Literary Friction - Illustrations With Sara Baume

Literary Friction

Arts

4.9 • 593 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2017

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do illustrations have a place in the novel? Pictures were commonplace in nineteenth-century books by authors like Thackeray and Dickens, and yet today almost all grown-up fiction is devoid of any illustrations, with a few notable exceptions including the work of W.G. Sebald and Douglas Coupland. Should a case be made for bringing them back? Our guest is the Irish writer Sara Baume whose first novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither has won and been shortlisted for a whole host of prizes, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Fiction. Her second novel, A Line Made by Walking, is not only illustrated with photographs, but is infused with ideas from contemporary art. Listen in as we talk to Sara and then discuss our favourite illustrations.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to literary friction.
0:09.0	I'm Carrie Plitt, here as always with Octavia Bright, who is taking a very short break from her impending thesis.
0:15.0	Thank you, Octavia.
0:16.0	Hi, Carrie.
0:17.0	How are you doing?
0:18.0	Oh my God.
0:19.0	I'm okay. You think it's nice doing? Oh, my God. I'm a bit. I'm okay.
0:40.6	It's nice to be out of my study. Yeah. We've been chatting before the show and you seem like a little more energetic than usual, if that's possible. Yeah. Excited to see people. Yeah. Possibly. Yeah. Like a jailbreak situation. Okay. Good. Well, hopefully that leads to interesting fodder in our chat.
0:39.8	Yeah, we a jailbreak situation. Okay, good. Well, hopefully that leads to interesting fodder in our chat. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. On this month's show, we have a really excellent guest,
0:45.9	so do you want to introduce her? Yes, definitely. Sarah Baum was born in 1984 in Lancashire, England,
0:53.0	and she studied fine art before earning a master's in creative
0:55.7	writing. And her short fiction has appeared in lots of great places, including the moth, the
1:01.1	stinging fly, the Irish Independent, and a bunch of others. And her first novel, Spill, Simmer, Fultor,
1:07.6	wither, has won and been shortlisted for a whole bunch of prizes, including
1:11.2	winning the Jeffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Fiction. So she's doing very well. And she lives
1:17.0	in Cork with her two dogs. Well done, Sarah. And she was a delight. She was a delight. So Sarah's
1:23.2	second novel, a line made by walking, which was published on the 16th of February this month,
1:27.9	is infused with art. The story of Frankie, who retreats to her dead grandmother's urban
1:32.6	bungalow, it is not only filled with descriptions of contemporary art pieces, including
1:36.7	a line made by walking, which is contemporary art, but it features a number of photographs of dead
1:42.7	animals integrated into the text.
1:44.3	So we thought today, for our theme, we would talk about illustrated novels.
	...

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