Adrian Nathan West

How did you become a writer?

The writing part began early, when I was a kid. But if you consider a writer someone who is publicly recognized for writing, that really began, apart from a short story published in 2006, with critical essays about translated fiction I started writing in around 2013: initially, these were for online journals, then the Times Literary Supplement and eventually any number of other magazines. My first book was published in 2016 thanks to the odd coincidence of a very unusual publisher being founded just as I had written a very unusual book.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

My Latin teacher when I was in eighth grade told me if I wanted to be a writer, I needed to get a journal and write every day. I don’t stick to that anymore because I’m too busy, but it was good advice. I’m not naive enough to think that I can claim the writers I like or admire as influences, but I love Samuel Johnson, Celine, Malaparte, Natalia Ginzburg, the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch, Ilse Aichinger. Sam Sacks classed my novel with the Dirty Realists in his recent review; I like those writers, but I think what similarities there are exist because I come from the same place as some of those writers. My sentences I think are quite different from theirs.

When and where do you write? 

I just write when and where I can. My translating schedule is pretty brutal––I translate around four books a year, but I do just as much or more work for Spanish publishers and the occasional commercial or film client, anything from book chapters to subtitles to catalogue copy––and in addition to this, I do a fair bit of reviewing. My idea is to change that this year: For the first time in ages, I have the prospect of an extended period of leisure before me, and I would like to go back to maintaining my journal more regularly and writing the next book in a more disciplined fashion.

What are you working on now?

I’ve just finished two fairly long essays, one on the Spanish writer Rafael Chirbes and one on Catalan separatism viewed through the work of a wonderful untranslated writer, Jordi Ibáñez Fanés. I now have a little bit of annoying work to get through and I will be turning to my next novel, which will be about a lot of things but will center on dementia.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?

Not really. I don’t think there’s a great need for more writing in the world, so if people can’t write or feel reluctant to, they shouldn’t do it. You have to distinguish between having something to say and wanting to have something to say. It’s true that when I write criticism, especially if it’s a longer piece, there is a lot of anxiety at the beginning, but this can be cured by reading more. But if I had an idea for a story about a conflict between a young dissolute heir and his rich religious aunt and I couldn’t get it off the ground, I’d just quit. There are already more good novels than a person can read anyway, and there’s much more to life than writing.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Other than the above-cited counsel from my Latin teacher, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten good writing advice in the general sense. A recommendation to fill out this part of the text or change this adjective, sure. But knowing why you want to write and how and if you can and if you should, all that is very private and it’s unlikely someone can really guide you there.

What’s your advice to new writers?

Just question everything you do. Question why you want to be a writer: if you think it’s because you’re smarter or your experience is richer or you have something to say that’s never been said, you need to figure out whether or not you’re right about that, because if you’re not, you’re just going to spew a bunch of cliches and cultivate an unjustified self-regard that will then turn you bitter when readers ignore you. You need to know what you think of the opinion of the public: there are lots of people who scorn the public as ignorant while ranting and raving that the public doesn’t give them the praise they believe they deserve. You can’t have it both ways, though. You should ask yourself whether writing really matters to you: writing, I mean, not publishing, because your own writing is the only thing you can actually control––everything else is in someone else’s hands. If you write because the act of doing so is pleasurable or enlightening or relaxing, it will make you happier, but if you do it because you think it will get others to love, respect, or admire you, you’ll probably be disappointed. Writing is not something to stake your self-esteem on.

Adrian Nathan West is a literary translator and author of My Father’s Diet and The Aesthetics of Degradation. He has translated more than thirty books, including Hermann Burger’s Brenner and the International Booker and National Book Award-shortlisted When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut.