David Szalay on Flesh, the Booker Prize, and Writing at the 92nd Street Y
Winning a Booker Prize. Prestigious. Life-altering. And according to David Szalay, extraordinarily stressful.
“They make you have dinner with the other nominees before,” he shared in conversation with Sam Lipsyte at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. “The stress is unbearable.”
It wasn’t his first rodeo, though. The Booker Prize judges shortlisted his book All That Man Is, and he shared with the crowd that losing that helped him relax this time around. A judge told him they loved this book, but in a reluctant tone, so he figured he lost. ’Twas not to be. Flesh, his Booker Prize-winning novel, took the prize this time, and thus I found myself uptown in a packed room at the 92nd Street Y to chat about the book and Szalay himself.
Flesh grew out of the skeleton of a book Szalay abandoned. He worked on it for years, but felt a renewed sense that this novel would work once he started on it. It operated on simple principles for him: Hungarian and English roots, pulling from Szalay’s real life, the physicality of life, the tension between desire and disgust, and truly embodied characters. The first chapter of this book is salvaged from his lost work.
And despite idle online speculation, Szalay argues that István, Flesh’s main character, does have interiority. He’s irritated by the suggestion that he doesn’t possess it. “I don’t want a protagonist who explains himself,” he said. “The reader has to do it, which is a very human instinct.”
Moderator Sam Lipsyte eagerly pulled at threads Szalay started. A novelist and professor, both roles came into play here, with Lipsyte dissecting themes the way only a fiction teacher can. The men opened up the discussion to themes of masculinity. Szalay anticipated that for this novel, ironically more than he did for his book entitled All That Man Is, but he doesn’t want that to define it. He doesn’t think István quite fits into the tropes of masculinity briefly introduced in one scene in the book. Similarly, the book isn’t about Hungary to Szalay. It’s about European migration from east to west, driven by the economy and the formation of the European Union. “We have no control over these political things and how they shape our lives,” he said. Isn’t that the truth?
The audience eagerly submitted questions to the experienced 92nd Street Y team. I really enjoyed how measured the question takers were as they strode around the aisles. On whether the meaning of writing changed after winning the Booker Prize, his answer was no. On the cover of the book, it features an Adam and Eve motif, a striking image that resonated immediately with the team once presented. On his style of writing for this novel, he deliberately wrote more sparsely, a change from All That Man Is. This book saw quite a few drafts and became like editing a film. Chunks were rearranged, and two chapters were removed entirely to create a bigger but more dynamic gap between sections. On the ending, he doesn’t realize it until he gets there, not in terms of plot but in terms of the words. It just comes to him. On inspirations for the voice of this book, Virginia Woolf and Michel Houellebecq, hilariously, this question was about how a young writer can develop a voice, and his initial answer was simply, “I don’t know.” And on István’s relationship to women: read the book, he says.
The talk carefully avoided spoilers, as does this review of the literary event, so attendees could pick up a copy of Flesh and even get it signed. After listening to Szalay speak, and after seeing him win the Booker Prize, give this novel a try yourself. While you’re at it, check out what talks are happening at the 92nd Street Y in NYC. It’s a trip on the 4/5/6 away from seeing world-class authors, and to me, it is worth it every time.