Lee Rourke lives in Hackney, East London and writes for The Guardian and The Observer. He is Reviews Editor for 3:AM Magazine and also edits Scarecrow, an online literary magazine. Everyday is published by Social Disease Publishing.

Mark Thwaite: What gave you the idea for Everyday?

Lee Rourke: There is nothing original in Everyday. It has already been said before. It wasn’t my idea. I had been reading (I still am) a lot of J.G. Ballard, Fernando Pessoa, Raoul Vaneigem, Martin Heidegger, Samuel Beckett, as well as re-reading James Joyce’s Dubliners, and discovering an interesting book called The Vertigo of Late Modernity by Jock Young. The title Everyday was pinched from this quote by Vaneigem:

The economy of everyday life is based on a continuous exchange of humiliations and aggressive attitudes.

I was interested in honing the momentum I found in such writing. I thought that attempting a novel inspired by such ideas would be too convoluted (it would essentially be over-written) so I figured a shorter form, dealing with only the surface movement of everyday human activity would be interesting – I was hoping that any premise or system could be revealed beneath this surface movement. The real story lies within the repeating causes of everyday transactions, this is what I wanted to capture in Everyday. I think I have achieved this.

MT: How long did Everyday take you to write it, Lee?

LR: Everything within the pages of Everyday was written in the same place: a pub in Hackney called The Talbot. I would get in early on a Saturday morning and aim to write about one story, from beginning to end, in the space of about four hours fuelled on red wine and coffee. Obviously this wasn’t always the case but I was surprised by the amount of work I could actually do in there. I enjoy the pub environment, it is a great place to sit, listen and observe. The pub would fill up around me and myriad voices, sounds and smells naturally permeated themselves into my collection. I was furiously writing each Saturday from about January 2006 until October 2006 – I have enough material for at least one more collection.

MT: Is there a unifying theme to your stories?

LR: I prefer to call them fragments. They are most definitely broken fragments of something bigger; nothing has been arranged as such, just scattered, just as fragments of something do when that same something is dropped or smashed – so yes, there is most definitely a theme running through the collection.

In James Joyce’s works, and especially in Dubliners, we are bombarded with a series of epiphanies: the conduit that connects both our and Joyce’s understanding. These epiphanies in Dubliners, the revelations and truths his characters experience, serve as a wider epiphany for the reader: through the characters’ minatory lives we at once see the whole of Dublin – the city – reveal itself: the epiphany we, as readers receive, is that Joyce’s Dublin – the labyrinthine city – is the 20th century mapped-out before us. Well, Everyday can be read as a sequence of anti-epiphanies: there is continually nothing to reveal and each character, and reader, is aware of this. These moments that aren’t particularly revelatory can most definitely be seen as something, some kind of trigger or mechanism, but nothing more, and, although inspired by Joyce, they are in no way Joycean epiphanies in that sense. Everyday simply reveals, over and over again, that there is nothing to wake up to. The only similarity – if I could ever dare compare the two – is that there is a bigger picture lurking underneath.

I suppose I can’t deny the theme of disintegration and repetition is prevalent throughout Everyday. Most of the characters within Everyday are walking away from something: be it work, an accident, or their own lives – essentially this ‘something’ they are walking away from is modernity. They know modernity is failing us. They are aware we are turning into automations whose sole purpose is to process electronic information within an air-conditioned environment day in day out. Like Ballard pointed out they know the ‘future is going to be boring’. Interspersed within this shared collapse are those who refuse such notions, a refusal acted out either consciously or unconsciously. When I say ‘characters’ they aren’t real people as such, they simply serve a purpose. There are only two character types in the whole collection: those who embrace boredom and those that fight it. Both archetypes are at loggerheads. I like this schism. I am interested in the violence within this friction, the violence caught in-between the ebb and flow of daily activity – the jagged fragments of the bigger picture.

MT: What attracts you to the short story form over the novel?

LR: I had just finished another novel and realised that it was over-written and way too long – in other words: a bit crap! I am of the opinion that a writer should hold back, that lessness is more. I was bitterly disappointed that I had wasted a huge amount of time writing this thing. For me the short story as a genre is more accurate, you can pinpoint far better and aim is easily achieved. There is no time for dilly-dallying along the page, for posturing – for writing, in fact. All writing is failure anyway, isn’t it? Why would I want to elongate such failure?

There’s a particular crispness to a collection of short stories that often appeals to me. Novellas appeal to me also. I have two novels in my bottom draw all typed up and edited that I might one day re-write.

MT: How do you write? Longhand or directly onto a computer, straight off or with lots and lots of editing?

