Q&A with Lynne Truss

Recently, we were lucky enough to ask Lynne Truss a few questions about herself and her writing.  Lynne’s latest book, Get Her Off the Pitch!, is a hilarious chronicle of her strange journey through the world of sports journalism.  Author of the worldwide bestsellers Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Talk to the Hand, she is one of Britain’s best-loved comic writers.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m five foot nine. I’ve weighed the same for about five years, but every day I read the scales and say the same thing: “Oh, surely not.” I spend all my time writing and emailing. If I can’t get an internet connection, I panic. I text all day, or at least until all my texting friends drop from fatigue. I am in love with communication. The most tragic moment in literature for me is when that confessional note goes under that carpet in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I’ve just acquired a dog for the first time in my life, and he is bliss on little furry legs. His arrival has been an enormous surprise to my two aloof cats. They keep shooting glances at me that say, “How could you do this to us?” And I shrug and say, “Actually, you brought this on yourselves.”

What books have had a lasting impact on you?

Well, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, obviously. Looking back, I think I was unusual in how much comic writing I read when I was young. Books like 1066 and All That and How to be Topp. I remember borrowing A.P. Herbert’s Misleading Cases from the library at a very young age and working quite hard to find it amusing. I loved the American writer Betty MacDonald. I read Keith Waterhouse. But when you look at my own work, I think you can quite clearly detect the influence of D.H. Lawrence, Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, Mrs Oliphant, H. Ryder Haggard and of course that woman who wrote Milly Molly Mandy.

Why do you write?

It’s an inexplicable urge. It was a suppressed urge for a very long time, too: I was in my mid-thirties before I started writing fiction or drama, which I think explains the terribly urgent urgency of this urge. My ex-boyfriend still describes me as the only person he knows who goes on holiday just so that she can slave over a keyboard somewhere else.

As an author, what are you most proud of writing?

My novel Tennyson’s Gift. Written mostly on holiday, as it happens.

What is your biggest failure?

My novel Tennyson’s Gift. It was a critical success, but it didn’t sell. It’s umpteen years ago now (published in 1996), but I never got over the sense of dismay.

When you were a child, what did you think you would be when you grew up?

I think I always wanted to write, but for a long time it was obvious to me that I would happily settle for being a library assistant. The main thing about me is that I come from a working-class background; I was considerably exceeding expectations just by sitting A levels. And somehow I kept on doing it: after university, I got an interesting job in literary journalism; I started writing as a critic; I became a literary editor; I became a full-time writer. All the time, I’ve felt I was on extended reprieve from the dull job awaiting me. I still feel that today, if I’m honest.

If you could go anywhere in time for one day, where would you go and why?

Interestingly, I used to have a ready answer to this question. I used to be sure that I would go straight back to the late 1860s and witness Charles Dickens giving one of his dramatic readings of “Sikes and Nancy”, possibly in America. But I went off this idea quite smartly when it was incorporated into one of the very first plots in the revamped Doctor Who. It was a big shock, realising that someone else had the same idea (except for wanting to see Dickens in Cardiff). So I think what I’d really have to choose now would be to see my parents when they were young. It would be unbearable, of course; but it would be like having the mystery of one’s own personal universe unveiled. Annoyingly, they did that story on Doctor Who as well, I seem to remember. Heavens, I’m so obvious.

Do you like reading e-books?

I haven’t done it. I bought a Sony Reader for my niece at Christmas and she loves it. (I’m trying to sound helpful.)

Who are the five people, living or dead, you would invite to a party?

This is where we run up against my searing self-knowledge, I’m afraid. I make it a policy never to seek out people I admire, because I know they will find me a terrible bore and I can’t face the heart-break. But if I could invite them to a party and just watch through the banisters in my nightie, I suppose I’d like to see Alfred, Lord Tennyson in the same room as Bob Dylan, Caligula, Vermeer and the woman who wrote Milly Molly Mandy.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve just finished work on the third series of my radio comedy Inspector Steine, to be aired in September/October 2009 on Radio 4. It’s about the police in Brighton in the 1950s, with a terrific regular cast, and I’d like to write it for ever.

Get Her Off the Pitch! is the story of Lynne Truss’ foray into the very masculine and rather baffling world of sport.  Lynne spent four years as an unlikely sports writer for The Times. It was a job that took her around the world (via the most difficult journeys and least glamorous hotels) and introduced her to some of the greatest living sportsmen. It was published on October 1st by Fourth Estate.