You kind of became a smash hit at about 35.
I was wondering, in that sort of smash hit zone, as it were,
how does it feel when you're in it?
It's lovely. No, I'm joking.
You'd be amazed at how little difference it makes
to your life minute by minute.
I waste a lot of time. I do a lot of jigsaw puzzles and the crosswords.
I'm desperate to answer the phone if it does ring.
Every now and again, someone will recognize you
and say something incredibly nice.
And it's just trying to get the next thing written, really.
I'm really excited to meet Nick today.
He is one of the biggest authors I can think of.
The books make you laugh, but at the same time,
they've got something to actually say.
His latest book, I gobbled it up.
I really found it a page-turner.
I think that no matter who you are
or what you like to read about,
you will find something you identify with in his books.
( music playing )
- Hello. - Hi. Hello. Hi.
- Hiya. - Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
We're delighted to be with you today.
I was so excited that I decided to come dressed as your book.
Color coordination.
BookTube is a vibrant community where readers come to YouTube
to share their love of books and reading.
And it's such a huge pleasure to have you here with us.
Your accomplishments are just staggering.
You are an award-winning writer.
You're an Oscar-nominated screenwriter.
You're a songwriter, a music and film critic,
and a philanthropist.
Is there anything that you can't do?
- Cook. - Oh, there we go.
Today we have the privilege of chatting with you about your new novel,
"Just Like You," which is your 19th book.
( yelps )
- It's a modern love story... - Mm-hmm.
...with a younger, working-class black man,
an older middle-class white woman,
and I have to say the age gap
is not insignificant between them.
And their romance is unfolding
with the backdrop of the EU referendum.
- Yeah. - I'd love to know more about why you chose
those characters as your protagonists.
The idea of the couple came from observing
a very warm relationship in a shop.
One person behind the counter, the other person a customer.
And those class differences and age differences were there.
And I just started to think about all the things that would stop them
ever from getting together.
She's got a degree and he hasn't,
and he's young and she's older.
But then I started to wonder
how much of these were constructs.
One of the things that attracted me
to writing about Brexit in "Just Like You"
is that I was writing about people's confusion
and how all of us were lured way out of our comfort zones
to get very angry about things we didn't understand.
My favorite part of the book was Joseph's bluntness,
especially when he was faced with questions that were well-intentioned
but ultimately ignorant.
As somebody who's mixed race, I have heard questions like that before.
It seems like an innocent question, but if you respond bluntly as Joseph does,
they kind of scramble and try and make it not about race
when ultimately that is what it is about.
But I was just wondering as a white man,
how you managed to represent it in a way that I
as somebody who is mixed race can identify with it.
First of all, I'm just really pleased that you did identify.
All I can say is that I did what I have to do in all of my writing,
which is think very, very, very hard
about what it must be like to be somebody who is not you.
- Yeah. - And I've done that--
I wouldn't say I've done it all my career,
because my first two books were about men like me.
"Fever Pitch" was about me,
and "High Fidelity" was about a man like me.
I live in a very multicultural community,
and I don't think I can write about my community
- unless I write about people who are different from me. - Mm-hmm.
Hi, my name is Emma Dabiri,
and I am an author and a broadcaster.
My debut book "Don't Touch My Hair" came out last year.
It's called "Twisted" in the U.S.
I found this book incredibly well-observed.
Something in particular that struck me
was the very pervasive and almost constant
casual soft racism that Joseph experiences.
It's a really difficult thing to penetrate,
so I would just love to know more about how you're able
to perceive it and to write about it.
I just had to hope that all the novelistic skills
I'd built up from previous books
when I'm thinking about people who are not just like me,
whether that's kids or women or people who are older than me.
Every time you write anything, you have to think hard
and look closer and closer until what you come up with
is something that feels true to you.
And so I did that with Joseph and--
and then when I'd finished it,
I gave it to a couple of people of color to read.
And one of the notes that came back that there was too much about race in it.
- Mm-hmm. - And that was interesting to me
because I think the awkwardness of the characters
combined with the awkwardness of the writer writing about the characters
was probably too much, and I had to shave a level off
and be less self-conscious myself.
The dialogue in the book is so witty,
and I cackled a lot, particularly, like,
conversation with Lucy and her friend about sex in the bushes,
as well as some really awkward dates.
How do you research that? How do you come up with that?
Do you kind of sit very closely behind-- well, not currently now, obviously.
But do you sit very closely behind people and just listen in?
Or is it little, you know, vignettes that you just play with in your head?
I am incredibly nosy, and I have to say cell phones have been a gift to writers
because people just don't care what they say out loud
on trains and buses and in the street.
And so I'm constantly walking past people hearing
one half of a conversation thinking, "Jesus."
I've usually got headphones on when I'm traveling.
And then if I can see that there's something going on,
then the headphones come off and I try and listen to every word.
