How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S1, Ep5 How to Fail: Olivia Laing

Episode Date: August 8, 2018

This week on How To Fail, we’re joined by the brilliant writer Olivia Laing. Her three critically-acclaimed works of non-fiction, To The River, The Trip to Echo Spring and The Lonely City, have explored themes of alcoholism, loneliness and suicide (and yet somehow manage to be deeply uplifting to read). Her recent debut novel, Crudo, has everyone from Jilly Cooper to Viv Albertine in veritable ecstasies. Olivia talks to us about losing her way in her 20s, how the torture of romantic break-ups has ultimately led to some of her greatest creative work and about what it’s like to be made redundant from a job you love. Along the way, we discuss gender fluidity, whether women are conditioned to self-deprecate, getting married at 40, why being raised by lesbians made Olivia less susceptible to patriarchal assumptions about What Men Want. We also debate whether Brighton has more dogs on strings than the average British city (spoiler alert: Elizabeth thinks that yes, it definitely does).  How To Fail is hosted by Elizabeth Day and produced by Chris Sharp  How To Fail is sponsored by Moorish Crudo by Olivia Laing is out now, published by Picador  Social Media: Elizabeth Day @elizabdayOlivia Laing @olivialanguageMoorish @moorishhumousPicador @picadorbooks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. Hosted by author and journalist Elizabeth Day, that's me. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how

to succeed better. Today we welcome Olivia Lang to the How to Fail podcast. She is one of our most brilliant writers and critics and the author of three dazzling works of non-fiction, To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring and The Lonely City. The latter was a profound and moving investigation into the condition of loneliness through the lens of iconic artists such as Andy Warhol and Edward Hopper. I love her work for its insight and cleverness and for the way in which she weaves highly original research

into meditations on what it is to be human. That all makes her sound a bit serious. She's also incredibly funny, and this is shown to great effect in her new novel, Crudo, which has everyone from Chris Krause to Jilly Cooper in veritable ecstasies. It's an amazing read, and I say that through slightly gritted teeth as a novelist myself. And yet along the way, Lange, like the rest of us, has also learned to deal with failure and rejection, both personal and professional. Feeling like I've really managed to express a thought, she once said of her writing, that's what makes it worthwhile. So Olivia, hello. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. I know you've been in torments for weeks, just thinking about the legions of failures you've experienced. But I

suppose what's interesting about that particular quote that I just read out is that it reveals how honest you are in your writing, and how you make yourself vulnerable through it. And I just wondered how hard that is to expose yourself on the page or whether it comes naturally. It definitely doesn't come naturally. I think I'm always slightly tormented by the idea of being sort of as a memoir writer, because I don't particularly like writing about myself. But at the same time, I do choose these subjects that are a very depressing, like alcoholism and loneliness, but that I have a personal investment in and it always feels to me like it's more ethical somehow to claim the investment to to make it clear that

I understand the subject from the inside as well as intellectually or aesthetically so my period of being very lonely in New York or my childhood in in an alcoholic family felt like something that was important to write about. And you said to me over an email that you had so much trouble kind of narrowing down your failures and that made me laugh so much because obviously you're incredibly successful and the recipient of many prizes and awards and but it but it really highlighted something for me that I found doing this podcast is that a lot of women will say to me, oh God, there's so much to choose from. And many men, not all of them, but many of them will sort of say, I don't think I failed at anything. I mean, maybe I failed at a football match when I

was 12 and I failed to score a goal. Whereas for women, it seems a lot more profound. And you are someone who writes a lot about gender. And I wanted to ask you whether you felt that one could say women are less resistant to the idea of embracing failure and also I suppose women are so socialized to be self-deprecating to not claim their successes that actually would be interesting if you were doing it about success where the women would say yes I really achieved this and I was magnificent at downhill skiing in 1980, or whether they'd say, oh God, I don't think I ever did anything particularly well. I think it's much easier for women to say, I didn't do well at this than to say I did marvelously at it.

Which is a bit depressing really, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, when you read your own work back, so something like Crudo, which is, you know, one of the best novels I've ever read, actually. And everyone's going around saying it's radically rewired the concepts of modern fiction. And you have all these wonderful quotes from heroes of yours saying how great it is. Do you feel that that is a success? Like, do you feel that you've written what you set out to write in that instance? Yes, actually, I don't finish a book and send it off until I feel like I'm happy with it and I don't have much angst about my work. I do have huge amounts of angst while I'm writing it but once it's done it's done and I don't particularly

think about it anymore. That's not true of really early like when I go back and look at To the River I slightly squirm at how overwritten it is but with with Crudo, I feel okay about it. I mean, there's other things that I have anxiety about, but not particularly that because it's the process of trying, the quote you gave before, it's the process of trying to articulate something that's the struggle for me. And once it's done, then I'm sort of moving on to the next crisis of writing. So I'm sort of more involved in that than the one that's previous. Do you draft and redraft a lot? With nonfiction, I rewrite every single sentence until it's perfect. So it draft and redraft a lot? With nonfiction I rewrite every single sentence

until it's perfect so it's an agonizing hateful process that takes years and years and is just a complete torment to me which is why Crudo was such a joy because I didn't let myself edit anything. The rules that I had were I had to write every day and I couldn't look back on any of it so the whole thing is just as it came out and that was incredibly liberating for a perfectionist. It was just a joy. So when you sent Crudo off to your editor or your agent, had you read it through at all from beginning to end? Not really. I finished it in Heathrow Airport and I sent it to them and then got on a flight. But I wasn't really planning on publishing it. I was planning on just putting it on the internet

for a sort of lark. I'm going to planning on publishing it. I was planning on just putting it on the internet for a sort of lark. I'm going to really regret saying this. And then they decided that they wanted to publish it and then so did my publishers. So it was sort of done in a real race. I wasn't expecting any of that to happen. I always remember seeing Abby Morgan, the screenwriter, interviewed

and she said that she wrote Suffragette. She was commissioned to write this movie. And wrote it in two weeks, not really thinking of magic, just kind of dashing it off on her computer. And then sent it off because she knew that there were going to be so many comments that actually it was easier for her to think of it as an act of collaboration and not be too attached to it. I mean, can you relate to that?

That thing of just... No, not in any way at all. I don't think of any writing as collaboration I hate the idea I'm really opposed to it and I hate writing for American magazines where they do think it's collaboration no I'm incredibly controlling about it as all my editors would attest so it's not that but there is something about having been a very sort of controlling perfectionist writer there was something about just dashing something off very freely

that felt amazing, but it's not like I'll carry on writing like that. It was a one-off. I mean, maybe I will and just write one every six months and really piss everyone off. Because you wrote it in seven weeks, Grido, didn't you? Yeah, but because it's a real-time book, I was recording what was happening every day, so it wasn't like there was a shortage of material

because the world was exploding in front of my face I mean I hate you but I love you so Olivia and I first became very good friends when we were both working at the Observer and Olivia was deputy literary editor I was wildly intimidated when I joined the Observer and basically didn't speak to anyone for the first six months to a year and then we got talking and then shortly afterwards you left the observer and that is one of the failures that you have said to me um but out of that failure what was amazing that came out of it was this book deal and that's why you started writing books but can you talk to us about how it felt failing to keep a hold of that job yes although in some ways

I need to do the other failure first to give the context but maybe I'll just kind of give a little tiny preamble which is that I completely fucked up my 20s my 20s are an entire fuck up so the job at the Observer was a real miracle for me I decided at about 29 I wanted to train to be a journalist I did journalism course I did some work experience we had to do work experience and I did some at the Observer for Robert McCrum, who was then literary editor. And by a complete miracle, the deputy literary editor ended up leaving shortly afterwards, and I got hired to do it. So I sort of sprang from absolutely having no career in journalism, no, no, absolutely nothing, to doing what was my dream job. So I had these sort of three blissful years working at the Observer, which I just, it's funny, you often think that you don't recognize happiness when you have it. But I really did. I kept saying to myself, this won't last. And I'm so happy now,

this is such a sort of happy, fulfilling job to do. I really adored it. But I never had a permanent contract. It was always sort of renewed every six months. And at some point in 2009, I was called to the head of HR's office and she told me that I was being made redundant. And it was just annihilating because I didn't have a sense of, OK, well, this is a world I'm in and I have stability in it. I'm rooted in it and I'll be able to find something else. I just felt like I had sort of climbed into a different world and I was going to fall back down and never find my footing again. It was so terrifying. I remember

leaving, I probably cried quite a lot in the office and people were incredibly kind. But I remember being at Farrington Station and just sobbing and sobbing and sobbing, leaning against a wall. It was so devastating. And then I was there for another month and then had a leaving party. And just that night was so awful knowing that I didn't have anything that I was going to go on to. I wasn't sure that I'd be able to sort of pick up the pieces. But actually, I had got an agent at that point. And I did have a book idea. And I decided I'd just give it a little bit of time and see if I could sell a book. And by a complete utter miracle I did so that gave me the next thing to do and where did the idea for to the river stem from I'd had it for ages I'd had it for a long time because I used to review like tiny

reviews for the TLS and it always said in my byline Olivia Lang's writing a book about Virginia Wolfe and the river but it wasn't it's like painting yourself into a corner like now I have to do I did I completely backed myself in but it was funny as well when you were saying people were nice at the observer I remember um I had this conversation with Claire Armistead who was the literary editor of the Guardian and she'd always been very kind to me and I was saying to her how sad I was and she said to me there's a very very small window in a woman's life where she can leave this kind of work and become a writer. And you have to dive through that window. And I was like, Claire, I've been pushed through the window. And she was like, it doesn't really matter. You're not

