Marlon James (notes from a BBC interview)
/In this post, there are notes so that you can understand the BBC radio 4 Desert Island Discs interview with Marlon James. He is writer who wrote a book about the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. Aggie and I are currently creating a podcast (in which we will explain some of the vocab) and it will be launched on 11th October!
You can listen to the interview here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003cqx
the booker prize
he may have been destined to turn his talents to story about crime
1.30 Family joked that his mother locked criminals up
1.38 He believed he had destroyed every existing copy of his manuscript
2.00 Tell me about self belief – I didn’t always have it
2.38 Someone asked him to give her a manuscript “I did under duress
3.38: I like teaching undergrads
3.39 just discovering their voice
3.51 intoxicating (creativity for creativity’s sake)
4.07 Writing is figuring themselves out
4.09 and tapping into this vast possibility of what they can be
4.36 Silence to me feels like deafness
5.011 Reggae music - rebellious
5.15 first Track (Ring the Alarm) – it was one of the paradigm shifts for reggae music
5.22 a stunning brilliant song
6.15 When he won Man Booker – reaction seems to be one of genuine surprise (LL)
6.23 Thinks he must have the most rambling, incoherent speech ever
6.32 in hindsight, yes I should have know (that he would win)
6.36 I was absolutely stunned
6.47 they even stayed near the stall (bathroom)
7.05 Selling a book sure beats not se
7.08 it’s galvanised a lot of things (selling the book)
7.18 Some thoroughly hating it (the book)
7.21 coming to it because of the exposure
7.35 we don’t storm the best seller list
7.35 we bring some acclaim to the publisher
7.52 Reaction in Jamaica it was for the most part celebraitary
8.00 same year that I came out in the New York Times
8.20 that was the sole purpose of the Facebook group (should a homeosexual give a marley speech)
10.00 A typical, surburban childhood
10.07 some lofty british series
10.31 some ways very rich, some ways stultifyingly boring
10.35 Boredom is the correct crucible for a creative imagination
10.40 – you’re trying to write your way out of it
11.00 they were very good at shielding work from us (parents – didn’t talk about their professions)
11.06 my mum was so over it
11.10 they shot up her workplace
11.28 It must have given you a different perspective
11.57 One of the few times when new unnerved my parents (When BM was shot)
12.05 BM was untouchable
12.15 that pulled a rug out from under them (the shooting (his parents))
12.28 A peculiar kind of close (relationship with Dad)
12.45 that was our way of bonding (Dad)
13.27 he sort of sunk into my blood (Mersey street - track)
13. 35 skipping college
13.43 rolling through Kingston
13.48 no matter how fast you were going, you were gliding
13.57 all you hear is rain on the wind shield
14.11 Utter joy
14.51 inexplicably joyful college days (LL - taking you back to …)
14.59 I was definitely a nerd, a geek, the school sissy
15.12 really wanting to live in any era but the one I was in
15.24 just not feeling that I fit in at all
15.30 was that something that you’d articulated to yourself at that point? (the ways that he didn’t fit in)
15.34 I found kindred spirits
15.41 everyone else excluded us
15.49 the kids who cursed too much ….
16.05 pretended that you weren’t your brothers brother so he wouldn’t be teased
16.11 not just my idol but ..
16.15 a second former with 5th former cred (he was that cool)
Street cred
16.51 the most we may have done is nodded to each other for the next 5 years
17.05 we didn’t acknowledge each other (him and his brother)
17.20 people were stunned (that they were related)
19.05 we’d show up in the library (at college)
19.36 it was pretty traumatic going to work
19.42 I ran back into the same people I left behind in high school
19.45 they were still narrow minded, homophoebic
19.59 after this grace period at college, you’re suddenly back in the real world (LL)
20.14 everyone will be progressive…..it was so oppressive
20.33 I didn’t pursue it for years (writing)
21.30 you are creating via compromise (being a writer in an ad agency etc)
21.33 there are so many cautionary tales in my own industry
21.49 get suspended
22.03: He thought I was chasing girls
22.43 he had dreads
23.55 you said that you wanted to pray away the gay
24.35 a narrowness that was looked upon as a virtue
24.51 you can put things on hold for as long as you want
24.55 we’re all repressed together
25.16 Exosism
25.29 So much intense and immediate emotional turmoil
26.26 the lusts came roaring back
26.59 that worked smashingly
27.05 I’m too much of a wuss to become an atheist
27.34 It was the first time that I felt like someone got my back (Nirvana didn’t want racist, homophobic people to buy records etc)
28.47 I don’t know if I would have written the queer parts (if was still in Jamaica)
28.59 I was over obsessed with what a novel should read like
29.14 shows itself in the ways in which I’d allow it to slip into a stream of consciousness
29.23 shifting timeframes
29.38 God I’m queer! (strange) high level code switching -
29.59 ‘they’re even more conservative in a diaspora (jamaicans living in the Bronx)
30.00 I’m living with people that are nostalgic for Jamaica
30.06 very suspicious of difference
30.23 baggy pants
30.44 Skin tight jeans with an obscenely low rise
30.57 strutting all over like some peacock
to show people how good you are at doing something, or how attractive you look
Let’s go and strut our stuff on the dance floor.
31.14 dash back to Barns and Noble
31.33 I could start over
33.16 have you ever made a pilgrimage to …
34.28 The guys were such good sports
34.36 all the hilarious of who shows up at Prince’s gates
34.51 I don’t think my books are as loaded with violence as people say
34.57 Of course my violence is going to resonate because violence comes with suffering
35.06 a lot of that criticism of violence is hypocritical
35.10 second novel doesn’t flinch from it either (the violence)
35.20 Reading about a slave getting whipped is probably hard, it’s easier than getting whipped.
36.28 I’m always thrown off when people ask me what can you cook
36.36 edible - food on the island
37.11 you kind of slide into it (Radiohead)
37.18 as a roving busy adult
38.44 Tom Jones - I had the most rollicking time