- Or have them on silent. - Yeah.
Hi, I'm Simon,
and I run the YouTube channel Savage Reads.
Got this today. "A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong."
I live in the north of England with my cats and my husband
and I talk about books, bath bombs, and much more.
So, today we're going to be doing quickfire round.
- Okay. - You just got to answer these questions
- with the first thing that comes to your mind. - Okay.
So, first up, favorite word that you can say.
- Discombobulated. - Good. It wasn't a rude one.
And what would people be surprised to know about you?
I don't know. People think I'm this guy writer,
but I only read books by women, really.
Oh, that is interesting. Favorite record?
The Duke Ellington Blanford Webster Sessions.
What's the first vinyl you bought?
The first Paul McCartney solo album.
What's your guilty pleasure? Not that I believe in them.
"Great British Bake Off" or liquorice allsorts.
Brilliant. Lots of musical references in your books.
Have you ever offended any artists?
Yes. I know for a fact that I have.
Simple Minds were not happy with me after "High Fidelity."
And if you weren't a writer, what would you be doing?
It's an impossible question.
There's nothing to stop me writing.
I know you have a charity called Ministry of Stories,
which works with authors and children.
I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about that.
The idea was that kids after school would walk into this space
and there'd be these young professionals there saying,
"Okay, let's do something. Let's write a story."
So we opened the Hoxton Street Monster Supply Store.
Behind that is the Ministry of Stories.
The Ministry of Stories helps you with writing.
And form of writing. We've done soap operas.
- Thanks. -
Voice: It's okay to be gay.
Our thing with the kids is that everything's written.
You might think you don't like writing,
but films are written, TV's written, rap's written,
cartoons are written, and you will meet people who do this stuff for a living.
And I think that access has got to make more difference than anything.
We don't want middle-class kids coming into our place particularly.
- Yeah, yeah. - We want them off the estates.
I think we have got to include kids who don't have access
so that they can understand that we're all on the same track.
I was from a benefits family when I was really, really young.
- Right. - I do think as well that underprivileged children
have least access to creative pursuits
- because creativity is seen as a luxury. - Yeah.
So, yeah, kids coming in from the estates, as you mentioned,
- is just so wonderful. - If you look at everyone we've ever valued
as an artist, almost none of them had privilege.
Dickens was from a proper poor family.
You know, his dad was in prison for debt.
Jane Austen had no money.
Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley,
the greatest artists in history
- came from a non-privileged background. - Hmm.
Hey, guys, I'm Becca from the YouTube channel Becca & the Books.
This one. Oh, no!
I have been reading as long as I can remember.
I like to be very honest about everything.
Honest about all of my thoughts and feelings.
Would you read the last line for us?
I really like that. It's more of a journey than a close thing.
- More of a journey than a destination, yeah. - Yeah.
That is the phrase I was looking for.
I am a mother of two and a writer,
and I was really interested how parenthood has influenced your writing
and also was wondering if your children read your books.
No. They seem to find the idea that they might read my books hilarious.
Given they don't read any books, why would they read mine?
- Fair enough. - There's a little theme in the book
that came from them, which is that I was talking to my youngest son
about literacy rates and he said, "What?
You mean people can't read and write?"
And I said, "Yes." And he said,
"I can't imagine that because I read all the time."
And then I laughed and said, "Well, you read nothing."
And he said, "I read all the time.
You can't have a phone if you're not reading."
- Mm. - He said, "I don't know any of my friends
who aren't desperate to read what's on their phones."
And so I started to think about
what we associate with literacy actually in a different way.
There is somehow a moral superiority...
- Mm-hmm. - ...associated with book reading,
which I think we should lose, actually.
I do wonder if it is, as well, we like to escape into fiction
and actually not pay attention to the news as much.
That's the only thing I worry about with the youth
is, like, how much they are consuming it.
At the moment, it's a time of intense anxiety for young people.
I mean, something that anyone older than them has not really experienced.
The mess that their schooling is in because of COVID,
and then they've got this constant nagging in their ear
that the world's going to end anyway because of global warming.
They are being told constantly that we're heading to this point of disaster.
And there's a lot of dystopian fiction.
There's a lot of dystopian television.
And one of the things that I feel determined to do
is to offer some kind of grounded optimism.
I think it's actually a moral duty at the moment
of artists, filmmakers, and writers.
You can't keep telling kids that everything's hopeless.
- Mm. - Yeah.
I like the note of optimism.
Well, yeah, it's that or, you know,
it's just sort of rabid dogs and tumbleweed.
I don't really want to think about that one.
That's the title of your next book.
"Rabid Dogs And Tumbleweeds," yeah.
And that's a perfect note to end on.
- Thank you so much, Nick. - Thank you.
I've loved talking to you all.
The book made me cackle quite a lot.
Make sure you check out "Just Like You."
Oops.
( music playing )