Note: Text has been lightly edited for clarity and does not match audio exactly.
Tricia Ford: Hello, listeners. This is Audible Editor Tricia Ford, and today I'm joined by one of the most vital, fearless, and original voices in modern literature, Marlon James. He won the Booker Prize for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings and is known for his Dark Star Trilogy. Today, this literary giant is joining me to talk about his new novel, The Disappearers.
Longlisted for the Booker Prize, the New York Times calls it "a masterpiece" and "the novel of the decade, if not the century." The Disappearers marks a deeply anticipated, profoundly personal return to the landscape of Jamaica for Marlon James. Set in 1980s Kingston, the book unearths a decades-old rumor about a devastating attack on a group of young, queer theater makers. But rather than a direct, simple historical account, James gives us a brilliant polyphonic echo chamber, a story told through an intricate tapestry of secret diaries, legal testimonies, and intimate letters. Welcome, Marlon James. It's so great to have you here.
Marlon James: Oh, thanks for having me.
Let's dive right into your incredible new book, The Disappearers. It's built around an unconfirmed, rumored 1980s attack on a group of gay men in Jamaica during your youth. You've remarked in the past that in Jamaica rumors are often trusted more than facts. What made you decide to construct a 600-plus-page epic out of a rumor?
Because I trust rumors. Because rumors usually imply that there's a story there and we're not telling it, or we're erasing it. Brief History of Seven Killings, which is three novels ago, was the same thing. I look for stories that have plot holes in it and then I use fiction to try to fill those holes. This was an event that I knew in my gut happened. I just couldn't get anybody to confirm it or anybody who was willing to say it happened, whether they knew it or had the courage to talk about it.
I'm always haunted by incomplete stories. I think that's a curse of a storyteller. If I come across something that doesn't add up—I don't think I'm a ripped-from-the-headlines kind of writer, but if I come across stories that don't add up, I usually think fiction can do something there that the lack of facts can't do. I also grew up with a detective for a mom, so I think I inherited her love of mysteries and unanswerable questions and the whole idea that a story is a mystery to solve.
This is your first novel set in Jamaica since A Brief History of Seven Killings. How has your personal and creative relationship with the landscape of Jamaica changed in the decade between these two massive undertakings?
I think I became more, I want to use the word fearless in writing about queer subjects and queer people and gay people, because the last time I wrote about a queer Jamaican, I had to take him abroad to write about him. I had to take him to Miami, then New York. Not surprisingly, I also had to go to Miami, then New York, then Minneapolis to live in the open. Whereas this novel is a lot of things, one being me trying to capture the world I ran away from, because first I ran to the church and then I left the country. Me finally feeling the, I guess, it's courage, although I don't think I'm courageous at all, but having the courage to talk about a queer story in Jamaica, which to me was a big turning point. As I said, most of the stuff I write that was queer was not set in Jamaica. Being in the present, even though the novel ends in 2005. And also imbuing characters sometimes with my own personal stakes.
Right. You grew up in Jamaica in the '80s.
Yeah, '80s and '90s.
Eighties and '90s, which brings me to—
And '70s (laughs).
—to the boys and the sense of protecting these boys. You've mentioned feeling a deep urge to protect the young boys in The Disappearers. Does that protective instinct come from wanting to shield the younger version of yourself?
No, I think the younger version of myself was pretty shielded, and sometimes I think that was the problem. Sure, I could say I escaped tragedy or I escaped violence, but most of my friends actually haven't encountered violence. Also, even if I escaped those things, I also missed out on community. I missed out on support. I missed out on guides. I missed out on a gay big brother, gay big sister. I missed out on community.
I think shielding would have been the problem, in a sense. In fact, I think that's what I did exactly. I think shielding is exactly what I did. My way of doing it was going to the church. Americans may not be aware that even though ex-gay is kind of banned in the States, although we don't know post-Supreme Court, it's going on full speed ahead in most countries in the world, including Jamaica. So, that was my queer journey, which was a journey to try to make myself straight.
Do you consider this a kind of tribute to the real-life men of 1980s Kingston who didn't survive?
I don't know if I'd say it's a tribute. I know I wasn't going to look away or pretend some of the violence didn't happen. Most of the events in the novel, good and bad, tend to be based on real events, not just the big gay bashing that happens in chapter 2. I guess it’s my version of a "Say her name," except it's "Say his name," in the sense that I didn't want these men and boys to die in vain.
