St. Martin's Literary Fiction
asked
David Dyer:
Why did you decide to write about the SS Californian and the Titanic through fiction instead of non-fiction?
David Dyer
Funny, I was asked this question just a few days ago by Harry C Marks, host of the wonderful literary podcast ‘Covered’ (I highly recommend it.)
As I explained to Harry, in fact I had initially set out to write a lengthy, technical non-fiction account of the Californian affair. But then:
‘I thought: this project isn’t going to work. I don’t think people will read it, there are already nonfiction accounts of this incident. And the more pressing problem I had was that the central puzzle of this historical incident is: Why didn’t Captain Lord, when he was told of distress rockets, go up to the bridge and take his ship to the rescue? ... And I found as I was writing my book, as I began my project, that the answer was a psychological answer. It’s not to do with the facts and figures of navigation … it was a complex psychological answer, and I found that really the only way to convey that was to use the tools of fiction. I wanted to try to create a sense of the complex interiority of these characters, I wanted to be able to relate their thoughts, their conversations, and the subtle nuances of their relationships, and really I could only do that with fiction … But a lot of what is in that book is true – as true as I could make it.’
If you want to hear Harry and me talk about other aspects of The Midnight Watch, you can download the episode here: https://hologramradio.org/covered/s2e... .
You can find about more about ‘Covered’ at Harry’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/coveredfm
As I explained to Harry, in fact I had initially set out to write a lengthy, technical non-fiction account of the Californian affair. But then:
‘I thought: this project isn’t going to work. I don’t think people will read it, there are already nonfiction accounts of this incident. And the more pressing problem I had was that the central puzzle of this historical incident is: Why didn’t Captain Lord, when he was told of distress rockets, go up to the bridge and take his ship to the rescue? ... And I found as I was writing my book, as I began my project, that the answer was a psychological answer. It’s not to do with the facts and figures of navigation … it was a complex psychological answer, and I found that really the only way to convey that was to use the tools of fiction. I wanted to try to create a sense of the complex interiority of these characters, I wanted to be able to relate their thoughts, their conversations, and the subtle nuances of their relationships, and really I could only do that with fiction … But a lot of what is in that book is true – as true as I could make it.’
If you want to hear Harry and me talk about other aspects of The Midnight Watch, you can download the episode here: https://hologramradio.org/covered/s2e... .
You can find about more about ‘Covered’ at Harry’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/coveredfm
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