Quarantine

Interviews & Essays

On Saturday, April 4th, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Jim Crace to discuss QUARANTINE.

---

Moderator: Welcome to our Auditorium, Jim Crace. We are pleased to have you with us tonight. Before we begin, do you have any opening comments for your online audience?

Jim Crace: Yes, please be patient. This is my first encounter with the Net. I'm a Luddite and don't plan on being online at home in England until my kids have fled the roost.

---

John R. from St. Petersburg, FL: Your book sounds interesting, but I have not yet read it. Could you tell us, in your own words, what it is about?

Jim Crace: Quarantine is an attempt to put the Christian religion under some hard-nosed scientific scrutiny. I take an established fact (that nobody could fast for 40 days without food and drink -- they'd die after four days) and place it at the center of the Bible story in which Jesus goes into the wilderness to fast for 40 days. So it's science versus God.

---

Geraldine from New York City: How do you see the character of Jesus? How does this compare with the popular image of Jesus? Did the way you view Jesus -- both as a character in your book and as a figure in Christian faith -- change in writing this book?

Jim Crace: It's always difficult writing about such a celebrated figure. Even for me -- and I'm an atheist -- just writing his name is to take on a whole load of religious and historical baggage. It helps that most of the conventional images of Christ present him as some kind of blond Scandinavian superman. I simply reminded myself that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. He would have been swarthy and black haired. I also asked myself what kind of young man would rather spend time in prayer than in the company of his friends. An inward-looking, shy person, someone who prefers his own company to the crowd, a man who is to some extent dysfunctional. Finally, I avoided the name Jesus, and gave Christ a nickname, Gally (the Galilean). That freed up my imagination. Then I let the narrative take over.

---

Peter H. from Greenwich, CT: Was it difficult to write about a biblical character? What were the advantages or difficulties of undertaking such a challenge?

Jim Crace: My last answer covers most of your question. But I want to say that actually QUARANTINE was not intended to be a book about Christ at all. It was mostly going to be about the four other travelers who are in the wilderness at the same time as him. I'd refer to Christ's presence in a paragraph or two to give the novel some religious and historical provenance, and then Jesus would slip out of the narrative. But as I wrote, he elbowed his way into the story. Christian readers in Britain have said that this happened because the Grace of God was standing at my shoulder as I wrote. They're wrong. It was the imp of storytelling at my shoulder. That imp can pull the oddest tricks.

---

Iggy from Ft. Lauderdale, FL: It seems in all your books, at least the ones I have read (THE GIFT OF STONES, CONTINENT, and QUARANTINE) , you write vividly about places that either do not really exist, or that at least seem foreign to our existence. What attracts you to such places? Would you consider writing about somewhere familiar and modern (or have you written about such places in other books I have not yet read)? Thank you, Iggy.

Jim Crace: You're quite correct, Iggy. I like to invent places. It's fun. Big lies are always better than small ones. Most novelists choose real settings because they want to locate their readers, to give them the shock of recognition. I prefer to dislocate my readers, to take an issue that is contemporary and place it in a new context. THE GIFT OF STONES, for example, deals with the issue of how a community that loses the dignity of work can reinvent itself. It was prompted by my experience of Birmingham in the 1980s, but I set it at the end of the Stone Age. I have written two novels set in modern times, ARCADIA and CONTINENT. The next novel, BEING DEAD, is set slightly in the future.

---

Bennie X. from Portland, OR: What has the reaction from Christian readers been? How have they received QUARANTINE?

Jim Crace: I half expected a Christian fatwa. But I had not realized how hard it is to offend a Christian. In fact, unlike the Muslim religion, the Christian religion has always relished doubters and embraced sinners. British Christians have, so far, greeted the novel as if it is a modern scripture that underscores their beliefs rather than undermines them. I am surprised. And somewhat relieved.

---

Yolanda: Have your personal beliefs changed at all while writing this story? I'm not asking if you've converted, but more how this story affected you personally. If writing something as powerful as this book has changed the way you thought or felt before you began it. I think it is a wonderful book, and thank you.

Jim Crace: I'm very happy that you liked the book, Yolanda. Of course, nobody could spend a year writing on such a subject and not be affected by it. What it has done is to strengthen my atheism by making it more spiritual. I used to present my atheism as the absence of belief, a bleak and hollow thing. But now I recognize that transcendence and mysticism are not incompatible with the nonexistence of God. The power of nature and natural forces seem more worthy of our awe than the simplistic explanations of the universe dished up by religion. Atheists are the new mystics.

---

Morgan from Waynesboro: Have you read Norman Mailer's THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON?

Jim Crace: I have. Duty calls. Norman Mailer has written five or six of the great postwar American books. We owe him respect. But his GOSPEL was not his best. He managed to turn wine into water. A miracle of writing in reverse.

---

Pamela from Oak Park, IL: I have just begun reading QUARANTINE, and I think it is just beautiful, and I can't wait to finish it. I am curious to know where the story began for you. What motivated you to write it?

