Until I wrote The Buddha of the Brothel, the only meaningful texts I wrote were lyrics for my band’s songs many moons ago. So the book was my first exploration of long-form writing and anyone who reads it will understand that it simply ached to come out.
Q Describe your favourite writing space.
Quiet, with temperatures ranging from 23 - 28 degrees. Anything more is a bonus.
Q Your favourite word?
At this moment, I would go with “gymnasium”, but only because it literally means “the place where you’re naked”. Ancient Greece sounds like fun.
Q Do you have a writing schedule?
I follow two rules. One, always write for at least two hours in a day. and two, never write on a full stomach; my hunger has to be more than merely an artistic one.
Q Which book do you wish you had written?
“Lolita. Nothing comes close. It’s no wonder Nabokov called it his “love letter to the English language”
Q Ever struggled with writer’s block?
Not really. I think the impediment is primarily reserved for those types of writing where plotting is of paramount importance. Although, I do sometimes stop until I find exactly the word or the expression I need.
Q Do you keep a diary?
No. But I should. Writing my autobiographical stuff would have been much less nerve-wracking.
Q What inspires you to write? Do you have a secret trick, or a book/author that helps?
The only trick is one I would not recommend to anyone. I try to end a passage as perfectly as possible to then be inspired to keep writing on the same level. That, unfortunately, doesn't seem to work for most.
Q Best piece of advice you’ve ever got?
“You don’t always have to say everything that’s on your mind.” Thanks mom, but it was too late.
Q Coffee/tea/cigarettes — numbers please — while you are writing…
Massive amounts of tea. Occasionally coffee, but I try to avoid it as I tend to crash afterwards.
Q Which books are you reading at present?
B. The Bridge in the Jungle by B. Traven.
Q Who are your favourite authors?
The list keeps changing all the time,
but among writers who are criminally underrated I would mention the late Boris Vian, a French polymath known principally for his surrealist novel Froth on the Daydream (AKA Mood Indigo AKA Foam of the Daze) and his anti-war song The Deserter in which he urges the president to be a good boy and give
his own life for killing poor people instead of the artist.
Q Which book/author should be banned on grounds of bad taste?
No book or anything else should ever be banned on any grounds whatsoever.
Q Which is the most under-rated book?
I’ll go with Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky, although it is highly rated among select scholars. A difficult and unsettling existentialist read which stands out through how far ahead of its time it was when originally published.
Q Which are your favourite children's books?
I read a lot of globally unknown Yugoslavian authors, but among those known abroad, I remember enjoying Treasure Island.
Q Which classics do you want to read?
I somehow never got around to reading The Master and Margarita, even though it was in my syllabus.
Q Who is your favourite literary character?
Meursault (The Stranger).
Q Which is the funniest book you have read?
My memory is often unreliable, so what I can come up is The Water-Method Man, one of John Irving’s less known works from 1972.
Q Which book do you wish you had written?
Lolita. Nothing comes close. It’s no wonder Nabokov called it his “love letter to the English language”.
