Donna Tartt discusses The Goldfinch | Waterstones

ladies and gentlemen uh downstairs and in the cheap seats upstairs um welcome to this very special event uh tickets uh to hear Donna talk about her new novel was sold out in ours for each in these series of talks this really is Donna tart on tour it's a new phenomenon but sales for The Goldfinch are not anything less than phenomenal for Donna because it's a spectacular hit it's number one in the Sunday Times list and in various other lists too and this lovely eloquent author has been called everything from a precocious Sprite to an exotic classes classicist she's been described as a recluse but really she is not reclusive at all unless she's absolutely head down and writing when she was 21 an editor told her that no woman has ever written a successful novel from a male point of view well now Donna tart has written not one for male point of view but two hugely successful novels there's some brilliant passages that I know that you'd like to read and so do go ahead and for the people over there don't worry because after Donald's read the lectern goes away and you'll be able to see her so Donna do read well I'm going to read a bit from the end of the book but don't worry because it doesn't give anything away it's it's about the painting actually who knows why fabrizi has painted The Goldfinch at all tiny stand-alone Masterpiece unique of all its kind he was young celebrated he had important patrons although unfortunately almost none of the work he did for them survives you'd imagine him like the young Rembrandt flooded with grandiose commissions his Studios resplendent with jewels and battle axes goblets and Furs leopard skins and costume Armor All the power and sadness of Earthly things why this subject a lonely pet bird which was in no way characteristic of his age or time where animals featured mainly dead in in Sumptuous trophy pieces limp hairs and fish and fowl heaped high and Bound for table why does it seem so significant to me that the wall is plain no tapestry or hunting horns no stage decoration and that he took such care to inscribe his name and the year with such prominence since he can hardly have known or did he that 1654 the year he made the painting would also be the year of his death there's a shiver of premonition about it somehow as if perhaps he had an intermission intimation that this tiny mysterious piece would be one of the very few Works to outlive him the anomaly of it haunts me on every level why not something more typical why not a Seascape a landscape a history painting a commissioned portrait of some important person a low life scene of drinkers in a Tavern a bunch of tulips For Heaven's Sake rather than this lonely little captive chained to his perch who knows what fabrizius was trying to tell us by his choice of tiny subject his presentation of tiny subject and if what they say is true if every great painting really is a self-portrait what if anything is fabricsi is saying about himself a painter thought so surpassingly great by the greatest painters of his day who died so young that so long ago and about whom we know almost nothing about himself as a painter he's saying plenty his lines speak on their own sinewy Wings scratched pinned feather the speed of his brush is visible the sureness of his hand paint dashed thick and yet there are also half transparent passages rendered so lovingly alongside the Bold Pasto Strokes that there's tenderness in the contrast and even humor the under layer of paint is visible beneath the hairs of his brush he wants us to feel the Downy breast fluff the softness and texture of it the brittleness of the little claw curled about the brass perch but what does the painting say about fabricsius himself nothing about religious or romantic or familial devotion nothing about Civic awe or career ambition or respect for wealth and power there's only a tiny heartbeat and solitude bright sunny wall and a sense of No Escape time that doesn't move time that couldn't be called time and trapped in the heart of light the little prisoner unflinching I think of something I read about sergeant how in portraiture Sergeant always looked for the animal in the sitter a tendency that once I knew to look for it I saw everywhere in his work in the long foxy noses and pointed ears of Sergeant's heiresses in his rabbit toothed intellectuals in leonine Captains of Industry his plump owl-faced children and in this staunch little portrait it's hard not to see the human in the finch dignified vulnerable one prisoner looking at another but who knows what fabrizius intended there's not enough of his work left to even make a guess the bird looks out at us it's not idealized or humanized it's very much a bird watchful resigned there's no moral or story there's no resolution there's only a double Abyss between painter and imprisoned bird between the record he left of the bird and our experience of it centuries later and yes Scholars might care about the Innovative brushwork and use of light the historical influence and the unique significance in Dutch art but not me [Applause] now imagine there's possibly less than one percent of people in here who are starting their relationship with you with The Goldfinch and I think probably 99 plus percent started probably with