by Graham Swift
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the following publications from which the pieces in this book have been reprinted or, where they have been revised or expanded, on which they are based:
Fiction Magazine for ‘Santa’s Clinic’; the Independent Magazine for ‘Isaac Babel’; Time Out for ‘Guildhall Farce’; Bomb magazine (New York) for the interview of the author by Patrick McGrath and for the interviews by the author of Kazuo Ishiguro and Caryl Phillips; Granta for ‘Looking for Jiří Wolf’, ‘Making an Elephant’ and ‘Fishing with Ted’; the Daily Telegraph for ‘Reading Aloud’; the Bulletin de la Société des Anglicistes de L’Enseignement Supérieur for ‘I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’; the Observer for ‘Filming Again, with Fred’.
Grateful acknowledgement is also made to Picador Books for ‘Greece Again’, which appeared in an earlier form in the anthology 21 (1993); to Continuum publishers for the interview of the author by Barbara Baker which appeared in The Way We Write (2006); and to the Folio Society for the Introduction to Florio’s Montaigne (2006).
Special thanks are due to Barbara Baker, Kazuo Ishiguro, Patrick McGrath and Caryl Phillips for permitting the interviews in which they participated to reappear here. Warm appreciation is extended to them and to other friends who kindly assisted and co-operated with this book.
Kazuo Ishiguro: Interview first published in BOMB Magazine, Issue #29, Fall 1989, pp. 22–23.© Bomb Magazine, New Art Publications, and its Contributors. All rights reserved. The BOMB Archive can be viewed at www.bombsite.com.
Patrick McGrath: Interview first published in BOMB Magazine, Issue #26, Winter 1989, p. 20.© Bomb Magazine, New Art Publications, and its Contributors. All rights reserved. The BOMB Archive can be viewed at www.bombsite.com.
Caryl Phillips: Interview first published in BOMB Magazine, Issue #38, Winter 1992, pp. 32–35.© Bomb Magazine, New Art Publications, and its Contributors. All rights reserved. The BOMB Archive can be viewed at www.bombsite.com.
Illustrations
Page i [Frontispiece] Coloured chromolithograph after John Gerard Keulemans (1842–1912)
5 Photo by beach photographer of the author, Swanage, Dorset, 1950s
15 Photo: Detroit News, 1954
33 Unattributed photo of Isaac Babel from Isaac Babel: You Must Know Everything: Stories 1915–1937, edited by Nathalie Babel (Jonathan Cape, 1970)
41 Postcard of York, 1920s
51 Ano Volos, Greece: photo by the author, 1974
65 Photo of Alan Ross: The Times
75 From the St Pancras Chronicle, November 1983
82 Photo of Patrick McGrath by Elena Seibert
95 Label from the author’s bottle
107 Set of six guitar strings
117 Photo of Kazuo Ishiguro and the author by Igor Navratil, London, 1990
128 Flier for Bamboo Club, Toronto, October 1986
141 Photo by unknown photographer of Caryl Phillips and the author in the Bamboo Club, Toronto, 1986
183 Photo of Jiří Wolf by Candice Rodd, Prague, December 1988
195 Photo by Sophie Baker, Norfolk, 1991
223 Photo by unknown photographer of the author’s father in Sydenham Wells Park, 1920s
269 London Transport bus ticket, 1960s
279 Photo of Salman Rushdie by Candice Rodd, 1997
289 Cartoon by Peter Brookes, The Times, October 1996
297 Postcard of Nice, 1920s
313 Postcard of Margate, 1900s, from Margate in Old Picture Postcards by Alan Kay (European Library, Zaltbommel/Netherlands, 1987)
331 Photo of Ted Hughes by Nick Rogers, The Times
345 Photo by Simon Mein, Peckham, 2000
359 From Stanford’s Library Map of London and its Suburbs, 1862
360 From The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of Prison Life by Henry Mayhew and John Binny, 1862
361 Photo of Thomas Hardy, 1880
362 Postcard of the County Arms, Trinity Road, Wandsworth, 1912, from Images of London: Wandsworth, Patrick Loobey, 2003
363 Balloon View of the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth SW by A. H. Fullwood, from The Gazette of the Third London General Hospital
364 Sketch by Pte. R. B. Ogle, from The Gazette of the Third London General Hospital
365 Photo by unknown photographer, 1918
366 Photo by unknown photographer, reproduced in Wandsworth Prison, A History by Stewart McLaughlin (HMP Wandsworth, 2001)
379 Watercolour by John England Nicholls, 1860–61. London Borough of Wandsworth
395 Engraving of Montaigne by Thomas de Leu from Les Essais de Michel seigneur de Montaigne, Paris, 1608
402 Salmon flies by the author
A Note About the Author
Graham Swift was born in 1949 in London, where he still lives and works. He is the author of eight novels: The Sweet-Shop Owner; Shuttlecock, which received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; Waterland, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Award, the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour; Out of This World; Ever After, which won the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; Last Orders, which was awarded the Booker Prize; The Light of Day; and, most recently, Tomorrow. He is also the author of Learning to Swim, a collection of short stories. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by Graham Swift
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by
Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Originally published in Great Britain by Picador,
an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd., London.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Swift, Graham, [date]
Making an elephant: writing from within / by Graham Swift.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27235-5
1. Swift, Graham, 1949– 2. Authors, English—20th century—Biography. I. Title
PR6069W47 Z46 2009
823′.914—dc22 2009014052
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