GUY MANKOWSKI

Having lived in cities for many years, their uncompromising presence has loomed large in my writing. I’m conscious of the literary precedent of using the modern city as character, and it is one which is preoccupying me more and more recently. In London Fields, Martin Amis depicted London’s many layers- its grimy yet labyrinthine quality. In ‘How The Dead Live’ Will Self brilliantly captured the sense of absence in cities, what Milan Kundera called the sense that ‘life is elsewhere’, when he described a world in which the dead go to live in a suburb in Crouch End. Perhaps more evocatively for a fan of the 1930’s such as me, in The New York Trilogy Paul Auster used the genre of detective fiction as a metaphor for his characters existential unease and urban alienation. In the three narratives men were ostracized from the rat race while they undertook mysterious tasks for unknown benefactors. Auster’s characters were therefore placed in a position whereby they could dispassio...

I often feel like a bit of a fraud when people ask me who my favourite writers are. They seem to be a small, insular crowd which people don’t particularly associate with literary prowess. It seems slightly disingenuous to say that my greatest influences have been records. I’m always attracted to works in which the listener can be drawn in by three or four rich threads. For instance, in Siri Hustvedt’s wonderful novel What I Loved, I found myself enraptured by four or five circling themes that rose recurrently like distant riffs. The idea of faded romance, the way art reveals the psyche of its creator, the vertigo in trying to reign in someone who always remains unknowable, even to themselves. Giving the audience that room is something that in my own writing I’m always trying to achieve. Paul Auster has written eloquently about how he intends his books to ultimately give the reader room to find themselves in. It is perhaps just something I have just found it easier to do with recor...