the secret history of Lisa Quebec secret history and in a way it's interesting because every book you know obviously secret history came at this wonderful wonderful um kind of you know like a phenomenon then of course you had the little friend and then of course another 11 years so do you feel in a sense that there's a lovely sense of rewarding the patience of your readers I'm happy that people um wait and remember um I'm it it does seem a strange pattern and it's nothing that I ever set out to do but they take a long time to write I I'm I'm making a I write big book books but I'm painting a wall-sized mural with the brush the size of an eyelash I work very small but in big forms so that's why they take such a long time but um I I read that you said that you know authors or somebody saying the authors are always elsewhere does the idea come from in the first place but I know that the idea came from Amsterdam but before you even wrote the little friend it did time I spent in Amsterdam um from notebooks that I kept I keep notebooks all the time and I'm always writing things in the notebooks and most of what I write is I keep my notebooks very much in the sense of an artist's Sketchbook a hand a face a bottle of glass little things that don't fit together a tree branch just little bits and Bobs and some of it makes its way into it all right I write but sometimes if I can't catch something quickly enough I will draw it when when I first began writing when I was a child my I would make little books out of construction paper and they were as much drawn as written the drawing fell away over the years but but they they're disjointed pieces in the sense that an artist's Sketchbook is you know if you look through an artist's Sketchbook that you'll find fragments of this fragments of that and some of them will make their way into finished paintings and some of them won't but my notebooks are exactly this way and some of the end of the book about Amsterdam was written over 20 years ago written right around the time I finished the secret history when I was in Amsterdam over alongside and I never had any I didn't know it would fit into a finished book I mean it it might not have it might not have found a home but somehow years later it linked up with other ideas I I was very just I was very disturbed about the destruction of the great Buddhas at bamayan and why this exactly why this inspired me to tell the story that I I decided to tell I can't say but that was where I got the idea to write about an endangered piece of art about terrorism and about um it was it was so horrific the idea of these great Serene presences which had been there for centuries intentionally destroyed this was before 9 11. it was the pre-tremor of 9 11 it was the pre-shock the sort of shock that you have before the before the big earthquake and there's something very wrong in the fiber of reality just a horrible Shimmer of something very dark and and it it really stayed with me and somehow that fit together with with Holland with my love of Dutch painting also with a sort of dark creepy Park Avenue mood that I was interested in and by I mean spoiled but spoiled in the sense of airless and claustrophobic the so those three things sort of came together in a in a way I wasn't expecting but again writing uh for the second time uh from the perspective of a man a young boy Theo Decker so it was Theo a very early part of this story his voice was always his voice was always very much with me and it it differs from my own voice in some respects but it's it's not a million miles away from my own so and then of course the the Boris is is his Artful Dodger yes yes yes so you have these two characters and they're going on this chaotic Journey to make your way through that chaotic Journey when you're writing are you reading yourself at the same time I mean what comforts you what company is you when you're writing and there's certain things you read and certain things you wouldn't read there's nothing I wouldn't read necessarily um I tend to know when I'm writing all day I long for my book at the end of the day and I'm always very much looking forward to it that's my treat and so it's chosen very carefully I only read what I want to read and not what I feel I should but often what I want to read is something that's being plowed back into the book so a book that was never far from me while I was writing um writing this with Seymour's Live's Dutch painting which is a masterpiece of a book a study of study of Dutch painting but um I will also at the end of the night pick up a volume of poetry as sometimes that's that's a wonderful way to sort of cleanse your palate go to sleep reading James Merrill or actually even Ezra pound and go to sleep sort of dreaming of China and well you're a long time to dream over the piece but when we met you say something that really surprised me I mean you said that you'd had lots of great patches of writing brilliant patches but you had an eight-month detour and we really didn't get a chance to explore that very much now I'm interested in that because you also talk about the fact we were talking uh with your editor and slate about not showing work half done or like you know like a bird will be scared from the nest if someone comes and looks in um that eight month