Interviews
Q&A with Tim Binding for SYLVIE AND THE SONGMAN
In SYLVIE AND THE SONGMAN, Sylvie is armed with two very loyal companions-George and Mr. Jackson. How important do you feel they are for Sylvie's quest?
In terms of plain storytelling any hero/heroine need their foils and companions: Tom Sawyer has Huck Finn, Sherlock Holmes has Dr Watson. The Lone Ranger has Tonto. Sylvie is lucky-she has two and
without them Sylvie's journey would not have been possible. It was important for the development of the story that Sylvie had these two aides. Both are linked to Sylvie's "normal" world, and both act in turn as anchors
and as guides. I hope too that they are strong characters in their own right. Both undergo trials themselves, and both provide comic relief in what otherwise might be rather an oppressive tale.
In some ways George is a more recognisable character than Sylvie. We all have known Georges at our schools-a little out of step with the rest of us, pre-occupied, a little nerdy, not obviously fit for anything.
In later life, it is often these characters who go on to do great things, their obsessions leading them to places the rest of us can barely dream of. In that sense, George is more like Sylvie's father than anyone. But while
it is Sylvie's father's invention that gets them all into trouble, it is George's gift which saves them, just when it's most needed.
Mr Jackson acts as the link between the human and the animal world-the animal world most eloquently spoken (I hope) by the fox and the tiger (more of this later). Mr Jackson is perhaps the most ordinary
of all the characters in the book. He is, after all, like any other family dog-deeply loved and deeply loving. Sylvie and Daniel are the centre of his universe and his loyalty and devotion are unquestioning.
SYLVIE AND THE SONGMAN boasts a cast of unforgettable villains. Booklist's starred review had this to say about the Woodpecker Man: "A silent villain as essential and exhilarating as a Wicked Witch in Oz."
Where did the idea for this character originate? Did you ever consider making him partly any animal besides a woodpecker?
I am not sure how this happened exactly, but here goes. Where I live-in an old, low ceilinged 15th-century house in the country-we often see green woodpeckers feeding on the lawn. I work in a hut at the
bottom of the garden, and see them in the field opposite too, flying up into the distant trees. When I started writing about this dreadful man appearing in the garden in the dead of night, and I visualised him in a green
coat, it seemed quite natural that he should have a red top hat too-and lo, he became the Woodpecker Man almost instantaneously. He started hopping like they do, but also had to have long, long arms to accentuate
the grotesque side of his "human" aspect. Then he started eating insects. The Woodpecker Man is the only character in the book that does not (cannot) speak and it is this, above all I think, that makes him the stuff of
nightmares. I never thought of him being anything other than the Woodpecker Man, though I do feel sorry for maligning the species so-they are one of my favourite birds.
Sylvie's biggest foe is the Songman. Why is the Songman so hungry for power?
Good question, a question that could be asked about any egomaniacal dictator knocking around. The Songman may be hungry for power, but I am not sure in my own mind what exactly he would do with it, if
and when he got it. Does he have an exact plan? I doubt it. His quest is, I feel, propelled by vanity as much as anything. The fact that he is the only person in the world endowed with this gift of out-singing the animals
at their own game (except, of course, the tiger) propels his views that the world's inhabitants, both human and animal, are his inferiors, which is why he has, as his only true companion, the Woodpecker Man, who is
neither, but springs from the deep. Envious of Daniel's "success," indifferent to beauty that is not of his own making, he cares for nothing, except imposing his will upon the world-though he is attracted to Sylvie as the
only one who can compliment his skill. If he had gained power (something which I toyed with) the world would be a truly terrible place.
Where did the idea for stealing animals' voices originate? Can you speak to what drew you to this as the central conflict for the story?
The quotation found at the beginning of the book tells much of the story, I am a great fan of the American composer Steve Reich and one of his pieces is called "Three Tales." The third movement is centered
around the story of creation in Britain of Dolly the Sheep, the world's first cloned animal-and woven into the music are words spoken by Richard Dawkins, Kevin Warwick, and Adin Steinsaltz amongst others. It is
Steinsaltz who says, "Every animal has a song . . . What do they say?" and the way he said it, particularly that last phrase, led me to the idea of Songs and the creation of a Songman. (I am also a great admirer of
Walt Whitman, so there was a reverberation there too.) This led me to the question "Well what could the animals say?" which also resonated with Wittgenstein's famous comment that if a tiger could speak, we would not understand what he said. So then we have the idea of animals singing and us not understanding. What if someone could? And then somehow the question came, well, what if they could not speak, what if all these languages that we did not understand were no longer there? What if we really could not hear them? So now the Songman had something to do. He would steal the animal's voices. He would render the world silent-bereft of song. Sylvie to the rescue!
