Fierce People - Softcover

Wittenborn, Dirk

4.01

845 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747556806 ISBN 13: 9780747556800

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2002

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/ 0747556806 / English literature / Engels / English / Anglais / Englisch / soft cover / 24 x 16 cm / 335 .pp /

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Review:

"Fierce People is a stylish, savagely funny coming-of-age story." -- The Big Issue, 10th June 2002

"engaging, disturbing and funny ... it's surprising that his contemporaries haven't turned on him in envy." -- Independent on Sunday, 7th July 2002

"savage and funny" -- Sunday Telegraph, June 16th 2002

From the Author:

An interview with Dirk Wittenborn

What made you decide to become a writer?

"My father was a neuropsychopharmacologist who was always writing scientific papers and books and my mother was a chemist. He would dictate to her in the dining room, so the clickety-clack of typewriter keys was omnipresent from birth. For all practical purposes, I was raised by a pair of eccentrically loveable but chronically depressed much older sisters, which made for a neurotic and lonely childhood. I felt a desperate desire and responsibility to cheer them up and the only means I had was by telling stories, making jokes and so on. Of course, because I resented having to be the household mood elevator, the jokes and stories I told invariably were at their expense. Story-telling was from a very early age the only way I saw to get through life. Also, I am allergic to getting up early in the morning. As a child, I had to take a train to school every morning with businessmen bound for New York, mostly Wall Street. I was determined to do something that would allow me to sleep in."

But when you published your first book in 1980 your career path changed slightly.

"Oh yeah. I wrote a novel shortly after I graduated from college, Eclipse, but as I aspired to a literary career, I simultaneously became involved in the comedy world. During the early ‘80s, I co-wrote and performed in a movie with the late Michael O'Donoghue, Mondo Video, started writing for Saturday Night Live, and appeared in some sketches on the show. Lorne Michaels, the producer/creator wanted me to become a performer but I wanted to write novels. Through Lorne, I wrote on various projects involving other SNL cast members."

That's quite an opportunity for someone fresh out of college.

"Sure - In the show-biz world, I had opportunities and access most aspiring comedy writers would have killed for. I was best friends with Belushi, hung out with a lot of famous people, and did a lot of drugs."

How did you cope with it all? It must have taken its toll, all the socialising and the drugs and that whole scene of excess.

"Shortly after publication of my second novel I embarked on a period of flamboyant self-destruction. I was known for wearing a bright, fire-engine red suit everywhere I went. Some of my bad habits could be attributed to too-much-too-soon, others to not enough, too late. But, in my defence, there was one additional factor: a few years earlier, I had contracted a virus in Indonesia that was slowly calcifying my heart. It went undiagnosed, and I prescribed homeopathic cocaine treatments. My career and my life took a downward spiral and I was told I would never work again (and that's what the people who were trying to be positive said)."

So how did you pick yourself up from it all?

"At the tail end of the ‘80s I, like so many people had reduced my vices to the poor man's speedball of caffeine, nicotine and Nutrasweet. I moved to Los Angeles and tried to begin rebuilding my career. No one would return my phone calls until I did something really clever - I almost died. In a 14 hour operation, I had my heart removed from my body and peeled like an orange. Amazingly enough, when I awoke, I was hireable and my ex-wife wanted a divorce."

And what have you been keeping yourself busy with since then?

"Over the last ten years, I got remarried (to a fashion model who has since became a psychologist) and became a working screenwriter/script doctor. I currently have romantic comedy at 20th Century Fox, "Highboys & Lowboys," which the President of Fox, has announced in the press he's making. In December I sold a script, "If You Only Knew," to Disney. I have just finished a rewrite of a Joel Silver action picture at Warner Brothers, "Mama's Boys," and have just begun writing for a pitch I sold to Warner Brothers, Mark Canton producer, called "Interior Decorators," which they hope to attach Rupert Everett and Eddie Murphy to. I am also working on a feature-length documentary which is fully financed, called "Rich Kids," about the children of vast, inherited wealth. "

Just your average novelist's career path then...

"Well, it's fair to say that my life has had its ups and downs, and if nothing else, it's certainly been colourful. Though I make light of it, my heart operation was a genuinely cathartic experience. It's a very strange thing to be told you have a one in three chance of dying, a one in three chance of requiring a heart transplant, and a one in three chance of making a miraculous recovery. I lucked out. Since that operation, I have wanted to start writing novels again. But for some reason, whereas I had no problem doing screenplays, I kept throwing away every novel I began after thirty or forty pages. A year and a half ago, I took this dilemma to a therapist, who prescribed recreating the physical environment I was in when it was last "fun" to write fiction. I purchased a twenty year old manual typewriter, bought a box full of old records, and sat down and wrote."

Finally, what inspired you to write Fierce People?

"Though Fierce People isn't autobiographical, it was inspired by the fact that as a teenager my family moved to a very rich, incredibly snobby rural community not unlike the fictional village of Vlyvalle where most of Fierce People takes place. I was the proverbial poor boy at the party, and was invited only because my family stumbled under the protective wing of a colourful and, in America, somewhat notorious but socially powerful family with a large pharmaceutical fortune, Johnson & Johnson. This afforded me a glimpse into the secret tribal rites of the American ruling class that I can honestly say few are privy to. My older sister later married into the tribe."

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