on this side now, you're on that side. And that really stayed with me that if I could manage to make that work, then I could make a different sort of artistic life rather than a professional life. And that that might be something I could pull off. Do you think she said as a woman because of the children thing? I think lots of things I think the children thing but I think also as you get older you have more financial commitments it's harder to make that sort of leap that there's a moment at which you can sort of take a risk or take a gamble and she felt like I was the right age for it and that I wouldn't always be. That if the same thing happened in 20 years' time, I might be in a very different position and feel I had to get

another sort of similar job. It was like being given a dare. It was like, you can choose to do something with this, or you can choose not to. And I know because I do have the great privilege of being your friend, that actually, although To The River was a great success and critically acclaimed and nominated for various awards, you then made a very brave choice to take on only writing assignments that you properly cared about and to live according to your means so you know which were very low yeah and you really did that was tough yeah and that was for years and years actually I was really broke but I mean I mean, God, what a luxury. What a sort of amazing way to be able to live.

So I don't feel like I'm sort of hard done by it. I feel like that was an amazing thing, that I could just about live off book deal money and do some writing around it that I like doing was amazing. So we'll track back to that, but you did mention there that that whole anecdote makes much more sense when you consider it in the context of your 20s which which you've described as one of your failures which seems like a huge admission one whole decade what were you like in your 20s I didn't know you then well I went to university

for a year and then I dropped out and lived on road protests. So I was a dreadlocked, incense-smelling hippie, really. I completely dropped out of society. I was very non-material. I was very politically active. Why did you drop out of university? Because I thought it was bullshit, man. What were you studying? English literature. I wanted to change the world. I mean, I was very sort of idealistic. And after a while of living on protests, it's a very draining lifestyle. I mean, I was very sort of idealistic. And after a while of living on protests, it's a very draining lifestyle. Living outdoors is very draining. So I decided that I was going to do an ethical job and I was going to train to be a herbalist, which was basically spending five years doing a medicine degree so that at the end people could say, are you a homeopath?

Which I hated because I'm very arrogant. Halfway through that course, I realized that it wasn't really what I wanted to do, but I felt like I couldn't drop out of something else. So I carried on with it. And then I set up a practice in Brighton and I absolutely hated it. And I couldn't see any way out. We were talking about not having very much money earlier, but then I really, I was working as a cleaner. I was was working doing the filing for an accountant and I was in my late 20s and I couldn't see any way out of it I was in this sort of world I remember once Elizabeth coming to visit me in Brighton and saying there are dogs on strings everywhere but but it was like that it is a place that people go to to drop out and everyone I was surrounded by was kind of in the same boat. And it's very hard to sort of drop back in again. So yeah,

it was a very, very dark period and a very long dark period. There are so many questions I want to ask about that period, because it feels as if you lived so many different lives within it. So the road protesting, you knew Swampy, didn't you? You protested the Newbury Bypass. That's, I guess, a failure because the Newbury Bypass was built. I don't actually, I don't think of that period as a failure. And the two protests I lived on, they both won. So there are woodlands that exist that wouldn't if we hadn't been there. And that's amazing. Actually, that particular adventure was fantastic. It was more the fallout of it that was really, you know, at the time, I thought, what does a degree matter? And I just hadn't really realised the entire infrastructure

that going to university builds for you in your life. It's not just the education, which I think I sort of patched together on my own anyway. You don't have a circle of friends that are also doing things. You're not part of that sort of professional world at all. And the older I got, the more it became clear that I really had slipped between the cracks somehow. And the older I got, the more it became clear that I really had slipped between the cracks somehow. And it is so hard to get back in. What did your family make of it? Of you dropping out of university? I mean, they were very long suffering. There was a period where I was living on an abandoned pig farm outside Brighton on my own and I built a bender which is this sort of

structure out of hazel and tarpaulin and I had a wood burner and I was living there I mean what was I doing nothing and my dad came out and brought a sofa to go in my bender on his sports car which even I could see was slightly ironic driving this like silver Audi over the field. So they were interested and tolerant. I mean, they could see with the herbal medicine that it was, you know, very academically demanding and they were interested by it. But at the same time, I think everyone was a bit like, where's this going? And herbalism is a funny job because once you qualify, that's it. It's not like there's a professional structure or that you can apply for promotion or that you have colleagues or that there's any of the sort of broader structure that makes medicine work. You're just alone seeing people who have terminal cancer day after day. It's an extraordinarily strange job and I hated it.

