Dear Readers, I ask that if you enjoy The Kureishi Chronicles, believe in paying for good writing, and want to help with my recovery, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Below is an answer to a question posed by Nina Tree: How do you draw lines for what is appropriate to share and what is not?
Knocked my socks off when I read it back in the day. I was an avid David Bowie fan and your references to him were enlightening! Passages from the book still stand out for me in my mind. I am going to re-read it and it will be a pleasure I am certain. Coping with being an older person ,I remember how I saw Bowie live in concert 6 times, he was Warm, funny, sexy, brilliant. Now he is a statue, a mural, a recording. Mortality defines us all.
I think you were the first writer in our generation to recognise Britain's social structures had completely changed post WW2 with the ending of Empire. You were also very funny , and yet there was poignancy. I wish I could find a script of your very first radio play...in that hot summer of 1976? I first heard of you when a friend told me there was a play I would like at Jackson's Lane Community Centre...Borderline...1981/82 ish...from memory...I think that's right. I then saw Birds of Passage at Hampstead Theatre. I went three times. Then Mother Courage at the Barbican. I then read your scripts like Outskirts. It was just great to have this "voice" out there as we went about our lives. Then the whole Laundrette thing happened. ..and then Buddha and the rest. These chronicles are unique because you seem to be opening up on so many internal processes about all that body of writing, and connecting with readers. Keep going...keep getting better.
Thank you for this piece, Hanif. I liked your advice about putting the delight of the readers above everything else. It's something I try to keep in mind when I write. I read Intimacy first, then Buddha of Suburbia, and these two novels led me to becoming a lifelong fan. I especially love your writings on relationships in your short stories. Wishing you speedy recovery and that everything will normalise soon in your life.
I must revisit the Buddha of Suburbia. It’s been almost thirty years since I last read it. I’m much older now, closer to Karim’s parents chronologically than Karim himself. Novels if they are truly brilliant like Buddha can age like a fine single malt. Their milieu isn’t a sherry cask but the passage of time and events and the maturity and evolving insight of their reader.
Many students in France very much like this novel (which is on the syllabus for specialists of English in High School), and comparisons with the BBC adaptation are very enlightening as to what makes the specificity of the wtiting of the book (and of the script, which is yours as well).
I recently acquired my own copy of The Buddha of Suburbia. Previously I had mooched a copy off a friend who was in the midst of a mid-life crisis, that was to eventually expand to saga-like proportions and result in a mini tidal wave of emotional collateral damage, the upheaval of lives, and the dissolution of friendships. It sounds in retrospect quite epic, but the reality was prosaic and drawn out.
I intend to re-read the novel over Christmas when I typically immerse myself in literature and music biographies. There is a schism in our family. Though I am not the cause of it, the utilitarian solution is for me to withdraw from family gatherings like Miss Havisham and get my head in a book or four.
I celebrate Christmas properly in February, inspired in part by the title of the Lou Reed song – Christmas in February – although that is about a homeless Vietnam Vet and nothing to do with me putting up my late grandparent's artificial tree in the conservatory and walking around the house in a paper crown. I discovered, a couple of years after I first began observing February Christmas, that I am not alone. During the era of slavery, the population of the Columbian town of Quinamayó, were forced to work throughout December and so moved their own Christmas celebrations to 40 days after the birth of Jesus. To this day the town carries on this tradition.
Writing fiction for me has always been about escapism, and extremes of imagination. Above all it is about getting away from myself, as I think that a measure of distance is warranted. If art is life transformed, then what I produce is warped beyond recognition.
Up until a few years ago there were parts of my early life I wouldn't have even considered documenting. I had a change of heart after watching the finale of Mad Men. If you are yet to watch this show and think that you might, then you should stop reading.
Mad Men concludes with the protagonist Don Draper, having seemingly lost everything, coming to the realisation that, in spite of his behaviour, he still has family and friends who love him and who accept him for who he is. This insight, that arrives from an unlikely source, steeped in tragic comedy and dramatic irony, gifts him the motivation and the inspiration to exploit the hippy commune, where he has fetched-up seeking transformation, and channel these new-age values into financial and reputational gain. It is a pay-off that, like the show itself, is rich in both 'dirt under the fingernails' humanity and opportunistic cynicism.
I saw the finale of Mad Men at a time when I was at a crossroads in my own life. I was trying to get over the premature death of a friend who had loved the show, but had not lived to see it end. I had all these feelings of guilt that you get in these situations. It occurred to me that if I wanted to be a half-decent person, then I needed to draw a line on my past. To do that I needed to be honest about some of the things I had done and who I was, so I started writing some of them down. Very little of it consciously enters my fiction and I don't think that it ever will.