detour was that helped by anyone but you I mean what happened what was what happened I had to go through this long passage before I could get to the place I needed to be um I mean I would imagine as a scientist or an inventor works I mean sometimes you have to fail you have to fail you have to fail several times before and you have to go through the failures before you see where you're meant to go but it it all worked it was a part it was a part in the middle of the book that ended up being not in the book at all but the eight months I spent writing it were not wasted in any sense because I got to know the characters much better and was able to start afresh and to really know and to have a very clear sight of the end so yes exactly The Detour The Detour was helpful in a way but if an editor had seen the book at that stage and said I wouldn't really like that I wouldn't have shown it to I I knew it wasn't right I wouldn't have shown it to it it wasn't right when you were writing it but you had to go I knew I knew it wasn't right and um I knew that well there's a choice you have a choice to whether to keep plunging forward or to and I kept plunging forward for a long time and trying to fix it trying to fix it trying to fix it and finally it became apparent to me in the trying to fix it what I needed to do was not which was not what I had been doing I saw it but you know you you I had to go through that to arrive where anything but it may not go to waste it could be for another book no it won't be for another book it's it's all in this one it's all in this one actually the the work it's it's invisible underpinning in this book um there was uh once in this book a much more complicated subplot about Platt Platt is a more a fairly mysterious figure in this book and we don't know why he got in trouble at school and that's a little bit left that's that's a little bit a little bit left but but it was at one time it played more into the into the book um you mentioned where claustrophobia there and you you you are great at um particularly at creating different atmospheres so you have the atmosphere obviously in hobie's work room which is dark and a bit dank but there is a sort of Love there and then you create the atmosphere of The Barbers uh which is this apparently Rosie family which you really it comes crashing down around them and of course you've also got the whole atmosphere of the Badlands of Las Vegas The Barbers are interesting character because you also said that you don't particularly like to write about families in that sense but The Barbers are just that family aren't they they're that family that you see on Park Avenue you think everything's fantastic and they need to realize everything's hellish yes they are yes very perfect looking on the outside except for Andy who's um who's Theo's friend who's sort of the the misfit child the one that doesn't quite the funny looking one the one that doesn't quite fit in the family photograph and he is um in some way Theo by becoming Andy's friend Andy the the vulnerable child becomes taken into the family by by befriending the vulnerable and it gives him a life raft for a little bit of time yes yes so Theo himself you wanted to create a character who finds himself in total chaos through no fault of his own and navigates his life as best he can and it made me think about how many people actually have to go through that to go through hell in their lives to get to the other and you talk a lot at the end about what you know you know what if life is just bad you know what if it's not all perfect for everybody what if it never can be it doesn't mean it's any less worth living and I I I think it was wonderful the way you had him come to an understanding of his own shortcomings it was amazing well it's something that we all have to come to an understanding of I think at a certain age I think we have to come to terms with what we've done and what we haven't done and what we've left undone and to to and not not to wallow in guilt about it to to sort of to sort of proceed and to you know sometimes what we what we've done is the the only thing that we can because in the beginning of course when he is in Amsterdam and he talks about you know it was his fault of course he was a child and it's all also about personal responsibility and and where your moral compass comes from and it seems moral compass and very much come from his mother but you see is actually more like his father well we don't always get to choose the parent that to be like the parent that we love you know and that was actually something that I wanted to do in the book is to have him without realizing it himself maybe the reader realizing it a bit before he did that he's becoming actually more like his father than he thinks when you you the meticulous amount of research that goes in which I it seems to me that you love that I mean oh I delay that process the book could be 20 years long if you could sit in the New York Public Library I loved that part I love that part but it I I thought how could you I mean I know this is the work of the imagination of course but you know I I was astonished that so much you got from a really good suffering of the net you can get yes I thought you actually had to make that I mean the the visceral quality of that bus