"As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?" -- Jonathan Coe
Jonathan Coe (born 19 August 1961) is an English novelist and writer. His work has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up! reworks the plot of an old 1960s spoof horror film of the same name. It is set within the "carve up" of the UK's resources which some believed was carried out by Margaret Thatcher's right wing Conservative governments of the 1980s.
"Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem.""As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.""As the books grew bigger and more ambitious, the situations in question sometimes became political ones, and so it became necessary to start painting in the social background on a scale which eventually became panoramic.""But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.""But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.""But we are entitled to look for continuity in politics.""But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.""Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.""I became quite taken over by Johnson's personality at some points while writing the biography, and since I went straight on to The Closed Circle afterwards, I did sometimes feel I could hear him whispering in my ear while I was working on it.""I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.""I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.""I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about!""I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.""It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.""It's only a drawback in the States, where most people seem to have no real interest in other countries and the notion of a novel which might offer insight into life in the UK doesn't seem to appeal very widely.""Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do.""My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it.""Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.""The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it.""The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's.""The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.""They were written in the early '90s when I was strapped for cash.""Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.""You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it."
Coe was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. He studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Trinity College, Cambridge. He taught at the University of Warwick, where he completed a PhD in English Literature.
Coe was long interested in both music and literature. He played with a band and tried to get a recording of his music.
He published his first novel in 1987. As of 2010, he has published nine novels. They have been well received and three have won literary awards.
Coe read an excerpt of The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim to crowds at the Latitude Festival. The central character was to be "a product of the social media boom," and "the sort of person with hundreds of Facebook friends but no one to talk to when his marriage breaks up.".
Both What a Carve Up!' (1994) and The Rotters' Club (2001) have been adapted as drama serials for BBC Radio 4. The Rotters' Club was adapted for television and broadcast on BBC Two. The Dwarves of Death (1990) was filmed as Five Seconds to Spare.
Jeremy Dyson, author of The League of Gentlemen, is adapting What a Carve Up! for Channel 4. This new TV project is in development with Big Talk (Black Books, Free Agents) but has yet to be formally commissioned by C4.
Music is a constant thread in Coe's oeuvre. He played music for years and tried to find a record label as a performer before becoming a published novelist. He had to wait until 2001 to make his first appearance on a record with 9th & 13th (Tricatel, 2001), a collection of readings of his work, set to music by jazz pianist/double bass player Danny Manners and indiepop artist Louis Philippe.
Coe is a lifelong fan of Canterbury progressive rock. His novel The Rotters' Club is named after an album by Hatfield and the North. He has contributed to the liner notes for that band's archival release Hatwise Choice. He recently said: "I'd love to find a pianist to collaborate with — maybe Alex Maguire, who is now playing with the reformed line-up of Hatfield and the North". Coe has also collaborated with flautist Theo Travis.
In 2009, Coe took part in Oxfam's first annual book festival — 'Bookfest'. Along with William Sutcliffe, Coe volunteered for the Oxfam Bloomsbury Bookshop in London on Thursday 9 July. Coe and Sutcliffe were each asked to choose a theme, and to find books from the stockroom to set up in the shop's window. Coe chose satire as the theme for his display. He chose books about or by Michael Moore, Bill Hicks and Steve Bell, and Tragically I Was an Only Twin: The Comedy of Peter Cook. He also unearthed a script of Terry Gilliam’s film, Brazil.
Coe donated a story to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Coe's story was published in the Earth collection.
