This interview with Joanne Harris was conducted by
Kevin Patrick Mahoney in
March 2000.
KPM:
Are you a very superstitious person? Do you have bags of charms lying around
the house like Joe Cox and Vianne Rocher? Are you like the footballer who
has to wear the same T-shirt to keep on winning?
Joanne
Harris: When I was a schoolgirl I had a lucky jumper,
which I wore to pass exams. Since then I have had some superstitions, and I do
keep lucky talismans around the house like Vianne, but I'm not the kind of
person who is crippled by superstitions and anxieties. I think that for the
most part it is possible to make one's own luck, and I try to do that as much
as I can.
KPM:
There seems to be quite a few novels published recently which involve
flashbacks to the 70s, such as your own 'Blackberry Wine', Kate
Atkinson's 'Emotionally Weird', and Zadie Smith's 'White Teeth'.
Why do you think this is? Have flares suddenly become fashionable again?
Joanne
Harris: I think that it's partly something to do with the
present generation of 30-somethings who are breaking into publishing. I can't
speak for the others, but I find that the 70s is a time I recall with great
clarity, and it's the period which best captures my own childhood. Given that
BW was partly about my own childhood in Yorkshire, it was easier and more
authentic to use material from that time. Plus the 70s represent a time when
life was simpler in a number of ways; music and fashions were more flamboyant,
people were not as afraid to differ and to be extrovert; things seemed happier
and brighter and less gritty and minimalist than they are now.
KPM: I
read 'Blackberry Wine' and 'Emotionally Weird' in the same weekend, and I
couldn't help noticing certain similarities. There's prominent characters
who love SF in both novels, scenes in creative writing classes, a central
detective mystery, and flashbacks to the 70s. From 'Chocolat' there's
also a shared theme of uncertain parentage, and Kate Atkinson uses the name of
Effie as her heroine, as you did in 'Sleep, Pale Sister'. Both you and
Atkinson are also published by Doubleday. Are these shared themes just
coincidence, or do you and Kate Atkinson share a dialogue?
Joanne
Harris: I haven't read any Kate Atkinson apart from
"Behind the Scenes at the Museum", so it really is a coincidence if
there are similarities. Of course none of these themes is especially unusual,
and I think our styles are widely divergent enough for us to avoid treading on
each others' toes... I did meet Kate recently (she has been doing the same
book-signing/reading round), and compared to me she seemed very serious and
intense - I'm not sure she approved of my flippancy!
KPM:
One of the things that really struck me as true from 'Emotionally Weird' is
Professor Cousin's observation that at the heart of all drama lies a quest for
identity. But how far would you say that our geographical location shapes
our destiny? Why does Jay feel the need to run away to France? And
why does Joe need to reinforce his borders?
Joanne
Harris: I think geographical location shapes the
personality in that people behave in different ways according to where they are
and the characters of those around them. As for destiny, I'm not sure I believe
in such a thing. After all, you can always change who you are if you find you
don't like what you have become, and you can always move away if you find that
the place in which you live is having an adverse effect on you. Jay runs away
to France because he wants to reinvent himself, because this reinvention is so
much easier in a foreign place where he isn't known and where he feels
liberated of many of his inhibitions, and because to him France represents a
place where time, his career and his relationships can be suspended (as on an
extended holiday) and he can allow himself some time to examine his life from
the outside. As for Joe, he feels more and more threatened by the closing of
the railway and the growing development of his area. He knows that his time is
almost over and that the roots he has laid down over so many years are about to
be disturbed. His protection rituals are a means of persuading himself that he
can do something to stop the inevitable from happening, that he is still to
some extent in control. He is a man under siege, and behaves accordingly.
KPM:
One of my favourite scenes from 'Chocolat' is when Armande seems to recognize
Vianne and Pantoufle. What is the nature of Vianne's true identity?
Is she some sort of mythical figure from a fairy tale?
Joanne
Harris: Vianne is who you want her to be. You might see
her as an archetype or a mythical figure (I prefer to see her as the lone gunslinger
who blows into the town, has a showdown with the man in the black hat, then
moves on relentless), but on another level she is a perfectly real person with
real insecurities and a very human desire for love and acceptance. Her
qualities too - kindness, love, tolerance - are very human. She is not supposed
to be either a supernatural or a superhuman figure - everything she does exists
on this everyday level, and she does nothing which could not be done perfectly
well by anyone else.
KPM:
How much did the figure of John Ruskin influence 'Sleep, Pale
Sister'? Like Henry
Chester, he married an Effie too, didn't he?
Joanne
Harris: I did have Ruskin quite strongly in mind when I
wrote SPS, as well as a number of other Victorian writers and artists. I'm
fascinated by the amazing dual standards of Victorian morality - and endlessly
amused when well-meaning politicians talk about "returning to good old
Victorian values". Certainly a whole culture of institutionalized
paedophilia (disguised as idealism) amongst the Victorians has been modestly
glossed over by historians, as has their rather special attitude to sex,
reflected now in the enduring passion of the fashion industry for childlike,
waif-thin models. I wanted to talk about that to some extent, and to explore
what might happen if that ideal were actually to take an identity of its own.
