Philip Wilding: Seasoned debut novelist

Philip Wilding is a seasoned journalist, producer and writer for TV, print and radio. He cut his teeth at Kerrang! magazine, touring with bands like Guns'n'Roses. It's criminal that his debut novel, Cross Country Murder Song, should appear now. Criminal- you see, is a pun, because this brutal dropkick of a book is visceral in its dark noir/thriller landscapes, occupying some of the bleakest most down-and-out parts of America. You'd be forgiven for thinking Welshman Wilding is American in the same vein as Don Delillo or John Cheever, so accurate and searing is his portrayal of the great expanse of the United States. He also co-presents a hilarious comedy podcast with Phil Jupitus called The Perfect Ten.

We caught up with Philip to discuss his favourite American voices, the genesis for his book and what's next for him.

> How are you?

I’m very well thank you. The book [Cross Country Murder Song] came out in Australia last week, Canada the week before. On Facebook, I’ve set up this thing where I ask people to take photos of my book in different bookshops, so I’m building a map up online of where my book is. It sounds childish but it’s exciting. I’m working on the second novel as well. I’ve just finished the first chapter- it’s about 5500 words and even my agent likes it. He doesn’t like anything. I’m in a good place.

> Tell us about Cross Country Murder Song...

I’d broken up with a girl so I went off to New York to stay with some friends for a couple of weeks to get my head together. I was in this apartment, reading a copy of the American Esquire someone had left lying about. In it there was an interview with one of the first pioneers of the American space race and he was doing weird things like going to the edge of space in a Bacofoil suit. I was in a bit of a weird place anyway, I was a bit traumatised, and I was looking at this image of this guy in his silver suit, thinking what it would be like to be the first guy who went to space? That was the genesis of the book. I wanted to write about trauma and how different people deal with it. The driver becomes the first domino as he affects everyone else’s lives by bringing trauma to them. I wanted to also look at how people adapt when they’re alone. The driver spends most of his time alone anyway except when he goes to his dad, so there’s a lot of stuff about how solitude affects you.

> You can read the book as a series of short stories with an interweaving narrative or as a novel. Was that on purpose?

I wanted the driver’s story, the choruses as it were, to be strong enough to stand alone as a book. The choruses have a timeline and work in context. But I did want to mess with the form a bit; I didn’t want to just write a conventional novel. When I was halfway through, I had thirty digital Post-it notes on my Mac with all the different stories and headings, and I was thinking ‘How am I going to pull this all together?’ It took me two solid days of drafting of editing to make everything fit. I prefer books that make you think, leave you wondering where things are going before slotting them into place.

> How did you write so well about America?

When I was 22-23, I was a music journalist. Have you seen the film Almost Famous? I was living that life. I was a journalist for Kerrang! magazine. I was going to America once every six weeks, to New York or Los Angeles, or left and right as we used to say. I’d get on tour buses and visit the Midwest. Everyone I met in LA was from somewhere else. It’s a bit like London. Early on, I made notes and met loads of people: junkies and homeless people and strippers, girls who’d come to the big city to try and make it. So I have firsthand experience of a lot of these people. A lot of it couldn’t have been written had I not been travelling in America, meeting lots of people, hearing stories and making notes. I was lucky, that was what I did as a young man. I’m also a big fan of American fiction.

> Did you find it hard to write dialogue as an American?

Not at all. I do a lot of script work so it came easy to me. I have a lot of American friends and I love books like The Great Gatsby. I’m reading Cheever’s diaries at the moment. I always read American authors growing up as I was always fascinated by the country. I had that American voice in my head. I’ve toured with American bands like Guns’n’Roses and Motley Cru and a lot of my girlfriends have been American, so weirdly, I know the American voice better than I know the Welsh voice.

> There are a lot of different tones in the book: it veers from Noir-ish thriller to really dark comedy...

