Tom,
I would like to know what you have to say about how to write a book that will be read in a hundred years' time.
Oh,
That's a great question,
Susie.
So,
In a hundred years' time,
I'm going to be 152.
All right?
So,
At 152,
I might not be on the planet.
So,
What would I want people to know when I'm 152 that I kind of know now?
Well,
The first thing is,
I suppose that,
You know,
You heard that phrase that there's only one thing we can take with us,
Which is our evolution,
And the only thing we can leave behind is our art.
So,
In a hundred years' time,
Things will be different in the same way that right now,
What happened in 1910 when we didn't have television,
There were no rockets to the moon,
We didn't have any iPhones and things like that,
And we've got all these magical things now,
Haven't we?
So,
Let's just imagine in a hundred years' time that all that stuff's moved on a little bit.
But there's going to be certain things that are still true,
Because we still read things like Dickens' Devil,
We read Shakespeare,
We read some of the classics and what have you.
And the things that remain that are true are things that are very,
Very dear to our hearts.
And that's our humanity,
It's our fun,
It's our entertainment,
And it's also,
I guess,
Insights that are really as old as the hills.
Yeah,
And those,
I guess,
They remain constant.
And some of the most fun books that I've read are very old books.
I love classics.
And by classics,
I guess we mean books that have been around a long time.
Yeah,
If you think about,
You know,
And some artists,
You know,
Van Gogh wasn't a famous after his death,
Was he?
And Dickens and Hardy and what have you,
If they could be enjoying their royalties now,
They'd be very wealthy men indeed.
So,
It's about sort of writing.
So,
One of the things you can do,
You can write about the conditions of the age.
So,
When we read Dickens,
We get a real sense of what it was like to live in that Victoriana.
Or you could write about the truisms,
As someone like Shakespeare did.
Or you could even write,
I suppose,
Future histories.
So,
We could write now what we think the world's going to be like in a hundred years' time,
Which would be kind of fascinating because it might be quite funny.
Yeah.
Of how non-true it is or how true it is.
So,
There is a component that writers could pick up when they're writing to think about longevity and how well their ideas will sit over the long term.
Yeah.
Now,
To some extent,
That might be a bit narcissistic.
How would I like people to think of me in a hundred years' time?
But also,
It would give a resonance,
Wouldn't it?
I've just been working with a lady who's written a biography of somebody who lived in the temperance movement.
And she was one of the leaders,
Leading suffragette.
And she was one of the leaders of the temperance movement back in the early 1900s.
And the message that she had then is so valid and true for people that may be living in the inner city environment with drug problems,
Alcohol problems,
Addiction problems,
And what have you now.
And she's actually started blogging now,
This lady.
And what she's doing is blogging as if she was this woman from the past.
So,
She's bringing her to life through modern technology,
Which is quite fun.
And there's a very famous granny blogger,
An elderly lady who's rocking the place with her blogs.
And people are loving it with this wise,
Deep wisdom that age brings.
Indeed.
I mean,
You know,
Imagine if you were writing as a hundred-year-old person now,
What that,
And reflecting on what the change of the last century had brought,
It would give incredible wisdom to somebody a hundred years from now to look back at the last hundred years again to realize that,
One,
What the rate of change is bringing,
But also what constancy is true throughout the ages.
So,
This is a kickback to our fast and instant communication technology,
This sense that we actually need to be writing or reading things that have a higher stature in terms of it's worth holding on to for longer than an instant,
Or the throwaway society doesn't apply in terms of the writing.
Well,
You know,
The maverick in Misery says,
You know what,
I think as ages move on,
Then there's,
I think all art is up for grabs.
You know,
Have you heard of the Reduce Shakespeare Company?
Yes.
You know,
They're fun,
They contemporize the message and what have you,
They do it in an instant so that you can pick it up on the classics really quickly and what have you,
And they don't demean Shakespeare,
They're not rubbishing what he said and what he wrote,
But they're actually making it accessible to a new audience.
And if you think about West Side Story,
Wasn't that Romeo and Juliet?
Yeah,
So just bringing something in a new setting and making it contemporary doesn't mean that you're sort of dissing the past,
In fact,
You're honouring it in a way and just bringing it to life again.
And if that means that you've got to tweet a classic in 140 characters or something,
Because that's how people are engaging with media nowadays,
Then so be it.
You know,
I think there's always going to be,
With the rise of the e-reader,
There'll always be a physical book,
But at the same time,
As an artist and as a communicator,
And as a communicator who wants to communicate with people 100 years from now,
You have to be mindful about how people will be accessing media then.
Do you think books will become shorter?
You know what,
I think there's always the opportunity for the backlash,
You know.
So the fact that you might get lots and lots of short books mean there's going to be some premium longer books that are out there.
I must say,
In a book club I was in last year,
We were flying through various novels and then we presented with one that looked the size of a large breeze block.
It was enormous,
Really thick,
Really wide and really dense with so many pages.
And I must admit,
I thought,
I haven't got the time to do this,
But I did.
I ploughed through it and you know what,
I really enjoyed it.
Yeah,
It's a bit like a long movie,
Isn't it?
We just need breaks.
Wonderful,
Tom.
So we have lots of ideas and ways forward to keep longevity and bow to the nod to the fast information flow that we're all working with.
And there's ways to navigate and there's something for everyone in the mix.
Tom,
Thank you so much.
Thank you,
Susie.
