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Seeing Things: Eighteen Stories
Hardcover
About the author
Karl Manders
5 booksInterview to the "The Book Depository Blog" TUE, 09 DEC 2008
Karl Manders worked for forty years as a journalist. He was a member of the Guardian Features Department for five years, and subsequently contributed to the paper for some years. For three years he was News Editor of Nature, and for a similar period Deputy Features Editor of The Telegraph Magazine. He has written for The Sunday Times, New Scientist, Scientific American, Radio Times and Reader's Digest. He moved to North America where he edited photographic arts titles, before returning to Europe, and particularly the Netherlands where he learned Dutch.
Mark Thwaite: What gave you the idea for Moths?
Karl Manders: Visiting the Site of a second world war concentration camp in Holland, where Dutch Jews were held before being sent east, I wondered what the people left behind believed their fate to be, and if they ever considered sending somebody to find out what happened to the deportees. My story began as the imagining of such a mission.
MT: You've been a journalist for many years, what was it made you finally get down to the hard work of writing a novel?
KM: Moths is the sixth novel I have written; it just happens to be the first one accepted for publication. Journalism, incidentally, is very hard work.
MT: How long did it take you to write Moths?
KM: Four months to write, and another month to revise.
MT: Jazz plays an important part in your book -- does it play a part in your life too?
KM: Having passed through a jazz nerd phase which began when I was fifteen, I now enjoy the music in a more laid-back way. But I still count myself a fan, and jazz means a lot to me.
MT: How do you write? Longhand or directly onto a computer, straight off or with lots and lots of editing?
KM: The development of the word-processing computer was the greatest technical advance made by man since shoes. I take care to write what I mean when I sit at the computer, but it is an inexpressible luxury to be able to revise and revise again, without having to type out a whole page. That’s what I do.
MT: What were the principle challenges of writing Moths and how did you overcome them?
KM: When I wrote Moths I was living in a woodland cottage in the eastern Netherlands, with no access to research facilities. I simply forged ahead with the information I held in my head, and hoped for the best. Only after the book was finished was I able to do some fact checking and correction.
MT: What do you do when you are not writing?
KM: I do what most other people do – I eat, sleep, read, go to the shops and ride my bike.
MT: Did you have an idea in your mind of your "ideal" reader? Did you write specifically for them?
KM: As a journalist I always have a publication’s typical reader in mind, and write in terms of what he or she will be comfortable with. As a fiction writer I can be more self-indulgent: I speak in my own voice, and trust that the story I tell will find a sympathetic readership.
MT: What are you working on now?
KM: I have completed two more novels since writing Moths, and I am currently working on a collection of short stories.
MT: Who is your favourite writer? What is/are your favourite book(s)?
KM: Anton Chekhov. My favourite books would include his collected stories, Nabokov’s Pale Fire, the Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield, The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek, Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms... That’s the beginning of the list.
MT: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!?
KM: Write every day. The hugely successful American author Pearl Buck (before your time my dear) wrote a page a day. That way, she said she could be sure of having at least three hundred and sixty-five pages (a substantial novel) to sell every year. When I’m writing a novel, I give myself an easily attainable daily target of seven hund
Karl Manders worked for forty years as a journalist. He was a member of the Guardian Features Department for five years, and subsequently contributed to the paper for some years. For three years he was News Editor of Nature, and for a similar period Deputy Features Editor of The Telegraph Magazine. He has written for The Sunday Times, New Scientist, Scientific American, Radio Times and Reader's Digest. He moved to North America where he edited photographic arts titles, before returning to Europe, and particularly the Netherlands where he learned Dutch.
Mark Thwaite: What gave you the idea for Moths?
Karl Manders: Visiting the Site of a second world war concentration camp in Holland, where Dutch Jews were held before being sent east, I wondered what the people left behind believed their fate to be, and if they ever considered sending somebody to find out what happened to the deportees. My story began as the imagining of such a mission.
MT: You've been a journalist for many years, what was it made you finally get down to the hard work of writing a novel?
KM: Moths is the sixth novel I have written; it just happens to be the first one accepted for publication. Journalism, incidentally, is very hard work.
MT: How long did it take you to write Moths?
KM: Four months to write, and another month to revise.
MT: Jazz plays an important part in your book -- does it play a part in your life too?
KM: Having passed through a jazz nerd phase which began when I was fifteen, I now enjoy the music in a more laid-back way. But I still count myself a fan, and jazz means a lot to me.
MT: How do you write? Longhand or directly onto a computer, straight off or with lots and lots of editing?
KM: The development of the word-processing computer was the greatest technical advance made by man since shoes. I take care to write what I mean when I sit at the computer, but it is an inexpressible luxury to be able to revise and revise again, without having to type out a whole page. That’s what I do.
MT: What were the principle challenges of writing Moths and how did you overcome them?
KM: When I wrote Moths I was living in a woodland cottage in the eastern Netherlands, with no access to research facilities. I simply forged ahead with the information I held in my head, and hoped for the best. Only after the book was finished was I able to do some fact checking and correction.
MT: What do you do when you are not writing?
KM: I do what most other people do – I eat, sleep, read, go to the shops and ride my bike.
MT: Did you have an idea in your mind of your "ideal" reader? Did you write specifically for them?
KM: As a journalist I always have a publication’s typical reader in mind, and write in terms of what he or she will be comfortable with. As a fiction writer I can be more self-indulgent: I speak in my own voice, and trust that the story I tell will find a sympathetic readership.
MT: What are you working on now?
KM: I have completed two more novels since writing Moths, and I am currently working on a collection of short stories.
MT: Who is your favourite writer? What is/are your favourite book(s)?
KM: Anton Chekhov. My favourite books would include his collected stories, Nabokov’s Pale Fire, the Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield, The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek, Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms... That’s the beginning of the list.
MT: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!?
KM: Write every day. The hugely successful American author Pearl Buck (before your time my dear) wrote a page a day. That way, she said she could be sure of having at least three hundred and sixty-five pages (a substantial novel) to sell every year. When I’m writing a novel, I give myself an easily attainable daily target of seven hund
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