Here comes the Doorstopper: Ġuzè Stagno interviews Alfred Sant

Ġużè Stagno’s extracurricular record is appalling: in the three years he has spent as a fulltime student at the University of Malta, he has neither contested the KSU elections, nor joined AIESEC. He couldn’t even be bothered with registering for the odd Degree Plus credit. This, an interview with acclaimed author and former Prime Minister Alfred Sant for the Department of English Students’ Association journal, is his way of making (late) amends.

In local literary circles, Alfred Sant is an author more usually admired than read. How about this for proof: I don’t know anyone who’s ever finished either Silġ fuq Kemmuna or La Bidu La Tmiem (actually I do … but the guy in question is a compulsive liar who, despite looking like Gollum’s uglier brother, keeps insisting he’s bedded no less than 45 top models). I managed to reach the end of Silġ only because I was asked – by the author himself – to be on the panel for the reprint’s 2006 launch. It’s not that Sant’s books are bad: au contraire, they are probably the closest Maltese literature ever got to a ‘proper’ postmodern discourse. No, the problem is this one: in these times of “5 second” attention spans and Under Pressue-type madness, do we really have the time to sit down and read a doorstop (a literary doorstop, at that) from cover to cover?

We don’t, unless said doorstop is part of the syllabus (and even that is no certain guarantee the book will be given more than a cursory read).

Sant’s last novel, cryptically titled L-Għalqa tal-Iskarjota, is something else, however. First of all, it is almost half the length of La Bidu La Tmiem; secondly (and even more importantly), it features a cleverly plotted story that makes you turn the pages well into the night. Suffice it to say that, whereas it took me almost a month of gruelling reading to finish Silġ in time for the book’s launch ceremony, in less than a week I was done with L-Għalqa. Then I cried my eyes out because I realised I would never write anything this good.

The following interview was conducted during the summer holidays. I was supposed to meet Sant in person, but being the busy man I am (no, really) I just couldn’t find the time to fit him in my hectic summer schedule. So I sent him an email instead. I hate Q & A interviews: they smack of laziness. But hey, short of making up a physical encounter for the sake of this article (“ … he kept downing vodka shots with Prokofiev playing in the background”), the Q & A format will have to do.

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Let me be clear about it, Dr Sant: I am extremely jealous of L-Għalqa tal-Iskarjota. Even though there are a number of local works of literature I admire, this is the first one that had me seething with unbearable jealousy. Reading it, I felt that – for the first time ever –  I was reading a Maltese work that wasn’t just tajjeb … għal Malta, if you see what I mean.

I do not follow you in your just tajjeb għal Malta angle. I’m uncomfortable with that classification. The way we appreciate what gets written should be seamless under well-defined criteria, with no distinction between foreign and local output. There’s rubbish being written and published in continental Europe, the UK and the US that I would qualify as bad, period; not as just tajjeb ghall-Ingilterra or wherever. People write or create things they feel they can write or create, and good luck to them; then they have to face the judgement of their readers, good and bad, no matter where they and their readers live.

Which does not mean that I’m claiming L-Għalqa is good … though I’m very happy you liked it! I enjoyed writing it very much, even if it is not the “real” novel I’ve been mulling over these last eight years or so, and on which I have not even started.

Considering its length, the book holds together surprisingly well. How many drafts were written, in all?

The procedure I’ve always adopted is to write three drafts. Way back in the past I used to write two of them in longhand, the final one in typescript. Now they all get done on the PC, which tends to blur the distinction between drafts – though I try to keep it by logging the first one, the second one and the third one, as different files. However, the truth is that with a PC, the ongoing ways by which you can revise, brush and correct from day to day are endless, which makes the distinction between the second and third drafts rather meaningless. Then there is what happens when you look at a hard copy of the second or third draft; I find that very revealing since it is where I discover that I have not revised, edited, rewrote as well as I should have. The worst moments of despair of course occur when you get the same feeling after going through the ultimate hard copy, the printed work. All this is a process of ongoing torment. I went through it when writing L-Għalqa, and more recently – in fact just now – as I finished work on a new book due to come out soon, a collection of short stories entitled Pupu fil-Baħar.

