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ally pointing out; it’s quarter past two on a Wednesday
afternoon. And the shop’s packed.
“And it always is,” he says with a smile. “Now you
try and open a shop like that in Manchester and, well…”
Dead within a week?
“Yeah. Dead within a week.”
Down the end of the street is a small place called the
TinTin Café. We step inside and take a table. Noon still
hasn’t told me exactly why he moved from Manchester,
his synonymous (perhaps even symbiotic) stomping
ground. And it’s something which shocked a lot of
people. Something I need to know.
“People are shocked, and I think that’s quite interesting.
I’ve been asked that question a lot, and the fact
that I’ve been asked it … That tells me something. It’s
to do with the fact that hardly anybody writes about
Manchester, in any medium, in such an intimate way as
I have. I reckon the only other person who’s been asked
so many times is Morrissey, when he left the city.”
He points out that despite the number of artists
Manchester produces, nobody would think twice
about Oasis leaving, “Because their work isn’t about
Manchester. It could have been done anywhere, you
know?” He laughs and shrugs.
“It’s not my fault that I’m one of the few that’s actually
taken the city and tried to do something with it. So
I think that’s actually a question you need to ask the city
of Manchester. Why are there so few people writing
BUY Jeff Noon books online from and
about it in such an intimate way that when somebody
who does do it leaves, people get upset?”
The answer may be simply that putting Manchester
into words is such a difficult task. It was no easy
journey for Noon, and he all but brought about his
situation himself.
“I started to feel isolated. I’d been putting these books
out, five books, all about Manchester, and I came to feel
that … I wasn’t getting the kind of reaction that I would
have hoped for. And it’s entirely my fault, because I
kind of set out on a mission. It’s always dangerous
when you do that.”
Mission? What mission?
“To put Manchester into the consciousness in terms
of prose. To discover, and write in, a language that had
come out of the city. And I think on my own terms, I’d
succeeded in that. On my own personal terms. But it
was definitely a mission.” He laughs, shaking his head.
“And whenever you set out on a mission, you can only
ever really be disappointed.”
Over the last few years, Noon watched his city slowly
disappear. Suffocated under a blanket of rejuvenation
called New Manchester.
“The poor place has been rejuvenated until it can
hardly breathe. Which is great, but you have to be careful
that you don’t rejuvenate into blandness. Increasingly,
the city I’d been writing about started to vanish,
and I have no interest in writing about yuppies living in
364
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