In conversation with... Ian Rankin

Dirty, divorced and often depressed. A stereotypical Scottish hardman, externally fierce and gruff, seeks willing companion for decades long bout of heavy drinking, detective work and self-destructive behaviour. Unwilling to make an effort.

Detective Inspector John Rebus does not make a good personal ad.

Yet, for the last 20 years, Ian Rankin has carried Rebus with him - in this work, in his heart and always, always on his mind. Is it any wonder that after spending 17 books in conversation with the Strawman of Edinburgh, a break-up would eventually have to come?

But a break can bring a lot of things. When Inspector Rebus was forced into retirement two years ago, there were fears that freed from the trials of the no-nonsense cop, the creator would find greener and happier pastures to roam in. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In  2010, I spoke with Scottish writer Ian Rankin about the recent retirement of literary muse, John Rebus. Perhaps the most interesting part of the interview however was when Rankin talked about the place of crime fiction in the broader world of literature and the subtle work that writers like Ian McEwan, John Bandville [as Benjamin Black] and himself were doing to make crime fiction and literary fiction one and the same. 

 

Click HERE to read this interview in full as well as other interviews with Ann Enright, John Arden, Kevin Barry, Colm Tóibin, Julian Gough, Donal Ryan, Colin Barrett, Catherine O'Flynn and Danielle McLaughlin.

In Conversation With... John Arden

In late 2009 I paid a visit to the Galway home of Man Booker Prize runner-up, John Arden. Less than three years before his sad passing, he was good enough to spare some time to speak with me about what turned out to be his last collection of stories Gallows - Tales of Suspicion and Obsession.  

There’s a man with a Palestinian flag on Shop Street. He’s 60 if he’s a day and when the rain falls on the happy shoppers of Galway, he usually gets wet. There are men and women who spend each weekend at Shannon Airport, counting airplanes as they traffic in and out and engage in uneasy staring-matches with guards through iron fences.

They are people who are placed, or place themselves, on the edge of what most people see as ‘normal’ society. People who sooner or later will pay some price for that placement.

For the last four decades, John Arden has lived in relative obscurity on Ireland’s west coast. After exploding onto the literary scene in the late 1950s, Arden was quickly hailed as one of the visionary playwrights of that era and was even christened Britain’s Brecht.

But all truths must eventually out and Arden’s unwillingness to keep quiet about his opposition to the British military machine and their presence in Ireland soon brought about a number of high profile falling-outs with the British theatre establishment. And that, as they say, was that.

Now, as he prepares to turn 80, he is about to release his most substantial collection of work in years. Set in Galway, London and Yorkshire, Gallows is a  collection of short stories that attempt to lift the carpet of polite society and peer at the goings-on in the underbelly of life.

“It’s not deliberate, you know. It’s just what happens when you write short stories over a period of years. The themes really are subconscious. It’s only after [the story] is written that I realise what the underlying theme might be,” he says.

Click HERE to read this interview in full as well as other interviews with Ann Enright, Kevin Barry, Colm Tóibin, Julian Gough, Donal Ryan, Colin Barrett, Catherine O'Flynn and Danielle McLaughlin.