Chris Womersley

So I sort of just had access to whatever I wanted.

Well, Poe famously died in the gutter.

wearing somebody else's clothes, as far as anyone could tell, a notorious drunk.

I think Harold Bloom refers to him as, like, the worst great writer of all time, for example.

Like, he's sort of incredibly overdone and melodramatic and stuff, but there's something in his work.

I mean, if you think of the raven knocking at the door and, you know, quoting Evermore or Nevermore, for example...

and he's extremely atmospheric i mean you know gothic literature i suppose is is primarily or not primarily but it's often extremely atmospheric and also you know another big book for me was weathering heights uh and i studied that when i was about 15 and uh my initial thought and approach you know i was a pretty wide reader but i was a little bit of a punk and the idea of studying some 19th century novel written by some dead woman

was just like oh please but it really sort of turned me on you know like just incredible characters incredible atmosphere there's still scenes that kind of recur to me of you know Heathcliff standing in the backyard and talking to Cathy and then

And smashing his head against the tree and saying, you know, I'm in hell because she's went off and married Linton.

Things like that sort of really engaged me in a way, in a really earthy sort of way that is a little bit kind of inexplicable in some senses as to what kind of takes your fancy and what doesn't.

Yeah, so it is.

And, you know, another thing I sort of studied early on around the same period of Wuthering Heights was T.S.

Eliot, who's also a bit dark and moody.

The great poet, of course, studying Prufrock and Preludes, which I still think is just sort of an incredible poem.

And

which, you know, takes you onto the wasteland.

And I feel like it's a constant process of discoveries.

And, you know, I was a big music fan when I was sort of younger and it was always this thing of like, well, I was listening to the Sex Pistols and they covered No Fun.

Well, who sang No Fun?

The Stooges sang it in the late 60s.