Hugo Hamilton: 'One of the problems for novelists now is that TV series are so good'
Hugo Hamilton.
Hugo Hamilton, 68, grew up in Dublin. His childhood memoir The Speckled People (2003) is a classic of the genre. It tells the story of a confused young boy, the son of a German mother and an ardent nationalist father who forbade his children to speak English at home; only Irish and German were allowed. His new novel The Pages is published by Fourth Estate.
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass is a formative book in my imagination. I read it in German. It was like nothing else I’d read before. I loved his way of dealing with the Nazi period and this slightly roguish magic realism that he had. He almost floated on top of the of the whole darkness of the time in that childhood voice – the little drummer boy who can't grow up. It was such an extraordinary metaphor for a time in Germany that became completely stunted and failed to progress. It still stays with me – one of those inventive novels that look at history with a slight ironic touch.
There was a crisis in fiction in Germany after the Nazi period where the German language had to be reinvented. There were extraordinary writers; in particular I found Thomas Bernhard very exciting. He took on this middle European way of doing fiction where there was no plot at all. It's almost an operatic approach where the language really counts. In his book The Lime Works, for example, a man and wife are stuck in this building. Nothing really happens except that he's trying to write a book, but he never gets around to it because there are too many distractions. Just when he’s getting down to writing the book, somebody starts chopping wood outside and that's the end of it – another day lost. It’s a very funny kind of book, a bit like Samuel Beckett.
Irish writers are wonderful because there’s a storytelling tradition in Ireland and also in the English-speaking world. It’s like the American way where everything is a story. Characters have a goal or a journey. Somebody is trying to get somewhere. Somebody has a problem. Whereas very often in these crazy European books, it's an intellectual problem. Like not being able to write a book because the central character spent too long at breakfast. That’s it – his day is ruined. He can't work. It's the type of narrative that's very rare in Anglo-American literature. I'm hoping that I've managed to do both in my fiction.
There’s a current wave of women writers in Ireland, some fantastic writing going on from a completely new viewpoint. I particularly loved Acts of Desperation recently by Megan Nolan. It’s this wonderful viewpoint by a woman about sex and relationships. It’s almost like this character uses her own body as a site of revenge on her untrue boyfriend. I really admire that novel. It's very well written. Only a woman could write it. It makes it all the more interesting.
Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme by Frank McGuinness is one of those absolutely extraordinary plays. It broke all the moulds. It brought out a wonderful gay element in the theatre that was never there before. I remember going to see the first production at The Peacock. Even the style of direction was quite a revelation.
Tom Murphy was another great playwright. His women characters are very strong. The whole catastrophe of Irish life that he described. Irish people laughing at each other’s misfortune. People saying: “I can laugh better than you.” His ideas were so eccentric. He appealed to me because I see myself as a quite an eccentric writer. I love the danger in some of his writing. It's close to anarchy. That's something that appeals to me in writers.
The Lives of Others is one of the standout movies I’ve seen. It’s about East Germany folding up and people spying on this couple. It was such a cleverly designed film. I like that voyeurism of state surveillance in the GDR and how they were such experts on human weakness. They recruited people because they were weak. It was a profound film about that time in history and how one man negotiates his way through that by trying to cheat on the security system from the inside.
One of the problems for novelists now is that TV series are so good. I absolutely loved Peaky Blinders. I watched it three times. I thought maybe I should give up writing now because Peaky Blinders does everything a novelist can do. Cillian Murphy must be the one of the most brilliant actors ever. Those TV series have brought the novel into a different place. It's a bit like the effect photography had on art. It made art do something different. It led to a period of abstract art. I think that's what's going to happen now with novels. What's the point in telling a story? Netflix can do that. Where the novel has the edge is that you're inviting the reader inside the imagination. It’s a more intellectual form.
I grew up intellectually speaking with this German artist called Joseph Beuys. He came to Ireland at one point. He was an intriguing figure. He was a pilot. He was injured during the war. He was brought back to life on the outskirts of Europe – in a remote place – and kept alive with felt and fat. Felt became the centre of his art. He made a felt suit for himself. His exhibits included bits of felt. When he came to Ireland he made a sod of butter – like a sod of turf, but it was made out of butter. He was a sort of dissident artist from the 1960s.
The thing was that when he came to Ireland, we matched him for eccentricity. I don't think he completely got the hang of Ireland because we were too eccentric for him. He was very interested in nature and ecology. He even went up to try and solve the northern problem in the ’70s. He drew the solution for Northern Ireland out on chalk blackboards. Very tellingly the chalk blackboards went missing. Somebody stole them. So the northern problem was never solved.
