24 July 2022 | Issue 27
I don't keep a diary. My mother does. I have instructions to burn them all after her death. This seems like a pretty good reason as to why one shouldn't keep a diary. But without a diary my recollection on how I met Will Ashon remains vague. Pretty sure like Clinton I'd stopped inhaling long ago. But the damage is done.
My favourite lit zine 3am likes him 1, and in the noughties, if you brought a novel by Matt Thorne or Dan Rhodes on that online book site, his novel of consumerist dystopia "Clearwater" would be recommended. I worked for the architect Eric Kuhne, who helped design Bluewater, England's "destination" shopping experience, aka mall. The industry dubbed him "The Supermarket king". Not kindly I suspect. Did I buy Clearwater because of that connection?
In 2012 Will started posting very short stories on Tumblr. Being me, I messaged him and said "Stop! Don't do that. That's a terrible idea!".
"We need to do an iPhone app called 'Shorter' that sends one of your stories daily, to be read on their morning commute", Will being Will said yes. And so was born my feeling and admiration of a kindred spirit who pursues his interests with fool hardy bravery.
A certain illustrator I admired called Timothy Hunt, yes, he who illustrates this very column, drew some thingamabobs to decorate the app, and we released. I have a horrible feeling I owe Will some sales money. Hopefully he'll have forgotten about it.
He has a new book out. It's very good.
“The Passengers” by Will Ashon
Between October 2018 and March 2021, Will Ashon collected voices - people talking about their lives, needs, dreams, loves, hopes and fears - all of them with some connection to the British Isles. He used a range of methods including letters sent to random addresses, hitchhiking, referrals from strangers and so on. He conducted the interviews in person, on the phone, over the internet or asked people to record themselves. Interview techniques ranged from asking people to tell him a secret to choosing an arbitrary question from a list.
The resulting testimonies tell the collective story of what it feels like to be alive in a particular time and place - here and now. The Passengers is a book about how we give shape to our lives, find meaning in the chaos, acknowledge the fragility of our existence while alleviating this anxiety with moments of beauty, love, humour and solidarity.
Buy here | www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571364145-the-passengers
In the name of transparency I should disclose I'm one of the passengers, "the holiday maker" I believe. If you want to know how "The Tao of Pooh" by Benjamin Hoff helped me face death, you are going to have to buy a copy. It was for his ears only. Except he put it in the book.
Will has been kind enough over the last couple of months to indulge me sending him emails about the journey that led to him writing "The Passengers". Hopefully I'm the first with that terrible pun. He was even kinder to reply.
Julian: Google tells you were a music journalist before starting your record label. The world of single releases, tours, press publicity, the demands of musical egos, seem to me to be a different mindset to that required in the silent long haul of producing a novel. While running the label you published two “conventional” novels without any connection to music. Did you feel you existed in two mental worlds?
Starting a record company without being a musician, and writing your own non-musical novel, from the position of being a music journalist, this seems to be a wilful Jekyll and Hyde splitting of your persona/profession. Did you intend to separate out the pen and the platter?
Will: There’s some truth in both those questions, definitely, although perhaps not in the way implied. And the only way to explain how and why is with a long biographical note...
I left university wanting to write. I thought I was a poet (some chance), and then, just after I left, a friend introduced me to the work of Georges Perec, Harry Mathews and the Oulipo, and I decided I would write novels. I wrote my first book (unpublished) in the early nineties, whilst signing on. The benefits people wanted me to get a job and, failing that, join a scheme, so I started working for a magazine down in Brighton called Impact, for an extra £10 a week on top of my Jobseeker’s Allowance (I think it took me from £27 to the princely sum of £37. Or maybe it was only £5 more…?). One of the editors at Impact told me I could get free records by ringing up record labels and saying I was a reviewer, which is how I eventually ended up working as a music journalist. I loved music and I was really into hip hop, but I wasn’t an expert. The plan, in my mind, was that this work would support my “real” work of writing novels etc, but I soon found I couldn’t really concentrate on both types of writing at once, so I just wrote music journalism - I dived in and became obsessed. Then, eventually I got bored of feeling reactive (you can only review those records which have already been released) - and also of being uncreative, I suppose - and I decided I would start a record label. So I did that and, within a few years, it had become a proper job. Be careful what you wish for...
