An interview with Paul Dalgarno

Paul Dalgarno is the author of And You May Find Yourself and Poly. His latest novel, A Country of Eternal Light, will be published in February 2023, followed by Prudish Nation in June. If you could go anywhere tomorrow, where would it be, and why? I’d go to Scotland because my dad’s unwell and I haven’t seen him in years. What’s your idea of hell? You can always add one more element to make hell worse, which in itself is a kind of hell. Burning for all eternity would be suboptimal, but what if you also had to listen to ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ on a never-ending loop? What do you consider the most specious virtue? Cleanliness. How did it end up next to godliness? What’s your favourite film? The Big Lebowski. The romance between traumatised Vietnam vet Walter Sobchak and hippy pacifist The Dude warms my cynical heart. Their hug at the end is an unheeded lesson for the world. And your favourite book? In recent years, I’d say Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko. It does everything a good novel should and reanimated a love of reading for me that continues today. Name the three people with whom you would most like to dine. Joan of Arc, Geillis Duncan, and Katharine Hepburn. Which word do you most dislike, and which one would you like to see back in public usage? ‘Smörgåsbord’ always brings to mind serving platters at public events with broken crackers jutting out of sweaty cheese, like teeth from tortured gums. I’d happily support the reintroduction of ‘mayhap’. Who is your favourite author? I’m happiest thinking we’ve yet to become acquainted. And your favourite literary hero or heroine? Kolya Ivanov Krasotkin in The Brothers Karamazov. I named my son after him. Which quality do you most admire in a writer? Precision – otherwise you’re watching writers sliding around the road on black ice with their tongues between their teeth, clutching the steering wheel, helplessly trying to convince you – and themselves – that they’re in control of the vehicle. Which book influenced you most in your youth? Catch 22 by Joseph Heller – what a masterclass in conveying horror and humour simultaneously. Name an early literary idol or influence whom you no longer admire – or vice versa. I was besotted with Milan Kundera in my early twenties, but each time I return to read a few chapters, I wish I’d just left it in the past. Do you have a favourite podcast? WTF with Marc Maron. He’s a funny, generous interviewer and has endearingly invited listeners into his grief since the death of his partner, Lynn Shelton. What, if anything, impedes your writing? I was the sole earner in my family for more than twelve years, from the moment I arrived in Australia as a migrant until a few short months ago. What qualities do you look for in critics, and which ones do you enjoy reading? I want to have a handle on the critic’s personality or persona in order to calibrate my own responses, and for their criticism to be entertaining and insightful without feeling like they’re standing in front of the book in question doing the can-can and shouting ‘look at me’. Rosemary Goring, who writes for the Scottish Review of Books, fits the bill. How do you find working with editors? On the whole, I love it. My day job is editing, so between that and working with editors myself, it’s obvious that good editors, with their track changes and square-bracket interventions, are worth their weight in [maybe use a word here that isn’t ‘gold’, yeah?]. What do you think of writers’ festivals? I always leave sessions wishing I’d learned more, and I feel sorry for everyone involved when disparate writers are shoehorned into panels with names like ‘Ambivalence in the Age of Social Media’. Are artists valued in our society? They’re maybe overvalued in people’s imaginations. If you asked a hundred passers-by what artists earn, my hunch is that nearly everyone would wildly overestimate and only then realise that their innate distrust and contempt for hardworking ‘arty types’ and those afflicted with ‘creativity’ is ridiculous. What are you working on now? I’m finishing a non-fiction book (to be published in June) called Prudish Nation that includes interviews with dozens of contemporary Australian authors. I’m also writing a novel about teenagers connected across time and space.

From the New Issue

Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The jazz singer who transformed American song by Judith Tick

Until August by Gabriel García Márquez, translated by Anne McLean

No Country for Idealists: The making of a family of subversives by Boris Frankel

The End of the Morning by Charmian Clift

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