Thank you. I think the book’s funny. Phil Jupitus and my friend Grant read bits of the book at the launch and people were laughing and I thanked them. All the reviews have been great but not one has said it’s funny. I’ve written comedy for the BBC and Phil [Jupitus] and I write comedy all the time. I wanted it to be funny on one level but on the other, dark. It can’t all be unrelentingly bleak because life isn’t that way- you could be having a really bad day but something might make you laugh. Also if you have something funny or beautifully written then something bad happens, it’s usually worse. The impact is bigger. The characters are less black and white then. You care about them.

> How did you write the book? Chronologically?

The first thing I wrote that was finished was the stuff with the astronaut- because early on, you need to finish something and feel like it has substance. What was nice about writing it was because I knew where everything was going to go, roughly. I could skip straight to chapter 4 or chapter 11, as long as I ended up with 13 ‘songs.’ I’m not good at doing linear stuff- I like the freedom.

> Do you have a writing process?

To be honest with you, you have to write everyday. At some point today, after this interview, I will have to write for about an hour, even if it’s 200 words or 1000. You just have to do it. When I finished the first chapter of my new book recently, I wrote a lot and then excavated bits- most of it is intact. If the muse is on me, I just write. One of the things my English teacher Ted, who the book’s dedicated to, said ‘you become a better writer by writing.’ It’s like running- the more you do it, the further you can run. Sharpen your tools.

> Who’s your favourite author?

I’ve bought The Great Gatsby for a lot of people- I’ve even got the last paragraph tattooed on my thigh. Early Fitzgerald helped me find my voice. I loved that he was mad and worked really hard at writing- for him it was a craft. I also love Bullet Park by John Cheever. Sam Sheppard, Richard Ford, Tobias Wolf- all of the great American voices, really. I go back to them quite a lot. There was a guy called Pinckney Benedict. He had two books of short stories, The Town Smoke and The Wrecking Yard, that were just brilliant. When I was working on the first book, I stopped reading fiction completely. If you do, and I know this sounds poncy, it’ll make your writing purer. Now, working on my second novel and back in hoopla-ville, I’m reading non-fiction, like Cheever’s journals. Cheever’s journals are classic: self-loathing, boozing, homosexuality, wife... It’s that hugely romanticised ideal of American authors as drunks, fighters and bullies. Fitzgerald and his missus were two manic depressive maniacs. She died in an asylum. He was an alcoholic, having affairs- I love the crashing beauty of it all. Martin Amis wrote a very good book called The Moronic Inferno, a collection of writings for The Observer, about America; it’s him interviewing, Gore Vidal, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth- it encapsulates what I feel about those authors and this country I really admire- not its politics though.

> Which of these writers would you compare yourself to the most?

Well, I got really excited recently- the book’s been selling well and Amazon has been sending out those ‘if you like..., you’ll like....’ emails. When I went on, it said ‘if you like Don Delillo, you’ll like Philip Wilding.’ The second time it said, ‘if you like Bullet Park by John Cheever, you’ll like Cross Country Murder Song by Philip Wilding.’ I did a little dance around the room.

> The book is based around an album structure, loosely. What music were you listening to writing this?

A lot of Bill Evans, the pianist. In the same way I don’t read fiction when I’m writing, I tend to not listen to music with lyrics in as well. So a lot of instrumental stuff like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman- for this book, a lot of dark noir stuff. A lot of the time, though, silence.

> Tell us about your The Perfect Ten podcast with Phil Jupitus?

Well it’s two grown men who spent five years launching 6Music- look what happened there- and when we left, I told Phil I wanted to write a novel and he said he wanted to be on a West End stage. A year later, I had my advance and he had his first rehearsal. And we just wanted to do something together again. A friend of ours runs USP, our production house, and Phil just said we’ll pick ten subjects out of one of Phil’s hats. We needed some sort of structure otherwise Phil and I would just ramble for an hour. Rambling podcasts just don’t work. We went in and recorded the first one, and now we’re doing live ones, selling out cinemas and I’m wondering, why do you want to sit and watch two men ramble in hats but they do.

In the style of The Perfect Ten podcast, what we've learnt: Philip likes dancing around rooms; people pay to see him ramble in cinemas; has sharpened tools; loves crashing beauty; and takes an hour to write 200 words.

Cross Country Murder Song is out now on Jonathan Cape