Dan Rhodes - Online Q and A

Dan Rhodes on crawling flesh, psychedelia and A Confederacy of Dunces...

What was your favourite childhood book?

Cars and Trucks and Things that Go by Richard Scarry. I also loved the Willard Price Adventure series, and as I got older I moved on to Arthur Conan Doyle.

Which book has made you laugh?

Most of my favourite books are funny. The funniest I can think of are A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and The Young Visiters by Daisy Ashford. Chekhov doesn't seem to get enough recognition for his gags, he cracks me up. Candide by Voltaire is a laugh a minute, as is Jane Austen's Juvenilia. And Be Wise, Be Otherwise by Kevin MacNeil is a lovely curio, although sadly hard to find.

Which book has made you cry?

There's a passage in Les Miserables where the young Cosette is huddling in rags under the Thenardiers' table without a friend in the world. She picks up a discarded toy sword and wraps it up and rocks it as if it's a doll. If you aren't filling up right now then you don't have a heart.

Which book would you never have on your bookshelf?

Anything by Tony Parsons. The thought of him makes my flesh crawl.

Which book are you reading at the moment?

Eye Mind by Paul Drummond - it's the story of one of my all-time favourite bands, the 13th Floor Elevators. It's superb. They were one of the most mysterious and dysfunctional groups of all time, and their story has at last been properly told. If you know anyone who has an interest in psychedelic music please tell them about this book - it deserves to sell by the truckload.

Which book would you give as a present to a friend?

I've given away quite a few copies of Gina Garan's photo book This Is Blythe, and if a friend has a baby we tend to give them The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey. This year a few people will be getting Dial M For Merthyr, Rachel Trezise's wonderful account of her adventures in the back of a dodgy band's dodgy van. Books of Martin Parr's photographs are always a good bet, although painful to let go of.

Which other writers do you admire?

Loads. All the authors I've mentioned positively elsewhere, and a bunch of others, living and otherwise - Barry Yourgrau, Magnus Mills, Ian Rankin, Cornell Woolrich, Amelie Nothomb, RK Narayan, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor, Spike Milligan, Tama Janowitz, Ben Rice, William McGonagall, Gabriel Garcia Marquez... Many more. More than anything I would love to read another book by Sylvia Smith.

Which classic have you always meant to read and never got round to it?

I've had copies of Moby Dick and Don Quixote mocking me from my bookshelves for the last few years.

What are your top five books of all time, in order or otherwise?

It changes, but today (29th April 2008) they are:

Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky by Patrick Hamilton

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Rhapsody by Dorothy Edwards

Ask The Dust by John Fante (and all the other Bandini books)

Zazie In The Metro by Raymond Queneau

What is the worst book you have ever read?

U and I by Nicholson Baker. It's just a long love letter to himself. Ugh. And Barney Hoskins' rotten biography of the mighty Arthur Lee. Oh, and On Chesil Beach, which I thought was insultingly crappy.

Is there a particular book or author that inspired you to be a writer?

I was more inspired by how I imagined the lifestyle would be - lots of lie ins, and a queue of beautiful women waiting to join me and my dog at our hillside retreat. Arthur Miller was a great inspiration, not because of his writing but because he got to shag Marilyn Monroe.

What is your favourite time of day to write?

It used to be between about ten in the evening until four in the morning, accompanied by a gallon of premium lager, but I have a baby now so I can't really do that so often. I now keep office-ish hours.

And favourite place?

I don't have a room to write in, so I'm a nomad. I'm happy to write almost anywhere, as long as it's quietish and not raining on me. When I was writing Gold I spent a few weeks staying where it's set, on the Pembrokeshire coast. That was magical.

Longhand or word processor?

I used to be very fussy about writing a couple of longhand drafts before going anywhere near a word processor, but these days I'm a bit more relaxed. Things still generally start on paper though.

Which fictional character would you most like to have met?

Ignatius J Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. I don't eat meat, but I would break my rule to buy a hotdog from him.

Who, in your opinion, is the greatest writer of all time?

Anton Chekhov.

Which book have you found yourself unable to finish reading?

The Last Burden by Upamanyu Chatterjee. It went round my whole family, and we all gave up. I think I lasted the longest, reaching about page 70. It was just so turgid.

What is your favourite word?

Singit. It's a Tagalog word that I learned from my wife when our baby arrived - it doesn't seem to have a direct English translation. It's pronounced seen-yit, and I'm not going to tell you what it means.

Other than writing, what other jobs or professions have you undertaken or considered?

Writing is a notoriously unreliable way to make a living so I'm always drifting in and out of day jobs. When I was writing Anthropology I was working on a farm. I've taught English as a Foreign Language (which is the modern equivalent of joining the Foreign Legion), worked behind bars (pub, not prison), and I last found myself moving boxes around in the stockroom of a soap shop. For eight years I drifted in and out of working in a branch of Waterstone's. I started on the shop floor, then decided that the best way to avoid killing the customers would be to demote myself to the stock room.

What was the first piece you ever had in print?

My first ISBN came when a couple of stories from Anthropology were selected for the anthology New Writing 8. That was my big break. I had written some mildly mortifying bits and pieces for stapled-together DIY publications before then.

What are you working on at the moment?

Book six. A novel, which I'm hoping to nail this year...

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