An evening with Donna Tartt

Tuesday 12th November - London

An evening with Donna Tartt in conversation with Kirsty Wark, 7pm
Venue: St James’s Church, 197 Piccadilly, London W1J 9LL

Chattering and excited energy filled the Church as we sat and waited. Movement on stage and a crackle of speakers. A cough. Steven Cooper, with an introduction we were too distracted to hear, for our eyes were scanning and necks craning - "Can you see her?"... "No. Can you?" 

Then she was there. Red tie. Red socks. Applause. A hand flew to her heart, she beamed.

This is it. Donna Tartt on tour...

I wish I could properly decipher my notes from that evening. However I was so excited, carried along by the murmurs and squeaks in the audience. My writing is both a haze of admiration and awful shorthand. I shall try picking bits out from my memory instead.

Kirsty Wark (Newsnight, The Review Show), carried us though some introductory questions touching on Donna's childhood memories, and her influences from that period. Donna let us in, talking of her aunts, and their own secret language, making the audience laugh as we perched in the pews already wishing the night wouldn't end.  

Talking in depth of her love of the Dutch painters, Donna spoke about The Goldfinch, on her knowing it was the right painting to draw from; the right painting with all it's coincidences. The Goldfinch, by Carel Fabritius, painted in 1654, brings about the sense of no escape, the tiny bird, depicted life-size  with it's leg attached to the post. There's certainly no escaping the coincidences then, when we hear how Carel Fabritius died in the same year he painted The Goldfinch, when about 40 tonnes of gunpowder exploded, destroying much of the city of Delft in the Netherlands. Over a hundred people were killed and thousands were injured. A stark familiarity to the novel's opening chapters, in which the Metropolitan Museum of Art witnesses a terrorist explosion, changing Theo Decker's life forever. Is the name Decker a coincidence too? It being the same as that of a church deacon, Simon Decker, who also perished alongside Fabritius in 1654...

More inspirations revealed were an absolute love affair with all things Dickens, whom she could quite easily spend an evening discussing his work and how the plots, characters, and language are the very best, ever. Links between Dickens' character Oliver Twist and Theo have already been discussed and drawn out in every review of The Goldfinch thus far. The modern day artful dodger style tale, with all the ingredients to make you think about modern-day terrorist threats and loneliness as well as just trying to make your way in the world. "At a certain age we all have to come to terms with what we have done, and what we haven't" Donna explains. This is Theo's journey.  

"Narration through life". Carry a notebook with you and write abut everything you see and your experiences. For ten years Donna Tartt carried these notebooks (feeling very strange without one on stage that night, in fact). She wrote in Theo's voice. She saw things as he would have seen them. Now the book has come to an end, she says she will probably take six months to get this voice out of her system, and to move on.  Ten years is a long time - she has no excuses about this - "It takes a long time to write!"  It was like a long sea journey. You have to have faith. Faith in what you're doing, in the direction you are going, in the progress you make day to day. If it's fun to write, you know it'll be fun to read. If she wrote faster, she says, she would't enjoy it, and we'd be able to tell. ("Take your time Donna - we LOVE your work!" I shout in my head) 

She dips into other influences - Nabakov, Stevenson, Hesse the poetry of Ezra Pound and again, 17th century Dutch painting.  (I'll let you establish a connection between these and The Goldfinch - it's more fun that way...)

Ten years is a long time to be concentrated on one thing, one voice. How does she relax at the end of a day? By reading. Poetry is the usual choice, and throughout writing The Goldfinch, it was books on antique furniture and Dutch painting too. Reading is a treat at the end of a long day writing, she says with a grin. A long period was spent going in the wrong direction, she recalls. Eight months of feeling like it wasn't working, not coming together, not the right words. This eight months of writing didn't make it into the book, and her editor didn't even see it. It contained more insight into Plat's character, and although the actual words didn't make it into the book, she grew to understand the characters better, and in short, it formed an invisible underpinning to the story you read in book form now. 

A coincidental trip to Vegas at the time of her writing, ending up being an essential part of the book. She recalls at the time how she really didn't want to go. So much so that she nearly didn't. But had she not, the book wouldn't be the book it is. Sometimes the thing you don't want to do, ends up being exactly what you need to do. You have to be open to change for things to happen and for your life to move forward.

At this point we know it's about to be wrapped up. Questions pop up from the audience, some good, some dumb, but on the whole, we all had our part to play, and I can't stop looking at how her tie matches her socks.