KPM:
Jay Mackintosh has a great moment when he says what he really thinks about the
work produced by his creative writing class. What would your critique be
of modern English literature?
Joanne
Harris: I don't feel qualified to criticize anyone's
style or choice of subject matter.
My gripe is the feeling amongst some people that there is a
"right" approach and a "wrong" approach to telling stories,
that fiction is somehow a dirty word, and that happy endings are
unrealistic, naff or out of fashion. Stories are stories. There's nothing wrong
with writing fiction. It's all right to take fiction seriously, even if
it is unrealistic. I believe that people who think that to suffer for one's art
- and to inflict lengthy depictions of suffeering upon the reader - is the only
way to write are missing out on one of the basic truths of literature: that is,
it's supposed to be fun. Reading it and writing it. I'm not ashamed of enjoying
what I do, or reading what I enjoy. Even if it isn't great literature. Even the
space aliens and the giant apes. In fact, especially those ... ;-)
KPM:
You seem to have a great love of works of fantasy, but what do you think of the
artists behind those works, like Baum, Carroll, and the Pre-Raphaelites?
Many of them were flawed figures, and drug abusers. Why is it that
Henry Chester can only produce a critically acclaimed piece of art when he's
addicted to chloral hydrate?
Joanne Harris:
I've been told that most of the people I admire are either dead or very ill.
;-) Perhaps artists who work very intensely also have to feel with similar
intensity in order to maintain their creativity. Perhaps these artists felt
obliged to maintain an image for the public, and got caught up in it, or the
pressure of fame stressed them so badly that they turned to drugs. I do think
that there is a greater potential for madness and depression amongst artists
and writers anyway - maybe because of the level of introspection necessary for
creativity. Henry Chester is not truly creative until he discovers the dual
addictions of Marta the teenage prostitute and chloral hydrate - a barrier is
broken inside him, letting him express himself to the full. I don't think there
is a rule for this: people write (or paint, or create music) for all kinds of
reasons, in many cases as therapy or to escape from themselves. Sometimes the
escape is so complete that they never quite come back... In this case the art
would be a symptom of madness, an insight into the psyche.
KPM:
Dr. Francis Russell is the psychoanalyst in 'Sleep, Pale Sister',
upon whose word
Effie can be committed to an asylum. What's your view of
psychoanalysis? Why were there so many 'madwomen in the attic'?
Joanne
Harris: Well of course in Victorian times all women were
viewed as potentially unstable (the affliction of "hysteria" -
a uniquely female complaint - most often being cured by total
"hysterectomy") by virtue of their sex. Women were often under
tremendous pressure to conform to impossible (and often conflicting) ideals,
the intelligent ones were bored and frustrated because education was not really
available to them, they were physically misunderstood even by physiologists,
they were crippled by the corsets they had to wear and repressed in so many
ways that I'm surprised any of them were sane ;-) Nowadays we have progressed,
but not, I think as much as we would like to think. Psychoanalysis has come to
mean so many things, and takes so many forms that we are now getting a kind of
backlash - people finding names for problems that never existed before; people
"discovering" abuse in their past, false memory syndrome... Everyone,
it seems, now has an analyst. We can obtain counselling for anything which we
find mildly disturbing. We bare our psyches at the drop of a hat, often on
daytime TV. Perhaps some of it should have been left in the attic after all ;-)
KPM:
There seems to be quite a bit of the carnivalesque in your work.
What attracts you
and appals you about carnival?
Joanne
Harris: Carnivals are transient. It's their appeal and
also their sinister aspect.
The carnival in Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way
Comes" (great movie, fabulous book) is a typical example of that: lurid,
fascinating, eternal. It is bright lights and loud noises, tricks and con
artists, fantasy and horror. Carnivals make us uneasy because of what they
represent: the residual memory of blood sacrifice (it is after all from the
word "carne" that the term arises), of pagan celebration. And they
represent a loss of inhibition; carnival time is a time at which almost
anything is possible; reality is suspended. Many of the images of the carnival
are sinister; the huge papier-mache heads and the masks, the giant floats, the
larger-than-life characters, the comic-scary carnivals of halloween. And
carnival people are always on the move, they are gypsies,
aliens, attractive perhaps but not, on the whole, to be trusted. Carnival food
- the candyfloss, the fried chicken, the hott dogs - has a different taste to
other food, but in the end it often proves indigestible. This is true of
the entire show; the laughter is never far removed from hysteria; the children
on the big wheel scream in terror as well as excitement; behind the lights and
the colours lies a constant awareness of the dark.
KPM:
Tarot plays a large role in 'Sleep, Pale Sister', and Vianne Rocher never seems
quite able to leave the cards behind. What do you see in the cards?
Joanne Harris:
I think people see what they want to see. Jung would have said that people who
scry are really tapping their own subconscious to free the images which they
see there. I'm with him on that one ;-)
KPM:
'Chocolat' mentions the sins of the Catholic Church, for which the Pope has
recently apologised. Henry Chester is also a repressed Catholic. Why is
the church so demonised in your work? Are you merely obeying Gothic
conventions, where Catholicism equals sin, or do you have a deeper critique of
the church?
