Justin Cartwright’s voice is quiet and almost sounds English, but the lick of his ‘yeah’ sounds a bit like ‘ja’ and you catch glimpses of the South African underneath. The South African-born London novelist was visiting Oxford to attend a party at Wolfson for a friend, and before I met him in Quod Bar, I spied him roaming Radcliffe Square, reacquainting himself with old haunts.
Cartwright’s education at Oxford in the mid-sixties was not unexpected: his family had a tradition of going to Oxford, and his boarding school had a strong connection to the Rhodes scholarship. Despite this fast-track, Cartwright first earned a degree from the University of Witwatersrand before coming to Trinity to study PPE. ‘I had an absurdly wonderful time,’ says Cartwright, admitting that he didn’t do much while at Oxford, although he ‘worked hard at the end’. Oxford was an odd experience for this colonial: feeling directly at home, Cartwright began to talk ‘more English, quickly, without trying.’ There was an ‘immense sense of living in a society which takes culture seriously.’ Cartwright is less sure that that’s as true about England now.
Cartwright eulogises Oxford in The Secret Garden: Oxford Revisited, a work of non-fiction I read eagerly two years ago, waiting to submit my own application. Though Cartwright never wrote an ‘Oxford novel’ per se, his novel A Song Before It is Sung is partially staged at Oxford, telling the story of an Isaiah Berlin-figure investigating the final hours of an Adam von Trott-like character involved in the plot against Hitler. Berlin, who paced the High Street outside Quod and had rooms just opposite, Cartwright pointed out to me, was a political idol of his.
As the author of twelve novels (collecting a Booker nomination, a Whitbread Novel Award and the Hawthorden Prize along the way), numerous screenplays, and reviews, Cartwright exhibits a rumbling sense of energy. After graduating from Oxford, he worked as a copywriter, finding he was quite good at the ‘cheap and cheerful’. A fellow copywriter who made a lot of money writing sexy novels enlisted Cartwright to try his hand at a few. Cartwright, finding he had an ease with words, wrote a few thrillers and then decided to work at literary fiction around the age of 37 (when Cartwright was 24, his brother was kind enough to remind him that at his age John Updike had already published three novels). Cartwright’s familiarity with the publishing world facilitated this switch, and he wrote Interior which ‘was pretty good, very well received’ and though it didn’t sell well convinced Cartwright he had a voice.
It becomes clear from talking to Cartwright that writers — especially those with growing families — cannot afford to be romantic about a writing career. ‘When you’re moderately well known,’ Cartwright says, ‘there’s the assumption that you’re making scads of money, which just isn’t true.’ Though he is now able to make a decent living from his pen, Cartwright had to work a day-job for most of his writing career, serving as a screenwriter, a director of commercials, election campaigns and documentaries. Cartwright was lucky enough to choose whatever caught his fancy, whether it was lions hunting at night or the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was present a few weeks before Mugabe got rid of Joshua Nkomo, one of his co-leaders, supposedly saying ‘It’s very difficult having two leaders in a party.’ Little did Cartwright realise how far Mugabe would push that sentiment.
Cartwright has continued to be interested in South African politics and literature. But despite being a novelist who has treated Africa in several novels, Cartwright never wrote an apartheid novel. ‘The issues were not that morally complex,’ says Cartwright. ‘We knew it was wrong; it was not very nuanced.’ Cartwright believes that though his prediction that South African writers would be put out of business at the end of apartheid was proved spectacularly wrong, he doesn’t think South African literature is in a good place at present. The culminated effects of apartheid and poor education mean that ‘people are not writing very well’.
‘People say ‘I’m African’, but you’re not. Let’s face it, you’re not African. Africans don’t regard white people as African whether or not you try.’ Cartwright is merciless in discussing the current South African government. He was never an African National Congress supporter, despite several of his university friends being in Mbeki’s government. ‘I never really wanted to belong to the ANC. I desperately didn’t want to belong to some closed system of belief.’
The new South Africa is ‘stimulating, if you don’t live there’. Cartwright speaks with the kind of weariness behind South Africa’s white-flight phenomenon. ‘It’s difficult, it doesn’t work anymore. That’s what [J.M. Coetzee’s] Disgrace was all about. If you don’t accept the new realities whatever they are for better or for worse, you’d better leave. And Coetzee left.’
