Q & A

Jennie, rashly, asks me for advice. She’s been given a questionnaire by her new publisher’s publicity people which, after the standard biog details, shoots off into colour-supplement-filler stuff: name your top five books of all time, worst book ever read, favourite word, etc. It’s like, If you were a vegetable, what vegetable would you be? And she wants to know how seriously she should take this, how seriously will her answers be taken? This one, for example: ‘Is there any particular ritual involved in your writing process?’ She lowers her voice and she tells me . . . No, I say, I don’t think so. It could put people off.