Many Nice Things
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with writer Tom Cox
Welcome to another edition of The Body, Brain, & Books. If you enjoy reading these quick, insightful interviews brimming with wisdom and hope, please subscribe to Beyond!
Tom Cox was born in Nottinghamshire and now lives in Devon. He is the author of the novels Villager and (published this summer) 1983, Sunday Times bestselling The Good, The Bad and The Furry and the William Hill Sports Book-longlisted Bring Me the Head of Sergio Garcia. His 21st-Century Yokel was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize, and the titular story of Help the Witch won a Shirley Jackson Award. He writes the brilliant and beautiful newsletter The Villager.
What are you reading now?
Lately I’ve been on a golden run of novels from - or set in - the early part of the 20th Century, all themed in some way around society and what it means: Virgina Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (which made me think a few of the things I’m doing in the novel I’m currently writing - https://unbound.com/books/everything-will-swallow-you - aren’t so crazy and far-out after all), Mary McCarthy’s The Group and finally Edith Wharton’s The Age Of Innocence which I’m hoping to finish in a few hours. I also have Portrait Of A Lady by Henry James on the go on audiobook.
What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
Tootles The Taxi was my literary first love, then, also from Ladybird, the late 60s versions of their Well-Loved Tales series (which I wrote about here) with that particularly spooky and haunting and occasionally psychedelic set of illustrations by the likes of Robert Lumley and Eric Winter. I remember nagging my parents to read Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr Fox to me over and over again. It was gratifying to hear a couple of early readers of my new novel 1983 tell me it reminded them of Sue Townsend and Kurt Vonnegut. I remember thinking The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4 and The Growing Pains Of Adrian Mole were the funniest things in the whole universe when I was ten and feeling traumatised that there were no more books in the series to read at that point. After a long hiatus from reading, I devoured about seven Vonneguts in succession in my late teens. I hadn’t thought about either author for years until receiving that feedback but it would appear both are embedded in my psyche, forever. Lots of people told me to read cool new journalism and counterculture memoirs and druggy bro novels in my early 20s. I liked some, tried to like others. At the same time I picked up Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album by Joan Didion, without anybody recommending them, and they hit the mark much more solidly and proved more lastingly seductive to the overreaching writer part of me. It was my parents who encouraged me to read Vonnegut. They were always happy that I was reading and a bit concerned when I became a low grade sports delinquent and stopped reading books almost entirely during my teens. I can’t imagine having had to hide any book from them, apart from maybe in the hugely unlikely event that my adolescent tastes had run to Jeremy Clarkson or Andrew Tate, which is a moot point since neither of these abominations had been invented at that relatively innocent point in history.
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
I am not a big rereader, but I have been through EL Doctorow’s Ragtime three times (or maybe it's four). It’s got pretty much everything I want from a novel and taught me so much about rhythm and voice. Doctorow is my favourite novelist of all time on some days. I remember feeling sad and cold and lonely one winter day in a tiny bedsit and getting utterly, blissfully lost in John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire. There are also countless ostensibly “weird” or “niche” but passionately loved novels that I read between 2002 and 2012 - the main part of my life when people were telling me that I would never be permitted to write the books I am writing now - and each of them felt like a kind of “Fuck you” to the amorphous voice in my head comprised of agents and publishers and London media folk that was telling me to play it safe and be a good obedient market-driven provincial pleb and play the game. The accumulation of those “Fuck you”s were a big part of what enabled me to finally write the novels I wanted to
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
Not so long ago I might have said flares and walking boots (although not simultaneously). Now I’d probably say a nice cotton granddad shirt/kaftan or elephant cords… and walking boots. I’m also fond of floral ponchos. I am always aware that the flares and ponchos would look better if they had more hair flying around above them but I’m accepting of the fact that I’ve passed the stage in my life where I suit long hair. Short hair can be nice, though. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn had short hair. When I first had short hair I thought someone might come along and tell me I wasn’t allowed to listen to West Coast acid rock albums from 1968 any more but apparently it’s still permitted, which has been a relief.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you’ve encountered recently?
