the PARIS REVIEW
Rubik Roy, The Art of
Fiction No. 197
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Interviewed by Jorge Plankton
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The following conversation was recorded one summer afternoon on the yacht Begorra off the coast of Capri.
I met Rubik Roy one summer afternoon in Capri and he invited me to sail around the Marina Grande in his yacht “Begorra”. We were joined by his wife and their two year old son. We sat down to our interview on the upper deck while his wife sunbathed on the lower deck. Their son steered from the bridge.
The first impression Roy gives is that he is mentally unstable. He is unable to maintain eye contact and keeps moaning under his breath as if he is about to climax but always stops short. It is a strange habit and a little distracting. Some commentators have observed that his much publicised deafness seems to ebb and flow according to the complexity of the questions or the favours asked of him. In any case, he foregoes the use of a hearing aid for reasons best known to himself. When he does understand or hear properly, his answers are usually short and to the point. He has a reputation for being an aggressive interviewee, and there is a rumour that he once bit a man who asked him the time on the street.
For the interview Roy was wearing blue and white striped pyjama bottoms and a white T-shirt shorn at the back as if he had been mauled by a bear. He gave the impression of being bored and often stared into the distance muttering to himself: “He probably can’t swim”, and “How to make it look like an accident?”.
INTERVIEWER: Why do you write?
ROY: I’m sorry? I’m a little hard of hearing. Sit on my right.
INTERVIEWER: Well, ok….How did you start writing?
ROY: Weren’t you at Robert Kennedy’s assassination?
INTERVIEWER: No, I think you’ve confused me for George Plimpton.
ROY: Over the phone, you said you were Plimpton.
INTERVIEWER: I said Plankton.
ROY: God!
INTERVIEWER: We must have had a bad connection. I can see you’re disappointed. I don’t blame you. I didn’t tackle Kennedy’s killer and help in his capture. Some people would call Plimpton a hero.
ROY: If only he had tackled the killer before he had fired his weapon. Then Kennedy himself would have called him a hero. I suppose you’re an intern.
INTERVIEWER: Well, not exactly. I’ve written some poetry and a book on finance: Experiments with Money. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? While it wasn’t a financial success, it did prove popular with anarchists. Anyway, enough about me. You were saying how you started writing.
ROY: Let me see…I was living in a nudist colony in Saudi Arabia when the mood to jot down a few thoughts struck me rather forcefully. Initially, I was moved to do a few sketches but capturing the human anatomy proved beyond my talents. I learned that it was easier to write the word “orgy” than to actually draw one.
INTERVIEWER: What did you write?
ROY: I wrote an essay on the habits of my fellow nudists. How they scratched themselves in public or bent over to touch their toes needlessly.
INTERVIEWER: Did you enjoy your time there?
ROY: Not at all. But if I hadn’t been there, I would probably have never written.
INTERVIEWER: Adversity, then, is your muse?
ROY: All writers are unhappy people. If they were happy they would have done something else. Accounting, for instance. Of all the vocations, writers and dentists have the highest rates of suicide. A writer writes because, as Simenon once said, they are trying to find themselves: “Every writer tries to find herself through her characters, through all her writing.”
INTERVIEWER: So writing gives you pleasure?
ROY: Nietzsche would say it gives one a reason to live.
INTERVIEWER: In that case, why the high suicide rate amongst writers?
ROY: Perhaps they couldn’t find themselves. Or perhaps they did and what they found disgusted them. There must also come a time when writing is no longer a pleasure.
INTERVIEWER: And have you found yourself?
ROY: I’m still looking.
INTERVIEWER: Do you write for yourself or for your readers?
ROY: That’s hard to say. I too am a reader of my work — the very first reader — and I would have to please myself first.
INTERVIEWER: Do you read reviews of your work?
ROY: I have no business reading reviews of my books. They aren’t written for me but for people who are thinking of buying a book, or for people who have read the book but now want to hear someone else’s opinion of it.
INTERVIEWER: Do you feel that critics have done you justice?
ROY: They’ve been a bit harsh, I would say. But I suppose it’s their job. Can you imagine a compassionate critic? They’d be unemployable. I find their determination to show how a writer has improved or regressed over the years rather paternalistic.
INTERVIEWER: Do you find criticism useful?
ROY: I never read reviews of my work.
INTERVIEWER: What, in your opinion, is the purpose of art?
ROY: It’s a prophylactic for nausea and suicide. Also, it passes the time.
INTERVIEWER: Faulkner said on several occasions that writers write so as not to be forgotten. Their works are a literary version of “Kilroy was here”.
ROY: Faulkner was a notorious prankster. You shouldn’t believe everything he says. He once said he wished he was the landlord of a brothel. I remember when Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson and myself were walking around the streets of New Orleans, the two of them would play a game where they would try to guess if a passerby had lost their virginity or not just by observing their gait. There was nothing sordid about it. It was all done in the name of science. Then they would send me along to ask the said person to confirm their hypothesis.
INTERVIEWER: Why did they send you?
ROY: I guess I was the youngest. And I enjoyed approaching strangers.
INTERVIEWER: How often were they correct?
