The optimist goes into a dark place and comes back with hope

Last night I went to see Jim Crace speak at the Birmingham Conservatoire, an event scheduled at the tail-end of this year's Birmingham Book Festival.

He was introduced by, and later entered a staged dialogue with, John Dolan (of the Museums Libraries and Archives Council - or MLA - and formerly Head of Birmingham Libraries). It's always interesting to see people in different contexts. I last saw John Dolan speak at the PLA public library conference in Glasgow a couple of weeks ago. Last night John seemed equally at home chatting to a prominent author, and it suited his relaxed style.

But the star of the show was Jim Crace, who turned out to be a very engaging speaker. It's one thing to have a local author (Jim lives in Moseley, not far from my house, and where I socialise), but it's another thing entirely to have one of international literary renown. I've read two of his novels, Quarantine and Being Dead, both of which stand out as very well-executed works of contemporary fiction. Even his speech glitters with metaphors and is perfectly composed.

There were two particular strands in his speech which interested me. Firstly, he declared himself to be the "least autobiographical author you're likely to encounter". This made me think about the nature of contemporary fiction. I daresay that George Eliot's Middlemarch was not so autobiographical either - it's hard to imagine a woman in early 19th century Britain being able to experience directly those of an up and coming doctor, such as her character Doctor Lydgate. My Dad used to say that no-one put into words the experience of being a research scientist better than George Eliot. But then 19th century writers such as Eliot, Dickens and Tolstoy were using an authorial voice, a voice that they must have been completely comfortable with. In contrast, today's writers usually write in the voice of a character. Crace spoke, unusually, about some work in progress - a novel in which he's exploring the realisation that in his own political past, he wasn't as courageous as others were. To have written about a highly courageous political activist, therefore, would have moved him away from his strength and range, and was therefore not feasible .

The second main strand of his speech was no less than the USA. His latest novel (of which I now have a signed copy following a pleasant little chat with him at the end) is called The Pesthouse. This came out of Crace's ambivalent feelings towards the States. On the one hand, he professes a love for the States, for providing a home over centuries to various groups, from the Irish escaping the potato famine of the 1840s, to the Jews arriving from the East European Schtetls. And yet, it is also strongly associated with cultural invasions - the coca cola can in the South Seas, as Crace said. So to address these feelings, Crace has, in The Pesthouse, invented a future where the USA has become a failing nation from which everyone is fleeing. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this paradox is realised in the narrative. Crace concludes this strand by suggesting that maybe the things he loves about the USA are eternal, whilst the things he hates may only be the duration of one single presidential term!

And as for the quotation from Crace in the title? Well that didn't have anything to do with either strand of the talk. It's just a good quote.