And you were filing and cleaning to make ends meet? Yeah I was just scrubbing floors and putting people's tax returns in alphabetical order. I mean really like that was what I did all day and I just felt like I was rotting. It was horrific. It was such a bad period. I've also been a cleaner. What was the worst thing? I didn't mind being a cleaner actually. I didn't mind it either. It was the filing that I really resented. Yeah because cleaning you get a sense of purpose and a sense of purpose and a sense of achievement. You've achieved something.

Yes, you can visually see what you've done. Yeah, I actually really enjoyed that. I like sorting out messes and I liked coming in and making something beautiful and then leaving again. I liked the people I worked for. Yeah, I cleaned for most lesbians in Brighton. That was my piece. Why is that not on your autobiography?

Do you think I should change it? Definitely. So from there to, you've dropped out of university, you've learnt how to be a herbalist, but from there to being deputy literary editor of The Observer is quite a leap. So were you reading yourself, were you educating yourself in literary ways throughout this? Yeah, I was always reading a huge amount. I was reading academically as well because I was interested. Were you educating yourself in literary ways throughout this?

Yeah, I was always reading a huge amount. I was reading academically as well because I was interested. But I don't think anyone at the Observer knew quite the depth of the non-education that I had. I remember somebody asking me once if I'd gone to Oxbridge. And I just felt like I didn't actually go to university at all. I thought you turned down a place at Oxbridge. I did. I did. This is something I discovered about Olivia literally after knowing her for about four years, that this whole past

as a herbalist and yeah. It wasn't like I didn't have options. I just said no to them all because I was perverse and youthful. God. Because that is one of the things that critics have said about your book, that you have an academic bent, the way you think about things is incredibly original, but also very, very learned. It's funny, though, because I spent huge amounts of time doing research, I spent lots of time in archives, and there is supposed to be a sort of scholarly depth to them. But at the same time, it's not what any academic would do. And I was giving a talk once in Cambridge, and Gillian Beer came up to me afterwards, the Virginia Woolf scholar, and said, sort of in quite shocked tones who gave you permission to do this

I mean she didn't mean you've broken the law but she meant like what made you think that you could and how it's so beyond the sort of idea of what would make proper academic research so I quite liked that I felt kind of like I'd kept the sort of rebelliousness at the same time as having the thoroughness as well yeah well I feel that that probably came out of this period of your life where you see failure turned into success because you chose to drop out and look at the world differently there was something in you that needed to do that yeah and I don't regret the initial thing. I just hadn't understood how long the consequences would be or how irreversible, you know, in the end, I did manage to reverse it, but it did take a huge amount of effort. And then this sort of magical stroke of

luck of getting hired by Robert and suddenly being sort of catapulted back into probably exactly the life I would have had if I'd gone to Cambridge and worked my way up. I can't imagine I would have been any further along at 30 than Deputy Literature of the Observer. That's exactly where I would have got to, which is quite weird that I sort of got to the same place by this mad, circuitous route. Do you think a lot of writers thrive on the solitary experience of writing? But it sounds like you quite liked working in an office. I loved it. I don't really like sitting down on my sofa and writing. I like talking. I like chatting, which is why I love doing events and I love doing in conversations

and that sort of side of writing I get much more of a kick out of. But I do remember my boss, Will Skadowski, who was the observer literature when I left, he took me for coffee immediately after I'd found out and was very kind, actually. And I did say to him, the only positive I can see is that I do want to think about things more deeply than just what 900 word review do we need to commission for next week and the week after and the week after. So I didn't particularly like the week schedules. I liked thinking about things for a couple of years. That does suit me more. How early in your life do you think you were introduced to the notion that things go wrong? Oh, God, that's such an intense question. I mean really early you know my parents split up when

I was really small. My mum had a complicated relationship with a woman who was an alcoholic. There were all kinds of threads of chaos going on but also, you know, my mum's this incredible person, like magical person who can make stuff work out of chaotic circumstances or difficult circumstances. She really has this sort of conjurer's ability. And she really raised me and my sister Kitty to be people who could not necessarily succeed, but just get on top of situations, deal with things. We were taught that whatever happened, we'd be able to cope with it it which I think is an amazing way to raise your children especially to raise girls to just feel like they're capable and that there are problems to be solved she was very into not solving things for us as well sort of making us work out solutions which we hated at the time but now I think

it really really paid off mother lang mother lang Mother Lang, she's amazing. The most wonderful woman, yeah. Yeah, she is. Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognized for being very online. It's about damn time. I mean, it's hard work being this opinionated. And correct. You're such a Leo.

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to the river now to the river in and of itself sort of came out of a failure as well it was a failure of a relationship all of my books start with somebody breaking up with me. And I just feel at this point, like, it's lucky I got married because probably no one would ever date me in case I start writing about them. Crudo doesn't start with that. Crudo starts with being married. Sort of does. Oh, does it?

