Lee Rourke: Not bored, never boring

Lee Rourke, the author of last year's excellent The Canal, is a writer concerned with big ideas and philosophies. Having made his name as a short story writer and a literary critic of repute, he has now released his debut novel, The Canal, which is on the surface a novel about a man sitting, watching the life of a canal expand before him while he wants for inspiration. As you dwelve deeper, you see it's about the intersection of boredom and violence. We called it 'a debut novel filled with humour, pathos and a stunningly odd relationship nurtured on a bench...'

We interviewed Lee about his favourite authors, inspiration and what it's like being published by an American publisher...

> Hello Lee, how are you today and what are you currently reading?

Hullo, I’m very well, I think. I’m currently reading Maurice Blanchot’s Awaiting Oblivion, Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, the collected poems of Wallace Stevens, Paul Celan, Tomas Transtromer and Geog Trakl, and as much Robert Walser as I can get hold of (especially his early poems translated by Michael Hamburger).

> How would you describe The Canal to a complete stranger?

I would say it’s a novel about desire, technology and the intersection of boredom and violence, set on the Regent’s Canal in London.

> Was there a moment that inspired you to write a book built of moments and how they ebb and flow in your memory?

The Canal was wholly influenced by certain theorists and philosophers I have read, I didn’t have a defining ‘moment’ as such, when I thought: ‘Right, Rourke, now it’s time to write your debut novel’, I just knew that I would always write something one day about a canal. So once I began to understand the stuff I was reading at the time I naturally began to write the book.

> When writing the book, what was the most method thing you did?

I did a lot of sitting on benches on the Regent’s Canal for long periods of time. But, at that point in my life I was doing a lot of that anyway, so it wasn’t truly method. I think the most ‘method’ thing I actually did was to sit down to write the book – I had to see what it felt like to be someone who writes. Writing doesn’t come easy to me, so I guess this helped.

> The book veers between the narrator's Godot-esque wait for inspiration and moments of social commentary. What did you intend?

Beckett is an unending influence on me. There’s something he said once in an interview: ‘When you listen to yourself, it’s not literature you hear.’ There is an echo of this ringing through The Canal. The narrator simply sits, he doesn’t even wait, he just sits. Then he begins to pick up on things: things he sees and hears. These things are the echoes of other lives and they aren’t pretty, they are dark, shrouded in blackness... they ring in the narrator’s ears until they won’t go away (a bit like Beckett’s ‘tinnitus of existence’). It isn’t social commentary as such, it’s an idea that when we try to step outside of a constructed reality, the construct begins to gradually seep and filter back in, and we begin to piece together another reality with each fragment (being memory or things seen or heard). This is basically the construct of The Canal, and I would argue the construct of all fiction. None of it is ‘Literature’.

> How did you write the book? What was your daily process?

I would write in notepads and then type them up onto my laptop editing as I typed. But I find it easy to write in noisy places so most of The Canal was written in pubs and cafes, then edited on my kitchen table the same evening in the flat we were living in at the time by the canal. But, as I said, I find writing hard work... it doesn’t come easy to me. So notepads are a good thing to carry, as I can write as soon as the urge hits me.

> As a writer active in social media, what is the greatest piece of advice you'd give to an aspiring author?

The three Ds: Disseminate, disseminate, disseminate.

> As your publisher is an American one, what were their reactions to very English references? It always amazes me how very American things have seeped into our subconscious through TV. Did you consciously set out to be as accessible as possible or just write what you wanted?

I would argue that the same influence has filtered into American culture through their reading of our traditional canon in the same way we feed from their TV. I would argue the average American’s view of the UK is determined by our stuffy, turgid and established literary forms.

But to answer your question, I basically wrote what I wanted. I had no conceived idea who would read The Canal when I was sitting down to write it. I just wrote it as I saw it in my head, utterly transfixed by what I was reading at the time. I’m not really interested in that sort of thing. I mean, I don’t care if certain things are untranslatable, it doesn’t matter to me. And it certainly doesn’t matter to me who might, or might not read my book.

I must admit, though, I do find it amusing that my book found its publishing home in New York and not in London. I mean, a book that is drenched in a particular London locale. Ultimately, a work of contemporary ‘London’ fiction. I find that funny.

I guess, all books come to life again when they are read (Blanchot was right), it just depends on who reads them.

> What has been the reaction to the book in America?

I get a lot of emails from people in places like Kentucky and Texas asking me what CCTV is and if swans and foxes really do inhabit London’s waterways and streets (honest), but mostly they want to know about the canals in London and what housing estates are, things like that.

On the whole I think American readers get it, I mean, the themes of The Canal are pretty much universal. And my publisher Melville House are amazing, my editor Dennis Johnson just seemed to ‘get’ the book immediately. It’s funny, the publishers I approached here in the UK seemed nervous around my book, they liked it but saw no place for it, whereas Dennis just seemed to understand that a novel such as The Canal has its place... He understood instinctively that I was writing against an established ‘British’ literary tradition and seemed to relish being part of that.

> Who is your favourite author and why?

I have many, and it all depends on how I’m feeling, but I would say it’s a toss-up between Samuel Beckett and Jean-Philippe Toussaint. For the simple reason that they both confront literature as something that isn’t real, but as something that is felt.

> What's next for Rourke?

In September this year I have a work of non-fiction A Brief History of Fables: From Aesop to Flash Fiction out with Hesperus Press and a German translation of The Canal (Der Kanal) is out in Autumn via Mairisch Verlag. My novel Amber (which I’m just trying to finish) is out with Melville House Publishing in 2012, and I have a short story collection I Like To Be Stationary and three poetry collections Varroa Destructor, Ink Black and Succinosis all out with Melville most probably in 2012/13 also.