{"id":170959,"date":"2025-11-09T06:03:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T06:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/170959\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T06:03:33","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T06:03:33","slug":"im-interested-in-fluidity-complexity-ambivalence-and-thats-true-politically-and-socially-too-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/170959\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m interested in fluidity, complexity, ambivalence, and that\u2019s true politically and socially too\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt meant I can carry on doing strange things,\u201d Olivia Laing tells me from their home in Suffolk. \u201cI\u2019ll probably be allowed to carry on writing these quite weird books for a while longer.\u201d They are talking about winning a Windham-Campbell Prize a few years ago, worth $175,000: a lifeline to any writer.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrange things\u201d is one way of putting it. Laing is best known for genre-defying books that blend memoir, essay, history and biography. Among the best known are The Lonely City<\/a> (2016), about artists whose work is permeated with loneliness, and The Trip to Echo Spring<\/a> (2013), about writers with a fondness for the bottle.<\/p>\n

Yet Laing is a creature of habit, perhaps embodying Gustave Flaubert\u2019s direction that a writer should \u201cbe settled and orderly in your life, in order that you may be wild and original in your work.\u201d (At the start of our conversation, they realise they haven\u2019t had their regular 10.30am cup of coffee. \u201cOh my God! I knew there was something wrong with today.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Laing is nonbinary. They say, \u201cI\u2019ve always been a nonbinary person. I\u2019ve been public about it for years, since first talking about it in The Lonely City. There\u2019s been a lot of helpful increase in visibility and language. But the reason I decided to switch pronouns was after the supreme court verdict in Scotland this year [where the court ruled that, for the purposes of the UK Equality Act, the word \u201cwoman\u201d referred to biological sex only].<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it felt very important to me to make it clear \u2013 as I have a level of visibility in the culture \u2013 that I\u2019m a trans person in public life. Lots of people don\u2019t fit into the so-called common sense categories of male and female, which are actually culturally constructed and powerfully policed. In all my work, I\u2019m interested in fluidity, complexity, ambivalence, and that\u2019s true politically and socially too.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Olivia Laing: \u2018People find it hard to grasp things like racism, or misogyny, because they genuinely can\u2019t see they exist\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

This fluidity, as Laing says, runs through their work. Although best known for the non-fiction books already mentioned, they also wrote a novel Crudo<\/a> (2018), which took a similarly hybrid approach, appropriating elements from Laing\u2019s own life, the writer Kathy Acker\u2019s life, and current affairs during the time the book was being written. \u201cI didn\u2019t make anything up,\u201d Laing says.<\/p>\n

So we might be surprised that Laing\u2019s new book \u2013 the purpose of our discussion today \u2013 is a more traditional novel. And so it is: up to a point.<\/p>\n

The Silver Book springs from historical fact. In autumn 1974, two celebrated Italian filmmakers were in the process of making two of their best known movies: Federico Fellini with Casanova, and Pier Paolo Pasolini with Sal\u00f2, or the 120 Days of Sodom, his controversial adaptation of the novel by the Marquis de Sade.<\/p>\n

Also present is Danilo Donati, the real-life \u201cmagician of Italian cinema,\u201d a designer who won two Oscars for best costume design (including for Fellini\u2019s Casanova) and collaborated with both filmmakers. The shimmery silver cover of the novel shows Fellini and Donati in a water taxi, \u201cprobably in Venice on the way to the film festival\u201d, says Laing, and looking tense. \u201cThey\u2019ve just had a huge fight,\u201d says Laing. \u201cAnd there\u2019s something about it that really captured the energy of a lot of the dynamic between Fellini and Donati in the book.\u201d<\/p>\n

But you don\u2019t need to know anything about Donati, Fellini or Pasolini \u2013 as I didn\u2019t \u2013 to get the most out of The Silver Book. \u201cThe book should work as if they\u2019re fictional characters,\u201d says Laing. Helping with this is one real fictional character, Nicholas, a young English artist who has fled his life in London \u2013 \u201cHe is 22 and has already obliterated the first of his lives\u201d, we\u2019re told \u2013 and he\u2019s our eyes for much of the story, an innocent literally abroad.<\/p>\n