When I asked Cartwright if he believed the novel still has social power, Cartwright gave an unequivocal yes. ‘We seem to forget — if you take South Africa as an example — the true story was told in novels.’ Having just read the South African novelist Andre Brink’s autobiography, Cartwright recounts the story of Brink’s father, a magistrate, beating a child-servant to death because of a small transgression. It took eight hours. This is the sort of incident which was later reported to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and was ‘completely devastating’.
Cartwright’s recent novel, Other People’s Money, is a state of the nation novel about the recent credit crash. He is currently writing a screenplay of the novel for a four-hour film treatment. ‘There’s a lot of dialogue, pretty sequential, intentionally quite straightforward in a Dickensian way. Some of my novels are quite tricky, but this isn’t.’ Other People’s Money shares genetic material with the Dickensian novel: after years of thinking Dickens was ‘sentimental and shallow’ Cartwright realized that ‘there’s immense craft involved.’
Cartwright has few bugbears about the new media, although he does say that ‘its problem is that it gives everybody the chance to think they can write. That sounds elitist but I don’t think it is. There’s a kind of fervour to express oneself.’
Saul Bellow was repeatedly mentioned as an influence on Cartwright, especially Bellow’s novel Herzog. But Cartwright also read Hemingway (‘like most people at that time’), and came early to Updike. Updike and Cartwright were friends, and Cartwright was asked to write the introduction to the paperback edition of Rabbit at Rest, the final book in Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy. ‘You’re going to say I don’t read women,’ Cartwright says with a sideways smile, but he holds up Marilynne Robinson as proof. ‘John loved Marilynne Robinson.’ And of course, if you’re South African, you would have read the Nobel winning novelist Nadine Gordimer. ‘I know her reasonably well,’ says Cartwright, ‘she’s difficult but highly intelligent.’ When I asked Cartwright if he found friendships with writers helpful or destructive, he suggested they were inevitable. Of course, friendships between writers are fraught with natural competitiveness. ‘I think most writers think they’re better than the critics think they are,’ says Cartwright. ‘But I can’t complain. I’ve had a pretty good roll so far.’
Justin Cartwright’s voice is quiet and almost sounds English, but the lick of his ‘yeah’ sounds a bit like ‘ja’ and you catch glimpses of the South African underneath. The South African-born London novelist was visiting Oxford to attend a party at Wolfson for a friend, and before I met him in Quod Bar, I spied him roaming Radcliffe Square, reacquainting himself with old haunts.Cartwright’s education at Oxford in the mid-sixties was not unexpected: his family had a tradition of going to Oxford, and his boarding school had a strong connection to the Rhodes scholarship. Despite this fast-track, Cartwright first earned a degree from the University of Witwatersrand before coming to Trinity to study PPE. ‘I had an absurdly wonderful time,’ says Cartwright, admitting that he didn’t do much while at Oxford, although he ‘worked hard at the end’.
Oxford was an odd experience for this colonial: feeling directly at home, Cartwright began to talk ‘more English, quickly, without trying.’ There was an ‘immense sense of living in a society which takes culture seriously.’ Cartwright is less sure that that’s as true about England now.Cartwright eulogises Oxford in The Secret Garden: Oxford Revisited, a work of non-fiction I read eagerly two years ago, waiting to submit my own application. Though Cartwright never wrote an ‘Oxford novel’ per se, his novel The Song Before It is Sung is partially staged at Oxford, telling the story of an Isaiah Berlin-figure investigating the final hours of an Adam von Trott-like character involved in the plot against Hitler. Berlin, who paced the High Street outside Quod and had rooms just opposite, Cartwright pointed out to me, was a political idol of his.As the author of twelve novels (collecting a Booker nomination, a Whitbread Novel Award and the Hawthorden Prize along the way), numerous screenplays, and reviews, Cartwright exhibits a rumbling sense of energy.
