Session #145: ‘The Vagabonds’: David Mitchell and Daniel Swift in Conversation with Louise Adler
Bomber County is Daniel Swift’s first book. It was, in part, an attempt to trace what happened to his grandfather who flew in British bombers in WWII and was shot down. It also looks at the people who were being bombed, what it was like for them, and so the book links the loss of his grandfather with a much greater story of loss. It is part memoir, part history.
David Mitchell needs no introduction!
Both authors were asked about the research in writing historical works, fiction and non-fiction, and how they know when it’s time to stop. Daniel said you know when to stop things become familiar. He interviewed many Germans and those who knew his grandfather. When their stories began to come together – when he started to hear ‘echoes’ between stories – he knew he was near the end. One of his interests in the telling of history is those things which are left unsaid. Sometimes it’s not best to know everything in its purest form. He talked of how the letters airmen wrote home were bland, ‘nothing happened today’-sort of notes, but when he looked at their flight logs for that day they’d been flying over some German city and dropping bombs. This gap intrigued him. Bomber County also examines the poetry of WWII.
David Mitchell came at things from the other end, starting with nothing. He said there are two forms of research: hard and soft. The hard research is ‘the girders of history’ – the facts and interconnections (a recurring theme for him) – and where in history a novel might be positioned. For him, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, was placed within the Napoleonic period because he saw it as this tectonic shift which generated its own conflict in which the story could be grounded. Then the ‘soft’ research commences when you start writing – those ‘1,001 ways human needs are met or not met’ – things like, ‘If you’re sick, what do you do?’ and ‘If you’re hungry…’ and so on. You do this research, know it, then hide it. He gave a very humourous account of how not to ‘hide’ the research, describing at length the lighting of a sperm oil lamp or a tallow candle. He said it might be funny now, but it’s horrible when it was written! Research operates on the iceberg principle – the 90% needs to be there, hidden, otherwise the top sinks without a trace. It took him four years to write the book.
Daniel was asked about the morality of the bombing Dresden. He talked of how difficult it is, how risky for us, to pass judgement.
David was asked about the structure of Autumns – why he moved us off Dejima and away to the temple. He said the structure of a book reveals itself – the book will tell you how it should be written. The walled island, he felt, could really only sustain part of the story rather than a whole one. He said he needed to leave Dejima before it became boring. (I’m not so sure about that, I’m sure he could have pulled it off, and for me, the middle part of the story didn’t quite work as well as the Dejima sections).
He was asked about the midwife character – and he talked about how she came to be a midwife. He had to ask himself, how do I get a woman onto the island, when there were only traders and prostitutes and spies allowed there? ‘You wade through a minefield of implausibility until something works.’ A midwife ‘bends’ but doesn’t break, it’s plausible. Writing, he said, is an ‘act of escapology’. I really like this, and it ties in with what Markus Zusak said in yessterday when he said ‘I don’t have a good imagination, I just have a lot of problems.’ It’s fascinating that many authors feel this way.
There was a very interesting discussion about the intersection of non-fiction and fiction. David talked about the end of movies like Platoon – those images set the terms for people’s understanding of that period of history. He called it ‘the Oliver Stone Syndrome’! The border between fiction and nonfiction is ‘unfenced and unpatrolled’. History isn’t always a matter of what happened, it’s what we think now about what happened. Fiction, in many ways almost stands in for fact. Is this a good thing? He obfuscated a little here, saying he didn’t like the idea of all that power in the hands on one person. He added that writing has an ethical dimension. If writers ignore the ethical dimension, it makes writing soulless. (If only we had Kate Grenville to chime in wither her thoughts here given all the fuss The Secret River and the so-called ‘History Wars’!)
When asked for tips on research, Daniel said that while archives and libraries are good start, other sources are often as good. He said reading a natural history text on animals in London from 1946 told him a lot about the time. David’s 2 tips: do the background research, but don’t do the background to the background. Otherwise 4 years might become 14! Secondly, stay receptive to happenstance – sometimes the way in is not through the front door. He then talked about how living in Holland made him aware that a Dutch snowflake is different to an English one. Found objects, like this piece of knowledge, are often the best, so ‘stay open’. Beyond that, do what you can, make it up and ‘get your wife to read it’! He gave a wonderful description of how he tests how good a piece of writing is: he gives it to his wife on the night that it’s her turn to cook and if she has time to prepare a feast then he knows the manuscript is boring, but if dinner is thrown together and a mess, then he knows he’s onto something good! (I love that – fantastic!)
A very entertaining session and very interesting for those of us who dabble in research projects from time to time.
The D!
I recently purchased and read Daniel Swift’s Bomber County: The Lost Airmen of WW2 on the strength of it’s title, though I now note that in the US it went under Bomber County: The Poetry of a Lost Pilot’s War which, in some way may have been a more appropriate title without the Bomber County preface.
Bomber County: The Lost Airmen of WW2 is an opportunistic title. Swift jumped on the name when he went to the 57 Sqn reunion at East Kirkby however, it is misleading to say the least and, in the extreme very dishonest.
His grandfather’s story seems more of an excuse for the book than anything else and, while it is craftily woven into the fabric of his narrative the focus is far from what the title promises. It is, of course
a treatise on poetry (not a very effective one I might suggest as James Purdon The Observer, Sunday 29 August 2010 noted) and the morality of the bombing campaign of WW2. Swift of course is entitled to his opinion but not by cloaking it under something it is not.
I started reading the book with great enthusiasm but by the end I found myself feeling very angry. I thought the tone was subtly demeaning towards the airmen who served in Bomber Command and especially those who died. There are many highly emotive references to the morality of the bombing campaign quote:
“from 45,000 dead in Hamburg to Berlin in early February 1945…. and …. British and
American planes burned down Dresden, killing 60,000”.
He refers to the airmen as “bombers”, in a way that totally dehumanises them. Further to this he says on p. 183 quote:
“He (my grandfather) was lost, neatly, at just the right time, and so I could tell the story of a hero: a pilot of the early bombing, justified and absent from the atrocities of later history. He was not in Hamburg or at Dresden….”
I really, really did not like this. It demonises all those who came after.
And finally, Swift got a lot of interesting stories from the old veterans when he and his father first attended the 57 Sqn reunion. These are great stories when they surface through the detritus of the book. Real stories about the day to day lives of these extraordinary men who flew out night after night, in the Lancasters. Like the thermos of tea and the chocolate. But there is a disparaging undercurrent throughout. Quote:
“The old bombers wear blue blazers, with rows of medals on their left breast pocket….
Each time we ask, were you at Feltwell in 1941, and each time there is a pause before they
answer, no. These are survivors, and they joined later, in ’43 and ’44 and so their
stories are of the last raids of the war, when Berlin was lit with fire.”
It was one of these veterans who paid for Swift to do the taxi run in Just Jane so he could
experience what it was like. And the last straw, in the last paragraph of chapter six he
says Quote:
“I returned to the 57 Squadron reunion at East Kirkby……. I wanted to see the
bombers together again, and to see who my grandfather might have become, had he grown
old…. As before, the women had fixed hair and brooches in the shape of Lancasters, and the
men in blue blazers drank more. As before, my father and I looked around the room and
thought, no, he wouldn’t have been like that at all.”
With regards
Pam Merrigan
Thanks for your considered commentary Pam. I only read the occasional history book (I should read a lot more), but I did feel it very odd that these two authors were put together at SWF. I had no inclination to read Swift’s book after the session and it seems my intuition paid off! I’m sorry you had such a bad experience with it, but thanks for sharing it. John.