Jim Crace
Jim Crace
James "Jim" Craceis an award-winning English writer. His novels include Quarantine, which was judged Whitbread Novel of 1998, and Harvest, which won the 2015 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth1 March 1946
sex betrayal men
I was captivated by Sherrie Flick's meticulous and intelligent study of Margaret and Vivette, and the men they share. Reconsidering Happiness is a courageously intimate novel about the young women of modern America, their friendships, their betrayals, and their anxious cravings for everything from sex to pastry.
crushed dread
...crushed between the fears of going forward and the dread of going back.
editors trying pitching
Try pitching a story of happiness to your editors and their toes are going to curl up.
balloon becomes carries fills hold nerve pushing trust
When you start a novel, it is always like pushing a boulder uphill. Then, after a while, to mangle the metaphor, the boulder fills with helium and becomes a balloon that carries you the rest of the way to the top. You just have to hold your nerve and trust to narrative.
basically entity stands work writers
Writers who want to interfere with adaptations of their work are basically undemocratic. The book still stands as an entity on its own.
careers gets hundred immensely
Writing careers are short. For every 100 writers, 99 never get published. Of those who do, only one in every hundred gets a career out of it, so I count myself as immensely privileged.
frightened
There is no comparison. The American landscape is so much more dangerous. They have real snakes, mountain lions, bears; we only have adders, and they're more frightened of us than we are of them.
solved sorted
The problems of the world are not going to be engaged with and solved in Faversham, they're going to be sorted out in cities like Birmingham.
itself knocking narrative starts
When the narrative itself starts knocking on the glassed-in box that was your prescription for how you were going to write this novel... you have to listen to it.
asked books deliver drive people side van work
When people asked me what I did, I'd say, 'I work in publishing', and when they then say, 'What side of it?', I say, 'Supply' - no doubt leaving them to think I drive the books around in a van and deliver them.
background brought estate
When I was a youngster, I was brought up in a very political background on an estate in north London.