At the same time, for all that happens in the novel, it is a celebration of life. It's rare for a novel I write where most people survive. That's a rarity for me, but it was important to me that they survive. Sometimes survival is enough. Survival doesn't necessarily mean they're thriving. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're doing well. Some of the characters are not. But I think, in a lot of ways, being alive is enough, is almost enough.
I agree. And I'm so happy to hear that you're intimately involved in the audio production side of things.
I'm a big, big fan of audiobooks. I listen to most nonfiction by audio.
It's perfect.
Yeah, fiction, the attention span, it depends. It's funny, I never thought about audiobooks until I was in the UK, 11, 12 years ago. Somebody visited me from the Royal Society for the Blind and it’s like, "Oh, I forgot I have blind readers. I have visually impaired readers." And I go way back, so I remember back in the old days, audiobook was the librarian reading into a cassette and you pick it up every Thursday. We talked about audio, and one of the things, why he gave me this special commendation, is that he was very happy that I didn't always depend on visual details to tell a story. Because if I'm visually impaired, that "little black dress" means nothing to me.
That’s so true. For the architecture of your book, it relies on this polyphonic structure, and it shifts between Eddy's diaries, legal testimony, Havelock’s letters. Did you always imagine the audio as an ensemble piece with multiple voices?
Yeah, quite a few of my novels tend to be that way, actually. Well, two of them. I knew it because the novel itself is multiple voices. The novel itself are multiple voices that sometimes really parallel each other, and other times really contrast from each other. I knew the story I was writing needed more than one person to tell it. I know actors who can do voices, and that would have been fine as well. There are a lot of actors who could have handled four different voices. But I also wanted to get Jamaica involved. I wanted to get Jamaica's art community and queer community involved. I really wanted it to be a group thing because it's almost as if—it's not almost as if, it was kind of a "Getting a group together to remember." I write alone, but the audiobook felt collaborative. It felt almost like we were putting on a play.
I wanted to get Jamaica's art community and queer community involved... I write alone, but the audiobook felt collaborative. It felt almost like we were putting on a play.
Two of the actors in it are actually very old friends of mine. One went to my high school.
Oh, that's amazing.
I think the character, the person who does Havelock, I think, went to my high school. And the person that does Eddy is one of my best friends.
Oh, my God, Eddy. Did you listen throughout the recording, or did you wait till the end?
I waited until the end, and I haven't listened to all of it yet. I've listened to enough to know I made the right choice with all the actors.
What did that feel like to hear it? Did it match the voice in your head as you were writing?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and I love it. I'm the person who's like, “I want to be surprised,” and I want to hear somebody read it in their way, not my way. Hearing somebody read Havelock, I realized, "Oh, my God, I didn't know I gave him a sense of humor." I didn't know. I thought I gave the young guys the humor and the old guy the somber reality. Turns out, Havelock is a riot.
He is. The story's driven by dialogue and vernacular. When you're writing these specific, distinctive Jamaican voices, are you actively hearing them out loud in your head, and how closely does, for instance, Brandon Miles and Michael Sean Harris, match your rhythm in writing?
Yeah, certainly, certainly, Michael, who I went to high school with, he was one year below me. I also, I write to be read aloud. I still read aloud to myself. I don't believe dialogue until I hear it aloud. And if I really want to punish myself, I have somebody read it to me. I come out of drama in a way. The first things I used to write was plays. This is one of the reasons why almost all my novels are in either first person or it's about somebody telling a story about somebody else. It's my primary tool, voice. I remember once thinking, "One day, I'm going to write a novel in third person. That's a sign of a real writer," and I got over that (laughs).
They should know which part of this novel you whisper, which part you scream, which part you sing-song to, which part really hurts, which part is really funny. To me, it should lend itself well to audio, because I write primarily for the listener more than the reader.
Voice is crucial to me. Voice is everything. Even if people are reading it instead of listening to it, I want them to hear volume. They should know which part of this novel you whisper, which part you scream, which part you sing-song to, which part really hurts, which part is really funny. To me, it should lend itself well to audio, because I write primarily for the listener more than the reader.
Getting to hear the patois as it's meant to be heard is a whole other thing. I could imagine getting it wrong in my own head, so having these performers almost challenge me as a listener.
Yeah, I mean, there's patois, but there’s, funny enough, Jamaican standard English, which isn't like British standard English. Especially Havelock. Havelock speaks that quite a bit. Havelock barely speaks Jamaican patois unless he's cursing you out. But I also wanted to make sure that we had the flavor of Jamaican standard English as well. The different characters actually come from different economic and social backgrounds and that also is reflected in what they say and how they say it.
