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Answers to an interviewer's questions
To: Joke Linders
From: Aidan Chambers
Als ik een schrijver was, zou ik dit artikel beginnen met de magische beginwoorden van het sprookje: lang, lang geleden... Want de bron voor dit artikel ligt in 1975 toen ik me tijdens een tweejarig verblijf in Engeland abonneerde op het tijdschrift Signal, waarin ik veel behartenswaardige zaken over jeugdliteratuur aantrof, en meer concreet in 1983 toen Aidan Chambers zijn Present Takers (Tirannen) publiceerde waarmee hij in Nederland in 1986 een Zilveren Griffel won. Zijn tweede.
Een langdurig onderhoud waarvan de neerslag is gepubliceerd in Leesgoed (1987-1), was het begin van een vriendschappelijke relatie op het gebied van de kinder- en jeugdliteratuur die me nog altijd inspireert. Een soort sprookje eigenlijk.
Sinds 1986 bezoekt Chambers om tal van redenen de Nederlandse kinderboekenwereld. Voor overleg met zijn uitgever over de vertaling van zijn boeken, voor een geruchtmakende lezing op verzoek van de CPNB in 1987, voor contact met Nederlandse auteurs die hij in zijn eigen, pas gestarte kinderboekenfonds wil opnemen, en kortgeleden voor een tiendaags werkbezoek. Een symposium met Nederlandse kinderboekenauteurs in Baarn, gastcolleges bij de sectie kind en media van de Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, een ontmoeting met zijn fans en met jeugdliteraire critici waren de belangrijkste onderdelen van dat bezoek dat overigens gelardeerd was met een serie van interviews. Om te voorkomen dat mijn interview met hem voor het Algemeen Dagblad beïnvloed zou worden door onze vriendschappelijke banden, stuurde ik hem vijf soorten vragen als uitdaging voor een kleine overweging. Slechts een klein gedeelte van de antwoorden kon ik gebruiken in het Algemeen Dagblad. De complete tekst, hier en daar aangevuld, krijgt een plaatsje in dit nummer van het Documentatieblad.
Jouw positie in de wereld van de kinderliteratuur is tamelijk ongebruikelijk. Je bent tegelijkertijd auteur, criticus, docent kinder- en jeugdliteratuur en sinds kort ook uitgever van kinderboeken. In bijna al die posities betrek je geruchtmakende stellingen. Hoe slaag je erin al die beroepen of werkzaam- | |
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heden te combineren? Beïnvloeden ze elkaar niet teveel? Hoe moet ik me dat in de praktijk van alledag voorstellen: doceren, schrijven, lezen, oordelen en uitgeven? Wat is het meest belangrijk voor je? En waarom? Overweeg je ooit je eigen uit te geven en kan dat wel?
I suppose it is a fact that I am a little unusual, being an author, a teacher and a publisher. But I don't feel unusual! All I feel is that I am doing what I have to do to keep myself going in life! I hope though that I am not a jack of many trades and master of none! That is certainly the danger of trying to mix three occupations, each of which is enough in itself to occupy more than one lifetime.
At heart, I am an author. Everything I do is possible only in relation to myself as someone who puts words on pages. I have been like this ever since I became a literary reader, which happened when I was about fifteen. Reading and writing are, to me, inseparable activities. They are the core of my life and give meaning to everything I do. Unless I tell myself about myself in stories, I can't make sense of myself or of anything - or anyone - else. Reading-and-writing is the means by which I make meaning out of the chaos that is the world around me. Another way of saying it is that language is my lifeline - language in stories and poems.
I once tried to give up writing. I became ill, psychologically and physically ill. I developed migraines and felt weak and lacking in confidence, and didn't want to do anything at all. Almost suicidal, in fact. Luckily, my doctor was very wise. He didn't try to analyse me. He just said: ‘There's something missing in your life. I don't know what it is. But when you find out what it is and put it back into your life, you'll be all right again.’ I knew at once what the ‘something missing’ was. I started writing again, and since then I've made sure that, whatever happens, I am always busy writing a book, usually a novel, but sometimes other sorts of things - critical articles or short stories or plays, or television or radio programmes.