Of course, the idea that running a record label is any more creative than writing music journalism is, frankly, nonsense. People seem to think it's incredibly glamorous but actually, most of it is a pretty standard office job - you do the admin. You spend an inordinate amount of time on the phone shouting at people who haven’t done what they said they would do. And a lot of time in meetings. I gradually stopped the music journalism due to both increasing potential conflicts of interest and one of my main employers decamping to New York and leaving me high and dry. My daughter was born at around the time we released Brand New Second Hand by Roots Manuva, which was when the whole business became serious, personally and professionally. I remember thinking, two years later, when my wife was pregnant with our second child, that if I didn’t go back to writing now I never would. So I bought a Palm Pilot, learnt the lettering and wrote for the 40 minute commute each way from Walthamstow to Vauxhall, near to where our offices were.
So yes, in that first instance, writing fiction on a Palm Pilot was very much an escape from 'the day job’ (most of the whole first draft of Clear Water was written like this). Less from the music itself, which I loved, than from the paraphernalia (and horror) of running a record label, which gradually, over the space of 15 years or so, poisoned and warped my relationship with music. I wanted to do something pure, something that was solely mine. Over the years I was asked/encouraged to write a book about music (partly because the books I was writing weren’t selling, or after the first two, even getting published) and I always felt that would be the wrong thing to do - that it would be cynical and exploitative, on the one hand, and that I would be ‘found out’ on the other (both themes of my entire working life). I think, also, I felt it was ‘beneath’ me in some snobby way - that writing fiction was the ultimate pinnacle of writing achievement and anything else was just a bit tacky. In retrospect, it was an interesting period. I was really depressed when I was dropped by Faber and I responded by doing the same thing over and over again, getting kicked over and over again, and then repeating the process. It took me a long time to learn a little humility and, with it, a bit more flexibility of thought and outlook.
I finally decided to leave the label around 2013/14 and I stumbled into writing Strange Labyrinth, my book about Epping Forest (which actually includes another version of this story). I’d never written non-fiction before and I was working it out as I went along, thinking about what I was doing and how it differed from what I’d done before. I’d always been very interested in form (that link back to my interest in the Oulipo) and I became quite fascinated by the possibilities created by the boundaries of this new genre, which I had previously thought of as a dull, Gradgrindian emphasis upon FACTS FACTS FACTS. In particular, I had an epiphany that, as a less than original thinker, what I was really doing was reading a lot of books and speaking to some people and then finding a way to thread together quotes from all those sources in an interesting way - which hopefully placed those quotes in a new context, illuminating them and adding up to something different than just a list of sources. It was a kind of bricolage or collage. A lightbulb moment! Because hip hop is perhaps the ultimate bricolagic (??!) cultural form.
That was why I decided to finally write a music book next - because I wanted to play out this insight on the terrain which had given birth to it, and which brought those two halves of my adult working life back together again. And this is where The Passengers started - as I wrote Chamber Music I became obsessed by the question of whether it would be possible to build a written bricolage without the mortar of my own words to lead the reader from one ‘object’ to the next. A pure bricolage, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms... So really, for me, this book is the conclusion, or realisation, of thirty years of thoughts and obsessions, all coming together in this one work. It’s the book which is truest to who I am, what I think about, what I believe in, how I see the world, how I envisage a future world - and it’s in no way about me. What could be better than to resolve a lifetime of contradiction through a contradiction? It goes without saying that, as you put it, I am wilful - literally full of Will. But utterly empty, too.
Julian: With the slight detour of The Heritage there's an almost linear progression marching through your work, steadily removing yourself as the voice of the author. Ghostwriting your own book. An hyper post-structuralism where the author most certainly isn't the best authority on the discourse, and the audience (the passengers) have become a loop speaking back to themselves.
Your debut Clear Water features a classic ensemble representing facets of England. The Asian ex-cricketer, a renegade called King James, a Essex-ish shop girl, a faded WWII singer from the upper echelons but on her uppers, and to represent the middle class a washed up journalist. Although written traditionally using the author's third person narrative, they do all represent unique voices and strands of Blighty.
The Heritage is more traditional, in the sense it's a tale of two protagonists, but you start writing one the characters speech phonetically.
Then there's the unpublished Mesopotamia where the whole book is written solely in dialect and we again see an ensemble of characters with different speech patterns representing fractured England.
The switch to non-fiction really isn't that abrupt if one looks at this evolution of capturing a character only through speech, much like a playwright. The difference being the story is historical not fictional. Without being Crass (sorry) Penny Rimbaud as King James anyone?