That being said I do enjoy reading about the impact of the lives of fiction writers on their work. 'Borges: A Life,' by Edwin Williamson, comes in for some heavy criticism, but it helped me to see Borges' short fictions as more than dryly humorous thought experiments and ghoulish retellings of historical events. Whether the framing of certain events in Borges' life as being influential on his choice of subject matter and symbolism is accurate, or an artifice of his biographer, is open for question, but when I read his stories now, I am more aware of their human foundation, and appreciate them more as a result.
Hanif, I'm reading the most remarkable book by Matthew Shepard called WAKING. he had a spinal cord injury (car accident @ 13) and has remarkable insights to share. he also teaches yoga from a wheelchair. i heard him on Krista Tippett's NPR show.
Once in Buenos Aires I walked into a bookstore which sold only used ones. I had never heard of your name or the book, but the title caught my eye, so I bought it. I really enjoyed it at the time, and always recommend it when I can. Thank you for such a creation. I hope you are feeling better!
Thanks so much Hanif for giving us another inside look into the mind of a fiction writer! Just a quick question:
If someone wrote an in-depth biography on you would it expose the hidden conceits of your writing the way Edmond White’s great book exposed Jean Genet? The way it showed he was not the one dimensional tough guy he always put forward?
May I ask a question of Hanif here? It’s a bit of a loose one. How you feel about plot? I enjoy some fantasy writing alongside contemporary fiction and other things. Fantasy tends to be more tightly plot driven - often with quite a sewn up arc. Is it that particular themes lend themselves to particular styles?
Damn glad you wrote it as you did! Wish it were possible to stream and view again in the US! luckily i have a copy of the book on my shelf... a favorite.
Perhaps an odd choice of reading material that I took with me to visit my sister in the U.S on a family trip to Las Vegas (!) where she was getting married - my nephews are mixed race, S.Indian via Southall / Italian American.
I really enjoyed it & the later TV dramatisation and it came out around the same time as films like “Bhaji On The Beach” & of course “My Beautiful Launderette”, “East is East” & so on & although my own experience and that of my family are somewhat different it represented a perspective that had never really been depicted before - it’s still a gap that needs to be plugged even after all this time.
My late father was also something of a suburban philosopher / wide reader & former socialist firebrand / political prisoner under colonialism in his younger days before he settled in the U.K with my mum in the late 50’s.
Knocked my socks off when I read it back in the day. I was an avid David Bowie fan and your references to him were enlightening! Passages from the book still stand out for me in my mind. I am going to re-read it and it will be a pleasure I am certain. Coping with being an older person ,I remember how I saw Bowie live in concert 6 times, he was Warm, funny, sexy, brilliant. Now he is a statue, a mural, a recording. Mortality defines us all.
Blessings as always to you, Hanif!
Rochelle
Hope you are recovering and feeling better.
I think you were the first writer in our generation to recognise Britain's social structures had completely changed post WW2 with the ending of Empire. You were also very funny , and yet there was poignancy. I wish I could find a script of your very first radio play...in that hot summer of 1976? I first heard of you when a friend told me there was a play I would like at Jackson's Lane Community Centre...Borderline...1981/82 ish...from memory...I think that's right. I then saw Birds of Passage at Hampstead Theatre. I went three times. Then Mother Courage at the Barbican. I then read your scripts like Outskirts. It was just great to have this "voice" out there as we went about our lives. Then the whole Laundrette thing happened. ..and then Buddha and the rest. These chronicles are unique because you seem to be opening up on so many internal processes about all that body of writing, and connecting with readers. Keep going...keep getting better.
I also loved reading the plays and the screenplays. I'm glad they were all published.
For sure!
Thank you for this piece, Hanif. I liked your advice about putting the delight of the readers above everything else. It's something I try to keep in mind when I write. I read Intimacy first, then Buddha of Suburbia, and these two novels led me to becoming a lifelong fan. I especially love your writings on relationships in your short stories. Wishing you speedy recovery and that everything will normalise soon in your life.
I must revisit the Buddha of Suburbia. It’s been almost thirty years since I last read it. I’m much older now, closer to Karim’s parents chronologically than Karim himself. Novels if they are truly brilliant like Buddha can age like a fine single malt. Their milieu isn’t a sherry cask but the passage of time and events and the maturity and evolving insight of their reader.
Many students in France very much like this novel (which is on the syllabus for specialists of English in High School), and comparisons with the BBC adaptation are very enlightening as to what makes the specificity of the wtiting of the book (and of the script, which is yours as well).
I recently acquired my own copy of The Buddha of Suburbia. Previously I had mooched a copy off a friend who was in the midst of a mid-life crisis, that was to eventually expand to saga-like proportions and result in a mini tidal wave of emotional collateral damage, the upheaval of lives, and the dissolution of friendships. It sounds in retrospect quite epic, but the reality was prosaic and drawn out.
I intend to re-read the novel over Christmas when I typically immerse myself in literature and music biographies. There is a schism in our family. Though I am not the cause of it, the utilitarian solution is for me to withdraw from family gatherings like Miss Havisham and get my head in a book or four.
I celebrate Christmas properly in February, inspired in part by the title of the Lou Reed song – Christmas in February – although that is about a homeless Vietnam Vet and nothing to do with me putting up my late grandparent's artificial tree in the conservatory and walking around the house in a paper crown. I discovered, a couple of years after I first began observing February Christmas, that I am not alone. During the era of slavery, the population of the Columbian town of Quinamayó, were forced to work throughout December and so moved their own Christmas celebrations to 40 days after the birth of Jesus. To this day the town carries on this tradition.
Writing fiction for me has always been about escapism, and extremes of imagination. Above all it is about getting away from myself, as I think that a measure of distance is warranted. If art is life transformed, then what I produce is warped beyond recognition.
Up until a few years ago there were parts of my early life I wouldn't have even considered documenting. I had a change of heart after watching the finale of Mad Men. If you are yet to watch this show and think that you might, then you should stop reading.
Mad Men concludes with the protagonist Don Draper, having seemingly lost everything, coming to the realisation that, in spite of his behaviour, he still has family and friends who love him and who accept him for who he is. This insight, that arrives from an unlikely source, steeped in tragic comedy and dramatic irony, gifts him the motivation and the inspiration to exploit the hippy commune, where he has fetched-up seeking transformation, and channel these new-age values into financial and reputational gain. It is a pay-off that, like the show itself, is rich in both 'dirt under the fingernails' humanity and opportunistic cynicism.
I saw the finale of Mad Men at a time when I was at a crossroads in my own life. I was trying to get over the premature death of a friend who had loved the show, but had not lived to see it end. I had all these feelings of guilt that you get in these situations. It occurred to me that if I wanted to be a half-decent person, then I needed to draw a line on my past. To do that I needed to be honest about some of the things I had done and who I was, so I started writing some of them down. Very little of it consciously enters my fiction and I don't think that it ever will.
That being said I do enjoy reading about the impact of the lives of fiction writers on their work. 'Borges: A Life,' by Edwin Williamson, comes in for some heavy criticism, but it helped me to see Borges' short fictions as more than dryly humorous thought experiments and ghoulish retellings of historical events. Whether the framing of certain events in Borges' life as being influential on his choice of subject matter and symbolism is accurate, or an artifice of his biographer, is open for question, but when I read his stories now, I am more aware of their human foundation, and appreciate them more as a result.
Hanif, I'm reading the most remarkable book by Matthew Shepard called WAKING. he had a spinal cord injury (car accident @ 13) and has remarkable insights to share. he also teaches yoga from a wheelchair. i heard him on Krista Tippett's NPR show.
Once in Buenos Aires I walked into a bookstore which sold only used ones. I had never heard of your name or the book, but the title caught my eye, so I bought it. I really enjoyed it at the time, and always recommend it when I can. Thank you for such a creation. I hope you are feeling better!
Thanks so much Hanif for giving us another inside look into the mind of a fiction writer! Just a quick question:
If someone wrote an in-depth biography on you would it expose the hidden conceits of your writing the way Edmond White’s great book exposed Jean Genet? The way it showed he was not the one dimensional tough guy he always put forward?
May I ask a question of Hanif here? It’s a bit of a loose one. How you feel about plot? I enjoy some fantasy writing alongside contemporary fiction and other things. Fantasy tends to be more tightly plot driven - often with quite a sewn up arc. Is it that particular themes lend themselves to particular styles?
Thank goodness you did, one of my favourite books it entrances me everytime I read it.
Great book! It's interesting, however, that family members/friends might still get offended in case a novel is rooted in reality.
Damn glad you wrote it as you did! Wish it were possible to stream and view again in the US! luckily i have a copy of the book on my shelf... a favorite.
More opportunities ahead. Off you will go!
Perhaps an odd choice of reading material that I took with me to visit my sister in the U.S on a family trip to Las Vegas (!) where she was getting married - my nephews are mixed race, S.Indian via Southall / Italian American.
I really enjoyed it & the later TV dramatisation and it came out around the same time as films like “Bhaji On The Beach” & of course “My Beautiful Launderette”, “East is East” & so on & although my own experience and that of my family are somewhat different it represented a perspective that had never really been depicted before - it’s still a gap that needs to be plugged even after all this time.
My late father was also something of a suburban philosopher / wide reader & former socialist firebrand / political prisoner under colonialism in his younger days before he settled in the U.K with my mum in the late 50’s.
What about Buchi Emecheta e.g. In the Ditch? That’s about Britain too.