“The
real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary
simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and
to make amazing things occur.” – Graham Swift
Born on this date in London in 1949,
Swift is considered one of the most important “contemporary” British writers. His first novel, The Sweet Shop Owner,
was published in 1980, and his subsequent works have won much praise and many
awards. Waterland, in particular, was one of the finalists for the
prestigious Booker Prize. Both Waterland and his book Last Orders have also been made into
movies that were well-received at the box office and by critics.
Swift has been in the news for his
comments that e-books are not something authors should support or be happy
about. “Unfortunately writers take a
very small part of the profit on their books, and I think in the e-book world
there is a real danger they will take even less, unless they are vigilant and
robust about protecting their own interests,” he noted. 
Swift is a meticulous and deliberate
writer and decries those who say Swift, ironically, writes too slow.
“It can be dismaying, all the same,
for a novelist to compare the slowness of the writing with the speed of the
reading,” he said. “Novels are read in a
matter of days, even hours. A writer may
labor for weeks over a particular passage that will have its effect on a reader
for an instant - and that effect may be subliminal or barely noticed.”
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