That's not what I totally forgot about. Sort of on the first page. But anyway, let's move on from that one. Yeah, I do find it very creatively inspiring to be done. Well, that's really interesting. Because I actually think some of the biggest personal growth spurts in my life have been as a result of relationships ending. Yeah, and part of that, I think, there's all sorts of reasons,

but part of it is just I have such a strong urge to put my case forward and I feel like I'm not being listened to anymore and I want to sort of make an argument and then you know I can sort of take that those bits out of the book but the sort of desire to communicate is so strong in that moment I feel like that's a real driver for me the desire to find your voice the desire to find my voice the desire to articulate what's going on you know because it's always such a swampy moment, isn't it? Emotionally, you have divergent stories of what's happened. There's lots of inarticulated feeling.

And I think then I just want to be very classificatory and work out what's happening and get it all written down. There's something about that that always gets me, yeah, ready to write. I think there's so much wrapped up in how women see themselves when relationships end. And I remember a few years ago having a conversation with my friend Tess where she said anyone who's ever broken up with me I walk away thinking what a fucking idiot and that was such a revelation to me because I thought oh I don't think that I always think what have I done wrong why am I not good enough yeah and that's terrible that this person doesn't want

to be with me yeah me too yes and I think there's something that's so wow it's a really interesting way of looking at it yeah imagine because I think that's unpack something about female self-worth yeah and how much women struggle to know who they are not in relation to other people because so much of a woman's social and cultural conditioning is to be a mother, to be a wife, to be a good friend and there and nurturing for other people. Yeah. I know that you have really interesting takes on gender and what it means to you, but did you feel that sort of womanly sense of what other people expected? In some ways, really not. You know, I was raised by lesbians.

I really didn't have a lot of that sort of patriarchal conditioning about pleasing men at all in other areas of my life. And, you know, I'm really confident, apart from in that one area of dating where I absolutely collapsed into that sense of, it must be my fault, what have I done? I would absolutely never think what Tess thought. Even now, that's so extraordinary to me. And that seems like such a healthy attitude to walk away being like,

you lost me. It's brilliant. I've now thought it once, post-breakup. Yeah, we'll talk later about who that was. Stick a pin in that, talk about it later. And it is a really empowering feeling yeah i'd find that really hard and i love the idea of it i feel like she should give workshops on how to feel like that get her on okay so your third failure that you emailed me about was actually

it ties into this a romantic failure and you talk about a specific one about being dumped in Chicago station by Skype which I mean that guy I have no words for I'm left speechless by that wait that isn't even the whole thing I got dumped in Chicago station by Skype before getting on a three-day train journey with no internet and no phone reception which is like just if you want to go into a hell realm of low self-worth that's the way to do it it reminds me of that story about how matt damon dumped mini driver by fax or something no he dumped her on the oprah winfrey show and someone else dumped someone else by fax it's sort of the modern day equivalent is doing it by skype skype so brutal yeah i don't know why of all the breakups i had, it was very, very short relationship,

but I had huge amounts of hope about it. And again, like the observer thing, it felt like the promise of it was something that was going to lift me into a different kind of life, possibly marriage, a world that I wanted to be in. I think I've always felt like my footing in the world has been slippery somehow. I don't know why. It felt like it was something that was going to provide that. And the loss of it, the age I was, I was in my mid-30s. Everyone else I knew was getting married. And it just felt like it was an absolute failure. Like it was a failure that there wasn't any coming back from.

I didn't think, oh, I'll pick up the pieces and go on Tinder tomorrow. I don't think Tinder had been invented. But anyway, whatever, go on. What did people do before Tinder? Mybestfriend.com what was the other one called the match.com match.com yeah go on match.com jesus i was just pulverized by it and it lasted for years and years but that is the experience that then led me into writing the lonely city which really then was the book that gave me the life i have now I think in that it was so much about things I love it allowed me to then carry on writing about art it gave me a sort of platform to be myself that sounds strange but yeah so it was a very liberating failure in the long run

it is an incredible book the Lonely City because so many people have related to it because you were giving words to a condition that existed that people very often didn't speak about. And there is something very radical about claiming your own loneliness in this hyper-connected culture. Yeah. And as your friend reading it, when I did, there was an enormous amount of your own sadness in that book. That sort of constant scrolling

through social media when it's dark outside and I know it's but but so relatable yeah and I think that's the funny thing about when you write down something that feels very individual and private and sort of appalling to admit and then it turns out everyone else is doing the same thing and you know at this point I've lost count of the number of generally really young people people in their early 20s who come up to me after talks or readings who are tearful and this has let me realize that I'm not a freak and that's sort of amazing that's an incredible thing to have happened it's lovely did writing the Lonely City make you less lonely yeah definitely definitely I mean the whole experience of just digging into other people's lives and realizing how many people are lonely for such diverse reasons,

that it isn't individual's fault, that it's to do with political and social structures as well, that people are stigmatized. All of that just made me feel like it's so ordinary. It's so much a part of the texture of life. It passes in and out. It's quite interesting. And then also because the book did so well, it connected me with so many, like so many artists that I absolutely adore liked it. It really did change my life. That's so magical. That's the magical thing about books, isn't it? Yeah. Do you, in a funny sort of way, miss the loneliness now of that particular era of your life?

