Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
Manchester. I wasn’t that conscious of even doing it;
I was a quarter of the way through when I suddenly
realised, ‘Hey this could be quite special, no-one’s really
done this before, not in this way.’ And that’s when
the mission set in…”
Noon’s not the first writer to be halfway through a
project before realising what the essence of the work
actually is, and he agrees that it’s often the best way for
a work to come about.
“The more and more books you do, the more you
think about what you’re doing. I’d always been interested
in Ballard and Borges, people on the fringes
of sci-fi, though; and the sci-fi thing happened almost
accidentally, just came out of the ideas in The
Torture Garden.”
It almost sounds like one of Noon’s own fictions, the
random remixing of concepts, words and spaces into
something altogether different.
“I’ve always been drawn to quite experimental art.
But the idea of experimental art in Manchester at the
time … It’s almost impossible to imagine what Manchester
was like back then. It was so dark, and grimy,
and grim. You just can’t imagine what it was like from
here. So yeah, when you come to Vurt, you get this quite
down and grimy place – a place of shadows – mixing
with this phantasmagorical world.”
Dark, but with a lot of energy, too.
“Yeah, there was that. There’s always been that, and
BUY Jeff Noon books online from and
that comes out of the punk thing.”
It will surprise no-one to learn that yes, Noon was
a punk. It was the only time in his life where he was
part of a crowd, a movement – “I’m just not like that
naturally” – and to him it signifies the real start of his
adult life. He’s at pains to point out that his work is
societal, not just cyberdrugs and urban grit.
“If you actually examine Vurt, there are serious things
going on in there which nobody ever talks about. It’s
about escape, and facing up to the realities of what it
is you’re trying to escape from. This is something that
happens again and again in my work; it’s one of the
themes that I pinpointed as being a typical Manchester
story. The need to escape from your situation.”
Certainly, many of Noon’s characters have an introverted
quality, continually faced with the temptation to
retreat into a secret, safe world. His stories are about
finding the courage to face what you’re retreating from.
“I think if you go back to Morrissey’s work with The
Smiths, you’ll definitely key into that feeling there as
well. Manchester in the 70s, when both Morrissey and
I were growing up, was just not a place to be sensitive,
or to be artistic or creative; it was beaten out of you. So
you do get the sense of escape going on with people
from our generation.”
What about other, later generations? Are they escaping
too?
“It’s quite interesting to look at what’s been coming
367
More
Spike
email
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z