'A novel is a long answer to the question "What is it about?

" I think it should be

possible to give a short answer - in other words, I believe a novel should have a
thematic and narrative unity that can be described. Each of my novels
corresponds to a particular phase or aspect of my own life: for example, going
to the University of California at the height of the Student Revolution, being an
English Catholic at a period of great change in the Church, getting on to the
international academic conference circuit; but this does not mean they are
autobiographical in any simple, straightforward sense. I begin with a hunch that
what I have experienced or observed has some representative (i.e., more than
merely private) significance that could be brought out by means of a fictional
story. To begin the novel I need to discover the structural idea that will generate
the story: two professors passing each other over the North Pole on their way to
exchange jobs, for example, or a parallel between the antics of globetrotting
academics and the adventures of the knights of chivalric romance. I seem to
have a fondness for binary structures, which predates my interest, as a literary
critic, in structuralism. I use comedy to explore serious subjects, and find
Mikhail Bakhtin's idea that the novel is an inherently carnivalesque form,
subverting monologic ideologies by laughter and a polyphony of discourses,
immensely appealing. I am fascinated by the power of narrative, when skilfully
managed, to keep the reader turning the pages, but I also aim to write novels
that will stand up to being read more than once.'