“We are only as possible as what happened to us yesterday. We all change as we move.” - William Kennedy (Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game)
Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
My partner and I dearly miss the massive sheep who lived near our old house, who we used to climb over a wall to cuddle. She was quite a bully to the rest of her flock (the sheep, not my partner) but unusually tactile by ovine standards, and inordinately fond of chin rubs. Jim, our huge soppy ginger cat who wandered over from a barn where he was living sixteen months ago and asked if he could live with us instead, is like no other cat I’ve ever known and completely scotches the myth that cats are “aloof” and “only motivated by food”. Jim is only motivated by chest rubs, Dave Brubeck records and the possibility of kissing your nose as many times as possible in one day.
What’s one thing you are happy worked out differently than you expected?
I’m not going to answer this in detail as you haven’t got that much room on your page and even if you did your readers probably wouldn't have time to read the labrythine answer. But I will say this: at one point, long before 2015 when I quit journalism for good, I would fantasise, as a writer of columns here and there for national newspapers, about the idea of getting my most regular and significant income via a column on a more prominent and widely read page in one of those newspapers. At the time - especially the specific time when I lost almost all my other regular newspaper work and I was told I wasn’t allowed to write any more books - it seemed hugely attractive but I think it would have been one of the worst things that could have happened to my development as a writer. Trying to conjure, weekly, if not even more frequently, out of a box of - probably increasingly stagnant - air, strong opinions and feelings on people and events you don’t, deep down, even have half-arsed opinions and feelings on, for a readership consisting of a sizeable number of people who read such things just to intentionally annoy themselves? No thanks. I’m infinitely happier in books, or here on Substack, writing about old buildings, Moby Grape albums and sheep.
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
Dancing in the kitchen. Every time. ‘Unhooked Generation’ by Freda Payne, ‘Peace Frog’ by The Doors or the Cher version of Dr John’s ‘Walk On Gilded Splinters’ preferably.
What are your hopes for yourself?
To be able to witness the people and animals I love live long, happy, healthy lives. To be able to continue writing and publishing and reading as many books as possible until I no longer can owing to an extreme case of death. To one day have a garden of my own to shape and witness as it matures. To be able to carry on buying the occasional rare weird record or two with the audible gold dust of time sprinkled on it. In that order.
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
Two that spring to mind out of many I’m sure I could think of, if I really sat down with the question and considered the different complex ways it could be interpreted. 1. In 2001 man called Martin Fletcher took the time to give me feedback on the first fiction I ever attempted to write. The feedback was harsh, but kind. The publisher he worked for didn’t want the book and he wasn’t being paid to give me the feedback but he somehow saw some potential in the clumsy young blokey crap that I wrote. I read his comments and listened. When the book finally came out, reworked as memoir, he had changed jobs. He now worked as a book reviewer for a newspaper. The book just happened to land in his lap when that week’s reviewing tasks were distributed. He gave it an enormously positive review. Which was also kind, because one thing was for sure: even in its reworked form, it was no masterpiece. 2. In 2020 a man called Hugh who was tending his flock of sheep told me to knock on a lady’s door about renting a house near his. He didn’t know how desperate or I was at the time or how poorly I’d recently been - unless perhaps he saw it in my eyes - and maybe a lot of people would have guided me in the same direction in his position. But he helped save me from a bad house and nudged me into the beginning of a phase which has included many nice things I’d waited a long time for and still seems to be taking place as we speak.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
Ellie, long walks, spring, psychedelic music, burritos, animals, crisps and the novels of Carol Shields.
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Thank you. Tom Cox is a treasure. So happy to have discovered him here.
Jane, enjoyed this interview. I am currently reading Tom's book Villager. Quite the interesting read.