SPIEGEL ONLINE: Her character Steven Stelfox is back in the music industry. The has changed a lot since his professional beginnings in the nineties. Why is he coming back?
Niven: Stelfox left the music industry around 2003 when CD sales went down the drain. Many people still think that the internet has destroyed the music business. But in reality, companies have long since found new ways to make money. YouTube or Spotify do not pay as much as they should and there is not enough on the artists. But the record companies are earning more money than they have in a long time. So thinks Stelfox: "Wait, that's worth it again, how can I get back in there?"
ddp images / Capital Pictures
Nicholas Hoult in the Niven novel adaptation "Kill Your Friends" (2015)
SPIEGEL ONLINE: His way back to business is a pretty blatant plan.
Niven: Yes, he wants to kill the biggest pop star in the world, but then bring him back. The star is pedophile and is to be blackmailed and ruined. But that would also ruin the record company. So he thinks first: we should just kill him. But then all the rumors about Elvis come to mind that he's alive somewhere. And he decides: We catch the death of our star, hide it, make up some story, stage the comeback and earn double.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is not that a bit bloated?
Niven: Stifox would just point to the TV, where Donald Trump calls his inauguration ceremony the greatest of times. That's the world today. A lie can not be big enough. The bigger the better. As long as you yell out loud enough and repeat it often enough.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You have Stelfox in the book saying Trump would be the perfect A & R man. Why?
Niven: Because he knows how to satisfy his fan base. And besides, because he knows that there is no bottom, no bottom. As an A & R man, Stelfox never wanted to discover Radiohead, he was talking about pop stars, about the smallest common multiple. That's how Trump works.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Can you personally recognize something good about the populist method?
Niven: I find this wave in the US really scary. The American writer HL Mencken pointed out in his thirties that you can become president if you tell people all that crazy, malicious stuff they want to believe. You knew it would work, but nobody was crazy enough to give it a try. And then came the storm, not only Trump, but also the Right in Germany, in Italy, people like Nigel Farage in England.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Some people see a possible answer to countering with a kind of populism from the left. Do you give the chance?
Niven: Difficult. For to play this game you have to speak a language that is demagogic and seditious in nature. And we should not address that part of the brains of the people. That is also one of the irritating consequences of social media: Everyone suddenly has a voice. But I do not want to hear from many people - because they are terrible people.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But is not that simply democratic?
Niven: Well, in the past there were filters. Editors, A & R people, they've filtered out the madmen and the undead. Do you know the Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park? Where you can just stand on a crate and scream around, that the world ends and you are Jesus? The Internet has transformed the world into a single Speaker's Corner. Especially in the US, there are many madmen who want to hear the lunatics who like what the lunatics have to say. With these people, I try to have some fun in my books.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The big pop star, around which "Kill 'em All" revolves, has many features of Michael Jackson. A documentary about him and his dealings with children is making headlines again. Do you still enjoy Jackson's music?
Niven: Yes. I found it very strange that the matter was not a big topic at his death. But I notice that the older I get, the more I separate art from the artist. Michael Jackson was a very damaged, but also harmful person. But his work is still great. Or let's take Morrissey: The fact that he has developed into a bitter, racist idiot does not detract from what he did as a young man with the Smiths. But many younger people may react more politically and say: I never want to hear his music anymore.
AP
Pop star Jackson with children
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So you think that's a question of generations? Or has the moral atmosphere of society changed in general?
Niven: I do not know. For me, human morality has little to do with art. I think it's more about how you want to live your life. And many musicians or writers are not very nice people. Some people take me because of my books for misogynist, homophobic or right-wing radical - like some characters in it. That worries me about the future, because that's a parental failure. Many people no longer know what a novel is and what a novel can do.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: If you put your books in the minds of these people, is that really fun? Or do not you come out a little bit changed after a day of writing Stelfox?
Niven: Bret Easton Ellis once said that he finds it difficult to keep the voice of Patrick Bateman in mind for a long time. I find that overdramatized. I think it's more with Nabokov: For him, his characters were galley slaves doing what he wanted. How does a character like Stelfox work? By letting him say something completely outrageous, but as if it came from common sense. As if it would not be wrong to think so, as if everyone thought so. Only then will it be funny. So, do not worry: I'm not coming out of the study to the kitchen and talking to my wife like Stelfox.
DISPLAY
John Niven:
Kill 'em all
From the English by Stephan Glietsch
Heyne Verlag; 384 pages; 20 Euros
Order at Amazon. Order from Thalia.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So here we are again with Trump's method: Even with him is in virtually every tweet any exaggeration.
Niven: Yeah, that's a real problem. I can barely remember the last time I was at a party or a meal and he did not show up after 20 minutes at the latest. I can not speak for other authors, but it seems to me impossible to write a contemporary novel in which Trump does not appear today.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Really?
Niven: Yes, Trump has so infected the world's consciousness. To be honest, I can not wait for him to die. I will celebrate! Pretty big! If there was justice, he would die a painful death while in jail for high treason.