I do a little teaching because that was the profession I entered as a young man before I got published and needed to make my living. I found I injoyed it enormously. I love young people, and like being with them. I found I was quite good at teaching, and, of course, everyone likes doing what they are good at. I've always found teaching comparatively easy, whereas I've always found writing novels the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. It's never easy. When I left teaching to become a full time writer (which I did because being a full time
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writer was the one thing I'd always wanted to be), I still went on doing some teaching for two reasons. the first is that I enjoy having that outlet - a relief from the difficulty of writing. Some people play golf or have a hobby. But I teach. The second reason is that I do feel I want to give back to young people what a couple of teachers gave me. I want to help them become thoughtful, avid literary readers who will carry into the next generation an understanding of how important literature is, and how important reading literature is. So nowadays I work once a week for thirty weeks a year with young people who are training to be teachers. And I also try and help working teachers who want to improve their skills as teachers of reading and of literature. I think of it as my social responsiblility. some people take to politics or help old people or do some other socially useful work. I teach, which to me is a political activity and also is socially useful. so in teaching I can relax and be socially useful at the same time!
I started publishing because I love working with books at every stage - from writing the very first words to dealing with the process of designing and printing the books themselves. I write very slowly, so I'm never able to produce enough books to satisfy my desire to be involved all the time at every stage in the making of a book. Also, became very concerned about the fact that English speaking young readers were not getting very much of the best literature that is published in other languages. So when my partner, David Turton, a very successful Australian bookseller, invited me to set up a new firm with him to produce high quality literature for young people, I decided I would have a go. What we are trying to do is to expand the form (the ways that stories can be told) and the content of books for the young. For example, we are publishing the Dutch writers Joke van Leeuwen, Imme Dros, Wim Hofman and Ted van Lieshout because I think they represent the best of Dutch children's books and because they are doing things that add to the range of books published in English. So, again, what I'm interested in is texts - words (and pictures) in the forms composed by the imagination.
Of course, I have to be careful that teaching and publishing don't swamp my work as an author. I suppose people would call me a workaholic, though I don't think of myself like that. To tell the truth, I think I'm rather lazy. However, my day does have to be carefully planned. I try to write at home in the morning, starting about 8.0 am. I finish at about 12.30. I have a light lunch. Then spend the afternoon and early evening at my publishing office, which is five minutes' walk from home. It is very important that the two places where I work are kept separate so that one doesn't spill over into the other. I can forget
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about publishing while I'm in my room at home and I can forget about writing when I'm in my office. In the late evening I read for myself (novels, poetry, biography, criticism) or watch television (though the decline in British television means that it often irritates me, so I more and more often hire videos of films, because I love movies: I find them very relaxing and often helpful to me as a writer. I suppose that is because when I was a child I wasn't much of a reader at all, but went to the cinema two or three times a week, so I feel at home with movies!)
My teaching day is thursday, so this breaks the week in two. I work at a college in Oxford, which is an hour's drive from home through very beautiful coutryside, so I enjoy this, and again it distances me from my other work places. I do, though, try to keep Sunday as a reading day, when I only doa few publishing odd jobs and very rarely do any writing. It is my day for recharging my batteries.
I needn't tell you that all too often this neat programme gets upset and what usually has to be given up at these times is my writing. Writing needs uninterrupted concentration and doesn't survive if there are upsetting distractions. Of course I get angry at these times. But that's life! Even when I was doing nothing else but write, my work still got interrupted and my writing day spoilt! but I do admit that as I get older it is harder and harder to find all the energy I need to work at full power at all three occupations! So the main thing is to protect my writing as best I can because the other two activities depend entirely on it.
Yes, I might publish my own books one day. But when I do, I shall make sure that I employ a very good editor so that I don't indulge myself, and have a stern critic to keep me in good shape! For over ten years I've had a brilliant editor, Margaret Clark. She has helped to bring into being all my best books and though she is retired from publishing now, she still looks after my work. She knows exactly how to get the best out of me and how to keep me going in the low times.
One person I haven't mentioned in all this is my wife Nancy. She's the one who is most responsible for helping me do what I do and sustaining me. She has her own work, of course, as an editor and publisher in charge of the small firm she and I own, The Thimble Press, which publishes a critical magazine, Signal, and other items about children's books.
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Sinds je je Zilveren Griffels kreeg heb je Nederland regelmatig bezocht? Hoe ervaar jij wat er hier gebeurt op het gebied van kinder- en jeugdliteratuur? Is er een groot verschil tussen de Nederlandse kinderboeken en de Angelsaksische? En hoe ziet dat verschil eruit?
Je hebt in het fonds van Turton & Chambers ook Nederlandse auteurs en illustratoren opgenomen. Wat vind je in hun werk, wat is er zo speciaal aan?