may miss the loneliness now of that particular era of your life? No, no, it was painful. But I mean, there are ways in which I miss the total freedom of living on my own and saying, well, I'm going to be in New York for the next three months. And that sort of not really being beholden to anyone else and not being committed to anyone else. You know, now I'm married and I'm in a really different life and I'm with somebody all the time and I think my natural state is much more solitary so I struggle with the commitment and the closeness not the commitment but I struggle with the closeness so I do have slight nostalgia for like New York City's sublets but I don't miss being that level of lonely at all. Bathtubs in the kitchen. That was a in the kitchen, yeah. That was a great apartment. In Crudo, which, I mean, can I categorise it as auto-fiction?

Yeah. Yeah. So there are sorts of biographical details that you weave in, and the character in Crudo talks about being bad at marriage. You are married now. How bad do you think you are at it? I mean, I do think I'm getting better but at the time I was fucking appalling I mean the thing is if you've been on your own for a long time you have

no idea that the skills are lacking of how to deal with another person how to have arguments how to compromise over space and I just didn't know how to do any of it so I'd fly off the handle all the time I found the proximity incredibly difficult. I found talking all the time really difficult. I wasn't used to having conversations about like, what should we eat for dinner? I was used to just living a bit like an animal really, like quite a civilised animal,

but I'd do what I want when I wanted. And it was like a crash course in learning how to compromise. And I think Ian would say that I'm better at it, but I think Ian would also say that I'm quite bad at it when but luckily for me he's been married three times so he's very very good are you self-conscious sometimes agonizingly less and less the older I get but there are definitely moments where I feel like I'm slightly on stage. Actually, never when I'm on stage where I'm really unselfconscious. But in those sort of like occasionally in a restaurant, definitely when I'm having my photo taken, I can feel really self-conscious, sort of agonizingly self-conscious. But I mean, as a child, I was tormented by shyness and self-consciousness.

And really, it's sort of gradually like rubbed off, gone. And why do you think that is why is it that aging makes you less so partly i think i just worked at it i couldn't bear how scared i was of doing things so i made myself do them until i could and then also i read this thing which i just think is the most useful piece of advice i've ever read which was in a book called the worm forgives the plow and it was just a throwaway comment that the narrator, it's a memoir from during the Second World War about a man who works on farms.

And he said that he was incredibly shy and he realized that everyone was shy and him performing his shyness was just a burden on everyone else. And that the best thing you could do for the communal shyness of everybody was to just act as if you were confident and fine. And it made life a lot easier. And I just thought, just thought bloody hell that's it was such a revelation to me it was so amazing

everyone's always struggling in social situations you don't need to make it harder for everyone else that is what Oprah would call a teachable moment it was a real teachable moment the worm forgives the plan it's a totally beautiful hilarious book he just goes on farms and he can't do anything. He fucks it up all the time, but in a very funny way. And he's got funny names for everything. It's like incredibly, you'd love it. It's very enjoyable. So now that you are married

and you're the recipient of all these fabulous grants and are making a good living from your wonderful writing, having been the poster girl, there's a loneliness and a kind of cultural criticism that came from, I guess, an examination of human failings. Do you ever worry that you're losing your edge? No, because the book I'm trying to write now is so painful and full of torment, not personal torment, but no, I feel like I can possibly use the skills I've got to write something that's better. And that it doesn't necessarily need a personal component that my more settled life can let me do more interesting work. I hope I mean, God knows,

I can't write it at the moment. But does it start with a breakup? This is the problem. I haven't got a breakup. I might need to invent one. I'm really interested in your new book and can we talk about it a bit it's called everybody and failure no it's not so I mean they're always a failure until you finish I always feel like this is a book that's unwritable I was saying that to our mutual friend Francesca the other day and she said Olivia you say that about every single book you write absolutely true which is true I know it's true. But luckily you don't. No, I do. Do I not say, well, I might not say it out loud, but I think it internally.

