An interview with R.J. Ellory about  : 

The Bell Tower

You already talked about death row in your first novel, Candlemoth, but this time your approach was very different, wasn’t it?

The thing that is really interesting about this question is that it makes me look back at Candlemoth. That book was written in 2001, and then published in 2003. It’s remarkable to think that this is now twenty-two years ago! Candlemoth was the twenty-fourth book I had written, and I had spent many, many years being rejected by more than a hundred publishers, both in the UK and the USA. The process of getting Candlemoth published was the closest I had ever come to a real possibility of seeing my goal of being a professional writer actually happen. I had decided that if I failed again after so many years and so many rejections then I would really have to choose to do something different with my life. What I would do, I had no idea – perhaps music or photography, something else in the field of the arts – but writing was the thing I really wanted to do. Anyway, the book did get published and the rest is history.

Candlemoth was really the first book that I wrote that was solely focused on subjects and issues that I was interested in. Before that I was writing books that I thought other people might enjoy. I then decided that I would write something that I would like to read. As you know, the characters are the most important thing for me. I choose subjects that test the morality, responsibility, integrity and emotional capacity of individuals. I want to put them in realistic situations where they have to make difficult decisions about what is right or wrong. I guess I like to challenge them and see how far I can push them mentally and psychologically.

The subject of the death penalty is a controversial and contentious issue, and so it’s a perfect area to explore. There are very few situations in life where one human being has the legal power of life or death over another human being. I can only think of war and the death penalty where there is no judicial consequence for killing someone. Capital punishment is a paradox. I think of the question from Holly Near, “Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing is wrong?” This is a territory where you can take a character and have them discover who they truly are and where their moral compass will direct them. That’s the interesting thing for me. It’s the exploration of the human psyche and the opportunity to ask yourself what you would do if you found yourself in such a situation.

How would you describe what the guards of these prisons experienced during the 1970s?

Oh, I can barely imagine how tough it would have been. The prison system – as we know all too well – does very little to correct or rehabilitate criminals. The rate of recidivism is very high, and though valiant efforts have been made to identify means by which that rate can be reduced, they have routinely failed. This is because there is a basic lack of understanding of the human mind and the source of destructive or criminal intentions. Psychiatry and psychology have neither identified nor solved it. Punishment does not solve it. Solitary confinement does not solve it. The threat of execution does not solve it. That tells us that we are addressing the wrong problem.

Prison, in truth, is merely a means by which dangerous elements in a society can be quarantined. For the majority, they will continue to commit crime in prison, and they will return to a life of crime after prison. It is not a cure of any kind. And so, those who are charged with the responsibility of governing and managing prisons know that they are not actually doing anything that will result in a long-term positive result. That’s like a mechanic working on a car day after day, month after month, all the while knowing that the car will never be fixed.

By observation, the way in which prisons are managed now are no different from how they were managed fifty years ago. The purpose is the same and the result is the same. An individual entering the prison service with a belief that he or she can make a demonstrative and beneficial change is going to be disillusioned and disappointed very quickly. And if your reason for doing something is not being fulfilled, you will feel nothing but resentment and frustration. That’s why it’s so easy to understand the cruelty that can sometimes be demonstrated against prisoners. Those charged with their care see them as the source of their resentment and frustration. It’s a terribly flawed system, and it only continues because no one has yet established true source of criminal intent and developed a means by which it can be resolved.

Did you want to work on the rhythm of this novel in particular? It never falters, without neglecting the emotions.

I’m a storyteller, nothing more than that. I don’t make a plan or develop an outline before I start a book. I have no idea what will really happen throughout the novel, and I certainly don’t know how it will end until I get there. I just want to tell an interesting story, and so I choose what I think is an interesting subject and I just start writing. It’s a spontaneous and organic thing. It’s not academic. It’s not something I analyse as I write. I just write it. I try to make the characters feel like real people. If they feel like real people, then perhaps the reader will care for them. I want to write stories that people think about even when they’re not reading the book, and when they finish the book I want them to feel like they’ve left behind people they’ve come to know. If I get emotionally engaged by the story, then there’s a good possibility that a reader will also be emotionally engaged. It’s no more complicated than that. If it has a rhythm, then that was not a planned thing. That’s just the way it turned out.

Can you confirm to me that you particularly like antiheroes, those everyday people facing situations beyond their control?

Yes, of course, but we are all antiheroes, right? We’re all human, and we all have to deal with both the positive and negative aspects of ourselves and our lives. We all make mistakes, sometimes small, sometimes overwhelming, but what a person does is often less important than what a person does next. We try to get it right, but we so often get it wrong. To survive, you only need to be right a little more than fifty percent of the time. No one can be right all the time. We judge ourselves far more harshly than others judge us. We criticise ourselves more than others criticise us. We all know our own faults and failings, and yet we just keep on going and doing the best we can. For me, it’s often a case of putting myself in the shoes of the character I am writing and asking myself, “If this was me, what would I do?” Again, the characters are the most important thing. They need to be human, to be real, to be relatable. I struggle when I read a book and the characters just don’t feel genuine. That doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy the book, but it won’t be a book that stays with me on an emotional level. I don’t want to appear pretentious, but I want to write a story that feels like something a little more substantial than “entertainment” or a distraction. I want to write a book that finds its way in to your thoughts and feelings and stays there.

How did you experience writing the execution scenes?

An execution scene is brutal and horrific, and so it needed to be written in a brutal and horrific way. I didn’t want it to be gratuitously violent, but the main character’s witnessing of an execution had to be dramatic. It is an important event for him, and it needed to have impact and importance. It had to be sufficiently disturbing for him not to be able to dismiss it or forget it. What happens when he first witnesses an execution will influence the way he approaches his job, his life, and his future. It will affect his decisions. It will make him think about the way he treats those on death row and the consequences of his actions. Because of the significance of this event, it needed to be memorable. I approached it from the viewpoint of trying to put myself and the reader in that position, detailing the exact procedure in the execution chamber but without making it clinical or too objective. If the character is feeling something, then I think we should feel it too. In that way, we can make a connection with his reaction and feel his revulsion and horror. In reality, there is no way to write convincingly about an unpleasant and difficult subject in a pleasant way. The execution of a human being is a powerful and unforgettable event, and so the text needs to convey that in a powerful and unforgettable way. That was what I was trying to do, and I can only hope that I succeeded.

Catégories :Interviews littéraires

Tags:Interview, R. J. Ellory