Patrick deWitt interview: ‘Certain writers look down their noses at plot. I was one of them – until I tried it’

The author and screenwriter talks about his lucky break in a bar, making readers laugh and kicking genres in the teeth

A man walks into a bar and, two years later, the bartender has a publishing deal. That’s how it went for Patrick deWitt and, three books later, this stroke of good fortune still unnerves him. “If I hadn’t gone into work that day or if that man had decided to drink somewhere else … There’s so much luck involved in anyone’s success. I’m sure I would have seen it through in some other way but you have to take a moment.”

That was in the middle of the last decade, since when DeWitt has become a successful full-time writer based in Portland, Oregon. His second novel, a first-person cowboy and gold rush story with a very clever title – The Sisters Brothers – was a huge hit. It was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker prize, and next year will be made into a film directed by Palme d’Or winner Jacques Audiard. I meet DeWitt a few weeks before publication of the keenly anticipated follow-up to his bestseller, the less catchy sounding Undermajordomo Minor, which DeWitt says could be thought of as the second part in a loose trilogy of adventures.

Continue reading...