Is it true you didn’t want the book to be proofread? There are spelling mistakes on almost every page!

It’s a bit exaggerated to say that there are spelling mistakes almost on every page, though there are more than there should be. A significant percentage occur for words ending in izzat/i, like ċivilizzat, organizzat and their plurals, where I have a total blind – or should I say deaf? – spot. No matter what people repeatedly tell me, I pronounce such words, write them and hear them being said around me in the form of iżżat/i. Cleaning this problem up should have been a priority task in checking the proofs, probably more than the priority I gave to ensuring that the latest innovations in Maltese orthography (even if I do not agree with many of them) appeared correctly. Even as I say this, I still cannot understand why organizzati, ċivilizzati and the rest are written the way they are written.

Then on another level, I missed my friend and former teacher Pawlu Aquilina, who died recently. He used to correct my scripts before publication. I couldn’t get used to the idea that he would not be handling the job this time round too. I thought I had learned enough from him to be able to do it by myself. I was wrong.

Why do you use ‘continental’ punctuation for dialogues etc.? Was it some sort of 60’s fashion? Are there any advantages to it?

I don’t recall there was anything like a sixties fashion regarding punctuation, except for some experiments in stream-of-consciousness techniques. I started out using the traditional style but soon found that the continental system is more congenial when you want your narrative to reflect the interplay between different platforms of experience: actions past, present and imagined – thoughts and remembrances – as well as the mix between the moods and feelings of different people simultaneously interacting with each other and with their own memories. I first employed the system in Silġ fuq Kemmuna and since then, when writing in Maltese, have rarely reverted to the other style which in my opinion, cuts narrative up too rigidly, into two distinct territories, the spoken word (as direct speech) and the rest.

Anyway, I’m not sure it’s a strictly continental punctuation I use, for the signage has evolved over the years and is still doing so; there are things I attempted in L-Għalqa tal-Iskarjota which I had never done before, and they’re not misprints.

Sometimes in L-Għalqa you stop short of actually using expletives and vulgarities. Is this a matter of personal preference, and if so, why should that be? Do you think that we  – meaning contemporary writers of Maltese literature – are going a bit overboard as regards language and subject matter? Are we nowadays surfeiting on the liberties (linguistic or otherwise) brought about by works like Il-Manifest tal-Killer, Sara Sue and some of my own stuff?

Regarding language, subject matter and everything else a writer decides about when he/she is writing (and this applies to all artists in their own lines of activity) there is only one basic rule, namely that there are no basic rules, with freedom of expression as the major lodestar. If one is being authentic in what one writes, then whether there are liberties being taken is a question of judgement, values and aspriations that should be settled between author and reader. During my lifetime, tastes and attitudes have changed drastically. In the late sixties, I had problems with my first novel L-Ewwel Weraq tal-Bajtar because a masturbation scene caused disgust and was censured on the local cable radio system. Less than fourteen years later, in Bejgħ u Xiri, another novel I published, a rape scene described from the perspective of the woman being raped, raised no eyebrows; indeed, reactons I got discussed whether the rape technique that was followed by the guy doing the action was physically viable.

When – as you say – I stop short of actually using expletives and vulgarities, it’s because that’s how I judge the writing should happen in that particular instance, with no reflection at all on what other writers judge is best for their stuff. I’m sure they don’t put in “expletives and vulgarities” simply pour epater les bourgeois.

And then, the best published exercise in vulgarities and expletives deleted (even though it’s very easy to determine what was really said despite the deletions) remains the transcript of President Nixon’s Watergate tapes, which among other things was an education in how to project vulgarities!

During the Silġ Fuq Kemmuna book launch some years ago, Michaela Muscat – who was on the panel – pointed out the fact that that particular novel, although set in the swinging 60’s, is brimming with references to classical music, highbrow literature and so on. On the other hand, L-Għalqa tal-Iskarjota is very much of its time. What has changed? Are you less of a cultural snob now than you were then?