Then came the novelette Not Far From The Junction 2 where the historical aspect is inverted. It's your name on the cover but the words belong to anonymous people met while hitchhiking around England. Its lineage to Passengers is obvious but in itself it's a far more curious prospect. I didn't know of your interest in Oulipo until now, somewhat serendipitous as it's threaded throughout previous posts here, making my pattern seeking antenna tingle like crazy, and does explain from one perspective the removal of the author. Stating the obvious I feel there's a hidden Will Ashon in Not Far From The Junction and vestiges of your journey up to this point, and your life themes are all there, in-between the lines: being lost, mythical England, and the loudest voice not always being the most salient.
Will: Before I move on to the questions, I have a few things to say about the above. I don’t think I’m a hyper post-structuralist, for one thing, though maybe I’m wrong (perhaps I don’t get to decide, as I am presumably Dead). But I'm interested in the idea that I’m predominantly interested in speech. It had never occurred to me before, but it actually makes some sense. If you’d asked me my secret ambition when I was 18 it would probably have been to become an actor. I also find it easier (right now anyway) to write for film and TV than any other form. I thought I liked the economy of it - but maybe I just like writing dialogue? Then again, I’d say Strange Labyrinth is an exercise in voice, so I’m not sure how straight your linear progression is…
Julian: In some ways I feel your work is like reading certain scripts from Jez Butterworth, but through the other end of the telescope. He tells tales of a Mythical England, larger than life, actual giants in fact. Butterworth's "mythical" being legendary, fabled. Your view through the inverted looking glass is the symbolic nature of mythical, the hidden heart, ideal. You speak with the everyman, and of the recluse and marginal, and through these quiet voices try and show what England is now, at its heart. Have you thought about your work directly in this manner, or is it perhaps an emergent property (or indeed an utter fabrication of mine)?
Will: Quite simply, I’ve never thought about my work in this way. But then again I am interested in the ‘motivations behind the reasons’. I don’t think of that as ‘mythical,’ but maybe it is. In my mind, Clear Water was about the psychosexual underpinnings of Thatcherism, so I was very pleased when a recent reader told me that they thought it was the first Brexit novel (not bad for 2007…). Brexit seems to be the psychosexual id of Thatcherism run rampant... I mean, a myth is a way of describing reality, right? Or even a way of describing reality by taking metaphor seriously? I dunno, maybe I’m getting too hung up on the words here? When you look through the wrong end of a telescope everything seems very small and far away. When I was a kid I used to like ‘walking on the ceiling’ by edging along looking down into a mirror reflecting the ceiling above me. It really obsessed me - the fear you’d feel when you stepped forward into a ‘drop’.
Julian: Bill Drummond has also based work on travelling along England's highways, and uses other people's voices and work in his bricolages. He places himself very much centre stage, like Oz being both behind and in front of the curtain. You have gone to lengths to remove the sense of yourself from the work, being scribe-like, a contemporary Chaucer telling the tales of modern pilgrims. You've already given a reason why in wanting to create an Oulipoian mortarless bricolage, but I wonder if you have also been influenced by being the manager for several larger-than-life egos, and the years of interviewing very vocal artists. A counter-reaction not to be the person shouting loudest in the room, but the person listening hardest?
Will: Believe me, I did more than my fair share of shouting when I ran a record label. I think my ego more than held its own. So no, on this one I reject your interpretation. I’m not a hard listener - I’m actually a bit of a crap listener, as I tend to drift off into my own reveries. And I’m a terrible interviewer, as I'm scared of silence. So the idea of me as some quiet, intense, close-listener is almost laughable. But I do wonder whether the form - presenting direct, reported speech as a series of monologues - creates an effect for the reader and when people refer to my ‘empathy,' or close-listening skills etc, they are actually referring to this effect rather than anything to do with me?
It’s funny, I’m always tripping over people who know Mr Drummond but I’ve never met him myself. I like the idea of being behind and in front of the curtain all at once, though. It reminds me of the writer character in one Roth or another describing himself and his fellow scribblers as ‘closet exhibitionists’. I think art happens in those moments where the art object sits in two preferably contradictory categories at once, inhabiting both and neither in a way where your attention/interpretation buzzes between these two poles, generating an energy of its own. A kind of quantum buzz…?
