Twenty Questions with Sarah Moss

‘I fear that the discourse of identity politics will continue to separate readers and writers’

Writers and thinkers take on twenty questions from the TLS, revealing the books they most admire, nagging regrets and the occasional hidden talent

Is there any book, written by someone else, that you wish you’d written?

No. But some books show the rest of us how to do something new and I’d like to write one of those one day.

What will your field look like twenty-five years from now?

I’m not sure I believe there will be life on earth in twenty-five years, much less bookshops and a publishing industry. I hope literary fiction will continue to open up new worlds and new ways of doing things with words for its readers. I fear that the discourse of identity politics will continue to separate readers and writers.

Which of your contemporaries will be read 100 years from now?

If you look back 100 years, the writers who were taken seriously are the ones we’re still reading – it’s rare for someone to be adopted into the canon posthumously. Hilary Mantel. W. G. Sebald.

What author or book do you think is most underrated? And why?

I admire sharp, self-aware writing and I’m happy with novels in which not much happens, so I know why my favourites are underrated. Everyone should read everything by Miriam Toews.

What author or book do you think is most overrated? And why?

The one where the middle-aged white male literature/history professor at an American liberal arts college has a midlife crisis and sleeps with a blonde student whom he despises so it’s all her fault when he loses his job and his wife, whom he despises, and has to move in with his mother, whom he despises.

If you could be a writer in any time and place, when and where would it be?

Somewhere in the EU with functioning public healthcare and education systems and a respect for international law, now.

If you could make a change to anything you’ve written over the years, what would it be?

I’d re-write everything in the light of what I learnt from writing it, but it’s more interesting to move on and write the next thing.

Which is your least favourite fictional character?

That professor.

Let’s play Humiliation (see David Lodge’s Changing Places): What’s the most famous book you haven’t read?/play you haven’t seen?/album you haven’t listened to?/film you haven’t watched?

I managed to graduate from Oxford with a D.Phil in Romantic Poetry without having read any Byron. Didn’t read Ulysses until I had to teach it. I haven’t read Harry Potter either but that’s not humiliating.

Do you have any hidden talents?

Not hidden because I do it everywhere, but I can do quite complicated knitting.

Quick questions:

George or T. S.? Both. George

Modernism or post-? Modernism

Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë? Austen. But at any earlier age I’d have said Brontë

Camus or Sartre? Camus

Proust or Joyce? Joyce

Knausgaard or Ferrante? Ferrante

Jacques Derrida or Judith Butler? Butler

Hamlet or A Midsummer Night’s Dream? Hamlet

Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley? That’s not a comparison. Mary Shelley

Tracey Emin or Jeff Koons? Emin

Sarah Moss is one of 80 writers taking part in the International Literature Showcase, an initiative by Writers’ Centre Norwich, the British Council and Arts Council England to support UK writers. The Tidal Zone is published by Granta.

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