I caught up with this evasive writer at the recent Hay Literature Festival in Wales, and asked him about the significance of some of the common themes and motifs of his variously brilliant works. Excerpts from an interview.

It’s a cloud rather than a question isn’t it? But an important and beautiful cloud. I couldn’t conceive of a life without music. Music is one of the major means by which I understand the human heart. Pop songs — they’re so good at human emotions. The best ones are. Of course 97 per cent is crap, but three per cent is imperishable human expression. The song reminds me of how articulate you can be if you master your art sufficiently. The song and the poem. It’s also a very studiable chunk of art. You can ask yourself about a song — why does that move me, why is that so clever, why is that phrase so retentive? And you can figure out the answers to these questions as well. They’re good places to study art in the abstract. Number 9 Dream was written under the musical spell of Kate Bush and John Lennon. Music is exactly like what St. Augustine said famously about Time, “I know exactly what it is until someone asks me to explain it.& #8221; If you could explain it you wouldn’t actually need the music, which makes it a fascinating, inebriating bar conversation but a tricky interview question.

The unborn twin is the evil alter-ego — the Mr. Hyde to the Dr. Jekyll. Children of course lack vocabulary, and they make up for it through feats of the imagination. Jason (the protagonist of Black Swan Green) lacks the vocabu lary to deal with his stammer, so he calls it the hangman even up to his teenage years. It’s this little voice — what Pope would call the “imp of the perverse” — this little voice goading in the background saying go on, go on, I know it’ll get you into trouble, but go on. In Number 9 Dream, it’s more of a love story. I suppose the fascination is that it’s mythic isn’t it? The ability to be two even though you are one.

I was in love with Wind up Bird Chronicle for a long time. Actually, there’s a naughty link between Number 9 Dream and Norwegian Wood — a mini tribute. I discovered Murakami very ear ly on. When I read Wild Sheep Chase, I hadn’t read anything like it. And when Wind-Up came along, it made a big impact on me. Practically, it taught me a handy lesson about how popular culture is a modern equiv alent of classical mythology in the 19th century. Across national borders you can refer to Charlie Brown or the Beatles or Frank Sinatra or Casablanca and it’s a metaphor bank about whose cheques can be cashed in most global cultures around the world. I had a crush on him (Murakami). Crushes kind of go as well. He’s still an amazing writer, but I’m perhaps a little bit more objective than I used to be.

I can’t understand childhood without understanding dreams or nightmares. The boundary between dreaming and waking is more porous as a kid and it becomes more calcified and patrolled as an adult. I’m fascinated by dreams. How can you not be? The human soul singing to itself. In my first two books I used a lot of my dreams, then I began to get suspicious about the deployment. A novel is already a dream, a different level of reality.

Secret architectures are a different blueprint for each book, and it’s a different means of creating that blueprint for each book. In the first three books, the secret architecture was thematic. Ghostwritten — all of its sections, were about why things happen, about causality. In a way, they are essays in fiction on that theme. The secret architecture of Number 9 Dream was intended to be a different answer to the question — what is the mind and where does it work and how does it function? Cloud Atlas was a means of transmitting narrative — the journal, the pulp fiction, the epistemological letters, the campfire yarn. How are stories told and what are they? And why are t hey such a basic human need? There’s food, water, protection from exposure – that’s one level. And then the next — sex, stories, the need to worship, maybe. How come? The visible structure is all in my head from the beginning, but I’m always asking what is this about, and then how can that knowledge feed back into the plot and the action. So this is what I really mean by secret architecture. You need to work out what each section of your book is about. It’s helpful. It saves labour and answers questions.

I don’t know how to do third person. I’ve tried in Cloud Atlas — the most unsuccessful section of the book is written in third person. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I just can’t do it. Bit like working out your secret architecture — first person automatically opens locked doors the same way. It’s a filter. How much your protagonist knows is the speed at which your plot is unfolding to your reader. It’s a built-in, handy device that I haven’t been able to forsake. Mrs. Dalloway bought the flowers… How can you say that? Why flowers? Why not tea? Why Mrs. Dalloway? It opens up a big abyss of possible questions that I have to answer. Of course, it’s an artificial conceit, because I’m answering anyway — but through the ventriloquist dummy of the first person.

They are very distinct things. Let’s try and define them. Memory is the act of recalling, storing and retrieving what we believed happened in the past. The Japanese are very good on memory verbs. There’s a number for a specific segment in the process of remembering. English is clumsier. In a sense, History is not what happened, it’s what we think happened. Imagination is god knows what! Imagination is a creation of a world that is not, and the endowing of it with history, geography, politics, anthropology, language — it’s the creation in the mind of what is not outside. Of course, to do that, one has to draw on memory. You couldn’t imagine I think, unless you had experiences from which to build imaginings on.

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