I'm sure it comes through if you're reading the text, but having listened, it says so much about who the characters are, based on how they speak.
I mean, that's literally how they identify themselves. That's how they introduce themselves. That's how we get to know them, because they're in a way kind of talking to us. It's funny because a lot of the forms in the novel are written forms, like diaries, interview transcripts, letters. But even so, the letter is supposed to mimic a human conversation. The transcript is from an interview. All of these things are still primarily audio. One of the things I like about audio and like about listening is I can get a certain musicality in the narration, in the dialogue, which is very much what Jamaican and English and what Jamaican patois is like. I try to give the reader, whoever's going to do my audiobook, as little work as possible.
Keeping to this musicality theme, the book deals with some incredibly heavy themes of hate-driven violence, but it balances that darkness with brilliant, biting humor and an absolute love for 1980s pop and reggae music. How do you handle those sudden tonal shifts as a writer?
I guess you just sort of shift along with it. I mean, it was a great help that each tonal shift is a different chapter. I think if I was doing it within chapters, it would be kind of crazy. Even with the third chapter that switches between first-person narration and interview transcripts, the transcripts are still pretty oral. It's still voice. But I didn't know how each section would turn out before I started writing them. Sometimes I just start and I realize, "This way doesn't make sense. Let's try something else." I'm a big believer that a book tells you how it wants to be written, and for this one, there was a lot of staring at the blank screen and just like, "Okay, what are we going to do here? How are we going to tell this story? What makes the most sense? What is going to be the most evocative? What's going to allow me to use the most sensory details? And also, what's just going to be fun?"
As I'm writing and I learn more about the story and more about the book, to me, everybody becomes more kinetic, more alive, more within the narrative, to the point where I feel like I'm not even writing, I'm just eavesdropping.
Which is a weird thing to say about such a heavy book, but all those things, I bear them in mind before I even start writing. As I'm writing and I learn more about the story and more about the book, to me, everybody becomes more kinetic, more alive, more within the narrative, to the point where I feel like I'm not even writing, I'm just eavesdropping.
That's amazing. That's kind of the experience as the listener, that sense of eavesdropping, so it kind of translates right to us. Now, having been a child of the '80s myself, graduating high school in 1988, the music is more than just background soundtrack. It acts as a lifeline and a vehicle for self-expression for many of the characters, including Eddy, who has an intense infatuation with Bruce Springsteen, both his music and his aesthetic, and he listens to Depeche Mode, INXS, Peter Gabriel, and his favorite, his absolute favorite, is Prince, which is in my top three as well. What is it about music, specifically this iconic music of the '80s, that has the power to save a life?
I think the thing about Gen X, and especially if you grew up in the '80s, is that it was the age of MTV. It wasn't just MTV. Those of us who couldn't afford cable had Friday Night Videos. I think it was the first time that music was centering culture. We always had rock stars. We always had music stars, but I think because of MTV, because of music videos, they became a central part of our culture, not just pop culture but culture in general.
Music, for me, there's a character in the book that says music was the first thing to love him back. I think that's how I certainly felt as an '80s kid. I was listening to a ton of pop. I was listening mostly on the radio, too, and it was an escape. It was unlike anything else I was hearing in Jamaica, because we were a pretty orthodox music culture. It gave me language. Sometimes it was songs that gave me dialogue, I mean, to actually speak to people. Pop music became our shorthand in a way. Pop music became a key. Pop music became a way to bond. I remember the first time I met a fellow Jamaican REM fan. I didn't think such a thing existed. I remember the first other Jamaican I could talk to about Led Zeppelin. I remember losing everybody because I was the only one who liked the Pixies (laughs).
It just took up such a huge space in our lives. Also, we had huge spaces in our lives. We live in the suburbs. We're raised by TV. Our parents are both working or we're latchkey kids. We have a lot of free time and nobody's watching us. I love that Gen A can't understand that every 10 PM the TV would ask parents if they know where their children were. That, actually, even though it was America, pretty much an American phenomenon, but it spread. I remember it in Jamaica, and I remember being left alone, not always by choice and not always something I liked, but the music slipping in and filling in these spaces.
It sure did, and it sure does for these characters. Eddy's love of this music is a beautiful thing, and I can feel how it feeds him, and his lightness is there.
Yeah, and whereas Jordan in some ways, Nirvana and grunge was the only thing keeping him going and kind of in this world. And once Kurt Cobain dies, it's sort of the beginning of his unraveling.
