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Jan Goodey cross-examines Jake Arnott, the rising star
of crime fiction whose first book was signed in the blink
of an eye
Mr
Arnott has, in that infamous phrase of Ann Widdecombe,
'something of the night about him'. Perhaps it's the voluminous
black eyebrows framing deep set eyes, or the slicked back
Vincent Price hair-do and protruding cheekbones - either
way if you came across him on a windswept night you'd
certainly watch your back, there's no saying he wouldn't
be at your neck with the swish of a switchblade.
That's
the myth, what about the man, a rising star on the literary
landscape whose last book He Kills Coppers has been spoken
of in the same breath as Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway?
A heavy burden to shoulder, especially for someone so
young in literary terms - he turned 40 last year and only
broke into writing a few years before that. Speak to Arnott
though and you soon realise he can handle it; the confidence
exudes from every pore, insinuates itself all around you
like a cool mist coming off the hills: one moment you're
in the clear thinking about your next question, the next
you're at sea in his urbane banter. It's like talking
to a Radio 4 announcer: the soft measured tones and near
perfect diction.
Is it true that his first book The Long Firm, which charts
the career of gay gangster Harry Starks in the swinging
Sixties, was virtually a done deal in a week, from the
time he sent it in, to the time the ink was dry on the
publishing contract? "The Long Firm is one of those
stories I'm very reluctant to mention when there are any
aspiring writers in the room, especially from my own experience
in the past of trying to get things written or published.
But yes, from when I first submitted it to the deal was
less than ten days. It is something that's been written
about for how ridiculously swift and fairy tale like it
was. And the shock, talking about it now is quite bizarre.
I had the first meeting I've ever had with my first agent
and we got doorstepped by Neil Taylor from Sceptre and
that's when he made this huge offer to us: £100,000
for two books. I'd actually fantasised about these huge
advances because I'd been living off about £6,500
a year up until then." Currently the BBC have a Long
Firm drama in development which should augment those coffers
quite considerably, although Arnott seems sceptical about
it ever appearing: "Until I read it in the Radio
Times (laughs) I'm not sure whether it's going to happen."
Why
all the interest, what marks him out as an author of work
worthy of a BBC drama? Well Arnott is in the groove of
the current vogue for fictionalised versions of recent
history. He revisits Sixties to Nineties gangster-land
in all its grim reality and weaves excellent plot lines,
making the books both highly readable and packed full
of insight into how today's culture is beholden to the
past. The only criticisms, and these merely in passing,
are that perhaps there's a temptation to gild the lily
on the 'grim reality' stakes and occasionally you feel
his eye may not be wholly on the ball, but half on the
film deal.
So
was he a bad boy himself, is this where all the gritty
realism comes from? "Yes, but nothing spectacular.
I did get into trouble quite a lot when I was young but
it was always really pathetic (laughs), you know most
things are really. I went to a state grammar school where
I grew up [Buckinghamshire]. I hated it, I was always
in trouble there, bunking off, vandalism. A lot of the
time I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think
early on if you're considered to be a known trouble-maker
it just generally helps everybody if you're the one who
gets fingered for it (laughs). And also I didn't get on
with the work, I was lazy. I didn't find that kind of
education very interesting at all."
Seems
the openly gay Arnott was more interested in perfecting
his smoking skills: "I suspect there was something
strongly homoerotic about this (laughs). The pleasure
of sharing a cigarette in some hidden place with lots
of other lads, the kind of furtiveness about it, it wasn't
just the nicotine. The more usual male bonding in sports
and such like was far more explicit. But I hated games,
you see I felt very self conscious because I actually
did find being in the showers with lots of naked boys
quite exciting and there was lot of horse play around
that. As long as it was clear you weren't a deviant it
was alright. But it was other outsiders I felt an affinity
with."
Was
that why he took a job in a mortuary, not exactly in the
mainstream of career prospects? This is met with a decidedly
frosty, "Oh God is this all going to be about me?"
But come on, he's been an artist's model, sign language
interpreter - I do manage to squeeze out of him a few
words on the signing job: "When I was an actor I
learnt signing while working on a project about hearing
actors working with deaf actors. I did think about taking
up interpreting, but sign language interpreters are very
weird people and I didn't want to become one in the end.
It's the one language apart from spoken English that I
did really learn. I'm quite scatty about the knowledge
of things but to understand a different language was quite
useful to me in terms of understanding my own."
Curiously,
Arnott describes his way of writing as "something
that hasn't got anything to do with life or living, it's
like being dead". It's almost as if he's a cypher
through which the words flow. "The book determines
how you write it," he says. "For me I kick around
an idea and slowly the structure will emerge, the structure
of the book and the structure of how I'm going to write
it." He writes at home in a quiet part of Clerkenwell
although he has gone away to write sometimes and found
it useful.
He
Kills Coppers is widely regarded to have bucked the trend
of second novels which generally fall below the standard
of the first. Arnott admits that there was pressure in
its writing, but that a sense of detachment won the day.
The latest novel which is due out in April 2004 will end
the loosely based trilogy. According to him there wasn't
any conscious decision to write this recent history: "What
I'm writing about is the period in which I lived. You
notice I put live in the past tense already. But that's
what's happened and I suppose if I did want to analyse
it, which I don't want to do too much, it would be that
I'm writing about my own history".
And
that is no doubt why his current reading list features
Brecht, Beckett and Borges, all writers who took liberally
from their own pasts. Not much light relief there however,
although Arnott begs to differ, "Oh, I thought that
was quite light, they are quite light". Shakespeare,
another of his particular favourites, he describes as,
"quite a populist writer - his ability to really
move a story along". Walter Scott and Robert Louis
Stevenson are those he terms 'unconscious influences',
things he read in his early teens. Not that Arnott emulates
any of these icons, as he's keen to point out. He tends
to emulate writers he doesn't really like. So how about
Nick Hornby or Alex Garland, writers who push the popular,
male-orientated brand? "I don't know them, I don't
know their work certainly. I avoid my contemporaries,
I don't feel I belong. I've got to know quite a lot of
writers but I don't feel I belong to a particular group
of people, never have done."
And
that very much sums him up: the loner, the Charlie Watts
of the literary world. Being a writer is the best alibi
he could have, he's got a ready made excuse to all those
probing questions as to why he spends so much time on
his own. As he says, "One of the advantages of getting
old and being successful at something that means you have
to spend most of your life on your own, you realise it's
not bad at all."
Jake Arnott will be reading from his work at Borders
Bookshop, Churchill Square, Feb 26 at 6.30pm, (free tickets
available before the event).
Arnott Factfile
Born
In Buckinghamshire in 1961.
Brought up into a big Catholic middle class family.
He
says on turning 40, "It's just one bloody damn year
after another. After 25 you stop worrying about numbers,
just keep hold as everything starts to collapse."
His
books: The Long Firm (1999)
He Kills Coppers (2001)
He
has been an actor in a radical theatre company working
with fellow actors with learning disabilities.
He
doesn't own a television.
copyright New Insight 2001
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