Interview (Written): Patrick Somerville (“The Leftovers”)

A TriQuarterly interview with novelist and short story writer Patrick Somerville on the transition to writing for television:

TQ: You’ve had quite a bit of success with short stories and novels. Did you ever think you’d find yourself writing for television?

Somerville: Not at all. Up until a couple of years ago, I didn’t think I’d do anything but write books. The appeal of writing fiction was always that you could sit down and write without anyone’s permission or any resources. I loved that. You needed a pen, probably a notebook. TV, on the other hand, always felt far away and inaccessible. I liked watching it, but it was something else. My house was an overstuffed library when I was growing up — every room had piles of books on every spare shelf. It felt like the natural direction for me.

TQ: Everyone from Salman Rushdie to Lorrie Moore has come out in praise of the episodic drama, saying that shows like The Wire, Homeland and Breaking Bad offer a level of artistry comparable to that of the great novels. How do you feel about this comparison? Do the two formats really have that much in common?

Somerville: They’re more like cousins than twins. They look alike, sound alike, and seem alike, but the DNA is cut with some totally unrelated ancestors. Storytelling, characters, drama, delightfully weird moments — those are all there in both books and television. But there is a unique psychological state that only reading can create, I think.

But all that aside, just to make a thing with a huge group of people is so different from making it by yourself. I do think those differences carry into the final product. Everything that makes it to the screen on a TV show has an explanation, on some level. It’s been debated. If you see a weird narrative curlicue in a scene, and the show doesn’t bother to explain it, that’s great, but I guarantee you someone has had a conversation with someone else about why that’s there — someone has asked, “What’s the story with that?” and someone has been forced to justify it out loud. Or it could be that the little wrinkle you saw actually used to be a more substantial story idea, but it got whittled away in post, and you’re only seeing the remnants. Or it might be that the boom operator dipped his mic into the take that did the scene the way it was written, and the actor found something unusual in the next take, and it ended up feeling more real. All those variables make TV very fun, but in novels, you can include a sentence that really makes no sense at all, but for the way it changes the feeling of a moment, and it is inherently justified. I love that. It’s creatively mysterious. No one with money will demand to know why it’s there. Eventually the author will forget why it’s there, too. Hopefully.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

HT to @lmecham for the link.