Q&A with Patrick Gale

We recently had the chance to ask Patrick Gale a few questions about himself and his writing. Patrick is the author of, among other titles, The Whole Day Through and Notes from an Exhibition. His fantastic new collection of short stories, Gentleman’s Relish, is due out today from Fourth Estate.

Tell us a little bit about yourself

I’m the last novelist in England, or the first, if you’re sailing from across the Atlantic. I’m typing this at my desk, looking over our garden and barely resisting the temptation to get out there and start deadheading.

What books have had a lasting impact on you?

Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy and Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea for showing me what was possible. Armistead Maupin’s Tales from the City and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming Pool Library for showing me anything is permitted in fiction if you do it with style and charm. Saki and Chekhov’s short stories for showing how much can be achieved in a tiny space.

Why do you write?

Compulsion. Also I think it feeds my profound curiosity about people’s lives. If I didn’t write I think I’d have to be a priest or a psychotherapist, probably the latter as it pays better and involves less silliness.

As an author, what are you most proud (or embarrassed) of writing?

I’m pretty proud of writing Rough Music. Although it was Notes From an Exhibition that won me a much bigger audience I think the earlier novel was a technical breakthrough for me. And it suddenly seemed to grant me permission to stop smiling, as a writer, and go into the dark places.

What is your biggest failure?

Not counting my earliest novels, which were crazily under written because I was so impatient, I’d say my Little Bits of Baby and The Cat Sanctuary. They’re not failures, exactly, and they each have a loyal following, but I had a pretty lazy editor at the time who was content with far less than I know I was capable of. I respond well to pushing and he didn’t push me nearly enough. They’re both stories that deal with very dark themes within a comic framework and if I wrote them now I know I’d go far deeper into those dark areas. In particular I’d listen more closely to what the female characters were trying to tell me rather than imprisoning them in my (very male) plotting. I think a female editor would have stood up for the female characters as my male editor didn’t.

When you were a kid, what did you think were you going to be when you grew up?

When I was really really small I had secret dreams of being a ballet dancer. Then I settled on music – I’d like to have been a cellist. I still play the cello but it’s a constant source of guilt that I didn’t threw it over for acting once I was a student.

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

I’d go to Clapham Station on the day Oscar Wilde was made to change trains there on his way to Reading Prison so I could push through the crowd of spitters and hecklers to slip him a letter reassuing him that his words would live on and his love be legalised and celebrated.

Do you like reading e-books?

I don’t know. I’ve never tried. But I love new technology so it’s probably only a matter of time. However I’m also deeply in love with books as things, with peculiar smells and creases and stains. I can’t imagine snatching an e reader from a burning house the way I can a book.

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

Francis Poulenc, Colette, Byron, George Cukor and Ann Tyler. But god alone knows what I’d feed them.

What are you working on at the moment?

A new novel is bubbling up nicely. It’s dark and fairly rambling at the moment, about the West Cornwall family of a very good priest who’s a very poor father.