Chapter 1: What insights does Max Porter share about his book, The Death of Francis Bacon?
I loved this book.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, his writing is so crisp, is so matter of fact.
Beautifully written. It's very stark in places. And I think she is the most extraordinary writer.
Not to get too, you know, invisible beret about this. And I love her books. I think they're brilliant. My parents read that book to me so many times.
If anything, it's actually a time for poetry, it's a time for slow text, it's a time for difficult text. Pretty dark, engrossing, suspenseful, plot driven. But I read that at least once a year. Do you know why you read? And is your first answer always for pleasure or to escape? You see, I'm not convinced about that as an answer.
Or rather, I'm not sure why the expectation is that that is why we read, to escape into a book or for solace. Hi, I'm Kate Evans and you're listening to a podcast extra edition of ABC Radio National's The Bookshelf. And our guest today keeps asking that question about why we read, about what books can do, what we expect of them.
His name is Max Porter and his books include Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Lanny and now The Death of Francis Bacon. You might have heard us talking about his work in our art-themed book club last week, along with Dominic Smith's The Last Painting of Sarah DeVos.
We also asked listeners, readers, to present Max Porter with questions about the Francis Bacon book, an unconventional book, a fragmented book. We played some of those answers on air and we showed you some others on our ABC Book Club Facebook group. But this is the long version of the discussion. Max Porter, thank you so much for speaking to us on ABC Radio National's Book Club.
It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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Chapter 2: How does Max Porter define the relationship between reading and personal reflection?
In this novel, I'm saying, look, here are multiple Bacons, one of which may be a Bacon you recognise, one of which may be me wearing a Bacon mask in conversation with another character wearing a cameo of Francis Bacon or self-quoting Francis Bacon, because this is Francis Bacon and he's self-quoted all the time. So the kind of game of representation and going beyond the literal plane
into something more abstract or something more theatrical or indeed something quite tongue-in-cheek and kitsch and quite preposterous.
These are all things that need to be in play when you're writing about Francis Bacon so I love the idea that my reader is not just subjected to that but they're engaged, they're involved, we're collaborating with that act in the same way as you can, there's no point having a picture with no viewer
You may as well have it in a dark room like that Vincent van Gogh in the Japanese banker's vault that no one will see. That's a dead picture. That doesn't exist. A picture only exists when it's looked at and thought about.
Well, let's turn to some of the questions that the members of the group have put to you. I have a thousand questions I would like to ask you, but I'll hand it over to other people. So Catherine Dixon, she began by quoting Francis Bacon himself, who said, when you are painting anything, you are painting yourself, not just the object.
And so she went on to ask, thinking about your painting, Max, this book you've painted for us, she said, you show a fondness and reverence for Bacon, overlooking the darker aspects of his personality. Would you say that's your perspective on him?
That is just a lovely question. Thank you. I don't think I want to have any one bacon in play. I think what I want is a kind of constantly moving or fluid sense of no such thing as bacon slash all bacons. And I suppose I'm pushing against, as an English reader who immersed themselves in a certain type of bacon book about 20 years ago, I'm pushing against the hagiographic idea
and prurient and sometimes voyeuristic tendency we had to tell of the masochistic Bacon abused by the you know the stable mates in his father's stables as a boy and you know always had this dark tendency terribly badly beaten by his lover you know these were the stories that were told of Bacon. Drunk, Soho, always in the colony rooms and that has become both
well they're not so much cliches in as much as sort of representational boxes into which Bacon is easily fitted and so is the interpretive work around his work and around his paintings and I just suppose I find that a well-trodden enough path and I wanted to sound a slightly new note and because I'm interested in tenderness and frailty and guilt particularly at the deathbed moment I'm interested in that kind of
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Chapter 3: What unique narrative techniques does Max Porter use in his writing?
And also ask when I'm, as a reader, bored. And that must mean that that's, to answer the question, that's an editorial interruption. And I think I do edit as I write, perhaps more than other people, because it was my job. So I'm very impatient with anything that seems to me formulaic or a cheat or a kind of pre-existing formulation.
So say I'm describing two bodies or I'm describing the progress from A to B of a physical entity in space or something like that. If I'm like, this is just...
this is just from the you know this is just from the you know the Ocado drop down click and buy link of ways you describe a person I need to do more than that I need to stop I need to sort of model it differently in my mind or it might be that I don't need this and it's more interesting if the reader doesn't know how they got there you know so I'm all the time asking myself those sorts of questions in quite a self-conscious way but also I believe in editing I sort of worship at the church of the editorial culture I believe
to edit one's own work, to write relatively editorially, to be editing other people's work, to always be keenly aware of what is happening with language. Trying to keep the technical and the emotional in conversation, I think, is important for readers and writers.
Now, Gillian McNamara starts by describing your wordplay as wonderful but crazy. And she's curious about where that comes from. But then she has a question that seems simple. And I think it's really not, particularly given the way that this book has Francis Bacon thinking about critique and review and people accusing his work. painting of being banal or kitsch.
There's this whole voice that comes through in a sort of fever dream way. And so I was thinking about that when I read Gillian's question. And she says, do reviews matter to you?
