Author interview: ‘Writing is exploration, as opposed to experiment’

Adrian Duncan's freestyle approach to writing is very much antithetical to that of his previous job as a structural engineer

Adrian Duncan: 'When you’re an engineer, you have to deduce and plan everything because you don’t want mistakes, whereas in art, mistakes aren’t a problem.'

• The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth
• Adrian Duncan
• Tuskar Rock, €14.99

The dream of abandoning the ‘good pensionable job’ to write a novel or take up a paint brush can often wither in the face of the insecurity that goes hand-in-hand with the artistic life.

But when the epiphany came for former structural engineer Adrian Duncan, it couldn’t be ignored.

“I had been working on a building for maybe two to three years, and I was walking around it near the very end, looking at all the different joints that I had designed for each floor, which were being covered over.

“By the end of the job, I felt anyone could have done this, my role in this is so unimportant, it disappears.

“For most engineers, that’s not a problem, you just do your job and you leave. For me, it didn’t seem to be enough. 

“I found it slightly deflating, the idea that all of the thought, effort and human interaction that you had put into a project essentially disappeared once the building changed hands.”

Duncan decided to give up his career to study art at Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire, while also taking a creative writing class in the evenings. He later went on to do a masters in art in the contemporary world at the National College of Art and Design.

I had been interested in art for years, and I wanted to become better at drawing.

“When I went to art college, I learned a completely different way of drawing — and I learned a completely different way of thinking. So the whole world opened up in a very different way to me.”

Duncan also brought this different way of thinking to his work as a writer. His critically acclaimed debut novel Love Notes from a German Building Site channelled his experience in construction into a philosophical meditation on language, memory and exile.

His novels A Sabbatical in Leipzig and The Geometer Lobachevsky, his short story collection Midfield Dynamo and his non-fiction work Little Republics: The Story of Bungalow Bliss built on his reputation as a distinctive and original literary voice, and he has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes and awards.

His new book, The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth, is a worthy addition to his catalogue.

It is the story of John, a shy stonemason who finds love with academic Bernadette while working on a sculptural project in a fictional European city. 

When he is asked to pray for a good friend who is dying back home, it triggers a crisis, his delirious tour of Bologna’s churches mirroring his late mother’s religious visions in his youth.

Duncan’s approach to the book was inspired by real-life objects, including a sculpture of 19th century German literary couple, Bettina and Achim von Arnim, near his home in Berlin, and the ancient Greek statue known as Kritios Boy.

“Objects are very important, it’s always where I start,” says Duncan.

Even if I’m working on a film, I start with an object as opposed to an idea.

When it comes to writing, his freestyle approach is very much antithetical to that of his previous job.

“When you’re an engineer, you have to deduce and plan everything because you don’t want mistakes, whereas in art, mistakes aren’t a problem.

“Problems aren’t a problem — in fact, you want them. And so I just made this leap of faith early in my writing career when I said I’m not going to plan anything.

“When I sit down to write, I have no idea where it’s going, which is a very strange thing to do at first. Now it’s completely normal.”

Duncan says he has no interest in directing the reader in any way or eliciting a particular feeling. 

Like a mosaic, the pieces gradually come together and the whole eventually comes into view to hugely satisfying effect.

“What I’m most interested in is that the reader is actively putting it together themselves.

“My agent, Marianne Gunn O’Connor, put it perfectly to me recently. She was reading another book that I’ve written, and she said that the better we get to know the contours of the characters’ thoughts, the more we care about them.

“But I know by doing it in this way that sometimes you run the risk that some readers won’t connect, and that’s fine as well.”

Work described as 'experimental'

This may explain why his work is often referred to as “experimental”. He laughs heartily when I ask if this is another way of saying his books are difficult. 

“Yeah, I think experimental is only experimental relative to what’s dominant in the industry.

“It’s not like I am going ‘oh, I’m going to write an experimental work’, because that would suggest that I know all of the different forms or tropes, and I don’t.

“I don’t read very much contemporary literature either, so I’m not even up to date in terms of what’s going on in that world.

“I understand why people use the term experimental but the writing is exploration, as opposed to experiment.”

Duncan moved to Berlin around 2013: “Because we had no money. It was as simple as that. The recession just kicked the shit out of us, basically.”

He returns home often, but is geographically removed from the Irish literary scene. His work is also clearly influenced by a European tradition.

“I obviously consider myself an Irish writer, but the German language is an important part of the books, particularly 'Love Notes'.

“I don’t write in German or anything like that but because it’s a daily struggle with being understood and understanding, it’s very proximate to my life.

“So to a certain degree, there is a European aspect to my writing because of these linguistic distances.”

This contrast between the Irish and European experience in relation to Catholicism is also something that Duncan wanted to explore, an interest which is reflected in the second half of the book when John, in an altered state, wanders through the vast and ornate basilicas of Bologna.

“I became really interested in the differences between Irish Catholicism, in terms of what it looks like, and Italian Catholicism — how the outer reaches of the empire are less rich in terms of their iconography, compared to the inner reaches of the empire, where there is unbelievable time and money invested.

“They leave the churches open really late in Bologna, and I just found it unbelievable, this experience of walking off the street straight into an absolutely giant, silent church.

“And so that feeling stuck with me, because it made me completely rethink the idea of a threshold, the idea of religious experience, even for someone who is pretty atheistic.”

With his growing and intriguing body of work, it could be said that Duncan is fulfilling his wish to make a tangible creative contribution. 

I presume he doesn’t regret his decision to leave a steady job for the uncertainty of artistic life.

“No, I don’t. You probably work 10 times harder when you are connected to your work but then it isn’t really work any more in the sense of how you understood it before.

“I feel very lucky because an awful lot of people, and I was one of them for a long time, don’t even know what they want to do, never mind how to pursue it.”