What Animal Fairm did for me

Thomas Clark Interview

What's your favourite thing about being an author?

Actually, I mainly write kid’s books, this is my first adult book.

So, my favourite thing about being an author is meeting young people and helping them to understand that they are Scots speakers and that's something that they should cherish, no something they should be discouraged about.

What do you think is the most difficult thing about being an author?

All the admin stuff, to be honest. Nobody teaches you how to do this stuff, nobody teaches you how to be in charge of your own life, your own money or your own taxes. Practically speaking, that's the hardest part.

The writing is never that hard, the writing’s a lot of fun. It's all the stuff around the writing that’s hard.

What attracted you to writing in Scots?

There were almost no Scots books at all, or at least commercially available Scots books when I was younger. That made a big difference to my life. It makes a big difference to your life, not knowing that how you're speaking is an actual language as opposed to slang or bad English (or whatever else people accuse Scots of being).

That's what attracted me to writing in Scots, whilst providing the literature and the books that weren’t around when I was younger.

Have you always wanted to be an author?

I think I wanted to be a Ghostbuster before I wanted to become an author. But, basically, since I stopped wanting to be a Ghostbuster… Yeah, absolutely.

And any advice you would give to aspiring authors?

For aspiring authors in Scots, particularly, I would say, keep writing, keep submitting.

Don't get put off by the fact that not everybody is interested in publishing Scots right now because enough publishers are publishing Scots, enough publishing platforms have begun to become available. These things are slowly beginning to happen, and it only happens if there's proof out there that there are people writing in Scots and there are people reading it.

If you are an aspiring writer writing in Scots, just keep going and just keep submitting.

Who is your favourite author?

David Foster Wallace. Both in his fiction and in his nonfiction, but particularly his nonfiction. He engages so well with what it's like to just be a person in the world.

Did you have a favourite book as a child?

I think if I was being brutally honest, my favourite books when I was a kid were the Just William books. I know they’re no mega-popular now, and probably something that you don't see republished or reissued.

They were kind of like proto-Oor Wullie in a lot of ways, they were just about hijinks and adventures. I absolutely devoured them all when I was a kid.

What are your three favourite books?

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

The Kiln by William McIlvanney

What book has changed your life and how?

If we're talking about Scots, the book that changed my life is Matthew Fitt’s translation of The Twits, which was called The Eejits. 20 years ago we had something like the beginning of a Scots renaissance, and I think we can trace it back to that book. I loved Roald Dahl when I was a kid and I loved The Twits when I was a kid, but the importance of The Eejits goes beyond that. It was the first book I ever read that was in Scots and that identified as being in Scots.

I’d read Trainspotting but Trainspotting is generally identified as being in English. The Eejits was the first time I'd heard Scots was a language as opposed to just a slang, a very localized way of speaking. And that really made a difference to me, and that's one of the main reasons I write in Scots, because I like to imagine that any Scots book has the potential to spark off for somebody, whether it's The Eejits, whether it's Animal Fairm or anything that's come in between.

If you could hypothetically be any character from any book, who would you be?

D'Artagnan from The Three Musketeers. I loved The Three Musketeers, and I still do. As you get older, possibly, he's impetuous and isnae quite so appealing, but as a younger man, as you're finding your way in the world, D'Artagnan seems like a real role model.

In what ways have you changed as a writer since writing your first book?

Well, when you’re a Scots writer you evolve over time.

It's maybe something that doesn't happen quite so often for English writers, but as a Scots writer the more you write and the more you read, the more you find out about the language. I wasn't taught it in school, or at least very, very, very little of it at school.

You're always learning in Scots. To be honest, nothing actually supersedes that.

The most important thing I've learned – and am continuing to learn – is the basics of Scots, the history of Scots, the tradition of Scots that we're all trying to maintain. And hopefully with their presence in the future, the Scots.

What's been the best advice someone has ever given you?

