Ask the Author: Guy Arthur Simpson
Answered Questions (11)
Guy Arthur Simpson
That this life exists at all
Guy Arthur Simpson
That this life exists at all
Guy Arthur Simpson
I think it was Doris Lessing who said: "Never tell."
It's like asking an expectant mother if it's a girl or a boy.
It's like asking an expectant mother if it's a girl or a boy.
Guy Arthur Simpson
"The Asturian Campaign"
I have lived the second half of my life in Spain. All European countries have a divide between the political left and right, but Spain is riven by their mutual contempt and distrust. Put crudely, the left wants a public apology it will never get for the atrocities and decades of dictatorship under Franco; the right still believes that Spain belongs to them and that the other 50% of the population is surplus to requirements. There has been no reconciliation under democracy and many of the Republican Civil War dead still lie in ditches. The Civil War hasn't left a scar through Spain: it is a festering wound in which society sickens. Consumer goods, football and the entertainment industry cannot bridge that gaping gash. The old are entrenched in their positions and the young have other interests. But truth will out. The attitudes of Franco's fascist Spain are still very much alive today. Its particularly nasty expression in the self-entitled right has no bounds and I wanted to show that. The Asturian Campaign is for all my Spanish friends, written in the love and respect I have for them.
I have lived the second half of my life in Spain. All European countries have a divide between the political left and right, but Spain is riven by their mutual contempt and distrust. Put crudely, the left wants a public apology it will never get for the atrocities and decades of dictatorship under Franco; the right still believes that Spain belongs to them and that the other 50% of the population is surplus to requirements. There has been no reconciliation under democracy and many of the Republican Civil War dead still lie in ditches. The Civil War hasn't left a scar through Spain: it is a festering wound in which society sickens. Consumer goods, football and the entertainment industry cannot bridge that gaping gash. The old are entrenched in their positions and the young have other interests. But truth will out. The attitudes of Franco's fascist Spain are still very much alive today. Its particularly nasty expression in the self-entitled right has no bounds and I wanted to show that. The Asturian Campaign is for all my Spanish friends, written in the love and respect I have for them.
Guy Arthur Simpson
Reading, mostly. It's the same fascination. I do remember that I started my first novel, Hoodwink, when I had nothing interesting to read, and decided to entertain myself instead. The seed for that book was a dream and the source of all inspiration is surely the unconscious, personal and collective. When it rises and engages with the conscious mind, it leave dents on a page in the symbols we call words.
Guy Arthur Simpson
if you have something to say, find a private space and begin. If you don't, leave it and get on with something else. Writing isn't everything. Be real.
Guy Arthur Simpson
I don't think of myself as "a writer," just someone who writes. The best thing about writing is the doing of it. It's the adult version of playing. All children invent narratives that they believe in and playing is at the core of their being. Writing is like that, a game with rules. You are free to say anything you like, yet governed by psychic truth and experience. Otherwise, it has no shape or substance and will say nothing.
Guy Arthur Simpson
Piled up on the round table are:
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Ostand - David Thomas
Anathem - Neal Stephenson
Exodo. Diario de una refugiada española - Silvia Mistral
The Lay of the Land - Richard Ford
Pictures from the water trade - John David Morley
The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton
The Grifters - Jim Thompson
The Busconductor Hines - James Kelman
A Path With Heart - Jack Kornfield
The Root of Evil - Håkan Nesser
The Spanish Civil War - Paul Preston
The Laughing Policeman - Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö
The Golden Ocean - Patrick O'Brian
L'Empire des Anges - Bernard Werber
Dreams Underfoot - Charles de Lint
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Ostand - David Thomas
Anathem - Neal Stephenson
Exodo. Diario de una refugiada española - Silvia Mistral
The Lay of the Land - Richard Ford
Pictures from the water trade - John David Morley
The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton
The Grifters - Jim Thompson
The Busconductor Hines - James Kelman
A Path With Heart - Jack Kornfield
The Root of Evil - Håkan Nesser
The Spanish Civil War - Paul Preston
The Laughing Policeman - Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö
The Golden Ocean - Patrick O'Brian
L'Empire des Anges - Bernard Werber
Dreams Underfoot - Charles de Lint
Guy Arthur Simpson
I go outside and hack at weeds with a mattock.
Guy Arthur Simpson
Other than the one I already inhabit, the fictional reality in which I would like to find myself is that of “Cider with Rosie” (Laurie Lee), where knowledge playfully inseminates innocence and one is intoxicated by a fabulous sense of belonging in the natural world.
Guy Arthur Simpson
Again, the tapping at the door, and again it ceased when she left the comfort of the sofa to investigate, plucking up the courage this time to approach the locked front door and peer through the spy hole. Outside, in the white light of the corridor, she could see nothing and no one and heard only a silence like a scream, a silence waiting there, in the corridor, in the apartment, in her bones, in the hallway cupboard right behind her, with its louvered doors, with its tap, tap, tap.
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