Extract from an Interview with Miles Gibson by James Keating
(c) James Keating 2000

JK: What made you want to be a writer?

MG: It was a desperate desire to fashion order from chaos. The need to build a world I could inhabit.

JK: And yet you've never written the same book twice.

MG: In what sense?

JK: Well, your subjects are always so different, from the Victorian photographer in Kingdom Swann to the suburban housewives in Prisoner of Meadow Bank, for example. They're difficult to classify.

MG: Oh, yes, that's true. But the themes and obsessions are constant. And in many ways, the narrative is less interesting to me than the colour, texture and symmetry of the work. If you want stories you can watch TV. The novel is a different experience. The language is everything. You'd never judge a painter on his subject, for example. You'd concentrate on how he applies paint to that subject.

JK: But the Sandman was a very controversial subject.

MG: The Sandman was pure mischief. I didn't want to write a first novel that was thinly veiled biography, so I chose something that would stretch my imagination. I hadn't intended to shock or infuriate anyone. And I've only once returned to crime fiction. It doesn't interest me enough.

JK: Your novels are often wickedly funny. You've even been compared to Evelyn Waugh. Would you describe yourself as a comic writer?

MG: No. In fact, I've always felt I was writing tragedy. The human condition is farcical - that's the tragedy. It helps to explain our endless struggle for dignity. We're absurd creatures. We want to be heroic but we're merely buffoons. I suppose we laugh when we spot the difference. But, despite everything, I've never set out to write a comic novel.

JK: I don't think I've ever seen you on the literary festival circuit.

MG: Well, writers are some of the biggest buffoons in the world. They talk too much. Anyway, I'm something of a recluse. I'm not a performance artist.

JK: Don't you think there's a special pleasure for the audience - an insight to be gained - when a writer reads his own work?

MG: No. Well, there's always Garrison Keillor. But I can't think of another.

JK: Do you read your critics?

MG: Yes. They've been very generous. But, of course, the hostile reviews are the ones that remain in the memory. It's remarkable how easily you can offend the average reviewer. If they don't like a character's opinions or attitude they'll make the mistake of thinking the writer shares that opinion or attitude and condemn him for it.

KG: Does that happen often?

MG: More often than you'd suppose. Sex always brings them out of the woodwork. It's impossible to write about male sexual fantasy without having a female reviewer somewhere protesting that I've written male sexual fantasy. It's as if they want an apology. And Kingdom Swann was attacked by some critics because I described the erotic beauty of fat women. This was a novel set in late Victorian London, remember, and I was trying to look at the world through Victorian eyes. Too many fat women. It's a sad state of affairs. But no one said we'd be living in an age or reason.

KG: Does the modern literary scene depress you?

MG: No. Well, the London literary scene is a stagnant pond. But when I get depressed I turn to a favourite writer like Annie Proulx and touch the magic.

KG: How would you like to be remembered?

MG: As a great painter.

KG: Do you paint?

MG: No.