The Lighthouse by Alison Moore is published by Salt.
Photograph courtesy of Alison Moore
Alison Moore spoke to John Freeman about the experience of being shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, why her characters often find themselves enclosed in a memory and writing short.
The Lighthouse by Alison Moore is published by Salt.
Photograph courtesy of Alison Moore
‘Feelings can be very obscure but numbers never lie.’
Kevin Brazil on metrics, obsession and fitness.
‘An intense workout is an ecstasy of punishment packaged as self-improvement.’
Mary Wellesley on exercise, ritual and Barry’s Bootcamp.
‘I was not good at sports because I would not do sports because I did not have the body for sports because I would not do sports.’
Saba Sams on girlhood, embodiment and avoiding sports.
‘Following United rarely brings me any great joy and most often it depresses me. If I could disengage, I would.’
Jonny Thakkar on Manchester United.
‘I deployed my body against an opponent like a blunt and effective instrument.’
John Patrick McHugh on playing Gaelic football.
Alison Moore is the author of The Lighthouse, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012.
More about the author →John Freeman is the founder of the literary annual Freeman's and an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. He is also the author and editor of eleven books, including Dictionary of the Undoing; There's a Revolution Outside, My Love (co-edited with Tracy K Smith), and Wind, Trees, a new collection of poems. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and been translated into more than twenty languages. Once a month he hosts The California Book Club, an online discussion of a classic book of golden state literature for Alta magazine. He lives in New York City.
More about the author →
‘The military recruits around football – they try to pick up the surplus player population. You couldn't make it on the college team? Well, you know, this is kind of similar. Both are violent.’
Nico Walker on American football.
‘Some of these bigger characters, Muhammad Ali or Lennox Lewis, they can become these mythologic, mythological characters, or these godlike figures.’
Declan Ryan on contemporary boxing.
‘It’s more like painting. It’s not like a film.’
Wang Xiaoshuai on the evolution of Chinese cinema and the challenges faced by those working at the vanguard of independent film.
‘This set of characters are simultaneously medieval kings and modern aristocrats.’
Allen Bratton on adapting the Henriad and his debut novel Henry Henry.
‘I settled in, decades ago, to the idea that I was just going to write from a gay position, without explanation or excuse.’
Alan Hollinghurst on writing from the outsider’s perspective and cataloguing queer life.
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