Jim Crace
Jim Crace
James "Jim" Craceis an award-winning English writer. His novels include Quarantine, which was judged Whitbread Novel of 1998, and Harvest, which won the 2015 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth1 March 1946
acquired writers
I have in the past acquired a reputation for concocting non-existent writers and unwritten volumes.
avoided danger despised english life
I have, I must admit, despised the English countryside for much of my life - despised it and avoided it for its want of danger and adventure.
absence allowed features freelance hinder journalist neither nor orderly presence sixteen taught
Sixteen years as a freelance features journalist taught me that neither the absence of 'the Muse' nor the presence of 'the block' should be allowed to hinder the orderly progress of a book.
almost avoid bitterness bound deliver retiring
Retiring from writing is to avoid the inevitable bitterness which a writing career is bound to deliver as its end product in almost every case.
life
Retiring from writing is not to retire from life.
itself knocking narrative starts
When the narrative itself starts knocking on the glassed-in box that was your prescription for how you were going to write this novel... you have to listen to it.
brought flat north south virtually
I was brought up in a flat in North London - virtually the last building in London, because north of us was countryside all the way to the coast, and south of us was non-stop London for 20 miles.
stopped
I stopped being an engaged journalist and became a disengaged novelist.
people
Part of me feels that I'm letting people down by not being as interesting as my books.
amusing bizarre cowardly fists instead people stories
My tongue is what I used instead of my fists because I was a small and cowardly young man. Amusing people with stories and being bizarre with words was my way of getting out of fixes.
Narrative is so rich; it's given up so much.
consciousness human narrative played thousands time trick
Narrative has been part of human consciousness for a long time. And if it has played a part in all those thousands of years, it will know a trick or two. It will be wise. It will be mischievous. It will be helpful. It will be generous.
failings
I feel the political failings of the U.S.A. are presidential in length, but the aspirant narrative of the States is millennial in length.
I didn't go to university straight after school. I went at night.