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Author InterviewsVictorian Melodrama without the MelodramaC. P. Farley, Powells.com
Michel Faber's second novel has been inciting critics on both sides of the Atlantic to inspired feats of hyperbole. Time magazine has called it The story centers on Sugar, a savvy Victorian prostitute determined to find a way out of the gutter, and William Rackham, a pompous perfume baron she pegs as her ticket out. There's also William's mad wife, Agnes, and neglected daughter, Sophie, as well as a small handful of supporting characters. But that's more or less it for Faber's characters. One of the novel's remarkable feats is that Faber not only vise grips his reader's attention - for over 800 pages - with such a small cast, but that he does so without relying on the tried and true narrative tricks of the Victorian pot-boiler. The true measure of Faber's achievement is that few readers seem to notice how little actually happens in the book. Sure, he throws in enough graphic sex to make Dickens blush. But surprisingly, slyly, what keeps the pages flying like a Clancy novel is Faber's intimate exploration of his characters' interior lives. Michel Faber established his reputation as a formidable literary talent on the basis of a celebrated debut story collection, Some Rain Must Fall, and a wildly imaginative first novel, Under the Skin. However, in scale, The Crimson Petal and the White is so much larger, and in vision, so much grander, the immense acclaim of Faber's second novel has taken even his many fans by surprise. Perhaps the only one who knew to expect such a book from Faber was his wife Eva, who worked closely with him during the writing as both reader and critic. Eva accompanied Michel on his American tour and sat in on the following interview.
Michel Faber: Thank you. It's just very bemusing for me because I never expected to be published in my lifetime. So the idea that not only are there readers, but there're people walking into every bookstore in the USA saying I want that book. That's just unbelievable. Farley: It's very unusual for a writer to say that they hadn't expected to be published in their life. You've been working on this for something like twenty years, right? Why would you spend so much time on something and put so much into it if you're not expecting to be published? Faber: I've always had this sense that somewhere up there was this God of Literature that reads your stuff and either says, Yeah, that will do, or No, that's not good enough. And I was really writing for that God of Literature, which, I guess, is an external embodiment of your own standards. But it really did feel as if there was some agency out there that reads good books and tells you whether you've done a sufficiently good job. I had no sense of reaching readers at all, real human beings. Eva: By the time you wrote the last draft, you were interested in real readers. You had changed by then, because we had lots of arguments and debates about it over the years. I think the third draft was definitely changed in many ways so that it would be particularly involving for the reader. Faber: Yes. When I first met Eva I was so devoted to this idea of writing only for oneself, or for the God of Literature, or however you want to put that, that quite a lot of my work was not very kind to the reader. And Eva, partly because she was a teacher, is very aware of what people can take in and what they can't. She's very interested in inclusion and helping people get access to things that they might be just below being able to grasp. And as a result of a lot of conversations and arguments that we had... Eva: ...always until 4:00 in the morning. Then I had to get up and go to work. But it paid off. Farley: What did you talk about? Eva: Different things. We talked philosophically about what art is for....There are a lot of debates about what art is for, whether one writes for oneself or the public. Faber: This whole question of whether a work of art has intrinsic merit if nobody sees it, if nobody hears it, if nobody reads it....We also talked about the specifics, the nitty gritty of each piece of work, of each scene—how good it was, how to change it, and so on. In a work like The Crimson Petal, Eva would say, "Look, it's been a long time since the reader had anything vivid to look at, or since there was anything for them to be emotionally involved with. It's getting a bit dry here." Or, you know, "You've got a lot of stuff going on here, perhaps it needs to be a bit simpler." Just the nitty gritty of analysis. Farley: And when you talked about questions of what the work should be for, did you come up with any answers? Eva: There was a subtle shift in your thinking eventually, wasn't there? Farley: You've mentioned elsewhere that when you were younger, you had a more cynical attitude toward your work. Faber: Because I've given a number of interviews now, I'm very wary of giving a spiel. I hate reading interviews with authors where I can tell that they've done this many times before, and they've got their little speech prepared. Eva: You became more generous, more empathetic towards the reader in my opinion. You don't agree? Faber: I think I became more generous and more empathetic all together, and that includes the reader and it includes the characters. I think in the first version of the book I saw the characters very much as tools, as puppets. Because I'm a good writer I was able to make them credible, to give them an aura of being human. Whereas, if I'd been a less talented writer, they would have been ciphers or chess pieces. But deep down they really were still puppets of a certain very dark, negative, deterministic worldview. I think in this last version, it really did feel as if I was giving them free will, as if I was allowing them their humanity, and I