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| The Books That Built Deborah Moggach |
Deborah
Moggach’s Books That Built Me offered guests at the Club at Café Royal a mini
masterclass in writing – I went away thinking that these six [pictured] each contain such a profound lesson about how to write, they
should almost be set texts on my alma mater’s hallowed creative writing MA.
But
the jewel in the crown of the literary treasure trove was Moggach herself –
warm, funny, generous, erudite and full of marvellous anecdotes. I’m mad about
her.
Huge thanks as
always to Champagne Bollinger, Tatler, Prestat chocolate and The Club at Café
Royal, and also to Alex Peake-Tomkinson (vast gratitude for the notes below,
Alex).
The Books That
Built Deborah Moggach.
1. Just William
by Richmal Crompton
“I was going to marry him, I just adore
him,” The eponymous William is eleven in Crompton's books, and Deborah discovered them at the same age. Although her parents were both prolific novelists, she wasn't a bookish child, but William made her realise that being funny is one of the greatest gifts books can give us - there's a truth in laughter and "humour in everything....'When my mother was suffering from dementia, she said, 'Debby, there were two men in my bedroom last night; one in the wardrobe and the other under the bed. Well, I've never believed in threesomes and I'm not about to start now'."
More than the humour, Crompton's refusal to patronise younger readers makes her writing extra special; she uses what might be thought of now as challenging language and expects readers to just keep up (which of course they do) "People [in the books] were always saying 'testily' or 'unctuously' - she'd even say 'William ejaculated'.... She made language come alive."
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Deborah said
that, like everyone of her generation, she was affected by both DH Lawrence and
Virginia Woolf - Woolf "sensitised me to language". She also said that “Woolf’s snobbishness is very hard to deal
with now.” She liked that everything and nothing happened in Woolf’s novels and
compared this to Mezzanine by
Nicholson Baker, a novel in which a man tries to buy a pair of shoelaces. She
said “nothing happens but it is absolutely thrilling.”
Deborah also
likes Agatha Christie and Mrs Trefusis pointed out that Christie “is all about
plot whereas Woolf is all about voice.” Deborah mentioned how autobiographical
some of Woolf’s fiction is and said that her
first novel, You Must Be Sisters, was
also autobiographical, but writing it
“took my past away.”
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
Describing Edward
Casaubon, the man that Dorothea Brooke – the heroine of the novel – decides to
marry, Deborah called him “a frightful dry old stick.” Discussing Middlemarch also led Deborah to talk
about how she depicted her own first marriage in fiction – in Close to Home, she wrote about a young
mother living in Camden Town, just as she was. She also said that real people
can’t be depicted in fiction – “it’s like newsprint, when you hold it too close
to your eyes, it blurs”.
She went on to
say that in order to create fictional characters who seem real, you should ask
questions: what would they do if they got stuck in a lift, for example?
- The Siege of
Krishnapur
by JG Farrell
Deborah described this novel as being “all about people clinging
on to their humanity and customs as the world collapses around them”. She described
the “myopic world” of this book but also said “a novelist is there to help us
broaden our empathies, it’s very important.”
- Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Deborah adapted both The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate for television
and says that Mitford’s “dialogue is to die for.” She also commented that
Fabrice, Linda’s lover is a “chatterer” and that the “sexiest thing ever” is
him calling Linda the minute after he has returned to his own home after the two have spent the night together so that they can
talk at length.
- Short Cuts by Raymond Carver
Deborah admitted that she
loves Robert Altman’s film adaptation of Short
Cuts as much as she loves Raymond Carver’s short stories. She commented “Carver
understood that writing is all to do with what you leave out. Hardly anything
need happen, he understood that. Those stories are an object lesson in how people’s
lives are intertwined.”
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