Kill your darlings – the old favourite. Like most writers starting out I thought that was the finished article straight away, and everything I wrote was perfect as soon as it had been put down on paper.

Why would you add anything to what you've written? It's perfect already.

Now, I actually enjoy editing more than I enjoy writing. Editing is where the shape of what you're doing comes out, editing is where you can see the fruits of what you're doing and writing in a lot of ways can feel just like scribbling. Editing's where you see what you're actually getting.

What is your favourite Scots word?

‘Bahookie’. Ostensibly because whenever you use the word ‘bahookie’ with young people they love it. They're absolutely delighted. It’s a forbidden word to them.

Although I personally have words that I think are more beautiful, like ‘gaberlunzie’ for tramp, or ‘yowdendrift’ for snow blowing in the wind, I cannae get past the fact that any time I say ‘bahookie’ to a bunch of kids I’ll hear the most wonderful sound in the world, which is the laughter of young children.

What was your favourite thing about writing Animal Fairm?

Honestly, my favourite thing about writing Animal Fairm – and it probably says something about me – was translating Squealer’s little speeches into Scots. Squealer’s kind of the mouthpiece of the pigs in Animal Farm. He's like the definition of sleekitness, and a complete fly man.

There was a lot about Animal Farm that was hard to make work in Scots – I like to think that it does all work in Scots – but there was a lot of work.

But Squealer, because he is the definitive gadgie, his stuff went into Scots so easily. I think, on a level, it actually worked better in Scots than it did in English. You don't pretend to yourself that you're going to be able to do something better than George Orwell did it. But I think Squealer works better in Scots just because he is so sleekit.

How long was this book in the works?

Principally because of the pandemic, I've been working on it for about two years. It seems daft now, but at the time you were doing these things kind of on trust that the pandemic one day would end and things would go back to normal.

Having Animal Fairm to work on during the pandemic was one of the things that kept me sane, that kept me connected to the idea that it would all end one day. That’s what Animal Fairm did for me.

Why do you think people should read the book?

It's more relevant than it ever was.

I know everybody says that about all of Orwell’s stuff, and it's true. Everything that Orwell wrote, in Animal Farm and 1984 has come to pass one way or another.

One of the things that really interests me about Animal Farm was that Orwell wrote a preface for the Ukrainian edition. He was really keen on having the book translated into as many different languages as he could. He basically gave away the rights hand over fist for translation in order to make sure that the people who needed to read Animal Farm could read it.

We're seeing that replayed now. Everything that happens in Animal Farm, that Russian totalitarianism, is happening all over again. But we're kidding ourselves if we think it's only in Russia and Ukraine. It’s everywhere that versions of what's happening in Animal Farm are happening, it might not always be as obvious as it is in Animal Farm or in Russia, but certainly the degradation of democracy and the degradation of political language, those are the things that Animal Farm was really about.

What do you wish you had known when you started writing the book?

I thought I knew a lot about Orwell and I really thought I was a massive fan, and I was, but through the course of writing the book and through the course of trying to find out a wee bit more about what Orwell was getting at, both in the book and just generally, I learned a lot more about the man.

Particularly, his feelings and his attitudes towards Scotland.

Orwell famously had very little time for Scotland and for Scottish people, and you don't have to look far through his books for evidence of that.

Most of us know that he spent the last few years of his life up here, in Jura, and those of us from Lanarkshire, like me, know that he spent some of that time in Hairmyres Hospice in East Kilbride. Because he died, I don't think it was ever really reflected in his writing, but I think there was a softening. There was a kind of road to Damascus moment for Orwell when he started to identify with Scotland.

I really wish that had been allowed to proceed unhindered by his death. I really think it would have been very interesting to see where Orwell would have gone, where Orwell would have taken himself as far as Scots and Scotland and the Scottish goes.

I didn't know it before. It would have been very helpful to me to have known it right from the start. But certainly, it’s the thing that I'm most grateful to have discovered through the course of writing Animal Fairm.