Then, I realised it's because of the shirt. People would come up to me and talk to have stuff off their chest. At first I thought why is everyone so angry? I saw that everyone is so invested in feeling disenfranchised in a weird way. I realised that this is out of fear. There is a reason that people picked this guy. He is an apparition, but he's both real and unreal, and people see something in him. It's not that everything was hunky dory in Barack Obama's time. Trump is a level of anger and hatred. For some people, Trump coming to power is like 'Finally, this is our turn'.
I really don't know what's going to happen. There is a sheer level of incompetence in the whole thing. Remember, Trump stumbled into the political system and that indeed is scary. You don't even know whether this guy was successful in his business.