After graduating from Oxford, he worked as a copywriter, finding he was quite good at the ‘cheap and cheerful’. A fellow copywriter who made a lot of money writing sexy novels enlisted Cartwright to try his hand at a few. Cartwright, finding he had an ease with words, wrote a few thrillers and then decided to work at literary fiction around the age of 37 (when Cartwright was 24, his brother was kind enough to remind him that at his age John Updike had already published three novels). Cartwright’s familiarity with the publishing world facilitated this switch, and he wrote Interior which ‘was pretty good, very well received’ and though it didn’t sell well convinced Cartwright he had a voice.It becomes clear from talking to Cartwright that writers — especially those with growing families — cannot afford to be romantic about a writing career. ‘When you’re moderately well known,’ Cartwright says, ‘there’s the assumption that you’re making scads of money, which just isn’t true.’ Though he is now able to make a decent living from his pen, Cartwright had to work a day-job for most of his writing career, serving as a screenwriter, a director of commercials, election campaigns and documentaries. Cartwright was lucky enough to choose whatever caught his fancy, whether it was lions hunting at night or the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was present a few weeks before Mugabe got rid of Joshua Nkomo, one of his co-leaders, supposedly saying ‘It’s very difficult having two leaders in a party.’ Little did Cartwright realise how far Mugabe would push that sentiment.Cartwright has continued to be interested in South African politics and literature. But despite being a novelist who has treated Africa in several novels, Cartwright never wrote an apartheid novel. ‘The issues were not that morally complex,’ says Cartwright. ‘We knew it was wrong; it was not very nuanced.’ Cartwright believes that though his prediction that South African writers would be put out of business at the end of apartheid was proved spectacularly wrong, he doesn’t think South African literature is in a good place at present. The culminated effects of apartheid and poor education mean that ‘people are not writing very well’.‘People say ‘I’m African’, but you’re not. Let’s face it, you’re not African. Africans don’t regard white people as African whether or not you try.’
Cartwright is merciless in discussing the current South African government. He was never an African National Congress supporter, despite several of his university friends being in Mbeki’s government. ‘I never really wanted to belong to the ANC. I desperately didn’t want to belong to some closed system of belief.’The new South Africa is ‘stimulating, if you don’t live there’. Cartwright speaks with the kind of weariness behind South Africa’s white-flight phenomenon. ‘It’s difficult, it doesn’t work anymore. That’s what [J.M. Coetzee’s] Disgrace was all about. If you don’t accept the new realities whatever they are for better or for worse, you’d better leave. And Coetzee left.’When I asked Cartwright if he believed the novel still has social power, Cartwright gave an unequivocal yes. ‘We seem to forget — if you take South Africa as an example — the true story was told in novels.’ Having just read the South African novelist Andre Brink’s autobiography, Cartwright recounts the story of Brink’s father, a magistrate, beating a child-servant to death because of a small transgression. It took eight hours. This is the sort of incident which was later reported to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and was ‘completely devastating’.Cartwright’s recent novel, Other People’s Money, is a state of the nation novel about the recent credit crash. He is currently writing a screenplay of the novel for a four-hour film treatment. ‘There’s a lot of dialogue, pretty sequential, intentionally quite straightforward in a Dickensian way. Some of my novels are quite tricky, but this isn’t.’ Other People’s Money shares genetic material with the Dickensian novel: after years of thinking Dickens was ‘sentimental and shallow’ Cartwright realized that ‘there’s immense craft involved.’
Cartwright has few bugbears about the new media, although he does say that ‘its problem is that it gives everybody the chance to think they can write. That sounds elitist but I don’t think it is. There’s a kind of fervour to express oneself.’Saul Bellow was repeatedly mentioned as an influence on Cartwright, especially Bellow’s novel Herzog. But Cartwright also read Hemingway (‘like most people at that time’), and came early to Updike. Updike and Cartwright were friends, and Cartwright was asked to write the introduction to the paperback edition of Rabbit at Rest, the final book in Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy. ‘You’re going to say I don’t read women,’ Cartwright says with a sideways smile, but he holds up Marilynne Robinson as proof. ‘John loved Marilynne Robinson.’ And of course, if you’re South African, you would have read the Nobel winning novelist Nadine Gordimer. ‘I know her reasonably well,’ says Cartwright, ‘she’s difficult but highly intelligent.’ When I asked Cartwright if he found friendships with writers helpful or destructive, he suggested they were inevitable. Of course, friendships between writers are fraught with natural competitiveness. ‘I think most writers think they’re better than the critics think they are,’ says Cartwright. ‘But I can’t complain. I’ve had a pretty good roll so far.’
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