Within SYLVIE AND THE SONGMAN, we hear what different animal languages sound like through Sylvie's special powers. How did you formulate what each of these languages should sound like?
This was the greatest fun-though time consuming. Thanks to Steinsaltz each animal-dog, fox, donkey, tiger, etc-had to have a different song, yet be similar enough to be connected to each other and
understandable to Sylvie's ears. So sounds and words of our language had to be discombobulated so that, although Sylvie ( and the reader ) might not completely understand what they heard, they would get the rough
meaning.
Mr Jackson was the easiest. I worked that on the principal that every household with a pet uses the same set of phrases over and over again-and over time that pet would associate that phrase with the
particular person/object/activity to such an extent that it would become how he/she thought of it. I use the phrase "time for supper boys" to my two Bedlington terriers every evening, so "timeforsupperboys" is
presumably their "word" for food. So there I had Mr Jackson.
The fox was the most difficult because he had to have a language that came from nowhere but himself. I used snatches, phrases, words from poems-Ted Hughes, Robert Duncan, dreamt up a few of my own.
But it wasn't just a string of words, they had to have a logic of their own, as did all the languages, and his "view" would be formed by what he does and how he lives-his paws, his nose, his jaw, very connected to the
earth, but conscious of the moon. The donkeys were just a bit of a laugh. Having the two of them meant them to speaking in vaguely rhyming couplets. The tiger's voice is the most easily identified-for his language was
created solely from the cut verse of William Blake (the longer poems mostly), which gives him that majestic savagery. So all the credit for the Tiger goes to William Blake, quite appropriate as his poem opens the
book.
The power of music is a central theme in SYLVIE AND THE SONGMAN. What type of music do you listen to? Do you listen to music while you write?
Song and music, the need for both, and what they are, what they could be, are key to the book, but whereas writing the animal languages relatively straightforward, trying to get the idea of music-Daniel's
music, in particular-was more difficult. I was inspired to a great extent by the life of the American composer Harry Partch, who created his own notational scale and invented a variety of musical instruments to realise
his work. Much like Partch, Daniel believes that there is "other" music out there that our ears have ignored or forgotten how to hear. Most people are affected by music in one form or another-very few people don't "get"
it. My mother was one. George is another-and, of course, his inability to "get" music becomes not a weakness but a strength. And I liked that.
I listen to music a lot, both when I write and the breaks in between. The mix is quite varied. I'm a bit of a Dylan freak, (extensive bootleg collection ) so there's a lot of him. I like modern composers like Steve
Reich and John Adams, Philip Glass, Eliot Carter, and lesser known people like Judith Weir and John McCabe. Then there's jazz like Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk (very good if you feel very energetic) Ben Webster,
Coltrane, and traditional composers like Bruckner, Mahler, Brahms, Schubert. Verdi, Britten, Janacek, and yes, Wagner too. Sometimes a blast of soul goes down well too-Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke,
Smokey Robinson, Etta James. And then there's Frank Zappa and Mr. Jimi Hendrix.
How has your experience as an editor at Penguin Books and Simon & Schuster in London influenced you as a writer?
Well, I was fired from Penguin back in 1989 and instead of jumping back into corporate life, I decided to write. I wrote for nearly ten years without doing much else and then a friend of mine asked me to go
back to help him develop Simon & Schuster UK, working for a couple of days a week. I did that for four years. It was good to be back. I enjoy working with writers and helping them get their books in the state they
want. What publishing has taught me is that we all need our editors. A good editor becomes a kind of chameleon, putting on the psyche of the author, but still being distant enough sniff out the errors, the
inconsistencies, the trouble spots. He/she won't necessarily be able to provide the answers, but they can and should pose the questions.
Why did you decide to write a children's book at this point in your career? Who are your favorite children's authors?
I had just written two adult novels in fairly rapid succession and very foolishly thought I would give myself a break by writing a book for children---i.e., I was under the misapprehension that it would be easy.
How wrong I was! Sylvie and the Songman was without doubt the most difficult book I have ever written and whatever strengths lie in the book have as much to do with the close involvement of my editor David Fickling as me. The trouble was, I think, that really good children's books sound so effortless. I should have known better.
My favourite books? The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, Worzel Gummidge and the Saucy Nancy, by Barbara Euphan Todd, Barboche by Henri Bosco, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (not a children's book, but first read as a child), The Borrowers by Mary Norton and The Horse Without a Head by Paul Berna (I am showing my age).
