Sunday, May 13, 2007

“Ya Wanna Do It Here Or Down The Station, Punk?” # 197: Sean Harnett

Yep, it's rubber-hose time, folks: a rapid-fire pick-'n'-mix Q&A for those shifty-looking usual suspects ...
What crime novel would you most like to have written?
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky or From Hell by Alan Moore.
Who do you read for guilty pleasures?
I strangely never feel guilty about what I read. What I do feel
guilty about is all those books I haven't read, including most Irish
crime fiction ...
Most satisfying writing moment?
Launching my first novel, Aisling Ltd, in Galway last year.
The best Irish crime novel is …?
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, although I know that's
stretching the meaning of both 'crime' *and* 'novel' ...
What Irish crime novel would make a great movie?
My bad, but I haven't read enough Irish crime novels to offer any kind
of decent answer to this question.
Worst / best thing about being a writer?
Worst: financial uncertainty. Best: imaginative freedom.
Why does John Banville use a pseudonym for writing crime?
He's just following in a long tradition of 'serious' writers slumming
it in the genre underworld (Cecil Day Lewis wrote detective fiction as
Nicholas Blake). Maybe it's also because he, by his own admission,
has 'never liked fiction'. Could it be that his crime novels are more
valuable to him than his literary novels? Could it be that Benjamin Black is the 'real' writer and John Banville the pseudonym ... ?
The three best words to describe your own writing are …?
Not yet profitable!

Sean Harnett's debut novel, Aisling Ltd., is available from Hag's Head Press

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Declan Burke has published a number of novels, the most recent of which is ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL. As a journalist and critic, he writes and broadcasts on books and film for a variety of media outlets, including the Irish Times, RTE, the Irish Examiner and the Sunday Independent. He has an unfortunate habit of speaking about himself in the third person. All views expressed here are his own and are very likely to be contrary.