Interview with novelist Colin Dexter, creator of Inspector Morse,
October 1998
The first 40 pages of Last Bus to Woodstock, Colin Dexter’s first Inspector Morse story, contains all the elements of his mega-popular crime mystery series, whose television counterpart is probably more successful commercially than his books.
There’s been a murder – in Oxford, naturally. Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis have met and teamed up to solve it. And the image of the crossword has been introduced.
Yet Dexter says he had no plans to write a sequel. The debut novel was more concerned with creating a one-off character. “ At the time I just thought I’d try to write one detective story. I never had any ideas of a series or anything. After the second book it was more an aggregation of circumstances. ”
As the Morse series developed, Dexter’s stories became inextricable from the realistic backdrop of Oxford town and its university. “ Morse is part of the town-and-gown duality. He’s partly in and partly out: he spent three years at Oxoford but didn’t get a degree. ”
Before starting the Morse novels Dexter had been a classics lecturer and an examinations board official at Oxford. Surprisingly, the author feels his career in education was not a major help in writing the book, few of which contain autobiographical details. “ There are some aspects of the gown side that influenced me, but describing the topography of Oxford was more important. ”
“ Knowing nothing about the police or crime, I had to rely on my knowledge of Oxford, being meticulous about making local facts accurate and giving the stories as much verisimilitude as possible. ”
Though Dexter didn’t start the books until 1970 he had his protagonist’s name in mind since the 1950s. An avid crossword buff, he used to see the name CJ Morse printed as winner of The Observer’s cryptic puzzle. Lewis’s name came from the pseudonym of a crossword compiler.
Then there is the complex enigmatic personality of his hero. How did he create that? “ I wanted to make him a very clever person. I could write with some conviction about his interests: poetry, whiskey, opera, whatever. I gave him some qualities that weren’t quite so endearing. He’s a bit mean with money; a loner and melancholic. But he is sensitive too. ”
Death Is Now My Neighbour, the thirteenth Morse novel, has a complicated but entertaining narrative. A young woman is shot dead in her home in suburban Oxford. A 17th-century love poem and a photograph are the only clues. For many eager Inspector Morse fans, however, the real mystery to be solved this time around is what his first name is – a secret held back up until now.
With Morse now technically in his sixties and a body count, Dexter tells me, of 73 and a diminishing pool of plots, the author admits he is nearing the end of the series. But after 13 books and 28 television adaptations, it would be a good run.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman has been viewed in many ways. It’s a 20th-century classic, an assault on the American dream and a universal tragedy. But the heart of the play is Willy Loman’s drifting, vacillating mind, as he tries to escape from the terrifying present back into the idealistic, good-old-days of his past.
The Lyric’s production, which began last night, did a fine job of consolidating all the disparate elements of Miller’s complex portrayal of a man caught plagued by an identity crisis and trying to work through the larger commitment of family responsibilities.
As Willy, Bernard Kay creates a realistic balance between the self-conscious inner personality of his tortured persona and the aggressive salesman whose pride has been taken away from him through no fault of his own,
By turns self-pitying, hypocritical and helpless, Willy comes across as Miller had intended – a plain common man out of his depth and unravelling as the world moves on.
Carol Scanlan (Linda) took some time to settle into her role as Willy’s wife. But then, she stole the light in a particularly powerful scene, in which she defended his worthy character.
As Biff and Happy, respectively, David Parnell and Mark O’ Halloran convincingly evoked that period of 1940s America when college sweaters and black and white sneakers defined liberalised pre-teenagers.
In their older selves, Biff and Happy suggested the template of a younger Willy Loman. Biff wants to work but can’t grow up. Happy is a Yuppie before his time.
Full credit to Stuart Marshall for the ingenious three-segment, split-level set design. This not only allowed the action to proceed very fluently but also commented on the fragmentary retrospective nature of the drama’s technique.
Interview with Erica
Jong, writer and feminist, June 1997
Erica Jong laughs when I suggest that she was the writer who put the fun into feminism. But it’s close enough to what actually happened in 1973, when her Fear of Flying introduced women around the world to its flamboyant central character, Isadora Wing.
Still amazingly relaxed after a full day on the Dublin media trail promoting her new novel – Of Blessed Memory (Bloomsbury) – Jong tells me her memories of that early 1970s era: “ I remember from a literary point of view that it was a very exciting time. Suddenly, because of historic court decisions about free speech, it became possible to publish books which didn’t have asterisks in the bedroom scenes. ”
“ Male writers were bringing out Couples and Portnoy’s Complaint. I felt that a woman had to write about a woman’s fantasies – what she’d think about. But I didn’t think one was allowed to write something like Fear of Flying. I didn’t believe the book would ever be published. ”
Undaunted, Jong believed it was essential to try to write a novel that would get inside a woman’s perspective. “ It was a very yeasty time. People discussed major issues. Could we change gender roles? Should men do the housework? There were some mad theories, but at least things were coming out into the open. So I wanted to write a book that would lift the lid off the top of a woman’s skull. ”
In effect, Jong wrote the book she wanted to read. She felt too that humour had to be an element is such a racial novel. “ I had been a feminist since I was fifteen years old. I didn’t need the 70s wave of the movement to make me one. My response was not to put on army boots and march off to join a lesbian commune. It’s easier to be a separtist than to work things out with men. ”
The current novel is another twist in a varied canon that includes The Devil at Large (1993), an exploration of her friendship with Henry Miller. Of Blessed Memory is spread over 100 years in a Jewish family and told by Sara, a historian working in New York in the year 2005. By turns satirical and tragic, the novel revolves around the theme of the struggle of all 20th-century women.
“ I’m not mocking my Jewish family or background, though God knows, they’re not perfect. But no group is; and human beings are interesting in so far as they’re imperfect. I don’t know what reaction it will get in the States. ”
Despite her specific reputation as a women’s writer, Jong insists she has no particular readership in mind when she sits down to write. “ I really write for myself. I’m aware of the female audience only in the sense that much of the literature has been male-dominated for 6000 years and that women’s voices have been silenced. I think the woman’s side of the story needs to be told and that my generation is privileged to be in the situation where we can tell it. ”