www.vilewatch.com

Richard Harland

Interviewed for vilewatch.com
by Josie Mc*******ie and Ali Sv****s

J & A: You are Richard Harland, author of The Black Crusade?

RH: Er, yes. Why are you looking at me like that?

J & A: No reason. Are you nervous?

RH: This is just an ordinary interview, right?

J & A: Of course. Tell us about The Black Crusade.

RH: The Black Crusade is an entertaining, bizarre, gothic novel -

J & A: Novel?

RH: Yes.

J & A: You made it up?

RH: All out of my own head. People often ask me, where do you get your ideas -

J & A: Where did you get the idea for Transylvanian love-vampires?

RH: And I have to say, how do you explain the inexplicable? The creative imagination -

J & A: What about Ingel Brankel's Mobilator? Powered by the Adversative Particle Drive?

RH: Mobilator? Umm. Sometimes a name just comes to me out of nowhere, charged with suggestion. Then I have to invent the thing that the name describes.

J & A: What about the Ordeal of the Five Senses, as conducted by Brother Dragorian in the monks' lavabo? How could you think of something so revolting?

RH: I don't know about revolting. I'd prefer to say confronting. Challenging. Words like that.

J & A: What about the episode with Annabelle Prout and her twenty-eight candles?

RH: Ah, yes. The necessities of the fantasy imagination. Why exactly twenty-eight, for example? Why not twenty-seven or twenty-nine? All I can tell you is -

J & A: There is no character called Annabelle Prout in The Black Crusade. There are no twenty-eight candles.

RH: But you said … I must have misunderstood. I was probably getting confused with some other novel I wrote.

J & A: Tell us honestly. What gave you the whole idea of Fundamental Darwinists travelling on a Black Crusade?

RH: Well, to be completely honest, yes. The whole idea came to me in a dream.

J & A: It came to you in a brown paper parcel.

RH: I've always had these very long dreams … What did you say?

J & A: The manuscript of The Black Crusade was mailed to you by your publisher. They asked you to put your name to what someone else had written.

RH: Are you questioning my artistic integrity?

J & A: Booknapper! You haven't even read The Black Crusade.

RH: What sort of interview is this? I don't like your tone.

J & A: We don't like your face. We don't like it with whiskers on and we don't like it with whiskers off. We don't like any tiny part of you.


R. Harland with Whiskers	R. Harland without Whiskers

RH: I thought you were some kind of fan club.

J & A: You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you?

RH: I should've guessed. When your address turned out to be in a dirty alley, down an unlit corridor behind an unmarked door. I should've turned back then.

J & A: Why didn't you?

RH: My agent said I had to come. She said you'd help promote my novels.

J & A: Your novels!

RH: Who are you people?

J & A: We'll ask the questions. Sit up and face forward. Why did you steal Martin Smythe's manuscript?

RH: I didn't steal it. I was inspired by it. I wanted to write something similar.

J & A: The same.

RH: Very, very similar.

J & A: What did you change?

RH: The punctuation. His commas were hopeless. I took them all out, then put them back in again. I did it without even looking at his version. It's a huge improvement.

J & A: Pig's arse.

RH: I beg your pardon.

J & A: Changing the commas doesn't make it yours.

RH: I never said it was mine in a simplistic everyday sense. Only in a sophisticated postmodernist sense. It's what I call a novel trouvé.

J & A: Wanker.

RH: No, I found it and re-framed it. Which makes it mine according to postmodern literary theory. I've written books on literary theory, you know. The first one was called Superstructuralism, the next was Beyond Superstructuralism, the third -

J & A: Thank you. We checked your biography on your website.

RH: Which is at www.richardharland.net.

J & A: Self-promoting wanker.

RH: When I create a novel trouvé, I re-frame the text by giving it a new context. If you'd read Martin Smythe's manuscript on its own, you might think it was a genuine presentation of a historical document. But when my name is there on the cover -

J & A: It looks like fiction.

RH: Exactly! I have a reputation as a writer of science fiction, fantasy and kids' novels. So a reader who picks up a book with my name on the cover doesn't expect to take it for real. It changes the way you read.

J & A: But it is for real.

RH: Hey? Come again?

J & A: What do you believe in, Richard Harland? What are your deepest moral convictions?

RH: You'll have to ask my agent about that.

J & A: We believe in Martin Smythe. We believe in the message he set out for us in The Black Crusade and The Vicar of Morbing Vyle. Which you have tried to obscure under an illusion of fiction.

RH: Surely you don't … you can't …? You can?

J & A: Every word. The literal truth. When Martin Smythe catches up with you, you'll learn what it means to be an author according to postmodern literary theory.

RH: Dead?

J & A: Very much so.

RH: But I thought … my publisher told me that Martin Smythe was locked away in a mental institution.

J & A: Your publisher lied. He's out there, and he'll be coming after you.

RH: Ah. Um. Can we finish this interview now? I think I'd like to leave.

J & A: Yes. Leave.

RH: I will.

J & A: Go back to your own website.

RH: I'm going.

J & A: Why don't you, then?

RH: Someone's nailed my shoes to the floor.

J & A: YES, AND THAT'S ONLY A FRACTION OF WHAT YOU DESERVE!