Julian: I am really delighted to see you gaining recognition and thrashing out this new territory of conduit raconteur-ism. I remember discovering you in the 3AM review of Clear Water, but it seems you have struggled for recognition, that you have been treated at times as if you weren't serious. I'm surprised (and saddened) no-one has optioned Clear Water for Netflix. Other writers during that period were honoured as cultural savants.
Apparent in your work is this sense of being lost, travelling without destination, searching, not knowing (for instance in the form of the now invisible questions you asked your passengers). Do you think if you had found earlier success you wouldn't have the impetus and freedom, which, along with a sense of outsiderness has led you to write Strange Labyrinth 3, Not Far From The Junction, and Passengers?
Will: I think I maybe live in a weird little niche of my own - in a sense I’ve had no great ‘recognition’ or critical acclaim for any of my books (and certainly not many sales), but at the same time, The Passengers will be my fifth proper publication across 15/16 years (I can’t remember when Clear Water came out), three of which have been with Faber and the other two with Granta, so that’s not a bad return (especially when you consider I didn’t publish anything major from 2008 to 2016). So I’ve actually been very lucky and have managed to find a way to get published without ever having made any of my publishers any money, or indeed a great deal of cultural capital. So I think by any objective standard I’ve been pretty successful - and as you say, what could be better than to be able to write the books you want to write without ever being in thrall to a hugely successful book? I have no one to disappoint! If Strange Labyrinth had been more successful I would’ve had to write ‘nature’ books until my eyes bled. If ‘Chamber Music’ had broken through I might have ended up as a talking head/nodding dog on TV music docs. If Clear Water had been a hit I’d still be writing cynical ’state-of-the-nation’ stuff and trying to come up with fresh ways to describe someone drinking coffee. If anyone had read The Heritage… okay, let’s not go beyond the furthest realms of the imagination. I don’t expect The Passengers to massively alter this pattern (I think it might be a bit late for that), but as long as I can keep doing the bit I enjoy (which isn’t the bit around publication) then I’m probably doing okay.
Julian: You’re one the few writers I know who’s admitted to having unfinished and/or novels that never found a publisher. Before the current vogue of writers having few newsletters on Subspace, you gave away short fiction on Tumblr, and back in 2010 released your unpublished work to date as a free download.
The computer artist Simon Biggs always tells people how he made his work, if asked, in a world where artists hide their process like it was the secret source of alum. An attitude I greatly admired (having been told his secrets), and his belief in it not being the how but the what that matters. You seem to share this openness, and a playfulness in not presenting a perfect persona.
Wondering if you have any thoughts on “giving it all way”, both in a behind-the-curtain sense and the more literal meaning?
Will: The truth is that I gave away books/writing when I had no other way to get them seen or read. I went through a patch where every time an indie decided to release one of my books they then shut down. I was a publishing albatross, wreaking destruction across the sector! So it wasn’t really a decision taken in a spirit of ludic playfulness, so much as desperation. It’s one that I regret to some extent, although I don’t think many people beyond you downloaded the books, so it probably doesn’t matter one way or the other. And I think my “giving it all away” is more to do with my lack of skill at telling lies (which is maybe why my fiction career hit the skids), and failure to 'curate a public persona,’ than it is to do with some carefully thought-through strategy. I just like writing - or get some sense of satisfaction out of it, anyway - so I keep doing it over and over again, without any real sense of what I am doing or why. I think of it as choosing a (fairly random) direction to set off in, then marching along until I bump into something.
Perhaps my problem is that I don’t have a curtain? Or that I am wearing the curtain over my head? Ouch, I stubbed my toe again...
Illustration by Timothy Hunt
©2012 Timothy Hunt
A shoutout to Timothy Hunt, my favourite illustrator, who very kindly allowed use of his work to enliven this post. Please do him a solid by following him on Instagram and liking all his posts. Even better would be visiting his shop and purchasing a print, gold star goes to commissioning him to design or illustrate your next project.
https://www.instagram.com/timothyjphunt
https://www.timothyjphunt.co.uk/shop
A small ask
I’m currently interviewing a few more authors , who have kindly relented agreed to humour my inquisitiveness. I feel rather sheepish in the number of subscribers, and would love their words and work to reach a wider audience.
If there’s anyone you know who you think would enjoy these posts, please forward this edition on to them, or a different one you think better suited to wooing. Better still, ring them up, harangue, shout, threaten and coerce them into subscribing. Nicely, of course.
References
I believe you gave me a copy of "Clear Water " a number of years ago which I dutifully read. I still have it if you would like it back.