Right. It's such a key part of this time, and placing it so distinctly in Jamaica, and having grown up in the States, it's just amazing to me that I share these thoughts, these loves, with these characters who are so different from me.
Yeah, I realized pretty later on in life, because I was at home most of the time, that for a lot of us, especially if you were a teenager or slightly younger, slightly older, in the '80s, regardless of where you were in the world, you probably were going through the same '80s. I remember reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's first volume of My Struggle and he talks about having his Sonic Youth Goo T-shirt. I was like, "I had a T-shirt for that." In fact, I had the album. I still have Sonic Youth Goo. In fact, the title Disappearer comes from Sonic Youth.
Really?
Yeah. It's a song on the Goo album called “Disappearer.”
I'm going to have to go listen to that. The other thing in this book that I absolutely loved is your play within a book. The eight men in the novel, they're rehearsing John Herbert's 1967 prison drama Fortune and Men's Eyes. Why did you pick this play?
I didn't. Who picked it was my partner. So, my partner, Nicholas Boggs, wrote the biography Baldwin: A Love Story. It came out last year. And there's a big moment in it when Baldwin is running, basically taking refuge in Turkey. Turkey's not the most liberal country and certainly wasn't back then. And he had this crazy idea to put on this play Fortune and Men’s Eyes, a gay-prison, sex-crime, whatever, drama, and to do it in Turkish. At the time, Baldwin didn't know any Turkish, but it was a moment of just queer visibility and defiance in a very anti-queer place. And the funny thing is, the play was a smash.
But I knew they were getting together to rehearse a play. Funny enough, the very first draft of this, which my editor has, the play was Pygmalion, and they did a version of it called My Fair Brady, where they turned My Fair Lady into a gay story. It was very funny, if I say so myself, but ultimately, it didn't lead into what follows and there was no parallels. I realized I can let the play work harder, but I have to find a play. I went through Midsummer Night's Dream. I went through The Tempest. I went through An Ideal Husband. That's the kind of writer I am, I'll try on everything until something works. And he said, "Why not that?" and I'm like, "Oh, great. People think I just read your book and stole your play." He was like, "I think you should read it. I think it's really speaking to all the things you want to capture to keep talking about."
I read it and then the cherry on top was that Sal Mineo did a version of it in New York. That, to me, cemented it as a work, a dangerous work, of queer lit that I think the characters would be doing almost as though just doing the play enough was rebellion in Jamaica. So, it just made perfect sense. I'm lucky to have my partner because I also didn't think AIDS was going to be a part of the novel. I just thought, "That's an American thing," and he's like, "I think AIDS was everywhere," and it ended up in the book.
It did. It was not a book about AIDS, I would say, for sure, but it did make its way in, and if you're gay in the '80s, it's going to make its way in.
Yeah, as I said before, most of the '80s, I was running away from being gay. Most of the '90s, I ran into work. By the late '90s, early 2000s, I'd run to church. So, I actually had no idea about AIDS. And to go from that to interviewing, among other people, the man who took care of our HIV patient zero, that was, honestly, it was a moment of reverence. It was a moment of me sitting down and hearing history and hearing that our people were taken care of, that they didn't die abandoned. I think that's important to know, that with all that's going on, we took care of each other.
I love that. And taking care of each other, these characters do that with zero sentimentality. They just do it. They're not nice about it all the time, but they just do it. Getting back to that sense of joy, you've spoken out against the cliche that writing is a curse, maintaining that for you writing is absolute fun. But when writing a story about deep historical trauma, characters who go missing, where do you find daily energy and joy to keep pushing forward?
I get a lot of energy from jazz. I get a lot of energy from writing to music. I get a lot of energy from having other forms of art around me. If it's not around me, I'm going to go to a gallery or go to a concert. I am very much interested in artists who change the way we see things and who push boundaries, although I'm not a big fan of that term. I also read a lot. I read a massive number of books when I'm writing. I always laugh when people say they don't read when they write because they don't want to be influenced. I'm like, "One can only hope!" I read to be influenced. I want Gabriel Garcia Marquez influence on the book. I want Toni Morrison influence on it. I believe what Cormac McCarthy says, that books come out of books. So, I'm always reading.
I also teach and I get a lot of energy from my students. I love their sense of possibility. I love how some of them don't even know if they're writers. You have to find ways to make writing be an ongoing discovery. I am eternally curious and I'm very suspicious of people who are not. It's my one unforgivable sin. I can't forgive incuriosity. It's one thing I can't, and I hope I never become incurious.