What drew Laing to these filmmakers? \u201cI was watching a lot of both of them during lockdown, but especially Pasolini. I\u2019d had this idea years ago that I\u2019d put Pasolini in [my previous book] The Garden against Time<\/a> \u2013 but he didn\u2019t fit. That often happens with books, that somebody doesn\u2019t fit in. But I was still really interested [in him].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Pasolini would not be surprised by the rash of flags appearing across British cities or the mobs of far right outside refugee hotels<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Laing<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story features film-making, costume design, acting and the creation of film sets \u2013 all aspects of representations of reality, how they coexist, complement and contradict one another. At one point, Nicholas asks Donati why they can\u2019t film Casanova in Venice. \u201cBecause the film is not set in Venice,\u201d he\u2019s told. \u201cIt\u2019s set in Fellini\u2019s Venice, and that has to be made from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laing says: \u201cIt\u2019s a book about dangerous illusions, fertile illusions, nourishing illusions, lethal illusions. Donati is this consummate illusion maker. I thought of him almost as a Renaissance figure, a master artist who\u2019s in service to these prince-like figures, Fellini and Pasolini.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to show that very rich world of hand-based creativity, as we enter our own bleak era of AI and machine creativity to really celebrate and serve \u2013 especially for young readers \u2013 as an invitation into the handmade, the hand-created.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there is another layer of illusion in The Silver Book, as Laing points out. \u201cPasolini is making films and writing novels and poetry, but he\u2019s also writing journalism that\u2019s attempting to tear the veil of illusion in Italian society and reveal the ongoing danger of fascism and the far right. I really started to see Pasolini as this prophet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA mural of Pier Paolo Pasolini, by Italian artist Jorit Agoch, in Naples. Photograph: Cesare Abbate\/EPA <\/p>\n

Some of Pasolini\u2019s journalism on the subject is presented in the book. \u201cFascism never really went away,\u201d he says. \u201cIt just changed form, went underground, periodically exploding back into the daylight.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIn a way, he predicted Berlusconi and Berlusconi predicted Trump,\u201d says Laing. \u201cPasolini would not be surprised by the rash of flags appearing across British cities. He wouldn\u2019t be surprised by the mobs of far right outside refugee hotels \u2013 those are exactly the sort of things he foresaw.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what Pasolini\u2019s vocal political warnings lead to is the violent climax of the book \u2013 which on the one hand is part of the public record of his life, but on the other remains a shocking moment in the novel, because it ends a work of such atmospheric beauty, with a serenity and rhythm to the prose. It makes the book into a sort of thriller, which, says Laing, \u201cis something I\u2019ve been thinking about writing for a really, really long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

On top of all this there is a seam of comedy through the book also \u2013 Laing seems pleased when I mention this \u2013 such as the discussion of how best to make a cinematic turd for Sal\u00f2\u2019s more scatological scenes. Swiss chocolate? \u201cMelts under the lights,\u201d observes one character. Olive oil or marmalade to bind it? \u201cThis is the most disgusting conversation I\u2019ve ever heard,\u201d declares Nicholas. \u201cWe\u2019re not perverts,\u201d Donati tells him, \u201cwe\u2019re labourers in the dream factory!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of teasing of each other,\u201d Laing says. \u201cI was spending a lot of time in Italy, and that felt very true to the Italian ways of working as well. They\u2019re not as strait-laced as the English.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the book \u2013 with its balance and poise, its beauty and just-so language \u2013 is that it was written so quickly. \u201cIt was like taking dictation,\u201d Laing says. \u201cI could hear the book and just typed it out.\u201d This was in the context of their having thought about the book for almost a year before beginning to write it. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel like I was looking for the right word. It was like I couldn\u2019t physically type fast enough to get it down.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it had been my first book, I would have thought writing was the best game in the world. [But] it\u2019s not going to happen again, which I\u2019m devastated about! Creativity is so strange, even to the person who does it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does writing get easier, then, in general? \u201cNo, it gets harder. There\u2019s nothing like writing your first book, because you don\u2019t believe anyone is going to read it. So you have this fabulous privacy [and] this very exciting sense of \u2018No one is going to stop me\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

It may be this sense that spurred Laing\u2019s nonconforming books, aided later by the Windham-Campbell Prize. How did it feel to win? \u201cIt was completely crazy. It felt like the most immense affirmation of what I\u2019ve been doing. \u2018Somebody\u2019s noticed, somebody\u2019s reading them.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the idea of having a prize that isn\u2019t tied to a book, it\u2019s tied to a body of work. That\u2019s very different to what the literary culture is so invested in, which is finding the next big thing. Like Anne Enright<\/a> getting it [this year] was such a fantastic thing. There\u2019s somebody who\u2019s made a body of work.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for Laing\u2019s own work? One reason for writing The Silver Book, their second novel, was because \u201cI felt that I had come to the limits of what I could do with nonfiction.\u201d <\/p>\n

When they say \u201ccome to the limits\u201d, is that for this subject, or more generally? \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Laing says. \u201cPotentially, I\u2019ve come to the end of nonfiction. Fiction feels like an open door in a way that nonfiction feels like a closed door right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t said that to anyone else,\u201d they conclude. \u201cThat\u2019s between you and me and The Irish Times.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt meant I can carry on doing strange things,\u201d Olivia Laing tells me from their home in Suffolk.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[65571,18,117,19,17,23550],"class_list":{"0":"post-170959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-anne-enright","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-scotland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115518230518411343","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}