It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.
quote by Jonathan Coe
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As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?
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But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.
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Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.
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My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it.
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As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.
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But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.
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I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.
quote by Jonathan Coe
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The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.
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It's only a drawback in the States, where most people seem to have no real interest in other countries and the notion of a novel which might offer insight into life in the UK doesn't seem to appeal very widely.
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