I'm extremely grateful for the honours I've been given by the Dutch. You are an enormously generous people, much more generous than the British. I love coming to Holland. And Amsterdam is my favourite city. As for the Dutch children's book world, what I notice is how active it is. So much is going on and at such a high level. I expect there are all sorts of arguments and upsets - that's only natural when people are keen and dedicated to an activity. But in general, what I see is a group of people - writers, publishers, critics, librarians, teachers, and parents - who are working together - and I stress together - to develop your literature for young readers. You have very high standards of judgement, and are producing some of the most interesting and innovative books of any nation in Europe. I hope very much you will be able to go on like this and won't be influenced or stopped by the people who are only interested in making big profits from children's books, or who can't understand why it is important to take literature for children so seriously.
The difference between Dutch and British children's books is too subtle to put into words easily. It has to do with a different way of looking at things and a different style of presentation. The British are keener on naturalistic drawing, for example, whereas the Dutch now like something less ‘realistic’ - look at the latest picture-story books from Querido's, especially DE DAME EN DE NEUSHOORN, or Wim Hofmans pictures, or the way Ted van Lieshout draws. I suspect that the Dutch aren't as skilled with animal fantasies as the British are, however. I don't really know enough Dutch books, in quantity or range, to be sure of the details of difference, though.
Besides, in a way, it isn't broad general qualities that I'm interested in. What interests me is individual authors. The ones who have a distinct, personal vision, a way of seeing the world that is their own and which I want to adopt into my own way of seeing. One of the values and functions of literature is that it is, in my view, the best way we can take on other people's minds and imaginations, adding them to our own and so enlarging our own vision - the number of selves that inhabit us. Dutch people are different from British people because they have a different language and history and are part of the mainland of Europe. The British are anti-intellectual, for example, and
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insular, whereas the Dutch are interested in ideas, as are most continental Europeans. To be called an intellectual in Britain is to be insulted; whereas it is a compliment in France - and Holland (?) The British are interested in plot and character. Continental Europeans are interested in ideas too. Is it right to include the Dutch in this? It is my experience that it is, but then perhaps my experience is limited to a narrow group of the community.
Authors like Joke van Leeuwen and Wim Hofman, for example, have a very rich and inventive way of handling words and pictures - and words-and-pictures together on the page - which allies them with contemporary ways of thinking. And yet they are entirely literary. It is language that matters to them, and stories in print as a way of making sense of the world around them. They understand about TV and film and radio, and all the other electronic ways of communication, and make use of what they know about these media. But they also know how unique and irreplaceable are words in print. Besides that, they honour and respect children by telling them stories that take it for granted that young readers can be thoughtful, and like to be thoughtful. They don't assume children are simple and can't think. On the contrary, they know very well that children are capable of everything that adults are capable of, so long as the words and stories include children, rather than exclude them. They know how to bring their adult mature understanding of the world to children in such a way that children can take that maturity into themselves and make it their own. And, of course, it is only by children doing this that the human race can develop and grow in wisdom and civility. This is the important task of all writers for children.
Het programma voor je tiendaagse werkbezoek ziet er behoorlijk druk uit. De presentatie van je nieuwste boek NIK naast activiteiten met schrijvers, critici en studenten. Waar kijk je het meeste naar uit?
The various activities I'll be engaged in while I'm in Holland have to do with the various activities of my life as a whole, only I'll be doing them in public with Dutch people. What I like about this is that I'll learn so much from those I'm working with. Dutch authors and critics will give me a slightly different view of things, they'll add to my range of thinking and understanding. I know this from the experience of working with them before. I have to confess though that I'll get the most pleasure from working with students. I suppose that is the teacher in me! They are always so keen to learn and yet they are critical and want to think for themselves. They are so vulnerable and haven't
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yet developed the kind of carapace to protect themselves that crusty old adults like me have grown. So working with them is a huge responsibility because it would be so easy to damage all that young energy and sensitivity. Besides, they are the new generation who will carry on the work we older people will soon have to give up. So they are enormously important to me as an author! Without them I won't have a readership for much longer!
Naturally, of course, it will be a great pleasure to see my new book launched in Dutch. My publisher, Querido's, and the translator, Rob Scholten, have spent so much time and care on it that I find it hard to know how to show my appreciation. Seeing your book in print is a culmination of years of work so of course it is like a birth. I am a slow writer. NOW I KNOW took five years to write. So you can see what a great day it is when the finished copies appear. And when it appears in another language it is a special kind of compliment.
