First Chapters Q&A with Nick Gadd
Nick will be reading at First Chapters on Friday 6 March from his new novel Death of a Typographer.
1. Brunswick Bound has asked you to read a piece from your published work. Tell us what we can expect from
the piece you have chosen?
I’m reading part of the opening chapter of
Death of a Typographer, in which the reader first encounters my
co-investigators when they meet each other at a murder scene. Martin Kern has a
special sensitivity to fonts, a skill that he uses to solve typographical
crimes. Lucy Tan is a hard-working journalist with a punctuation fetish and
eyebrows like swung dashes. In this chapter you will hear the first of many
references to fonts, and be drawn into the nefarious world of type crime.
2. How would you describe your writing?
I’ve tried to throw a bit of everything into
this novel: murders, ghosts, high speed tram chases, exotic locations, prog
rock, Dutch type designers and lots of font jokes. It’s packed with eccentric
characters human and typographical. It roams the world and ranges between
genres. Several publishers, in rejecting it, described it as “too clever” which
I would never say myself but of course am secretly pleased about.
3. What was the first book that you read (or
had read to you) that left an impression on you?
My Family and Other Animals was my ideal book when I was a kid. Funny, full of oddball
characters and unfamiliar landscapes, it took me out of my humdrum ordinary
life into somewhere more interesting. Another was a collection of supposedly
true ghost stories called Stranger Than Science which scared the
bejeezus out of me.
4. Do you believe that books should answer
life’s big questions?
Unfortunately I don’t know the answers to any
of the big questions. And the poet Rilke says in Letters to a Young Poet that
books should ask questions, not answer them. But I would like my writing to
encourage readers to view the world a slightly different way.
5. Do you have any writing quirks?
In writing Death of a Typographer I found
that it helped to sit at a particular desk in a particular spot in the State
Library, close to the typography books, so that I could commune with them as I
wrote. Font wise, my manuscript had to be in Times, although my laptop kept
trying to convert it to Helvetica. I suspect foul play.
6.
What is your favourite word or phrase?
They’ll never kill Floogenkool.
7. What have you found most surprising or
interesting about publishing a book?
If you have written a book that is in some
way original or unusual, many publishers will be reluctant because they don’t
know how to market it. They would rather publish a book that is similar to
another book - the next Rosie Project, the next The Dry - and
they’ll try to push you towards doing that. But it’s all a crapshoot and
the next big thing will probably be something completely unexpected, so why not
just write what you really want to write?
8. What is the question that you hope never
to be asked in an author Q&A?
A fellow writer told me that they once held a
signing session at which nobody at all came up to the table, except for one
person who asked “Can I borrow your pen?” So I hope no one asks me that.
9. What question do you hope you will be
asked and why?
What is so interesting about fonts anyway?
I want to be asked this because I during my
research I came across many great stories that didn’t make it into the book and
this is a chance to use them.
10. Which author or book do you think should
be better known or more widely read?
B.S. Johnson, an experimental English
novelist whose novels include The Unfortunates, which was printed on
loose pages so it could be read in any order. He’s also a very funny writer. He
wrote half a dozen books, all quite different, and died too young. Jonathan
Coe, another writer I like, wrote a great biography of Johnson called Like a Fiery Elephant.
Find out more about the First Chapters event series on the Brunswick Bound website.
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