Journey from Las Vegas to New York I printed out a bus schedule I found it I've I found it online um yes I I printed out a bus schedule uh looked up the names and Google Earth gave me a picture of all all the towns and there it was yeah yeah so yes the internet's a wonderful thing um yeah and and but you did actually do other levels of research so for example when it came to doing things like you know wood turning and cutting and what we call it cutting and shutting a car but what who we actually did was cut and Shop Furniture um you'd research that but you did look at some woodworking stuff didn't you I did but not as much as you'd think it's not really not as much as you'd think I mean I it was mostly from reading books about furniture I think of that there's a great um Nabokov for some reason and I don't know why he cut it from his novel penin but there was a scene in which Professor penin is hospitalized and he teaches himself how to drive a car by manipulating the levers of his Hospital cot and I'm kind of I'm kind of that person I can teach myself anything from a book I can you know my house yes I need lots of things fixed well no I can I can I can sit there with the instruction manual and figure out how how to do it I that's I it's funny you should talk about in The Book of because there's an interview that you did in 1992 where you talked about the fact that you're reading Despair and that it was about the idea of a perfect murder now I mean there's no point in this I'm sure you've all read the Goldfish so the point is that there is a kind of feel the murder is pretty perfect isn't it it is perfect but it's not I mean in a way the he doesn't eat in a way I think that when that murder happens that that there's so much else going on he's there's so many other immediate clear present dangers and his own life is in danger and he doesn't really care about that anymore his own life means nothing to him so the life of this other person really means nothing to him either he's he's his his own life is gone he's just out he's out of sight for sure he's he's often another country One Way Ticket No Return yeah but he's not doomed he thinks he is when you write as well as doing um little phrases and like little bits of string that you want to keep because you're not quite sure what you're going to do with them um you will write anywhere now you see that really surprised me that you you're right on a bus you're right wherever you can on at a table at lunch today actually doing the conversation at lunch always pulling out my notebook it's very it feels very strange not to have it on me now but yeah I I have yeah a tiny little and I keep them and and you write the New York Public Library and you write in the park and you write anywhere and it gives a life because you know all the early press about you was that you know you were very secretive and that you were they are reclusive and it seems that you're not where are you more like that than you are now you seem you know incredibly kind of at ease with the world well the thing I got well I've always been kind of a Hermit about town I mean um the um the reclusive tag I think came only because I don't do a lot of literary things this is my first uh public reading in London for a decade for 11 years actually this is the first time I've appeared in London in public for 11 years and I've been here lots of times and done lots of things but I haven't done anything on stage I so I don't know does that make me reclusive I mean I I I think so I think you know not at all and I think that what you were saying was that you know you're you you you you're right in the Bible but when you're writing you do hunker down when when I'm when I'm writing seriously yeah I don't see I I don't see a lot of people I don't like to go out at night I sometimes even the consciousness of having a social engagement in the evening will sort of wreck my day's writing I need to know that if it's going well that I don't have to stop at six o'clock and get dressed and go somewhere if I if I'm really on a roll I don't want to don't want to see people don't want to answer the phone but when we were in New York it was Serendipity that we ended up in the room um on the Lafayette hotel where you had written the book for several months so had you taken a place on the Lower East Side at least in Barry with the express intention of feeling where you were when you're writing the sections of the boot that were to do with Albion to do with woodworking or was it just that you wanted to be in New York for that period of time anyway or it had been a particularly conscious decision to write there well all of the above I love that neighborhood it's where I first lived when I moved to New York and always felt very happy there and I was I don't know I I love that neighborhood and I love New York because I love working in New York I've always people say New York is not a good place to work but for me it's always been an excellent place to work because you can walk around and think and anytime you're lost for a character or a setting all you have to do is you know walk outside and and and look around and there it is what you need and come back home and there you are yeah because you actually have spent a lot of time in New York you were a class before one