FICTION: ANOTHER DAY
One of Our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde
British author Jasper Fforde was in Denver recently to discuss his latest novel, “One of Our Thursdays Is Missing,” the sixth in his popular Thursday Next series. As an author, Fforde’s method is to throw a variety of genres — and irresistible silliness — into a mash-up machine; the result defies easy description.
He is also author of the Nursery Crimes series (think, “who pushed Humpty Dumpty”) and “Shades of Gray,” which takes place in a world where people are ranked by their color perception. Yet it is the continuing character of Thursday Next that draws the most readers. She makes her home in Book World, a place where fiction and its characters dwell. Her job with Jurisfiction is to ensure that fiction remains as its author intended.
Fforde talked about this newest book and his unusual style of writing.
Q: How do you describe your work?If I say it’s fantasy, people think of goblins and spells, and it’s not goblins and spells. If I say speculative fiction, people think is experimental, and they won’t touch it. It’s no specific genre, it’s a blend of genres.
A:
If you enjoy reading a little bit of sci-fi, a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of crime, a little bit of thriller, a little bit of romance, then my books have essentially something for you. Each is a sort of a Swiss army knife of a book.
Q: How do you see fiction as a reflection of the real world?When you read a story, most stories have a beginning and then things happen, and things happen for a purpose, and are sort of explained by the end of the story. It might not have a happy ending, but at least it’s resolved, in some form or another. The things that people say to you along the way have relevance later on.
A:
In the real world, that doesn’t happen. It’s full of random occurrences that may happen for absolutely no reason.
We don’t know what’s going to happen, and often times there is no resolution. If real life were a book, it would never find a publisher.
Q: What keeps drawing you back to Thursday Next? Is it her character? Her world?The great thing about the Thursday books is that they offer a very, very broad canvas in which to work, and it’s still very enjoyable.
A:
Also I think, for many people, Thursday is their favorite character. So I’m very keen to not to be disappointing to those people who buy my books.
Q: The new book is written in terms of two Thursdays, the real one (who now lives in the real world) and the written one, the stand-in who takes the real Thursday’s place in the fictional world. Is that confusing?It’s complex and it can be confusing for anyone who hasn’t read the series. This is my first true sequel. You probably have to have read one of the first Thursdays, or have an idea of what’s going on before you leap in.
A:
I’ve got a written Thursday, who I think is a pale imitation of the real Thursday. The written one is very keen to step up and be as good as the real Thursday, something she knows she cannot do.
It’s a subtle relationship, a bit like having an elder sister who was head girl and the captain of the basketball team, and could swim fast. She’s left school, gone off to do something else, and all of a sudden you’re there. Everyone’s saying, “Well your sister was terrific. What are you going to do? You’ll be on the swim team, right?” And you say, “Not really. I can’t swim.”
The written Thursday is in a position where she has to do something to match up to this huge, huge figure in her life. For me, that story is about someone trying to do something to be a better person.
Q: Book World seems to have become a police state: Would you talk about the Men in Plaid?I like the Men in Plaid. They’re members of an NSA type organization, shadowy characters like the (characters in) “Men in Black,” who work for someone within the Counsel of Genres.
A:
They are a policing level independent of Jurisfiction. That organization is the policing area within fiction, they have more to do with the nuts and bolts of actual fiction.
The Men in Plaid are just there to make sure that everyone stays in order, in a national security kind of way. So, they’re a bit frightening.
Q: Your website is lively (). Do you do the work yourself?I do it all. We (he and his wife) update it ourselves, that’s why it looks so old fashioned. We learned HTML in 2001, and it hasn’t really advanced since.
A:
We managed to justify text in 2005, but that was the only advance. If I had to hand it over to someone else, then it would have a buffer. It won’t be like mine at all.
These days, when a book is out, I usually do a competition on my website. It’s not part of Penguin (his publisher), just something between me and my readers. It’s a sleuthing competition. You have to put on your Deerstalker. You can’t find the answers by going to Google or Wikipedia. These are not fact questions; you really have to think about them. I have one of the sleuthing competitions running now.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who lives in Centennial.
