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Below are some soundbites
from Kate Atkinson on Behind the Scenes at the Museum which may
provide a jumping-off point for discussion:
"I'm pathalogically nostalgic. Writing in the act of rescuing the
past, even if it's only an imaginary one. I have trouble writing about
the present - there's no distance."
[In answer to the question: Is the novel at all autobiographical?]
"No, I spent a lot of time scribbling in the dark, getting rid
of all that autobiographical stuff. The novel is a repository for a
network of objects and things, not for my personal feelings - perhaps
that's why there are so many cupboards in it."
On the title which she says came to her as a dream of walking through
the Festival of Britain room at the Castle Museum in York:
"I woke up and thought that is what this book is about - behind
the scenes at the museum."
On being patronizingly labelled an unconscious post-modernist: Atkinson's
main aim is for readability, to be entertaining.
"People write to me and say 'I loved that book' and I think, what
more could anyone want?"
"Making the imagination real, that's what writing is. That's what
I like about books, that Wuthering Heights, say, is as real as
the desk I'm writing at and yet it's entirely a product of Emily Brontë's
imagination. It's a kind of validation of self, and maybe some of us
need to validate ourselves more than others."
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