Joanne
Harris: I have nothing against the Catholic church or any
other. What I find offensive is intolerance of other beliefs. I also find it
difficult to accept any belief system based on self-hatred and self-blame, the
demonizing of pleasure, or the persecution of people of other faiths.
However I don't think that in any of my books I am making a point against the
Church itself. Instead I am criticizing particular individuals who use the
church as an excuse to pursue their own agenda of cruelty or dominance.
A religion is only made up of the people who follow it, and like
anything else, it can be a tool for good or for evil. Catholicism has been
both, in spades, throughout history, as have many other "crusading"
religions. I'm not a crusader. I don't discuss my own religion, nor would I
want to persuade anyone else to follow it. I think people should find their own
way, and let others do the same.
KPM:
In 'Chocolat' and 'Sleep, Pale Sister' the main battle seems to be that between
the masculine and the feminine, whether it's the break-up of the Muscats'
marriage, or the contrast between the masculine church, embodied by
Reynaud, or the feminine Pagan beliefs represented by Vianne. How much
drama do you see in the division between the sexes?
Joanne
Harris: It depends. There again, I never intended either
book to be perceived as a treatise on feminism. The division depends on the
individuals and their circumstances. SPS is more clear-cut in that it deals
with a society in which women are treated fundamentally differently to men, but
any division between the sexes in "Chocolat" is I think purely
coincidental. I was thinking very much about my French family when I wrote it,
which seems mostly comprised of strong women; I think that quite a few of them
must have crept into the book somehow...
KPM:
One of the focal points of drama in 'Chocolat' is the various reactions of the
people of Lansquenet to the arrival of the Gypsies. Britain also seems to a
very negative view of them at the moment. Why have the Gypsies always
attracted such bigotry?
Joanne
Harris: Because (like the carnival) they present an
ambivalent picture to people who are not transients; because they are very
different in the way they live and it is (regrettably) in human nature to
distrust what is different; because they have a bad reputation which dates back
hundreds of years which no-one has really bothered to investigate; because they
are easy victims, existing as they do outside a solid social context and
therefore to a great extent, outside the law. They do not conform to our norms
of education, child-rearing, religion, work or "settling down". It
doesn't matter that they have their own beliefs, families, social structure.
The crusading instinct to impose our way of life onto others isn't just a
religious one...
KPM:
In all your novels, there seem to be continuous themes, such as magic,
chocolate, and wasps. Why have you written so much about these horrid
insects?
Joanne
Harris: I hate them, and I find them fascinating. Unlike
bees they have a measure of independence from the swarm; they can sting
repeatedly, often out of what seems like sheer bad temper; they are carnivores
and can kill live prey for food. They are also very beautiful and disciplined
in the single-minded way they build and multiply; they are tiny but are capable
of inflicting great fear in spite of the fact that their sting is a relatively
harmless weapon to an adult human with no allergies. I have no problem with
bees (my grandfather kept them and I remember going out to the hives with only
a hat on to protect me, and never being stung), but I feel a quite irrational
terror of wasps. Like all irrational terrors, this has no real foundation or
explanation that I can discover. Perhaps I need more psychoanalysis ;-)
KPM:
The Victorians are often claimed to have invented childhood, and it's a theme
on which you seem to write a great deal. How important is childhood to
you?
Joanne
Harris: I often feel as if I have never left my childhood,
and that I never will.
Certainly I have more vivid recollections of that time than of any other, and I
am aware that most of what I am now was formed very early, and is at present
pretty immovable. I think that there are a lot of misconceptions about
childhood - the Victorian ideal of childhood as "a state of innocent
bliss" being one of them. It can be a very confusing time, when
unhappiness is felt more deeply than at any other, when all emotions are
enhanced. I think that many writers are able to access these early feelings and
memories as part of the creative process, which is why so many of them are so
preoccupied with childhood in all its aspects.
KPM: Are
there any drawbacks to being a successful writer? Jay Mackintosh
certainly seems to think so. Do you find it more difficult to
define yourself as an artist, to write what you want? Or are you
being marketed and promoted into the same mould each time?
Joanne
Harris: I'm lucky in that I have always written what I
wanted to write. Marketing and promotion are not my job (and I leave it to
those responsible with the greatest pleasure), or my area of interest. I can't
write to order, nor would I if I were able; there are much easier ways of
making money than writing, and if I didn't enjoy what I was doing so much I
would have stuck to my safe, solid, lucrative day job. The fact is that I love
what I do, but I am aware that the moment I begin to look upon it as a chore,
or at myself as a product, then I will be finished as a writer, and I will go
back to teaching without a qualm. My publisher knows it too, and knows better
than to pressure me in any way about what I do. As for being successful
(whatever that means), of course it feels fine, but what I really enjoy is not
the media attention, but the actual process of writing. The other stuff
is incidental; I've lived without it in the past (for ten years I was virtually
unread, after all), and could do so again. I know I'd
write whether I was being published or not. I'm addicted.