was sort of watching to see what they would do with it. And in the final version of The Crimson Petal I honestly didn't know if Sugar would survive. It wasn't 'til I was approaching the end that I realized that she could make it. Farley: It seemed very plausible to me, as a reader. Sugar seemed resourceful, so I assumed she'd work it out somehow. Faber: But one of the things that made the original book powerful is that this person who seemed as if they'd make it and who was so resourceful gets assassinated by fate, basically. Then, at the end of the first version, once she was dead, you could go back through the book and see all the clues that were leading up to her death and that were giving little presentiments of that fate. Eva: He developed more humility, I think. He became a greater writer. More humble and more sure, which is quite amazing. I'm just staggered by Michel's courage. The fact that he was prepared to unravel his entire worldview for the third version of the book, and to actually say he was wrong about many things. I mean, the whole book could have fallen apart. Farley: One thing that interested me was that the book seemed such a strange hybrid between the Victorian and the contemporary. For example, in many ways the elements of the story, the characters, the setting, and so on, are very Victorian. And yet the plot isn't really intricate or convoluted enough for a proper Victorian novel. Faber: Again, in the original version, there were outrageous coincidences. Like, in the original version, Mrs. Castaway was William's mother. She was the woman who was thrown out of the Rackham household for having an affair and then, with no other options, became a prostitute and then a madam. So, in effect, William and Sugar were having incestuous, half-brother and -sister relations. These sorts of things are very Victorian. They're very contrived. Farley: So the first draft of the novel was more Victorian than the third. Faber: Absolutely. By the final version, I had the bones of that Victorian architecture still in place, but I had allowed it to develop in a much more organic way, in the way that more modern novels would tend to. So that's why she was called Mrs. Castaway. Farley: I wondered about that. The name seemed very purposeful, but the purpose wasn't clear. Faber: There were other things like that, as well, but I think that level of contrivance is an alienating factor for modern readers. I wanted just enough Victorian architecture for people to feel that they could get swept away in this traditional narrative and to trust that they were going to be shown a good time. Farley: Yes, it felt like a melodrama without the melodrama. Faber: That's a really good way of putting it. I really like that phrase. There are, of course, incidents of very, very intense drama in the book, but I think there are in all our lives. Farley: But why did you want to write about the Victorian period in the first place? I'm curious because it seems that at this particular point in time there are a many novels being written that are set in the Victorian period. Faber: There are a lot coming out now. But of course I wrote this book originally during the early eighties. Farley: Well, what drew you to that period in the eighties? Faber: I was studying the Victorian era at University. And I loved it. I did a six-month seminar on the works of Dickens, and I read most of the books Dickens wrote and loved them. I also did a seminar called 19th Century Literature and Thought, which was Freud, Nietzsche, Macauley, Disraeli, etc. So I was very immersed in the period as a student. And, I don't know if this is so much true now, but in the eighties there was a sort of critical consensus that good writing was stripped down and spare, that you shouldn't have adverbs and that, you know, you should cut down on your adjectives. Farley: You've called it the "tyranny of American spare writing." Faber: Well, I think each story knows how it needs or wants to be told. And, I think it's always unfortunate when any fashion becomes dominant. I think the same is true in music. It's a bit like the 1980s, when everybody was using a particular kind of drum sound, regardless of the feel of the music. So I guess I felt that if I wrote a Victorian novel, people would be more forgiving of that kind of very fully described, richly evoked, leisurely prose than if I used that kind of prose in a book set in the modern day. Eva: And, it's got a lot to do, I think, with how you see the 19th century. Faber: Yes. When I was younger, I was extremely cynical, and I was attracted to satire. I wrote a lot of stuff that was satirical, and I read a lot of satire. I think that when you have too much flippancy, too much cynicism, you end up discrediting the very notion of sincerity, the very notion of passion and idealism, because you start to think that everything's rotten underneath. And, that notion of everything being rotten underneath really fitted in with my alienated worldview when I was a young man. I tend to think we've reached a stage now as a culture where we've had enough cynicism; we've had enough flippancy; and we really need idealism and sincerity. The Victorians, despite having this reputation for pompousness and hypocrisy, were actually tremendously zealous reformers. They passionately believed that society could be improved. That's why I treat Henry Rackham and Emmeline Fox with such respect: because I think we could use that kind of spirit more. Farley: You sound a bit tired of cynicism. Faber: I think that kind of cynicism is essentially adolescent, and a lot of our culture has become very adolescent. All movies, basically, are targeting adolescents; all fashions are modeled on the look that looks best on adolescents. There is a kind of bogus rebellion, which is in fact marketed and controlled rebelling—which, again, is