Ewan Morrison Speaks.

When you start a novel, do you aim for a pre-determined conclusion, or let it happen as it happens?

I guess I don’t have a pre-determined outcome. I try to let the characters come alive and let them sort out their own ending. I set them in motion; create them through the first and second act, create their problems and their personalities write the ending for me. If I have to force an ending on characters then I’d have to totally re-write the story.

Three is often a crowd, but in Ménage each of the three main characters seem to depend on the other two, how did you create their relationship as such?

One of the problems with stories and narratives is that you tend to have a protagonist and an antagonist. You know… the hero and the enemy. So it’s a good question when you’ve got three: are you just adding one person into the mix or does it disturb the whole equilibrium? I was reading about the different ménage a trois in history and generally you have the leader – or a guru – Saul, you have a disciple, Dot, and someone who aids and abets both of them, Owen. Ultimately, they all end up being completely dependent on one another.

Where do the bulk of your ideas come from – imagination or life experience?

Sometimes my imagination forces me to live more extremely; therefore it becomes a loop whereby if I was to write about the daily experience of being a writer it would just be extremely boring. Some people have actually done that and that’s the end of their career… basically. Whereas in the book, Owen is a writer of sorts but he’s an art critic so I can kind of get away with it. There is a balance between real life and imagination because unbound imagination bores me. Writing about another period in history is just too whimsical. Authors have to have something at stake for them in their writing.

Nihilism plays a major part in your novel, how do you think people with strong opposing beliefs may feel when reading it?

They get really, really pissed off. My novels are becoming more focussed on the agenda I’ve got. Because I’m stating it more clearly we’re getting a real love/hate thing with readers and reviewers. It’s more the nihilism than the sex, in fact, that they attack. Some people are so terrified of nihilism. They cling to beliefs – things that are out of date or redundant. They’re terrified of facing up to the void that has opened up in our culture. And I think we do live in a nihilistic culture, one without values or one where we shop around for values – there’s no real core set of grounded values. And I’ve always liked that word… ‘grounded’… because Nihilism is a hole, so either you’ve got ground or a hole. And a novel is a wee hand-made bridge over the top of the hole.

“How could he live in the modern world every day being confronted with the images, the adverts, newspaper and magazine covers, with their many smiling photo faces…” In the case of Saul, do you aim for others to adopt such an attitude toward mainstream life?

Well, from Saul’s perspective, the book is really a study of what happens to somebody who does go to those [nihilistic] extremes. If you despise the world and everyone in it so much, then you’re going to have to run away from it and live as a total exile. So the book really asks: if you start from a bedrock of nihilism; of questioning mass cultural values, how can you actually live in the world thereafter? With Kurt Cobain: after he became successful he wrote a song and the chorus was “I miss the comfort in being sad”. I think his suicide and his career trajectory was from someone who was perfectly content in screaming at the world and then deeply confused by the fact it made him a success. If the world he hates turns him into a success, then what the fuck can he do?

In the end, you often let a narrative run out, leaving the characters with nothing but themselves to deal with. What is your intention here?

I’ve found myself, many times, waking up without a narrative of how I could get through the rest of the day and living through other people. It’s more like real life that way. It’s maybe only a temporary solution but living without a narrative… at least we’ve got each other. Something like that.

So you’ve tackled the swinging scene, long distance relationships, ménage a trios, what’s next?

I’m working on a book of short stories called Tales From The Mall. It’s twelve stories about twelve individuals. There may be some crossovers between the different stories. It’s partly: how do you make yourself an individual in a shopping mall? Do you just accept that you’re just one of ten thousand people all doing basically the same thing? Or are there certain ways to be different? People go on speed dating in malls; you can buy stuff from the cradle to the grave etc. What’s interesting is that in shopping malls there are books on basically everything except shopping malls. I want to turn the gaze inward.

[Interviewer: Craig Lamont]