Jim Crace: Novels transform before your eyes as you write them. That's the joy of fiction for me. I had intended to write a book in which all the characters were troubled, living on the edge. I was interested in this subject after I had visited a hostel of 149 bedrooms near my home where mental patients were housed. I wanted to find a setting in which I could dislocate their experience. Someone sent me a postcard of the cave near Jericho where Jesus passed his 40 days. I noticed that the cliff was full of caves. One hundred and forty-nine caves at least. It was an ancient version of the hostel I had visited. That was the starting point. Then I let the story fly.

---

Rebecca Hewlett from Louisville, KY: Who is your favorite character in your book? Also, as an atheist, did you find it more or less difficult to write about Jesus than if you were a Christian? Thanks.

Jim Crace: My favorite character is the woman, Miri. She isn't beautiful. She isn't powerful. She isn't smooth tongued. In fact, she's nothing like a Hollywood heroine. But she is strong.

---

Wellington Phillips from Athens, OH: How long did it take you to write QUARANTINE?

Jim Crace: About a year. I'm a lazy writer. (What's the hurry? My readers can only tolerate about one book every three years from me.)

---

Bill Harries from Houston, TX: Did you know QUARANTINE would become the novel that it is when you began it? What did you originally think would happen in the story? What surprised you most while writing it?

Jim Crace: My novels are always a surprise to me. I wonder who wrote them. People who meet me can't believe that I produced the books. I'm not sufficiently intellectual or well informed. They've fallen into the trap of believing that writers must be like their books. But what is most interesting for me is how writers are different from their books. That's because a novel when it's truly underway has a wilful spirit of its own. In the case of QUARANTINE, the spirit wouldn't let me kill Jesus off entirely as I had planned. That wasn't ambiguous enough. And stories love ambiguity.

---

Richie Wohl from Binghamton, NY: How much of the Bible had you read before you decided to write QUARANTINE? What other research did you do?

Jim Crace: I didn't read the Bible. I only read those few verses that dealt with the wilderness days. I did very little research. I visited Judea for a few weeks in the desert, but mostly because I fancied the trip, not to do research. I needed to see the landscape so that I could tell convincing lies about it. I don't like awkward facts to get in the way of the narrative.

---

Muriel Ellington from Huntington, WV: What are your writing habits like? Would you say you are a disciplined writer? What do you love most about writing? Least?

Jim Crace: I pretend that I'm disciplined to my editor, my agent, my wife, and my children. I say that I start work in the morning as soon as I have walked the dog and that I stop, having completed 1,000 words, when the children return from school. The truth is that I'm easily distracted, particularly in the early chapters of a novel. I waste days sitting in the garden, pretending to solve some problem with the narrative. I do too many crosswords and ride off on my bike for no good reason. But when the book gets some wind in its sails then I become genuinely hardworking. And everybody who knows me complains that I become impossibly remote and preoccupied.

---

Meagan Haggarty from Arlington, VA: Are you working on a new book now? Could you tell us about it?

Jim Crace: I"m writing a novel called BEING DEAD. A cheerful little title. It's the logical book to write after QUARANTINE. It is an optimistic romance that deals with the finality of death. There is no god. There is no paradise, or judgement day, or any eternity. We draw our last breaths and that's the end. The novel tries to make some sense of that bleak fact.

---

Susan Burns from Sherman, TX: I read that you were a journalist until you were 40 and then turned to fiction. What caused you to do this? Do you ever go back to journalism? Do you miss it?

Jim Crace: I had an important story on a racially sensitive issue spiked by an editor of The Sunday Times who hadn't got the brains or humanity to know better. I left journalism on principle, but my first novel, CONTINENT, had just been published and was earning lots of cash. Would I have been so principled if I hadn't got the cash? I no longer do any journalism. I don't miss the work, but I do miss the colleagues, especially the photographers.

---

Bethany Keene from Toronto, Canada: As a writer, is there anything you seek to convey in your novels? Many authors claim to seek to explore character and human relationships, human interaction, but it seems as if there is something more going on in your novels. Do you wish to share a moral or message? If so, what is it? What message did you want to convey in QUARANTINE? Thank you. I love all your books.

Jim Crace: Thanks, Bethany. I have been more interested in the fate of communities than the fate of individuals. And the tone of my books tends to be moralistic rather than cynical or ironic in the English manner. If there is a shared "message" in any of my books it is 1) that traders, merchants, and capitalists do more harm than good; and that 2) all people are lovable despite their blemishes. That's a mild expression of something I feel passionately.

---

Mei from Durham, NC: Some of your prose sounds biblical in QUARANTINE -- did you intend this, or was it an effect of the subject matter or your research?

Jim Crace: Intentional. I wanted to use the same heightened language of the Bible. But I wanted my prose to have more clarity.

---

Pennie from Brooklyn, NY: Who are your favorite authors? Could you recommend your favorites? Also, coming from England, can you recommend any British writers we might not have heard of?