ROY: I don’t know. People would rarely say. I did get slapped a lot.
INTERVIEWER: Would you consider any of your works to be autobiographical?
ROY: I like to use incidents or details from life as a springboard for fiction or to add to the realism of a story. But I wouldn’t go as far as to call anything I’ve done autobiographical. Even the characters, while I may begin with someone in mind, invariably take on lives of their own and by the end of the story resemble nothing of my first inspiration.
INTERVIEW: Do you outline your novels beforehand or do you allow your stories to grow organically as it were?
ROY: I don’t have a hard and fast rule. I’ve done both, and often I’ve done both on the same work. But I do find that if I outline in too much detail, I lose all interest in that novel.
INTERVIEWER: Why is that?
ROY: There’s no longer anything to explore. Part of the pleasure of writing is to surprise yourself.
INTERVIEWER: When you start a novel, do you start with character or plot?
ROY: Neither, necessarily. Sometimes, I might start with a conversation between two people, and I have no idea who they are, or where they are, or what they want. Sometimes, I might start by describing a dream I had, or a piece of music I had heard a long time ago but I can’t remember the name or how it finishes.
INTERVIEWER: Do you listen to music when you write? What are your writing habits?
ROY: If there happens to be music playing when I’m writing, I don’t find it distracting. Of course, it depends on what kind of music. But I wouldn’t go out of my way to choose some music to accompany my writing. As for my habits, I don’t have a set time or place. I write when I feel like it. Is that a problem?
INTERVIEWER: No, of course not. I was merely asking.
ROY: You made a face when I spoke so I thought you disagreed.
INTERVIEWER: No, no…my face is like that. Many people have commented on it.
ROY: I don’t see how you can go around with a face like that. I’d wear makeup if I were you.
INTERVIEWER: You began your career writing for movies and TV. How did you start writing novels?
ROY: I found the cost of making films prohibitive. And explaining your vision to producers, actors, cinematographers, funding bodies, etc. is exhausting and often futile. Writing novels was much cheaper and less taxing — quite literally, since the financial rewards are so modest.
INTERVIEWER: It is interesting that you raise that point because no one, to my knowledge, has been able to connect your work with a source of income. While you are obviously a successful man, one wonders how you support such a luxurious lifestyle.
ROY: Only a fool would write for money. As a wise man once said: “money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.” If you’re wondering about this yacht, rest assured it is stolen.
INTERVIEWER: Apart from Dostoevsky, who do you count among your influences?
ROY: I have a great admiration for Henry Green, although I have never read any of his work. I suppose I’ve stolen more from Pliny the Elder and Seneca the Younger than from anyone else. Vitalstatistix and Dogmatix are a close third and fourth.
INTERVIEWER: One critic thought your writing was reminiscent of Flann O’Brien.
ROY: That’s very flattering…for Mr O’Brien, I mean.
INTERVIEWER: What do you think is the future of the novel? Do you think people will continue to read and write novels in a hundred years from now? Or five hundred years from now?
ROY: Socrates thought the invention of writing would reduce our capacity for remembering, and that writing led to the appearance of wisdom instead of true wisdom. There were similar arguments made against the cinema, of moving images. And while people certainly read less than they did in the past, there will always be more readers than zealots who try to commit scripture to memory. I think the intimacy of the novel, the ability to pause and reflect on a sentence, a word, to underline, to dog-ear, to hold a book in one’s hands and to smell the pages, and drift off into another world, is an experience to behold, and cinema in 3D or 4K would find it hard to beat. Growing up, I loved the cinema and the communal experience it offers. But as I grow older, I find it loud and annoying. I haven’t been to the movies in more than three years.
INTERVIEWER: So you think that as people grow older, they will read more? At the expense of cinema?
ROY: No. People will read less in the future and those that do will be looked upon roughly the way we now look upon religious fanatics.
INTERVIEWER: So you’re a pessimist?
ROY: There’s nothing wrong with being in the minority. And as a form of communication, writing will not disappear. If anything, it will probably support or evolve into a higher order of thinking. Extrasensory perception for example.
INTERVIEWER: What, if anything, prevents you from writing?
ROY: Solitude is preferable, but not absolutely necessary, for reading and writing. I’ve always been fascinated by public readings. Authors aren’t the ideal people to be reading aloud their words, and personally I’ve never wanted to know what my favourite writers look or sound like. They’re not actors and if they are compelled to go outdoors they should be allowed to wear pillowcases over their heads.
INTERVIEWER: Is that why you wore a stocking on your head to the Nobel Prize ceremony?
ROY: I was a little jet-lagged at the time…and was still composing my speech on the plane. Also, the lights at the ceremony were far too bright. I’d asked them to dim them a little but apparently you couldn’t. It was either on or off.
INTERVIEWER: You would have preferred them off.
ROY: I would.
INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your writing style?
ROY: A writer’s personality dictates their style.
INTERVIEWER: And how would you describe your personality?
ROY: Well, it’s a lot less annoying than yours.
INTERVIEWER: What are you working on at the moment?
ROY: An alibi. Can you swim by any chance?
JORGE PLANKTON
Summer 20__