GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2023/24
An interview with GBP Short Story Prize author Max Lury
Congratulations on winning the GBP Short Story Prize, Max! It’s been a brilliant year – and it would be wonderful if you could offer just a few short sentences here, introducing your story ‘Santa Fe’ to our readers.
Thank you!
‘Santa Fe’ is set at a Lido, somewhere in London. There are some unpleasant men there, and a young woman who seems unbothered by the men. Between them is something strange, which will slowly come to light.
And can you tell us a bit more about your inspiration, and the writing of it?
I think the original seed was pretty vague. I was really interested in fiction that manages to cultivate a kind of empty space at the centre, and the level of control that requires on every level. I guess the classic there is ‘Hills Like White Elephants’, but I like things that push it just one step further, not necessarily anything that tangible/particular – but just a controlled sense that there is something beyond what we’re being told.
I wanted something very odd and ominous and vague – placed right in the middle – and then to build a certain kind of realism around it, and to see what that contrast did to both the realism, and also to the more ominous stuff.
Your story reminded me – in the best possible way – of the writer Robert Aickman, and the tradition of the uncanny/unheimlich, especially in short story form. … On that – I quite coincidentally (re)read Freud’s essay ‘The Uncanny’ over the summer, which (partly) explores the traditional as something that draws on (and exploits, or confronts) intellectual or existential uncertainty. There’s a profound and possibly cathartic unmooring in the genre… which I think is a very important part of ‘Santa Fe’. Would you say that’s right?
I did think about the uncanny a lot! I like exploiting a feeling of uncertainty, maybe. It’s fun to put something deeply strange next to something very naturalistic, I think, and to see what that does/how that then charges both parts. Trying to control the direction of that charge was something I thought about a lot with ‘Santa Fe’. I think for me it’s very important to the story.
Two stories on the longlist this year – your own and Laurence Pritchard’s ‘Dirty Weekend’ – have a lot of fun with a particularly dingy kind of Englishness. In the case of ‘Santa Fe’, there’s quite a grim and lonely lido, the sort that I’m sure most English readers will immediately be able to conjure, as well as a neglected, unwelcoming block of flats. … Can you tell us a bit more about that?
For a really long time I hated writing about any detail that felt too contemporary, like smart phones or social media or the kind of particular unromantic English brands we see all the time (Sainsbury’s, Lucozade, ITV, JD Sports). There’s a very particular way the conjuring of brands/place can work in American fiction, for example, with this kind of epic/sweeping depth to the references and allusions (even if it’s not necessarily positive!) – which often build out these quite grand narratives. I don’t know if it works the same way in the UK. I’m not sure there’s anything very epic about Lucozade Sport.
But then I actually became quite obsessed with portraying a certain kind of bleak Englishness – a move away from any notions of romance or whatever. It’s such a unique (and very very bleak) feeling to be hungover in a Morrison’s carpark, for example, or to eat a Tesco’s meal deal on the bus, or on a wet park bench. But it also makes up a lot of your life, in England. I think it’s just fun to bring that feeling into fiction, and then to see what you can tease out of it. It’s quite sad, I guess, and maybe quite tactile in an odd way.
In fact, you seem to have a lot of fun in general with detail in ‘Santa Fe’ – everything seems very carefully chosen, from the book that the woman is reading (Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey) to the title – the meaning of which I’m still trying to tease out. How important getting those details just right?
I think details are so interesting because they’re both what makes a piece feel ‘real’, and also they are very intense points of meaning – changing them even in some small way can have a huge impact. Like the example mentioned in the question – I think it hopefully does a lot (probably more than I intended – which is exciting/good, I think!). The Odyssey is a fairly traditional ‘canon’ narrative, which I enjoyed contrasting with the more stilted feel of the story – Emily Wilson’s translation was important as she has a lot of really interesting thinking around how she translates the text, which maybe mirrors some of the dynamics around the pool. I also wanted the reader to know Charlie was smart/etc. – it’s important for the story that we feel that Charlie is in control, or at least that it feels like that to some degree at the start, and that she understands the dynamics that are playing out. It’s also just really fun to sit back and change details, and see how that makes the whole story shift – what certain implications are, etc.