Yes, definitely. And you would be completely unforgivable if you didn't think that. I mean, I think it's a beautiful part of your character that you think that and it makes you work ever harder at your writing. Yeah. But it's about how we relate to our bodies it's about the experience of having a body in the 21st century which is a moment of increasing disembodiment and robots and artificial intelligence and us becoming data points for

hateful capitalist organizations to um exploit what a lovely era to live in but really it's about how we manage things like violence, sexuality, all of these can make the experience of living in a body a prison. And then the ways in which the body is a source of freedom in the world and can continue to be a source of freedom, like the body is a vehicle for protest. So I'm really interested at the moment in, on the positive side, the kids who are protesting against gun use in America. I'm also completely fascinated by the incels, these boys who believe that sex with women is their right and commit terrorist atrocities because they're not getting sex with hot girls. I find them fascinating and repulsive. And so

that's something that I'm sort of really intrigued by at the moment. But it's a very, very depressing book. And, you know, the nature of it is that I need to think a lot about torture and genocide. I'm not having the best time, really. How do you feel about your own body? Oh, well, really complicated, really complicated, because of my feelings about gender, because I don't feel particularly comfortable with a female gender, which has always been the case. I find it really hard. And I don't know how much of that to bring into the book. I mean, bodies are just repositories for so much complex feeling and so much history and so much social history as well, political history. So I just hadn't quite bargained for the size of the subject that I'd taken on.

Now I'm very daunted by it. Perhaps I will still fail. In which case we can come back and talk about that. And do another one. Yeah. You talk about Hemingway, and my favourite of your books is The Trip to Echo Spring, which I think you know.

And you look at Hemingway amongst other writers in that book, and Hemingway once talked about writers being brilliant liars. All writers are liars, he said. Do you think you're a good liar? No, I'm a terrible liar. My godson's a really bad liar. When he's asked questions, he says, yeah, and his eyes start rolling from side to side. And I feel like I'm quite like that. I can't really tell. I went to Catholic school. I went to a convent. You're not allowed to lie. understand why writers drank when I wrote The Trip to Echo Spring, because I'd hardly written any books. I didn't realise that the sense of failure gets greater and greater, the possibility

of failure, the danger of repeating yourself. It sort of accelerates and accelerates. And I hadn't quite taken in the sort of pressure that somebody like Hemingway must have been under as the decades roll by, to keep producing and knowing that you're not really producing the same kind of works of genius that you were when you were younger so I feel much more sympathetic towards him than I perhaps did in the book that's so interesting because you you have had a great deal of critical acclaim which must be lovely on one level but also terrifying yeah yeah I feel very daunted by it and actually after I got the Wyndham Campbell Prize which was completely amazing and and wonderful I felt very

depressed for a while because I just felt like I'm not capable of living up to these things in my work. Like, so what about the work that you've done? It's the work that's ahead. And what if it can't exist? So I can see why you might want to drink a bottle of rum a day, really. That seems quite intelligible now. Has a reviewer ever said something about your work that you haven't thought about? Oh, I was going to say that hurt your feelings. No, no, no. I mean, no, no. now. Has a reviewer ever said something about your work that you haven't thought about?

Oh, I was going to say that hurt your feelings. No, no, no. I mean, no, no. But quite often when I write a novel and it's reviewed, someone will talk about the themes that clearly interest me. And I think, oh, I never even imagined that I was, that I did have this theme in mind. For instance, like I write about class apparently, and I hadn't really realised I was doing that. And I just wondered if you'd ever had that experience. I don't know, but to be apparently and I hadn't really realized I was doing that and I just wondered if you ever had that experience I don't know but to be honest I can't remember anything from my reviews apart from the things that did upset me which is like etched in my memory but I don't think I particularly take in anything else from them that's funny isn't it no I am exactly the same and I think it just slides off me well I think it's quite a female trait as well yeah to forget the compliments instantly but to nurture grudges for decades on the one sentence the one wounding sentence that

everyone else is like I don't think that's even space to be negative yes but you find it yeah no I don't think I can answer that question I don't know do you feel like a success no no I feel sort of poised between the possibility of success and failure I suppose I don't particularly look back I look forwards at what I'm working on and because that always feels like it's got the potential to be awful and because I catastrophize constantly and I constantly think everything is going to go to shit so no no but I mean I can see rationally that things have gone very well so far and that I feel very lucky about it I feel very lucky about the sort of random opportunities that have opened up yeah but I don't go around going yeah really got this writing shit locked down no god no now I feel like I'm jinxed no we're touching I'm touching

I'm hitting it. You talked earlier about how you hate having your photograph taken. But to my eyes, you are an incredibly stylish individual. And I think part of the reason incredibly stylish individuals don't like having their photo taken is because a two-dimensional static art form can never capture the essence of someone. But how has your style developed? Like your aesthetic style? That's such a good question from rainbow jumpers and oh my god I was writing something about road

protest era clothes the other day and I remembered that I had a pair of red trousers that I'd stitched myself from an old ball gown that was what I wore all the. I had a top hat with like feathers sticking out. That is so grunge. That is so like early 90s reality. It's very, very 90s. Yeah, so I've definitely got more stylish in the year. It wouldn't be hard, impossible to get less stylish. But I am obsessed with clothes. I do really love clothes. What was the question?

