Reasons for writing

Christian Century, Sept 27, 2000 by Trudy Bush

Well, I don't know enough about that, unfortunately. But if it should prove to be so, and one could identify these people at a very young age, what would one do then? They have their right to civil liberties. One can't say, "If you have this dangerous gene, you must be locked up," or "We must watch you day and night." It may not be so easy to deal with.

You offer a long list of reasons why one might become a detective novelist. One reason that seems especially important has to do with the mastery of one's feelings about death. Has this been the most important motivation for you? What about others?

To make money never has been very important for me. Rather, it has been important because I have had family to support, but it hasn't been among my most important reasons for writing. I have psychologically needed to be a writer, and I think that I need the structure that this particular form gives.

I have been preoccupied with death from early on--from childhood, I think. It fascinated me. Once I became aware of it, it was never totally absent from my mind. I can't explain at all why that should be so. I sometimes wonder if it could have been the effect of the First World War. I was born in 1920, two years after the war ended, and it seemed for a long time as if the whole country was under a cloud of perpetual mourning for the generation lost in that war.

How does religion help you deal with this preoccupation, and with the process of aging?

It helps me to deal with absolutely every aspect of life. By religion, I don't mean the regular practice of religion--that is, regular churchgoing or Bible reading. I mean the awareness of the reality of God. The sense that he exists, that I can communicate with him, that he loves me, and that I must try to live my life, as far as possible, in the way that he would wish. Very often I don't succeed. But I have never doubted those realities. I'm a communicant member of the Church of England. I've never left the church and would not wish to do so, though there's much in it that I'm critical of.

Do you think you are unusual among your literary acquaintances in your adherence to faith and to the church?

Not altogether. Ruth Rendell is a churchwoman. I certainly have found faith important, but I do have friends who are totally without it and who cope admirably with life, sometimes under difficult circumstances, and who live extremely good lives. It isn't a given that if you have faith, you're happy, and if you don't have it you're miserable; or that you have it and you're good, and you don't have it and you're less good; or even that you have it and you're comforted, and you don't have it and you're not comforted. I sometimes think that religious faith is rather like musicality. You're either born with it or not. Some of my friends who haven't got faith find it rather a surprising thing to have. Religion is a dimension of life of which they have no understanding, really.

The Victorians feared that loss of religious faith would undermine the moral structure of society. You don't seem to agree that it has had that effect.