In your story “Revision,” an Oxford student named Gabriel is preparing for his final exams and is having particular difficulty with a paper on medieval literature. Gabriel’s somewhat aloof tutor, James Thornton, offers to provide him with additional help, and during their subsequent sessions together, Gabriel discovers that he may have more in common with Thornton than he realized. begin to notice. Why did you decide to write a campus story and why did you choose this topic for Gabriel’s dissertation?
When I was Gabriel’s age, the idea of writing a campus story, especially one set in Oxford, would have seemed mortifying and pathetic. There are already many stories about this place, most of which are the strange fantasies of the merry elite. It’s a kind of novelty literature that never really becomes new. So I came up with an idea about a man who comes up with a plan to cheat the system he feels stuck in, and I was intrigued. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that it was happening in Oxford. (That is not to say that I have changed my mind about the humiliating and pathetic aspects of these stories; rather, my personal sense of embarrassment is less important.)
Using Middle English and Old English texts made sense in the story, as they are in some ways inaccessible literature, but I didn’t like their foreign flavours, the strange spellings and literal translations. I also wanted words. As I read that strange book, I feel a fleeting but intense connection with the author, whether from a distance, writing about my favorite flower or reflecting on the basic meaninglessness of life. You’ll get the most intimate moments.
In one session, Gabriel, who comes from a modest Manchester family, tells Thornton that many of his colleagues “belong to British history, and British history is theirs”, but he feels alienated from it. That’s what he feels. In response, Thornton says, “Of course we all live in history.” How does Gabriel’s encounter with Thornton expand or change his understanding of history, or in what ways does it not?
I think both of them are trying to live on the “right side of history,” but they don’t know where that is. At the same time, they’re just trying to get through the day. To navigate the world we have inherited and the changes happening around us. They’re not very good at it, in many ways.
Part of the story also deals with class, which may be inevitable given the Oxford setting, but it also subverts our expectations. Gabriel discusses how many students feel disadvantaged in one particular way, even though they are objectively very well-off in other ways. “There must have been someone in power inside,” Gabriel recalls. “And yet it felt like everyone here was frozen.” Was he trying to complicate the standard narrative about class divisions in places like Oxford?
Yes, I think such complex divisions exist everywhere. That impulse stemmed from something I was noticing in the conversation. It was a situation in which I was exposed to strong feelings about other people’s identity positions and related pressures and threats to myself. I noticed that I often hear third-person omniscient summaries about the life experiences of distant acquaintances, not only from friends, but also at work and in the news (politicians are always arguing with each other) ). In other words, we see a raw and uniquely modern resistance to the complexity and mystery of the Other. And I found this reaction itself complicated, at least in my mind. But it was the intensity of the feeling that bothered me. I get it sometimes too.
I take that as a sign that something good is happening. This is about tolerating injustice and paying attention to how privilege is perpetuated by manipulating systems, including those designed to rebalance. I also think that the experience of privilege and poverty is complete in itself. One never removes the other. Writing the story felt like chasing all those emotions and trying to put my finger on them or play them out.
The outside world constantly invades this closed environment. Material reality seems inevitable. The story is set in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which directly affects Gabriel’s neighbor Petra and her family. Thornton comments on how many calves it took to make a book in Chaucer’s time, and Gabriel describes the enormous chain of labor required to make a cell phone in your hand or a garden outside. Think about it. And catch a glimpse of the statue of infamous colonialist Cecil Rhodes. What was the process of trying to integrate these larger systems into the campus story genre?
That doesn’t seem like integration to me. Placing interconnected global, historical and environmental material outside short fiction about young British men seems more difficult. They are also evident in the lives of ordinary people. People feel them, see them, talk about them, and we all live in them. These are continuous with, but not distinct from, the stories of privilege described above, although it is not always easy to see how they are distinct.
When these scaled-up interconnections appear in modern fiction, they often exist in speculative reality or, in realist fiction, are in the background as a source of anxiety for the protagonist. I understand why and how this could be expressed, but I was looking for something else, something more real and alive to me.
Towards the end, the story begins to shift perspective, first from Gabriel to his friend June, then to Thornton, and finally to the vivid natural world around them. Why did you decide to change your perspective? Can you explain that it’s a kind of zoom out?
Yes, by zooming out for a closer view, zooming in on other scales, and zooming in on even smaller worlds, the rose aphid tells its own little story. I wanted to take the tour and explore the story not only from Gabriel’s point of view, but also through the other beings who were there, and see how the same events could be experienced in other ways. .
One of the things I love about fiction, both as a reader and as a writer, is that it can take large phenomena, but let the details take on an action of their own, often in mischievous ways. That means we have the smartest explanations and the best principles. Everything is shaped by experience. Gabriel has to deal with that mess, and personally, I respect his actions.
I won’t reveal much about the ending, but Gabriel seems to be doing some kind of sabotage in the exam hall. Did you know he was going to do that when you started writing the story? What do you think compels him to do that?
The story concerns the differences between two men, Gabriel and Thornton, and how they form themselves in the stories of their respective generations. I felt close to Thornton from the beginning, but I didn’t know what Gabriel would do in the end. I think what he does can be explained in many different ways. I think his choices required either simple stupidity or simple goodness. In a broader context, you can also see him as an anomaly. What he does is unique. Or you could see him as being set up and sabotaged long before the story begins. ♦