LR: I mostly write longhand. If I’m writing in my Moleskine (Everyday was scribbled into three Moleskins) I always use Staedtler Noris 122-HB pencils. If I’m writing in the re-cycled spiral A4 ruled notebooks I steal from work then I always use a black Pilot Hi-Techpoint V5 Extra Fine pen. I edit when typing up onto my laptop, print it out, re-edit in red pen and then make the changes on-screen. A laborious process, yet a necessary one.

If I’m writing reviews and journalism I mostly type it straight into my laptop. I’m quite a proficient typist. Sub editors generally do a good job.

MT: What were the principle challenges of writing Everyday and how did you overcome them?

LR: I was very fortunate to have an amazing editor to work on Everyday: Andrew Gallix. Without his input the collection simply wouldn’t be the book it is today. He pointed out many things that I simply would never have seen or thought about. For instance, problems with dialogue and diction, ironing out those repetitive, infinitesimal ticks in my writing: certain words I use too much that are completely incongruous within the framework of narrative and voice. I just gave him the manuscript and left him to it and I more or less agreed with every change he suggested. I have a lot to learn.

MT: Tell us a little about your publisher, Social Disease, Lee?

LR: It’s an extremely exiting time for Social Disease Publishing right now with the amount of publicity they are receiving on both sides of the Atlantic. The novelist Heidi James started Social Disease last year when she brought out a collection of poems and short stories by the New York-based author Tony O’Neill. Mancunian author HP Tinker’s collection soon followed and then an anthology called The Flash edited by Peter Wild – all proceeds from this title go to Amnesty International. Everyday will be the fourth on Heidi’s burgeoning list, followed early next year by Ben Myers’ The Missing Kidney. I am proud to be part of such an independent venture – there aren’t that many people out there willing to do what Heidi James has done.

MT: What do you do when you are not writing?

LR: Lots of things. I am a Production Editor by trade – but work isn’t my life. I read, read, read. It seems that I’m always writing though, which interrupts my reading pleasure. What does anyone do in their spare time? I like to cook. I hang out in my kitchen a lot; it’s very big and there’s a nice table in there that’s great for reading the broadsheets on with a coffee. The kitchen window is big too and overlooks the road in Hackney where I live. I like to people -watch. I can watch them waiting at bus stops and walking in and out of the pubs and shops for hours on end. There’s a group of about twelve pigeons who hang out on the roof of a house across the road. I watch them a lot too. I can recognise each of them individually. I like to drink fine wine (although my idea of fine wine is anything French over £5 and under £10). A lovely Brouilly makes me very happy. I hang out with Holly my girlfriend. The usual stuff.

I abhor writers who think that writing and Literature (even being creative), and those that indulge in it, exist on a higher, purer plateau than the rest of society. Hilary Mantel made me want to puke once. I read an interview with her and when she was asked what she would do if she wasn’t a writer (or something like that) she had the vainglorious temerity to reply: “I’d die”. I hate that sort of answer. I really do. Writers are not that special. And Literature is not really that important.

MT: Did you have an idea in your mind of your "ideal" reader? Did you write specifically for them?

LR: Not especially. Everyday is not a political thriller! I will be happy if even one person I don’t know reads my book. When I’m writing readers do not exist in my mind. I’m too busy writing, thinking about that. I find it a hard enough task as it is.

MT: What are you working on now?

LR: I’ve just finished a novella called The Canal that I am very, very happy with. It’s about 60,000 words long and is about boredom, a man, a woman, and a swan. It’s most definitely a post 9/11 book that deals with the fetishisation of technology, terrorism and the fall of modernity as I see it. It is the result of three to four intense months of Heidegger, Schopenhauer, Bataille, Yeats and J.G. Ballard.

MT: Who is your favourite writer? What is/are your favourite book(s)?

LR: That’s a hard one. It changes all the time. Obviously I have to say Blaise Cendrars – although he doesn’t influence me in any way. Marguerite Duras, Michel Houellebecq. It all depends what mood I am in. I’m reading a lot of Beckett of late, and Blanchot (who I sometimes hate as well as love – one day he makes perfect sense to me, the other it is pure poetic gibberish. Great stuff all the same). When I just want to sit back and relax and not care I pick up any one of the Georges Simenon I have. If I’m in a serious mood I’ll read Heidegger or Keats’ letters. I am currently eking my way through the nouveau roman authors especially Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Antonio Tabucchi and Enrique Vila-Matas are great too.

MT: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!?

LR: Ha! You’re asking me!? Well, hold back as much as possible, don’t clutter things. But if you’re really serious about your writing you won’t be listening to me or anyone, you’ll be writing.

I’d just like to thank you, Mark, for your continued support and wealth of knowledge. There are many authors I wouldn’t have even knew existed if it wasn’t for your research and judgement. I’d also urge readers to spread the word about the great service The Book Depository provides.

Thanks, Mark.