I’m slightly puzzled by your question. One of my fears with L-Għalqa was that it would be criticised for being culturally snobbish. Mostly by way of satire or parody, there are what one could consider to be a lot of name dropping, plus too many snide references to “highbrow” or unusual writers like Dante, Victor Hugo, Ġużè Diacono, Goethe, Homer, Rabelais, Ġużè Stagno, Bram Stoker, Norman Mailer, Sheridan Le Fanu, Ed McBain, George Eliot, M R James, Grazia Deledda, Wen Amon, St Mark, among others. So if anything, the index of cultural snobbishness has gone up, compared to Silġ fuq Kemmuna, rather than down.

I doubt though whether the point is a useful one, for again, there are no rules; if readers feel ok with what is being spun by way of snobbishness or otherwise, then there is no issue, and vice-versa. Actually, one of the main characters in Silġ fuq Kemmuna had a genuine personal interest in classical music (which does not make anybody a cultural snob), whence the references to that line of artistic creation there. The same does not apply to L-Għalqa, where the musical interests of the characters either remain unspecified or tend to be close to the prevailing fashion.

In L-Għalqa, the background information regarding the Phoenicians is astounding in its detail. But honestly: how much of it is researched work, and how much is just the figment of a particularly fervid imagination? Research notwithstanding, don’t you ever get any hangups when writing about things you have no direct experience of?

In writing L-Iskarjota, I did no research at all. For long years, I’ve been reading up for pleasure, on material having to do with the ancient history of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Egypt and Mesopotamia. There’s a brilliant book which I’ve been browsing for the last twenty five years or so entitled Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament, edited by James B Pritchard, and published by Princeton University Press. There you can meet, all translated from the available tablets and papyri, face to face, Hammurabi, Sinuhe and Wen Amon, the Hittite lawmakers, and further up the millenia, Gilgamesh, plus the heroes and gods worshipped in Ur and Babylon, Upper and Lower Egypt, plus much much more. That’s where the initial material about the Phoenicians came from, but other works picked up over the years were of great help. Then, as far as imaginative hangups go, you must have read (let’s do some more name dropping now) Norman Mailer in Ancient Evenings, or Carlos Fuentes in Terra Nostra: are they being driven by a fervid imagination? Your guess is a good as mine. But can you doubt that they’re creating worthwhile fiction that is setting new rules for itself, while delving into material of which the writers concerned can have had no direct experience?

So my point would be: are we asking the right question about imagination? It is the basic stuff of creative writing. I don’t know about whether it should be fervid or not. What it must surely be though is bold without being reckless.

Most of the time in your novels, you seem to go out of your way to use the Maltese words for things we usually refer to using the English language. The term ‘remote control’ springs to mind: in L-Għalqa, instead of using that, you opted for the rather long-winded and unwieldy version in Maltese. Why do you do that?

Yes, I would like to have Maltese terms available for “new” things we use all the time. I’ve always had a great respect for linguists like Saydon, the Serracino Inglotts, Aquilina and Sammut, who tried/try to use the base of terms and vocabulary that already exists in the Maltese language to describe what we see around us and what we do today, rather than simply copy or adapt words from the English, as happens most of the time. So I also try to do my best, as a writer, not as a linguist which I’m not, to discover Maltese expressions for what we do in everyday life, and to express which we blindly seem to need English. However, I cannot call my efforts in this direction successful. For instance, in Silġ Fuq Kemmuna, I tried to describe how to change gear when driving a car, by writing about how to tibdel il-ħeffa. That attempt did not get anywhere.

Something else that really interests me, as an author: do you agonise too much over choice of words, syntax and so on, or are you a ‘one take’ writer?

Yes, I do take a lot of pains over syntax and use of words, even if sometimes, awful things slip through. For at some stage, you have to let go, unless you want to go on and on, agonising over a text, and give up on ever getting it published.

Having personally written three extremely slim novels in the space of ten years, I still cannot reconcile the fact that a busy man like you can churn out doorstop after doorstop after doorstop. Honestly: how do you do it? Do you believe that it takes a certain kind of literary stamina to be a ‘proper’ novelist?

The contrast between slimness and doorstopping is not very productive. Is Gone with the Wind a lot of wind (I don’t think so.)? Or War and Peace? Ha, ha. On the other hand, being slim is no sign of  lack of stamina. Think of Jane Austen. Sometimes writing “slim”, is much more time consuming and demanding than writing in big chunks. There simply are no rules.

