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MA)
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Several books about relationships have been written by men lately. Do you think a major change is taking place in the way men express their feelings? Do you think the time has come for men to start talking about their feelings?
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| TP) |
I think men are starting to go through the process that women went through with feminism - men are starting to lead examined lines, analysed lives, they are thinking more about what being a man means - certainly that's true of Harry, the protagonist in Man And Boy.
At the start of the book he is not very good at any of the roles he plays - father, son, husband. He learns to do all these things a bit better.
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| MA) |
How have the events in your own life influence the creation of Man and Boy?
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| TP) |
It's always difficult to know where reality ends and fiction begins. Harry's story is not my story but a lot of the things he goes through - bringing up a child alone, watching a parent die of cancer, destroying a relationship with casual infidelity - are things that I have done and gone through.
But people are responding to the book in such an incredible way - 250,000 copies sold in just two months! - because they see their story in the book. That was my aim - to write a book that was everyone's story. But to do that you obviously have to draw on your own life.
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| MA) |
Are any of the characters in the novel based on real people in you life?
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| TP) |
Everybody is based on a real character - but often they are warped caricatures of reality. For example, there's a young comedian in the book who is brilliant, promiscuous, insecure, vain and loyal - and he is based on me, but only one side of me, the nasty side.
That's the way I like to do it - to exaggerate, to heighten, to edit. I am not interested in thinly veiled portraits of real people. I seek a greater truth. But I certainly used a lot of real flesh and blood in Man and Boy.
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| MA) |
Are there any similarities between Harry's father and your own?
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| TP) |
Lots - Harry's father is a war hero, a very gentle man, and he dies of cancer - that all happened to my dad. More than any character in the book, Harry's father is based on reality - my dad. That said, he still comes out a little differently from my own father.
You can never get it exactly right. You are always painting from memory. But I tried to make Harry's father from my memories of my father - but a lot of readers have said that he reminds them of THEIR father. So I think I may have hit on some universal truths about fathers.
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| MA) |
I understand you wanted to be a writer since your teenage years. Did you plan to be a novelist or did you plan to stay in journalism?
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| TP) |
I wrote a novel when I was 17, which got published and landed me my first job in journalism. It wasn't a very good book but it got published and sold quite well - so I was a novelist before I was a journalist, even if I wasn't a very good one. So writing Man and Boy feels like coming home to my original trade.
But I will continue with my journalism because it gets me out of the house.
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MA)
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Has the success of Man and Boy surprised you at all?
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| TP) |
I am stunned by the success of Man and Boy. Never in a million years did I dream it would sell 250,000 copies in less than two months. I am amazed, stunned, shocked and delighted. I keep expecting to wake up!
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| MA) |
What is your favourite part of the book?
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| TP) |
I like the ending. It's very tender and full of love. It's a happy ending. I am a man who believes in happy endings.
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| MA) |
Do you consider it a "man's" book or a "woman's" book or either? Why?
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| TP) |
I thought it was a man's book but I was wrong - 95% of the letters I receive about Man and Boy are from women. Women have made it a bestseller. I think they are responding to the emotion in the book - there's a lot of emotion in there. People cry when they read Man and Boy -
and I think that women are probably more comfortable with that than men. Although Jeremy Paxman cried when he read Man and Boy - and Jeremy is all-man!! But I think it has become a woman's book , simply because women have claimed Man and Boy as their own. And I thank them.
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| MA) |
The caring, loving character Harry is somewhat at odds with your laddish image. Which is the real you?
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| TP) |
I am a very caring, loving man - a great big softy, if the truth be known. I have always been that way - it's nothing new. But 300 pages of fiction reveals the real you in a way that 30 minutes of television never could. I do like many blokeish things - football, women, Kung Fu -
but that doesn't stop me from being a loving dad, a sensitive partner, a considerate lover. I don't believe in labels like "laddish" because I think that real human beings are much more complex - and much more interesting - than these labels allow.
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| MA) |
Did you find it difficult to write about such emotional topics as your love for your child and your parents?
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| TP) |
I didn't find it difficult - I found it liberating. It is good to write about things that you care about, things that are at the centre of your existence. My mother was dying of cancer while I was writing Man and Boy, so the themes of the book were very close to home and close to the bone for me.
It mattered. It was important. I wanted to get it right. Man And Boy is a love story - about love in all its different forms, the love we feel for our parents, the love we feel for our children, the love we feel for our partners. I want to write about these things.
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MA)
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In what way do you think society is changing in terms of family and careers for men and women?
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| TP) |
Clearly the big change has been the collapse of the nuclear family - we have raised a generation of divorced children. I think that men and women are taking on more varied roles,
and that's all good, but the great black mark against my generation is that we didn't provide our children with the kind of stable family life that I was lucky enough to grow up in.
There are lots of great single parents out there - but it seems self-evident to me that a child is better off with two good parents, rather than one.
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| MA) |
And, do you think these changes are true throughout the economically developed world?
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| TP) |
Probably we are a bit behind America, as always, but we are getting there. I think so many people are living in post-nuclear families, families where there are children who are not living with both their blood parents,
that we have to work out a way to love and raise children who are not our own. Which is difficult. When you are a parent, you do not have to think about how you relate to a child - when you are a step-parent, you have to think about it all the time.
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| MA) |
How do you think the new technologies will effect family and working life?
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| TP) |
More people will be working from home - this will mean the death of office life.
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| MA) |
Do you think we can have it all, ie. happy homelife, satisfying, challenging and successful careers, and healthy relationships?
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| TP) |
No - but we can try.
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| MA) |
What price do we have to pay for success?
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| TP) |
Limited time with the people we love.
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| MA) |
Do you have any plans for another novel?
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| TP) |
Just started one - should be out in 2001. Also, the BBC have bought the rights to Man and Boy, so this one will be on the small screen around the same time.
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Tony Parsons, author of Man and Boy, has published his first novel in over 10 years.