Jim Crace: I spend all day writing fiction, so I tend to avoid novels as personal reading. I like writing about the natural world. At the moment the Americans are the best at this. I read Barry Lopez, Stephen J. Gould, E. O. Wilson, and John McPhee. My all-time favorite is THE SONG OF THE DODO by David Quammen, first published in 1987. It's an adventure in island biodiversity. And it's immensely diverting and exciting. I"d sacrifice a couple of my novels just to have written a book half as good as DODO. As for English writers you won't have heard of? I'm not very up to date. But I do enjoy Will Self for his uncompromising inventiveness.

---

Henry P. from Bennington, VT: How do your personal beliefs affect your writing? Because it is fiction, do you think you can write a story independent of your convictions? Did your convictions change while you were writing this book, or did you at any time contradict your own beliefs with what you had written?

Jim Crace: I'd love to be an old-fashioned didactic and political writer like Orwell. But, unfortunately, that's not the hand I've been dealt. When I write polemically it always sounds like a leaflet. So I'm stuck with my sub-Magic Realism. That doesn't mean that my beliefs are sidelined. It's literature that is the sideline. I lead an active political life (on the sentimental left). It just doesn't show up in the novels.

---

Richard P. Anderson from Ann Arbor, MI: I think it is very interesting that you have written a book about Jesus, and yet you are an atheist. Can you tell us a bit about your personal beliefs, as well as how you view Christianity? How did this affect the direction of your book?

Jim Crace: I'm a hard-line scientific atheist. I believe that the universe was created and is controlled by natural forces, and that there is no divine power. But that does not mean that I do not have a moral code or that I am unable to respond to the startling diversity of the planet. I just do it without the help of God, that's all.

---

Mark S. Crichton from Rockville, MD: Do you write full time? How did you begin as a writer? Do you have any advice for a young writer? Thank you very much. I m glad to see you online.

Jim Crace: Writing novels is my only job. But it's hardly a full-time occupation. I started writing as a journalist and became relatively well known. That meant that it was easy for me to get a contract to write a novel when I wanted to. Most people don't have that luck. But I am not a cynic about the publishing industry. I do believe that if your work has talent it will be picked up by an editor somewhere. You just have to persevere, and remember always to take the challenging and ambitious route with your writing. If you set your sights low you'll write something that is unremarkable.

---

Elke M. Jones from Pittsburgh, PA: How did you decide who the other characters in QUARANTINE would be? We always think of Jesus in the company of the apostles, but we rarely imagine him alone with strangers. How did you decide who those strangers would be?

Jim Crace: These things just develop in the writing. I knew that I wanted a strong woman character who was barren, as that would allow me to explore some interesting themes. And I also knew that I needed the Devil's representative. But the other characters bubbled up under their own volition. The badu, for example, is discovered to be deaf about three-quarters of the way through the book. It surprises the reader. It surprised me, too, because that is not what I had intended.

---

Iris from Arizona: I read that you traveled to Palestine to write this book. What was your favorite place you visited? Also, does any of the geography you saw actually appear in your book?

Jim Crace: None of the real Palestine is to be found in the novel, but the spirit of the country is there, I hope. The place I liked the best was the high scrubland behind Qumran. I slept out there with Izzat, my Bedouin guide. When we woke up we were surrounded by gazelles.

---

Michelle R. Morgenstern from Savannah, GA: I am curious about how you went about writing the character of Jesus. What resources did you use to get to know your character?

Jim Crace: I didn't use any biblical resources. I just looked around at those young men who lived near me in Birmingham and were involved in evangelical and charismatic Christian groups. QUARANTINE was meant to be a novel with modern as well as ancient themes.

---

Peter Hochman from Palo Alto, CA: Why did you choose to call Jesus Gally instead of using his name all the time in your narrative?

Jim Crace: I answered this question earlier, Peter. But I think that Gally is a sweet name. It humanizes Jesus. It brings him into our universe, a young and troubled youth rather than a remote and one-dimensional icon.

---

Oren from Williamsburg, VA: Your description of landscape in QUARANTINE is so rich and thoroughly believable. Have you traveled to the area you described?

Jim Crace: See the earlier answer, Oren. But remember that things do not have to researched to be thoroughly believable. Humankind is a narrative animal. Storytelling is in our genes. I didn't have to go to Palestine. My landscape was invented in a converted garage in the scruffy suburb of Moseley in Birmingham, England. The trick with telling believable lies is to use convincing vocabulary with confidence.

---

Peter M. from Chelsea, NY: If Jesus were on a book tour today, would you recommend he fly a turboprop or jet airplane?

Jim Crace: I'd suggest that he went up onto the roof of the Temple and simply flapped his hands.

---

Moderator: Thank you so much for joining us tonight, Jim Crace, and taking the time to answer our questions. Any last words for your online audience before you go?

Jim Crace: Much more fun than I'd expected -- thanks mostly to the generous comments that you have made and to the intelligent questions. Many thanks, and goodnight.

---