Tristan, you were born in
Atikokan, Canada, before
moving to Wales - what
influence has a
split-heritage had on
your writing?
Tristan Hughes:
I'm sure it's had quite a
big influence on my
writing, in all sorts of
different ways. To begin
with it tends to give you
a slight feeling of
detachment - a sense that
being from two different
places means you don't
entirely belong to either
of them, that you're
always looking at them
from the outside and the
inside at the same time.
A lot of my writing seems
to shift between insider
and outsider points of
view.
On a more concrete level,
there's also the question
of the different
influences you're exposed
to. In Wales I grew up in
a small rural community
and spent a lot of time
listening to local tales
and legends, genealogies,
ghost stories, a whole
body of oral history (and
fiction too, I suspect)
relating to the place,
and this helped me
perceive the landscapes
around me as layered,
historically textured -
profoundly 'storied', so
to speak. And yet at the
same time the written
stories I was reading
tended to be Canadian and
American (my mother
brought a lot of her
books over with her from
Canada). I
detected a strong gothic
element in your latest
novel Send My
Cold Bones Home
- do you acknowledge this
presence? If so, is the
gothicism instinctive or
planned?
Tristan
Hughes: Yes,
there is a strong gothic
strain running through SMCBH,
and some of it was
planned. It's a
particular type of the
gothic I think. William
Faulkner is a very
important writer for me,
as are other writers in
the tradition of Southern
literature, like Carson
McCullers and Flannery
O'Connor. Southern gothic
grew out of a perception
of how the past doesn't
just inform the present,
it deforms it, and that's
an insight I'm slightly
obsessed by. The gothic
is a kind of border genre
(if that makes sense); a
fictional space where
things get mixed and
muddled, where they merge
and overlap - the past
and the present, the
natural and the
supernatural, the real
and the fictional - and
that's extremely
appealing to me as a
writer. I'm also
interested in haunting,
in the invisible
presences and absences
that linger around the
edges of our lives, and
the gothic is a good
vehicle for exploring
that.
In
SMCBH
a restless traveller
develops a fascination
for a Welsh recluse. It
strikes me that all the
characters in the book
are determined by either
stasis or movement - what
were you getting at with
this idea?
Tristan
Hughes: The
relationship (and
tension) between stasis
and movement is a major
theme in both my books.
In one sense it's very
place specific - it's an
island thing. Islands
represent a paradoxical
mix of isolation,
detachment, and
connection; the sea that
cuts you off also links
you more promiscuously
with the wider world. On
Ynys Môn this used to be
ingrained into our
economy: you were either
a farmer or a sailor; a
stay-at-home, tied to
particular patch of land,
or a sea-farer, intimate
with all the far-flung
ports of the globe. You
only have to go to one of
the island's graveyards
and take a peek at the
inscriptions to see this:
half the people buried
there probably didn't
stray much further than
their village pub, while
the other half probably
travelled the world. And
that creates certain
psychological legacies: a
habit of being
simultaneously outward
and inward looking, the
frictions that arise
between those points of
view, the persistent need
for one special place you
can call your own and a
restless craving to get
over the horizon and see
what's out there.
On the other hand, and
without meaning to sound
too grandiose, I think
these frictions and
tensions are increasingly
characteristic of the
modern world. Cheap
travel, the internet,
advanced communications
systems - all of them
bring the world much
closer to us and give us
what I suppose you'd call
a global perspective. And
yet far from erasing a
consciousness of locality
they seem to have
sharpened it:
independence movements
appear to be
proliferating, regional
identities are being
re-asserted, minority
cultures re-invigorated.
We seem torn more than
ever by the simultaneous
desire for a home and an
elsewhere, staying still
and lighting out for the
territories.
Trauma
plays a significant part
on character in SMCBH
- the notion that people
who have suffered get
stuck into patterns of
behaviour from which they
struggle to escape. Why
does this interest you?
Tristan
Hughes: I'm
interested in the effect
of trauma on character
because of the way it
warps time and
experience. It can make
the past coterminous with
the present, and trap us
in a way of seeing the
world that refers
endlessly back to one
particular event, one
degree zero moment that
we can't get out of and
so are doomed to repeat.
Amongst
the more exotic
meanderings in SMCBH
are episodes concerning
the Valparaiso earthquake
of 1906 and the search
for the Mandan Indians.
What attracted you to
those historical
incidents?
Tristan
Hughes: I've been
fascinated with the Madoc
legend for many years. I
also studied early
American travel
literature, so the Mandan
section of SMCBH
was an opportunity for me
to bring those two
interests together. I
also wanted to suggest
something about the
fragility of cultures and
communities, that behind
what we call progress
there's a terrible
history of extinction and
despoliation. Mobility
has its darker
consequences.
Valparaiso was more a
piece of serendipity. I
was reading an old
sailing memoir when I
came across a Valparaiso
Jones, whose name
intrigued me and
eventually set that
section of the book into
motion.
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