Paul Shipton talks to Kathryn Saeb-Parsy about his interest in Greek Myths and the provenance of a pig called Gryllus.

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PAUL SHIPTON interviewed by KATHRYN SAEB-PARSY

Paul Shipton grew up in Manchester and attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge and Manchester University. He completed an MPhil in Philosophy and an MA in Classics. He spent several years teaching English as a foreign language - living in Istanbul for a year. Paul then moved into publishing working on science activity books and primary school English materials. By his own admission he wasn't sure that he wanted to be a writer: when he was growing up he was an avid reader but wanted to be the characters in the books, not their creator. He published his first book, Zargon Zoo - in his own words, "a fairly daft science fiction story written for people learning English". Four years later came Paul's breakthrough book, the hilarious Bug Muldoon and the Garden of Fear. Paul decided he wanted to write about animals that weren't cute and cuddly but were different from humans. The name 'Bug Muldoon' just popped into his head. He had always liked the 'hard-boiled' style of writers like Raymond Chandler, and the name just struck him as being right for the character he had created. Paul and his family moved to the U.S for a while, where he worked as a freelance editor and writer. Happily for us, he has now returned to England. Paul won the Bronze Smarties Prize Award for The Pig Scrolls.

Where did you get your idea for the Gryllus the Pig novels?

 I was reading a very good book by Marina Warner called, No Go the Bogeyman. Warner is a cultural historian with a particular interest in art history but she’s one of these polymaths who ranges over every possible subject. In Bogeyman there’s a section on the immagery of transformation and a chapter on the Circe myth as part of the Odyssey. Her analysis is very interesting. She also mentioned, somewhat in passing, a comic dialogue by the Greek writer Plutarch featuring a pig called Gyrllus. The pig out-argues Odysseus on the merits of ‘pigdom’ versus humanity. The dialogue is quite dry to the modern ear but in its day it was comedy gold. So although he is not very well known at all, Gryllus is a character from ancient literature that I thought needed brushing down and updating.

Can you tell us why you used the narrative device of having many of your stories told through the eyes of animals? Why do you like doing this so much?

It has just happened really. With Bug Muldoon I had been reading Raymond Chandler – I wanted to do a story like that but living in rural Hertfordshire at the time could not really compare to the mean streets of LA! It therefore needed to be a spoof version. The Mighty Skink was more intentionally meant to be about animals. Then the pig scrolls came along. My mother recently asked me if I had started a new book yet and suggested that I might want to give the animals a rest! Your love of ancient Greek history obviously shines through these books. It was an interest years back in my student days but I only revisited it having had the idea to do the book. I was slightly worried though when there was one review that said something like, ‘This will teach you more about Greek mythology and Greek history than any textbook.’ I think that if you really want to learn about Greek history, get a textbook – I tend to use it as my setting and centuries of Greek history are all pushed into one moment. Gryllus is a witty and entertaining character -

 Do you and Gryllus have anything in common? Do you see Gyrllus as an ancient anti-hero?

 He’s witty and entertaining but he’s also selfish and greedy. His obsession with food is autobiographical! The work anti-hero is a slippery term because I think a lot of so-called anti heroes, to go back to Raymond Chandler’s idea, are really knights in tarnished armour. They are really heroes in heavy disguise. Gryllus is not exactly like this but I think that he is a character who comes good eventually.

Your translator’s notes add an interesting dimension to the book – how did these develop?

 Originally my very first idea was to completely push this conceit of first person narration and not even name the author, which wouldn’t have mattered – there was not much of a reputation to sell the book on. My publisher wasn’t keen on that so we still stuck with the front matter and end notes billing me as the translator - there’s some sort of story about finding the scrolls in the British Museum and so on. When I get books I always like to look at the bits at the beginning. It’s about going beyond the text - the text these days is not just the book, the text often starts before the first chapter. Absolutely – given that it had its origins in classical text there’s a sort of element of spoof academia about it all so the translator’s notes seem to fit in. I did read something that said this sort of thing was borrowing a page out of Terry Pratchett’s books – his children’s books are just terrific. I actually stopped reading his book when I was writing The Pig Scrolls because he has done every joke going and he’s usually done it better!

Do you think you will write another book in this series?

Possibly, Gryllus was a lot of fun to live with and I would hate to leave it where it is, although I feel as if it is not my decision. I slightly tweaked the ending of the second book, which in its first draft more clearly paved the way for a third and final book. These things come and go in and out of fashion – not too long ago, people were talking about trilogy fatigue. At one point the publishers were saying that if you conceive a book as a trilogy you were on tricky ground because the middle inevitably has a dip as it bridges to the climax. I did the first as a one-off and then I pestered the publisher to do a second because I really wanted to. I didn’t sit and wonder how many books I could get out of this idea. If it ever became something that wasn’t fun to do, I would abandon it. My editor has given up asking me when the next book is coming. I wouldn’t want to shift the balance so that I am writing more of these books than my other work because it starts to feel a bit trivial if all you are doing it sitting making jokes about pies all day!

Thank you Paul Shipton for talking to Write Away