– ANAKANA SCHOFIELD –

records. It’s reassuringly banal. Why we now aspire for that ­necessarily banal testimony to additionally validate our fiction is as mysterious as indulging in a paralysing death complex as a writing process.

More broadly: why would readers seek to verify existence against an apparently created set of fictions? I can understand the manipulation into text of life-based observations as hidden source material, but without the tools of literature – language, rhythm, form, syntax, character and ideas – this source material would be lifeless on the page. As lifeless as the endless inquiry to the novelist as to whether this actually happened. It suggests to create fiction (that) the writer merely grazes upon herself. Often the answer is depressingly, yes. But even if it is yes, why supply it? Why erase those carefully fought for terms through which we can contemplate serious fiction over the reduction of text to merely you the writer and your circumstances. Language is bigger than you. It’s stronger than finding yourself in your own book.

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