MICHEL FABER
Making Unforgettable Pictures
At the time of writing what you are reading now, I am sitting next to stack of paper 967 pages high. This is a novel that I started twenty years ago and of which I have written three versions, each good, each better than the last. For seventeen of those twenty years, there was not the slightest sign that I would get any money or any recognition for those 967 pages. There's only one reason why anyone in their right mind would undertake such a labour -- passionate love of language.
Now that I have readers, I enjoy the challenge of making unforgettable pictures materialise in their heads and diverting their thinking onto paths they wouldn't otherwise have travelled. But before I had readers, I worked just as hard to achieve these things, for no one.
Overall, I'd say my work has evolved from being thematically ambitious but rather artificial, to having compassion and warmth. I've reached a balance between the alienation that gives rise to unusual and disturbing ideas, and the life experience that allows me to share human insights. It's interesting to see the way my latest novel - the huge Victorian one - has changed over the years. It used to be a very circular, determinist story. As I rewrote it, it became more good-humoured, more open- ended, more respectful of human potential and the preciousness of love. It's still dark as hell, mind you. But less so than it used to be -- like me.
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