very adolescent. And I think anything that offers a vision that can be more grown up, whether it's a more grown up literary vision or a musical vision or a cinematic vision, is very welcome, very needed. Farley: You talk about the Victorians being very serious, very passionate and reform minded. Faber: Yes, they also had a fantastic sense of fun. Farley: Well, Lewis Carroll was a Victorian. Faber: Exactly. Often when you mention the Alice books people say, "Oh, yes I forgot." And that is a part of Victorian literature. They had a daft sense of humor. Also, they were desperate for thrills. I mean, they wanted thrills twenty-four hours a day. Farley: I have to say, it sounds in some ways like you're describing contemporary society, or at least contemporary society in this country. We have a very strong religiously based movement here that is very serious about reforming society, though, perhaps their methods are adolescent in their own way. Do you see any parallels with the Victorian period? Faber: No, I think the dilemma we have now is that the people who are most serious and most sincere often align themselves with very simpleminded faiths and very simpleminded solutions. The people who think in a more complex ways, and who are more liberal, tend also to be more cynical. The challenge is to have less of a gulf between those two. But, we're getting into issues of sociology, and this is a story, of course. It's a work of the imagination. It's intended to entertain and inspire. Again, one of the weird things about having a successful book is that people ask what you think of modern culture. Farley: Do you mind being asked these sorts of questions? Faber: I'm uneasy about it. Because I feel that whatever I have to say that's valuable, I've put in the work. It's channeled through a narrative, which connects imaginatively with people's emotions and their thoughts. Whereas, if I'm just holding forth, you know, if I'm just making a speech, then I really don't feel as if I have any right to comment. Farley: What effect do you expect the work itself to have an effect on people, or on society? Faber: I was sitting next to a woman in the plane coming over from San Francisco. She was reading a very trashy looking book, and on its back cover were about eight different statements about how this book was going to change your life and revolutionize everything about you and that you'd never be the same after reading it. I rather doubt that that book will have the effect on her that it claims it will. And yet, people are deeply affected by certain books if they read them at the right time, at the right stage in their development. And in that sense it matters very much what books are out there and what those books are offering philosophically. I think most people who read The Crimson Petal will find it gripping and entertaining, and that, of those people, there will be a small percentage who are perhaps in some sort of crisis, or are really struggling with questions of morality or of sexual politics, and for them The Crimson Petal will be just the book they needed at that moment in their life. I think each of my books has that potential. But the primary motivation is to write a book that is moving and entertaining. For example, I read a book recently by a man whose name I can't pronounce, Michel Houellebecq, it's called Atomised. It's enormously popular in Britain and a huge bestseller in France. It has a very clear and harsh political agenda, and it pursues that mercilessly. But unless you're willing to engage with that political agenda, there really isn't anything to hold onto in the book. I'm uneasy about that when it comes to fiction. I would really rather that were expressed in a manifesto of some kind or a nonfiction book. I think if you're going to write fiction it should inspire and carry people away to some other place. Farley: And yet, you chose a topic that is fairly political, or at least would have been in the Victorian era: prostitution. Why did you choose to make your main character a prostitute, and why did you want to portray the realities of her life so graphically? Faber: Well, there are two questions there. As for the graphically part, I think if you're going to write about sex... I mean sex is hard core. It should be hard core. So I can't see the point of having a pink tinged, fluffy version of sex. As far as choosing a prostitute, I think prostitutes are always on the lowest rung of any society. They're the ones with the fewest rights. They're the ones at the most risk of violence. They're the ones who if they're killed or if they disappear, the fewest people care. They really are the lowest of the low, and I wanted a character who began as the lowest of the low and then worked her way up toward...respectability...toward having more options. But it's also always a mystery why I choose any characters or any story. Farley: So, through Sugar you could explore a powerless member of society. But it also seemed that you were very interested, specifically, in Sugar as a woman, and, through her, the relationship between men and women. Faber: Yes, sexual politics are crucial in a lot of my work. And I think that's partly because I grew up in Australia in the late seventies, when feminism was at its height there. When I was at university, most of my friends, not that I had many friends, but most of the friends that I had were radical lesbian separatists. I don't think I knew any straight males, so inevitably that colored my view of how men and women get along, or don't get along. Farley: I've actually been reading about the seventies lately. It was a remarkable decade. So much changed, in particular the relationship between the sexes. Sorry to come back to this again, but why, when our lives bear so little resemblance to those of the Victorians, do we still relate to them?