OK! Onto writing in general. How long have you been writing? Do you have a daily routine? What are you working on at the moment?
On and off since I can remember, really. As for a daily routine, I just believe strongly in little and often – keeping that muscle trained. Also sometimes in very big gulps over a weekend can work, too.
I’m currently working on a novel, No Ghosts.
Writing and rewriting: What’s your ratio?
It really depends on the piece, I think. Sometimes the changes are fairly minimal – more stylistic/changing the angles of certain things/picking and swapping details to see what that change generates. Sometimes the whole thing is rewritten as only at the end I’ve realised what it’s about/I’ve stumbled across something more interesting than the original intention in the process.
Other writers. Tell us about some you especially admire – and also what you’re reading at the moment.
I’ve really admired recently The Complete by Gabriel Smith, which I thought was just wonderful – expansive, and structurally so interesting, and very funny and also profound whilst feeling so contemporary. A friend sent me it over Whatsapp with incredibly excited and high praise, and it completely lived up to that. Went beyond it, maybe! I also really admired ‘Solo Poly’ by Sophie Kemp. So funny and dark and strange and stylish – so many perfect details. There is a slightly uncanny feeling to it, but it’s all very vivid and smart and startling.
I am obsessed with Steve Erickson – the ending of Zeroville is just the greatest ending to anything, ever, I think. His book Days Between Stations I found incredibly exciting, too – it did things with fiction I’d never seen anyone else do, which was both an incredible thing to experience, and very inspirational. Carmen Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties made me feel like that too.
I read the first Wizard of Earthsea recently, which is very special. The Employees (Olga Ravn) I thought was just incredible, engaging and distant and somehow very human/moving. My girlfriend introduced me to The Interestings (Meg Wolitzer), which is now one of my favourite books of all time. I think about it a lot. I’ve been reading a collection of James Tate’s poems, too.
Elaine Pagels The Gnostic Gospels is amazing – I really fell into a hole there, and became kind of obsessed with the gnostic gospels and their discovery – it’s an absolutely insane story. Nuar Alsadir’s Animal Joy I really loved.
And here’s a spot to namecheck any other favourite things: artists, arts, films, cinemas, TV, music… whatever you like.
I’ve been watching a lot of John Carpenter movies recently. The Thing, Escape from New York, The Fog. Someone on Twitter told me to watch Southland Tales, so I did, and whilst being completely wild, it has a kind of eerie prescience to it – everything is insane and over the top and filtered through screen after screen after screen. Crazy Stupid Love is an all time favourite, as is The Apartment. A close friend has become really obsessed with The Shining recently, and so I’m receiving pictures of Lloyd the bartender at all hours – and so have been meaning to rewatch that. Aftersun made me cry.
I’m listening to a lot of ambient at the moment. Abul Mogard and The Haxan Cloak conjure very particular (dark/ominous/spooky) worlds. For some reason I’m listening to Extreme Ways by Moby a lot. Dorian Electra is very fun. This mix by Woody92 I have also had on repeat, especially the last hour.
“The horror of the blank page” is something that has – by pure chance – popped up in our social media timeline two or three times over the past week. So we want end by asking all of our longlisted authors: Do you feel that horror? And how would you advise other writers to get beyond it?
This is not my advice, and unfortunately I can’t remember who said it, but it works for me: if you write when you feel it’s all good/amazing/coming out very naturally, and also write when you feel it’s all awful/irredeemable – and then take a look a week later at both, it’s very very hard to tell them apart. That is, it’s almost impossible, if they’re in one document, to tell when was the good day and when was the bad day.
I tell myself that on bad days (and good ones) and most of the time, it’s true.