Are you a better novelist than playwright?

I don’t consider myself as a playwright any more. Back in the seventies I realized that writing plays for the drawer, as I came to call them, without getting them produced, was not a meaningful project. There could be no development that way. I believe in the “literary” theatre as one of the formats that drama can take, but unless the writer can experience at some point how the effects he saw in his mind’s eye actually work out on the stage, the whole effort becomes a waste of time. So I stopped writing drama.

L-Għalqa tal-Iskarjota was PEG’s last publication before the company went belly up. Any comments regarding the matter?

It’s very sad. Most of my books were published with PEG and I believe we came up with some good projects. They did so with other writers too.

When you were starting out, who were your literary role models, locally?

I admired Francis Ebejer. I liked works by Ġużè Diacono and Ġużè Chetcuti. I appreciated the romantic poets and some of the older novelists for their impeccable deployment of the Maltese language, even when what they wrote was frequently pietistic and clichéd. The reference point for this is the mid-sixties.

You studied sciences at university. Do you think you could have done with a ‘formal’ education in literature? Didn’t you ever think – at the time – that you’d made the wrong choice, academically?

I’m really glad I did sciences at Sixth Form and University, for this gave me a grip on areas of knowledge that matter a lot and that provide you with insight and skills which turn out to be very useful over the years. Even at the time, I thought I was having the best of both worlds, for while slogging at science, I also found enough time to read over quite a wide range of novels and plays, Anglo-Saxon and continental. To be sure I was anything but brilliant at maths and physics; however I managed to satisfy examiners, and they were not pushovers. Mathematical and scientific knowledge helped me a lot at a later stage, in the study of international relations, economics and business management.

During our last interview some years ago, I asked you a question regarding local teleserials, a question which you rather conveniently ignored. But as a playwright, didn’t you ever toy with the idea of writing something serious for television – a clever and literate ‘soap opera’ for example? Are drama and poetry as passe’ and irrelevant as ballet these days? Could it be said that nowadays scriptwriting is to drama what song lyrics are to poetry in that it makes it palatable to modern audiences?

I hardly ever considered writing for TV during the past thirty years or so, which may be considered surprising seeing that my first “success” was with a TV play. But then I wrote a TV play Bniedem Ieħor which was initially accepted for production and never produced. Another play Il-Viċi-President tal-Awstralja jżur l-Istazzjon tat-Televixin was unceremoniously dumped. And a third TV play whose text I have lost, was actually recorded but then docketed as the sound quality of the recording was considered to be too bad, technically. So I lost interest.

However, I do not agree that drama, poetry and ballet are passe and irrelevant. To the contrary. But the infrastructure, human and material, which can carry them is lacking in a post-industrial, capitalist society. Making such an infrastructure profitable in the business sense, is problematic at best, and even more so in a tiny place like Malta. This is definitely one area where the state should have an active input, through a sensible longterm plan to create and sustain such an infrastructure. In the distant past much drama, dance and poetry used to be subsidized by the aristocracy and later by the moneyed merchant classes. For a while, these art forms seemed in line to make the transition towards a mass audience/market on which they could survive. But with the acceleration of communications technology, things seem to have fallen apart once more.

Regarding the idea of writing a clever and literate soap opera for TV, ok, let me propose this: that you and I do it as a joint venture, in black comedy mode, on lines that would mash Joe Orton with Clockwork Orange.

One final question. The play Min Hu Evelyn Costa? appeared when you were still in your teens. Honestly: did its success affect you, vanity-wise? Did it make you more popular with your peers … or with girls?

Min Hu Evelyn Costa? was successful in the sense that it got the first prize of fifty pounds in the first TV play writing competition held in Malta and was performed on local television. With many viewers it was quite unpopular and there were letters in the press complaining that local television should not put on plays which nobody could make head or tail of. Friends came to ask me discreetly what exactly the plot was about. The fifty pounds came in handy for they financed my first trip abroad, to Italy and Germany. In the popularity stakes with peers and/or girls, the play’s impact was zilch.