How your style has developed, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. I think spending more and more time in the art world probably sharpens your style up doesn't it because people are already so well dressed and I'm so kind of obsessed with colour and interested in that sort of thing I don't know I can't articulate it what's your favourite item of clothing that you currently possess I'm very keen on the t-shirt I'm wearing which there's fruits in very bright letters it's lovely I love it I like it too it's a grey t-shirt, yes,

and it's got fruits and kind of block sans serif capitals. But they're very bright. They're very glossy letters and the colours are very pleasing. They also slightly match with your watch. Which is also, I'm very proud of this swatch watch. I'm definitely a success when it comes to swatches. Do you think you've ever failed at dressing well? I mean, the Roe Protester era obviously but oh god yeah

definitely dressing appropriately is very hard so hard it's very hard to sort of read the circumstance and get it right and I like being sort of slant to what the occasion is but there's slant and there's like completely misreading it I'm trying to think of specific examples but I'm finding it quite hard to and like they're also oh god yeah I was going to say there are photos on the internet but then I remembered that I bought this black and white striped top which I really liked and I actually think in real life it looked fine but somehow I ended up having my photo taken about 40 times the one day I wore it which is still used this was in 2011 which was still used as my author pictures now. It's like I can never escape this fucking licorice all sort top.

Yeah, you can find that on the internet. Just Google image search. Oh, please don't. Who do you think has been the most inspiring influence in your life? Oh, I mean, I instantly want to say my mum. My mum and Derek Jarman, that's probably the combination. So Derek Jarman, the gay filmmaker and artist, activist, who I started reading when I was 12 or something, was somebody who gave me a really foundational sense of what it means to be an artist, really, how you can be an artist, that it can be fun and jolly and also radical and political to be an artist. So that's somebody that really gave me a sort of frame. And then also Ali Smith, the writer,

has been in my life since I was a kid because she's my cousin's partner. And she's always given me the sense that the way to be an artist is to be generous and to be generous to other artists rather than competing. And that's really foundational as well. It looked like that's a fantastic way to live. That's a joyous way to live. Yeah, I was lucky to have that mode

to kind of aspire towards or to just see that that's a way of being in the world. It doesn't have to be sort of cutthroat. It can be generous. Talking about generosity versus sort of competitiveness. You relatively recently joined Instagram. How do you enjoy it? I absolutely love it. I really love it. I'm surprised at how much I do. I was really late to join it because I don't have a smartphone, but I got given... It's one of her failings.

It's one of my failings. It's literally, she's got a Nokia phone of the kind that you used to play Snake on. I just want to say that my Nokia Lewis, in Lewis as in Lewis and Morse, has the same Nokia, which I think is amazing, very stylish. Every time I see it, I gasp,

where's my phone? phone oh you mean in the tv program yes but is that is is more it's not a period piece well I mean Lewis does extend like style I I love it I love my phone anyway Instagram I like it because I've been very ruthless about who i follow i just follow people who put stuff on that i think is beautiful so i look on and it's lovely and uplifting and then i go on twitter and it's all like hell and hate and war and i feel really depressed and go back on look at flowers it's brilliant what would be a piece of advice you said that there that a lot of people in their 20s come up to you after you've given talks and talk about loneliness and disconnectedness. What would be your piece of

advice for someone like that who is just struggling to feel content? There's this lovely line in an Arthur Russell song, being sad is not a crime. And I love that so much. It's like you're not doing something wrong just because you don't feel great. And I think like I've been very positive about Instagram, but I can see for people that that age this constant need to sort of curate your life and be beautiful and be surrounded by laughing beautiful people in beautiful places it's like an extraordinary pressure when the conditions of that generation's existence is so hard that they don't get paid very much they can't afford to rent anywhere they're living in shared houses into their 30s and maybe 40s it's okay to feel bad about that it's okay to feel low and I just think emotions are like weather they come and go and you don't have to make that a source of feeling like a

failure actually it feels like we live in an age of relentless positivity and actually we've forgotten that life is texture yeah and that you can't really experience the beauty of it without experiencing the tough stuff. Yeah, and I think this is something Elizabeth and I talk about a lot in our friendship, that we do weather these experiences where we feel really bad, but then they clearly open us up to new stuff. It's so clear looking back at the last, what, eight years of our friendship and seeing the way that all of the things that made us feel like failures

at the time have turned into the foundations of who we are so clearly. So now I don't believe in failure at all. I think it's all success. I love that. What a great note to end on. Being sad is not a crime and there's no such thing as failure. Only the success that comes from it. Yeah, yeah.

Olivia, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.