Dagger in the heart. Yeah. And, you know, they do. And I am on a journey because I'm quite lucky because I have family and a lot of the time I'm busy cooking things and I know that it's harder for writers that aren't distracted because they go and they read this stuff and they fixate on it and I've known very
brilliant, intelligent, successful writers collapse in the sort of sea of pain and paranoia that being reviewed brings. What I've discovered with this book, because I've learned, you know, what good is going to come of going on Amazon and finding people that hate my work? Is it interesting?
I mean, I don't want to take no interest, because if you put work out in the world, I think you owe it to the world to be interested in the response. And I think writers that say, no, it doesn't matter, then I think, well... your audience of one must be delighted with your work. You know, congratulations. But I'm a social person. I'm interested in it. I'm also interested in the critical culture.
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Chapter 4: How does Max Porter address the complexities of Francis Bacon's character?
Their bodies pinned to space. they're one or two faces or bits of meat chucked in an empty made-up interior you know. so you can see what Bacon is. you can also see where he died. you can see some of his lovers like he's very very famous. i didn't go esoteric. i went right to the most baggage heavy painter i could find.
that was the point of the exercise you know was to get this famous person up and gasping on their deathbed to deal with fame and reputation. So the idea that a book needs to be all the time pleasurable, all the time totally understandable, all the time totally transparent, and that we must have nothing difficult or opaque, it's a bit like the attack on pretentiousness.
And you know, there's that wonderful book called On Pretentiousness, which quotes Jarvis Cocker saying, pretentious? Moi? Without pretentiousness, we don't have newness. And without newness, our art stays the same. And we don't develop. There has to be an avant-garde. There have to be people that try and do something different.
Otherwise, we're all going to just be writing the same book forever and ever. And that's what we call the death signs in a culture. And to me, that is all the same question in a way.
as would you as a government minister stand there and and rank culture way down at the bottom of your spreadsheet it's the same thing as would you as a novelist say oh i really won't get this i better just put a footnote in saying he died you know i have to credit you with you'll get this and the same way as a politician has to credit the culture with you'll expand you'll investigate you'll experiment you'll tease each other you'll you'll work out where political correctness stands in the great argument about identity politics and stuff like we trust you you're thinking feeling human beings you know
so i suppose in a way since this has been published i'm thinking of it slightly differently and more about kind of more like a sort of i'm sorry if it offends you but i i really believe in this i really believe in in the weird books as well as the easy ones and and the strange little jagged ones that leave you with a sore taste and a sour taste in your mouth as much as the great big luxurious thumpers that you know
And as a reader, I want that. I want it all. I want to read beautifully written crime procedurals. I want to read, like, rumping children's fantasy novels. I want to read comics. I want to read weird little bitty books about Francis Bacon that stick in my head, you know?
I've lost the question, but the answer is I do... It's not so much that I care about reviews, because I know this is going to appall some people...
and delight others you know the kind of masterpiece nonsense uh hammock is in play with this book and that's fine i get that but i it's more that i'm interested i'm really interested in how we're reviewing books and how we're talking about books particularly in the uk now
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Chapter 5: What role does reader engagement play in Max Porter's writing process?
You know, he could read great chunks of Nietzsche out and misquote it. And then he could speak French and he'd do some Baudelaire and all this. Part of the kind of showmanship of being Bacon was a literary aspect.
But there is also, and there's this incredible new biography that I reckon to any of your readers that have got a taste for Bacon, there's this brilliant new biography called Revelations, which is, as far as I'm concerned, really definitive, but very interesting on his childhood and his early career as an interior designer, building these beautiful modernist interiors and not doing well, his painting and stuff.
So anyway, I wanted these sort of
I guess like almost that's why I made them up that one of them is based at that one about the cat rough tongue is based loosely at least its rhyming structure is based on a Ukrainian poem I found in a book of sort of heroic Ukrainian poems translated into English that I found like actually in a junk shop in Dublin so I wanted it this sense of things that you stumble across
that weirdly lodge themselves in your head. That one obviously has a homoerotic element, which adds to the Baconian stew, oral stew. But I also wanted it to be quite like, you know, why have I suddenly thought of that? You know, like, you know, like, like suddenly, if I've got nothing going on in my head, sometimes I'll go, I'll sing Tina Turner.
You know, some things are lodged way back, aren't they? And I wanted it to have that element, but also something slightly archaic, as well as this sort of, I wanted this slight sense of kind of homoerotic myth-making of the sort of soldier's song at this point in the Fantasia.
Oh, well, thank you. So you've answered sort of very abstract questions that are both about reading and writing and process and some very specific ones. And I also have to say I loved being immersed in this fever dream sort of monologue interior world that you've created. So, Max Porter, thank you.
Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's really nice to chat. And thanks to everyone for their questions.
They were lovely selection of questions. So thank you. Max Porter's The Death of Francis Bacon is published by Faber. I'm Kate Evans and this has been a podcast extra edition of Radio National's The Bookshelf. I'll be back along with Cassie McCullough next week for more books, more reading, more writers. See you then.
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