Faber: I think the reason we're still interested is that we've realized that we haven't really resolved any of these issues. I mean, women have more legal protection, they have more freedom—with all the benefits and all the horrors that come with it—but I don't think we're that much closer to figuring out what women are for. What are women actually for? Are they there to conceive and raise children? Are they there to have careers? Are they there to fuck? What are they for? And I think women are confused about that. Farley: Do you think we have a better idea what men are for? Faber: That's an interesting question. Again, actually I would say that the greatest tragedy of the late 20th century is how very many people we have who feel that they have no purpose whatsoever other than to consume. They're consumers, but, for the rest, they don't know what they're on earth for. That vacuum is filled with all sorts of stuff, but so little of it is satisfying. Farley: Do you really think people were more satisfied in a former era? Faber:I think this sense of being lost in a meaningless universe is very modern, because it's to do with the loss of God, the decline of religion, complete relativism. And, it's also to do with the loss of connection between the work that you do and any use that that work may be to any other human being. I think in the 19th century even the most exploited workers knew that they were producing something that was of use to someone. Whereas, many people nowadays do jobs that they know are worthless. They know there's nothing actually being made that anyone can actually use. They just have this job. I think that causes more misery than we're willing to face up to yet. Eva: But you're not saying that it was a golden era? Faber: Absolutely not. Eva: They were more miserable in some ways. Faber: Every century has its pluses and its minuses. And the minuses of the Victorian era were horrific, as I think the book makes more vividly clear than many. I don't think that anyone could reasonably claim that The Crimson Petal is one of these guided tours of a tourist 19th century, where you go to look at all the pretty costumes. Farley: And yet the Victorians understood something that we don't today? Faber: Well, in the 1870s, when the book is set, Darwin is a hot topic, and the whole notion of there being a bearded god up there who has created and arranged everything is very much in the air. One of the reasons the Victorians were so terrified of Darwin and that kind of scientific progress was because they saw coming what, in fact, has happened. It wasn't that they were terrible bigots and were opposed to scientific knowledge. But they knew that if you remove God from the universe you're going to have a lot of people who are lost and anxious, that the vacuum will be filled with all sorts of undesirable activities. People like George Eliot, who had lost their faith, were very interested in finding alternative belief systems that could fill that vacuum. I think we're at a stage again now where it's become crucial for people to find alternative belief
systems, because if we don't find alternative belief
systems that work for intelligent, questioning people,
then there are plenty of fundamentalists out there who
have an easier answer. And you know fundamentalists
of every shade, whether it's American televangelists who tell you that you have to touch the television screen in order to be healed, or whether it's lunatic Muslims, it's all simple-mindedness of one kind or another. So, I think it's really time that we thought more seriously
about the role of morality, and of moral structure in
our lives, and recognized that we can't get by without
it. It's got to be there in some form. And the more
subtle, and the more humane, and the more generous spirited
that form is, the better it will be for us as a culture.
But, it's got to be there somehow. But again, I'm talking
as a pundit, which is exactly what I feel most unqualified
to do.
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Don't Miss
"a living, laughing, sweating, coruscating mass of gorgeous words." According to Kirkus Reviews, "[It's] hard to imagine...that readers who hunger for story won't devour this like grateful wolves." Such overstatement is understandable. Like Madonna's vinyl corset, The Crimson Petal and the White is a Victorian artifact brilliantly retooled for the 21st century.
