Literary Birthday – 10 August – Barry Unsworth

Barry Unsworth was born on 10 August 1930 and died on 4 June 2012.

Barry Unsworth Quotes

1. Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can’t be disproved or shown to be false.
2. All my fiction starts from a feeling of unique perception, the pressure of a secret, a story that needs to be told.
3. The term historical fiction is a blunt instrument in literary criticism. When people ask, ‘Is it a good historical novel?’ they may as well ask, ‘Is it a good Protestant novel?’ or ‘Is it a good transvestite novel?’ I write stories that are set in the past. Fiction set in the past should be judged by the same criteria as any other fiction. Does the novel convey a sense of life, touch the reader’s mind and heart? Does it belong to what D.H. Lawrence called the one bright book of life?
4. I like the condition of being an outsider, just passing through.
5. With time I have grown more sparing with the words. I think less of fireworks and flourishes. I try to get warmth and colour through precision of language. This is more difficult, I think, which may be why I find writing novels so challenging and exacting.
6. In my generation, history was taught in terms of grand figures, men on whom the destiny of the nation hinged, quintessential heroes.
7. I’m unemployable in any other capacity.
8. I don’t really care how many buttons someone had on his waistcoat. It would be good to get it right, but what really matters is trying to get hold of the spirit of the age, what it was like to be alive in that age, what it felt like to be…an ordinary person in the margins of history.

Barry Unsworth was a British writer known for his historical fiction. He wrote 17 novels, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. He won once for the 1992 novel Sacred Hunger. He was also awarded the Royal Society of Literature’s Heinemann Award for Mooncranker’s Gift. Unsworth received several accolades, including a Litt.D. from Manchester University and fellowship at the Royal Society of Literature. In 1999 he was a visiting professor at the University of Iowa’s Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 2004 he taught literature and creative writing classes at Kenyon College in Ohio.

Source for image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Barry_Unsworth.jpg