Douglas Adams
- 1992-01-05
P.D. James with A.S. Byatt
Novelist AS Byatt talks to crime writer PD James about writing and the complex allure of murder.
In the mid-1980s, the Institute of Contemporary Arts launched a series of staged interviews between pairs of successful authors, under the banner Writers in Conversation. In this edition, AS Byatt asks questions of famous crime novelist PD James. There's an atmosphere of reverence and familiarity, with the pair on first-name terms. But Byatt was then still an emerging writer growing in stature - this was some five years before the publication of her acclaimed novel Possession. By contrast, interviewee James was already hugely popular for her series of Adam Dalgliesh mysteries.
James begins with characteristic self-deprecation - "I'm a very late starter, Antonia" - and describes how her circumstances through wartime, marriage and motherhood stalled her writing until her mid-thirties. James's work stems from her adoration of the genre, and she and Byatt discuss her place next to other women detective writers, including Dorothy L Sayers and Agatha Christie.
She talks of her works convivially, dismissing her early novels as derivative while admiring their enduring appeal. James wanted to balance the 'nitty gritty' of Dalgliesh's police work with his more romantic characteristics. Still, she also notes that she found ease writing her other detective, Cordelia Gray, even though Gray's fictional world is full of loss and loneliness. From there, the conversation deepens into exploring the pleasures and pains of writing crime, touching on morality, religion, redemption and justice.
The crime writer P.D. James talks with A.S. Byatt about the development of her
writing and main characters of the novels, and aspects of the genre of
detective/crime writing. Themes arising in the discussion include: writing a
classical detective story; the importance of strong structure; using a single
detective through several books; detective stories by women; real-life murders
as a source of material; the geometry of good detective fiction; and, the role
of murderers and corpses.
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P.D. James with A.S. Byatt
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