Rachel Cusk Interview: You Can Live the Wrong Life

“Discipline is a massive component of creating a body of work, and the further I get, the more I see that this really is true.” The award-winning and critically acclaimed writer Rachel Cusk here generously offers us an insight into her writing process.

“I have to experience things as unconsciously as possible, and then re-experience them as an artist.” Cusk typically has a long thinking period and a quick writing period. She attributes the relatively short period of writing to being a mother and having written in a period where she had small children: “I got into the habit of writing very, very, very quickly, and I think the mental holding of the material that I’ve described really came out of being the mother of small children, and not having the opportunity to make notes. I had to hold things and then find an opportunity to express them.” Having to work in a set period of time, she continues, was quite challenging: “For a lot of writers, the fear in the process lies around the fact that you don’t know whether you’ll be able to do it at that particular moment or not.”

Cusk compares starting a novel to “setting out on a mountain climbing trip without the right equipment, and not having read the weather forecast.” The real trial, she finds, is staying with the story, and accepting when you have to leave it. She doesn’t read fiction when writing, as she finds that it influences her writing too much. From the beginning, a distinctive element of her work has been the feeling of needing a literary style rather than a personal voice. Finding the form, she argues, is the most important task as the literary form is a kind of vessel that needs to “reflect a shape that is recognisable in life.” Moreover, Cusk is very aware of how your implication in language is the writer’s primary problem: “Increasingly, what I’m striving to do is rid my use of language of those parts – those automatic identity parts that you make just because it’s who you are.” Finally, Cusk reflects on the relationship between talent and hard work: “Talent is like personality, it’s like any version of fate, it responds to how it’s treated – you can live the wrong life. You can treat your talent wrongly.”

Rachel Cusk (b. 1967) is a Canadian-born writer, who lives and works in England. Her novels include ‘Saving Agnes’ (1993), ‘The Country Life’ (1997), ‘The Lucky Ones’ (2003), ‘Arlington Park’ (2006), and the Outline Trilogy – ‘Outline’ (2014), ‘Transit’ (2017), and ‘Kudos’ (2018). Cusk is also the author of non-fiction such as ‘A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother’ (2001), ‘Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation’ (2012), and ‘Coventry: Essays’ (2019). She is the recipient of the prestigious awards Whitbread First Novel Award (1993), and the Somerset Maugham Award (1997).

Rachel Cusk was interviewed by Tonny Vorm in August 2019 in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark.

Camera: Anders Lindved

Edited by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen

Produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2019

Supported by Nordea-fonden

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[akisdimou]

The way the interviewer, hidden in the background, is shooting his accurate, penetrative questions without taking over the conversation, together with the sincerity, and the wonderful presence of Cusk makes watching captivating...
What an amazing interview!!!
Thank you both for these 20 fullfilling minutes.

[gregorylent]

the thoughtfulness here works in many mediums. thanks

[HM-mwcg]

I love how much like a mature writer she is in her responses. Obviously Sally Rooney is so much younger but god, when you hear her in interviews you want her to shut up after a while. It's somewhat soothing to see that a great thinker and writer like Cusk isn't so confident and assured on many subjects and doesn't feel the need to project that she is.

[samdembling]

On the question of talent versus hard work, Cusk mentions (18:43 - 20:09) that "one of the most marking experiences of [her] life" was watching a girl from school transform herself from a talentless and ridiculed painter into a successful and widely admired one. That story appears with a few alterations in Transit: now the subject is a boy, not a girl, and the vocation is clarinet, not painting. In a book preoccupied with fate, choice, and destiny, the anecdote lodges as a formidable win for the side of free will.

[foolyanr.]

Love this channel seeing artist talk about their work and their conception. Its super interesting, stimulating and motivating. Every artist puts a nother perspective of the world. I love that.

[MrCanigou]

Thank you for sharing that demanding conversation

[jayhype]

love her work and/but she says everything you need to know about the classism of British literature: "I gave my first novel to the friend of my sister, who was a publisher, and that was that. That was the easy part."

[krystynap]

Such a wonderful and insightful interview.

[siddharthrajsoni]

Really good interview! Thanks to the interviewer

[LucianoCantabruel]

The form, that it is, the value should be in every line, and each paragraph, then altogether

[ljooc]

What an illuminating and interesting interview. Now I want to read all her work. She reminds me of NZ PM Ardern, their accents are very similar, perhaps even in the way they look.

[charisselouw]

I feel completely connected to what and how she articulated these tensions which are particular to women. Thank you.

[Monkeighz]

How anxiety-inducing is that? How would you ever know if you're living the right life? How can you ever know if you're doing enough?

[gracespaulding]

Doing this interview with a vape in hand is iconique.

[AA-nxki]

I'm writing 17 novels all at the same time.

[h.a.s.]

Character will always exist. People are interested in people, the shared human experience.

[artrobot-productions]

fascinating, ...\...\....\...\....\...\.

[RkristinaTay]

I have to say that explaining writing sounds like plenty of gobblygook, or humbug. The writing should explain itself, just like visual art. So much of contemporary fiction is quite bad and we encourage women especially even if they are mediocre.


I read Cusk's book Kudos, and firstly it was terribly edited, much like a first draft of a novel on a college level. And then it turned out to be more of a dumping ground for 'guess whom I met and what they said' short pieces all lumped together without beauty. Cusk is not living up to her standard, D. H. Lawrence. He had something to say and could express it beautifully and naturally. She is perhaps not as lucky to have published so much and may regret her 'body of work' later. It's just not good enough. Sorry to be so tough. I love Lawrence and his sincerity, immediacy and genius shines through, still. She is too confident, though she nervously behaves modestly and neurotic which is the pose of the modern 'writer'. I wish her well but she has not even begun the real work. One has to face the fact that just because one feels deeply does not mean one has any talent. Intelligence will not help when deep phoniness and trendiness are at the root of one's persona. So an Oxford degree means nothing, unless you want a job in the Civil Service.

[Deltaful]

Is that a vape in her hand??!! Can't believe she's doing the interview holding something that's burning her lungs. If she's vaping, she's shortening her life. Hence, she's living the wrong life. Or, maybe that is the right life for her. Just sad to see a beautiful mind and body succumbing to this vice.

[osip]

whats that in her hands ? you can see the effects of smoking on her face and unfortunately her writing "developmentally malformed"