I always laugh when people say they don't read when they write because they don't want to be influenced. I'm like, "One can only hope!" I read to be influenced.
As a teacher, what is your go-to first lesson for your students?
My go-to first lesson is what I call “nine and a half lessons of seduction,” and it has nothing to do with sex or romance. It has everything to do with text and how you can make text more appealing. I didn't come up with the idea, actually. Francine du Plessix Gray came up with the idea, but she had her own four. I did five and a half more. Now, I have rules of seduction. One of the rules is don't seduce yourself. You wrote that line, you think it's the greatest thing you've ever written. The best thing you can do for yourself is kill it because that's a darling that probably doesn't fit and it probably has to go.
Another rule I have is each word should be an ongoing attraction. So, are all the words in your sentence doing new work? And if they're not, another one I like to say—it's a very corny class, but they learn things—I say things like “divorce words long married.” We get it, the breeze is cool. We do not need a “cool breeze.” We really don't. Nobody needs a “gentle breeze,” either. We get it.
So true. Such a great lesson. Now, another thing that you've shared is that your ultimate goal with this book is for people to know that people suffered, but also you can't kill us even when you kill us. For someone listening to the final hours of this audiobook, what do you hope they carry away with them regarding resilience?
That sometimes survival is enough. Survival is a big deal. I've been in situations where people think survival isn't. I'll come across, for example, queer people who grew up in America and they want to know why the African won't come out, why they won't live according to certain American rules. And sometimes, especially when well-meaning people come to countries like Ghana and Jamaica, they already have this sort of superior attitude: "If you just become like us, you'd be free and so on," and ignoring the realities of these countries. And one of the realities of these countries is that survival is sometimes enough. Survival is almost rebellion. I think it's something that I certainly have to tell myself, that it's great when we go beyond that, but that's a big deal.
It's a big deal that your story makes it to the end of the novel. Many people’s stories don’t. Also, if you're going to celebrate survival, you also have to celebrate the version of yourself that got you there. The students I'm teaching now are older than usual. I usually teach undergrads and these are post-grads and they have such low opinions of their [younger] selves. "I didn't know enough. I wasn't this. I didn't experience that. I wasn't as smart then. I made so many mistakes." I say, "You know, that young, ignorant, less educated, less worthy, less smart version of yourself is the one that got you here. So maybe shut up and show him some respect." (laughs)
If you're going to celebrate survival, you also have to celebrate the version of yourself that got you there.
It's true.
"That kid with one-tenth your resources still managed to get you here, so maybe show some respect." And that's what I said, you know, you hear, "Oh, you need to learn to forgive yourself.” It’s your old self that needs to forgive you!
That's a great lesson. I love that. Now, is there anything about the book or in general that I haven't touched upon that you want to be sure to share with us?
I don't think so. You even touched on the humor, which is great because sometimes people forget or they don't know. They think because it's such harrowing subject matter that it isn't funny. The characters are funny, and the characters are funny with each other, and the characters don't get along in a way that's funny. Honestly, any gay person will tell you, actually gay sex is a little funny and ridiculous. It's a little ridiculous. There's a certain absurdity to their situations, which I think every now and then the characters realize. They love being clever. They love leaning on pop music and pop culture. They are very much participating in the world that they're in, and they're aware. I love writing smart people. I wish they made smarter decisions, but, you know.
That's part of their youth, right? I know you mentioned that you read a lot of books all at once. Do you write multiple books all at once? What are you working on right now?
Oh, God, I wish I could. I want to be Joyce Carol Oates with three typewriters. I am not working on anything right now. I'm working on other mediums. I'm working on scripts for stuff I can't disclose yet, but I'm working on film and TV scripts. There is a part 3 of a trilogy that I am contracted to deliver. So, there is that. I have been thinking a lot about something I never usually think about, which is characters that haunt me even after I've finished a novel, because I'm usually not. That's one of the reasons why my novels are so long. When I'm done, I'm done. But there are some characters from old books who have been poking around in my head lately and I'm like, "Come on, I thought your story was over." I'm starting to think maybe it's not. So, I think I may revisit some characters from a novel, The Book of Night Women. They won't leave me alone, and usually, the only way I can get them to leave me alone is to give them a book.
Then give them a book. You gotta do it.
I don't even have a choice in the matter, honestly.
Well, I will be reading whenever it’s done. Thank you so much for your beautiful book. We'll be watching, listening, and waiting. Thanks again so much for being here.
Cool. Thanks for having me.