NIK kan misschien het beste omschreven worden als een veelzijdige zoektocht. Een zoektocht naar de zin van het leven; naar wat belangrijk is voor jezelf of voor anderen; een zoeken naar God, geloof en religie, en een zoeken naar liefde. Dat zijn nogal wat onderwerpen om binnen één roman aan de orde te stellen. Hoe ben je op dat idee gekomen? Ligt de inspiratie daarvoor in je eigen leven, je eigen ervaringen en verlangens? Geloof je werkelijk dat tieners van u de moeite willen nemen te lezen over dit soort ‘zware’ onderwerpen? Jouw schrijftechniek, stijl en vorm zijn niet bepaald makkelijk en vragen nogal wat inspanning?
NOW I KNOW is one book in a sequence of books. They aren't sequels, you understand, but rather a collection of books that are linked together. When the sequence is finished, if I live long enough to do it!, there'll be six books, I think. They'll make a sort of multiple portrait of adolescence. BREAKTIME, for example, has a lot in it about physical sensation, about the five senses and what the world is like from that point of view to a 16 or 17 year old teenager. DANCE ON MY GRAVE has a lot to do with the emotional aspects of experience. When I came to write NOW I KNOW I was ready to tackle the spiritual aspects of life - what belief means and how it affects your behaviour and your thinking and your relations with other people. All the books are also about language, and how we tell ourselves about ourselves. In fact, how we create our selves - invent ourselves - through the stories we tell about ourselves. And they are all about the nature of friendship and love in its different forms, whether sexual or not.
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Yes, of course NOW I KNOW uses my own experience to some extent. How could it do otherwise? That is my raw material.
You know I was an Anglican monk for quite a few years. The scenes where Nik spend his time in the monastery are very much helped by that experience.
I was very interested in religion and ideas about the spiritual aspects of life when I was young, and I think young people still are. Though, I have to admit, I don't think much about whether young readers will be interested in what I write about, at least not while I'm writing. Afterwards, I'm very interested in what they say about my books, but not at the time of writing them. When I'm writing, I'm interested in the story and the characters in the story and what they are trying to say. I am their secretary: I shape the story they want to tell and I write it down. It isn't a question of what young people in general are interested in, but of what the main characters in the story are interested in. This is what controls the book and makes it into the kind of book it is.
So far as reading my books is concerned I think of it, as I think of all reading, as just like finding friends. There are all sorts and kinds of people, no matter what age people are or what period of history they live in. And we all look for friends who we like and can trust and want to spend time with because they also surprise us and enlarge life for us in ways we can't do by ourselves. It's the same with books. It is the personality inside the book - which is made up of the author's personality and the personality of the characters in the story - that either attracts us or puts us off a book.
And so far as young people are concerned, the ones my books look for as friends are those who like being thoughtful, and enjoy books that are fúll of possibilities and have many layers of meaning that the reader has to find for herself. They are books that want the reader to help in making the richest story that can be managed. They leave room for the reader to be in the story too. I don't write for readers who want an easy way of passing the time. I write for alert people, thoughtful people, people who find life and language fascinating and endlessly puzzling. And who enjoy the puzzle!
In bijna al je publicaties, interviews en kritische artikelen besteed je aandacht aan de betekenis van taal, aan het belang van woorden en beelden, van literatuur. Ook in je eigen romans hamer je steeds op dat aambeeld...
In literary usage of language, words begin to breed on each other, producing meanings that you hadn't intended when you wrote them down, but which add to what you did intend to say. An author has to be sensitive to this, looking out for opportunities created by the language itself. You have to edit
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out the meanings that don't add to what you are saying but clutter it up, and you have to exploit the unexpected meanings that do add something. You must learn not to force the meaning, but to let the story do the work. You have to be fluid and flexible and let your intuitive use of language guide you. I've sometimes found myself thinking of a word I've never heard before, supposing that I've just invented it, and then found that it does exist and is exactly the right word for that sentence. English is such a rich language you can do all sorts of things with it if you play with it and give yourself to it rather than trying to restrict it. And it is full of jokes - ironies, ambiguities, double entendres, vulgarities, slang, and so on. I wish I could handle it better and make better use of all its resources of diction and grammar.
To me language is the most important issue of all, and the most complicated. What I can say is that literature gives us images to think with. An American scholar says it gives us images to perfink with! He means perceive, feel and think with. I believe that. Human beings need to put experience into words before they can begin to understand it. Language is our only hope of making sense of life. The better we can use it, the more we can use it in complicated and subtle ways, the better we are at doing anything we want to do. And literature is the most complex form of language. That's why reading is more important than being just a pastime activity. It is essential to our education. Apart from the fact that it can give us pleasure of the most satisfying kind. |
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