Author Interview
CRAIG TAYLOR Alexander Larman meets the Canadian writer to discuss the similarities between interviewing farmers from Suffolk and therapists from Manhattan
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“That’s the secret: ask people to talk about their context. Hope for the best. Everyone has a folk song, a story they tell again and again, but most people have other stories that lay beneath their usual anecdotes. They’re the ones that often crackle with life”
he age of writers travelling to cities and interviewing their residents, once such a mainstay of travel literature, is now largely behind us, for any number of tiresome reasons. Yet writer Craig Taylor has produced a series of fascinating books about places ranging from New York to the Suffolk countryside, all of which draw on verbatim conversations with their residents. In addition to being an author, Taylor co-edits the literary magazine Five Dials, writes miniature plays and, as we shall see, has a fine line in functional attire. We talked to him about writing about place, the nature of literature and why he’d like to be remembered with a song that Leonard Cohen covered.
CHAP: There are, I believe, two other Craig Taylors who are both writers. Are you ever confused for either of them? TAYLOR: Not by passing strangers. I wish them all the best. I was nearly named Luxton Taylor, which would have been helpful. I’d love to free myself from ‘Taylor’ and leave the surname to those who truly own it: Elizabeth, James, Chuck.
CHAP: Writer, editor, ‘psychogeographer’ and more – you are indeed a Renaissance man. Which of these various hats are you most comfortable wearing? TAYLOR: Writer. Just writer. Maybe reporter. Certainly not Renaissance person. I’m barely a resident of the 21st century.
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