of the various things was that you were a southern writer and you practically started a whole new wave of Southern writing on your own Southern writing yes of course because you know obviously a little friend but then there was Bennington and now there's New York and so forth so you don't there's a southern sensibility is only there in particular book or do you feel you bring that to to your writing generally and what would that be I bring any kind of Southern sensibility to my work it's in it's in a much more deeply ingrained sense of Southerners are great Raconteurs they're great storytellers I grew up hearing stories told I grew up being read to hearing magnificent crazy preachers and wonderful strange oratory and somehow that worked its way into my Consciousness I mean the King James Bible is there and all sorts of um bizarre dialect and um because you grew around a lot of ants and great ants oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so you would hear stories from them and so forth I would hear stories from them and they had their own private language which they only spoke among themselves really yes which is called which meant sister in dutta and yes so I would they were very funny and they they spoke it to themselves and they spoke it to children and they spoke it to cats um and no one else could understand it and they wouldn't teach you you just had to pick up I I I I knew words of it I couldn't string sentences of it together yeah but I but but yes growing up and hearing all sorts of um many different kinds of talk and um but more than that a sense of Storytelling constant storytelling constant storytelling and like an oral tradition or reading as well yes yes yes yes yes so I mean because obviously people know that you love Stevenson but Dickens as well for this story as well you said that Dickens was a huge influence when it came to The Goldfinch he was but Stevenson was for this too um Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde I read in that very very formative period of childhood when you're being formed and you don't even know it I was about 14 years old and I read that for the first time and just there's something of it in every book I've ever written um sort of guilt alienation questions of self versus Persona doubleness he was talking about things in questions of surface I mean the way that the way that is told you see perfect Dr Jekyll on the outside and then you find his notebook and you find out what's going on on the inside so definitely that was that was a huge influence as as as well and but yes I love Dickens first lasted Center I mean I love him Oliver Twist was the first Dickens I ever read it was read to me and um David Copperfield Great Expectations and I didn't read the I mean I I felt really lucky actually saving some of them for being I couldn't understand them I mean I I I I started little Dart many times in childhood and there was always a part when it would get to the myrtles that I would get bored and I didn't understand what was going on and I would stop reading it but I um but I loved it so much I mean Dickens is so complex and his the way that he treats of life is just there's nothing that Dickens doesn't do well as a writer he and in terms of technique there's nothing he doesn't do well suspend he's a master at um character he constructs a beautiful sentence beautiful metaphor he's amazing in terms of constructing plot he's the only person only writer in human history who could have a character spontaneously combust he has a character spontaneously human combust in Bleak House and you believe it and he makes you believe it you know that's really something that is that is craftsmanship that is you know these well when you go to Edinburgh you'll have to go to Harriet Road to see one of Stevenson's houses then go to the south side of the city to see where he also lived for a while he were jotting things out at lunch today does that mean you're on your way for something are you still in the throes of enjoying this with The Goldfinch I started writing um The Goldfinch when I was on tour for the secret history when I was in Amsterdam on tour for the secret history being on tour I'm not able to write really uh but I'm in new places meeting new people things occur to me it's a wonderful the time after a book is actually sort of a great sort of open free time where new ideas Russian and you don't know what's going to hit you or when so it's an exciting time and yeah and no pressure from anyone no pressure from Publishers no pressure for Asian Binkies here no pressure no pressure to write quickly no pressure well it doesn't doesn't work that well for me I've tried to write more more quickly but it it it it's I don't enjoy doing it it's not fun and it's and I really do truly believe if there's no fun for the writer there's no fun for the reader if it's not fun for me to write it it's not fun for you to read but it's certainly been fun so far thank you

Channel: Waterstones

Views: 289,324

Keywords: Books, eBooks, bestsellers, Waterstones, Waterstones.com, interview, Donna Tartt, Kirsty Wark, exclusive, event, London, The Goldfinch, The Secret History (Book), The Little Friend, reading

Id: RPgPixshbXo

Length: 31min 5sec (1865 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 15 2014