Ben Pester’s Shelf Life

Ben Pester’s debut short story collection Am I in the Right Place? was published by Boiler House Press, and was long listed for the 2022 Edge Hill Prize. His work has appeared in Granta, The London Magazine, Hotel, Five Dials and elsewhere. When not writing fiction, he is a technical writer. He lives with his family in North London.

How and where are you?

I'm in the kitchen, and feeling ok. It's a Sunday morning which means everyone is very slowly eating breakfast and getting homework out of the way. I'm writing this as a sort of warm up for what I'm hoping to work on later. There are only a few hours in which I can write, so I'm hoping I make the most of it. I feel close to disaster in this current draft, which is usually a good sign. What would be the point of writing something easy? There's a bit of sun outside. The starlings have absolutely rinsed the birdfeeder. Peaceful. Though the idea of experiencing peace is strange at this moment. Or abhorrent. It doesn’t feel earnt, if this is peace. You can hear the neighbours playing music to themselves in their gardens — it’s just about warm enough. The speech of squirrels hoping to place a stolen almond. Meanwhile, everything grinds on. A sickness for killing each other and fucking everything up. I go marching against the invasion of Gaza.

I hear loudest, the voices of young people, young women whose voices through the loud hailer could galvanize a cloud. And then I feel ashamed of being impressed. Of thinking about them when they are demanding that I pay attention to people who need it. I shuffle on. I think about the other genocides in the world. I think about how foolish we are. I come back home. I make sure my Palestine flag is visible at all times in the coat cupboard, so I remember those people. I give money — but what use is money? You have to believe in people. And I do — addictively I do believe in humanity. You just have to remember not to rest on hope, especially when it comes from those who are younger than you. They are actually asking you — need you — to act. 

With the coat cupboard door closed, I worry constantly about my kids — like am I doing a good enough job? I worry about the decline we’re in. What is even gonna be left? There’s a tree in the garden. There’s a garden! Jesus it should be enough. How do we even go on? 

But the kids seem fine. Maybe it's ok. It's not, obviously, but maybe it is. All this as I write it down sounds like a lot, but it's just normal nutrino-sized worry that rushes through everything constantly, whatever else I’m doing. If you looked at me, I’d seem fine. I’m fine. 

At work, it's the same: I'm sitting here. It all seems fine. I used to wonder what would happen when they find me out. I have realised that they won’t — there’s nothing there to find. I work hard. Everyone is working hard. Everyone is thinking the same things.


What are you reading right now?

I was just reading August Blue, the new Deborah Levy. Stunning as always. I find her work gives me a great energy and confidence for writing. There are a few around like that. M John Harrison also has that power, I think. I am very late to his work, and thanks to a few comparisons between my work and his, I have tried to avoid getting in too deep. The comparisons are vastly flattering to me. When I read The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, I almost felt like I ought to just stop trying to write. But that’s never what happens –— I write more, and probably better. Fractionally better. It’s incredible how some writers can build into their work this silent layer of generosity. A gift is made of the ideas and the language that seems layered in there for you to take on with you, and it becomes part of your work. Maybe. Maybe they do that, but maybe they just get on with it and enjoy themselves.

There are loads more. A few months ago I attended the launch of Kevin Boniface’s new book — Sports and Social — such a warm and friendly event. They had cake and tea! Not normally what I want on a Friday night in Brixton, but somehow perfect.

Last week it was Holly’s launch of The Lodgers. This is my sister, Holly Pester. You’re going to ask me about my influences soon, I can tell, and I’ll talk about almost everyone except her. It’s like asking birds if they are influenced by the air. Holly’s work has always moved and amazed me. Her novel is exactly as linguistically dashing, funny, and heart-breaking as I expected.

And, of course, watching or listening to?

Gardeners World has come to an end for the year. I had been preparing myself for this. I’ve been watching it for about 14 years. I have learnt exactly zilch about gardening. Couldn’t tell you the right end of a trowel. But I miss it when it’s not there. My favourite is when they talk about the idea of drama in the garden. You can’t tell where the garden ends, they say, because these hedges make it look like it might go on forever. I like that. I like it too when the textures make the garden surround you and take you away from the difficulty of normal existence. What’s there? Just beyond that hedge? I’ll tell you, it’s the fence we need to get repaired. Beyond that is a fox and the couple with a fig tree who prune it with a chainsaw.



What did you read as a child?
Before secondary school, I can’t honestly remember. I can't remember very much really from before I was 12. I worry about this too – other people tell me they can recall vividly the time, aged three, when they first picked up a paint brush. I feel like must have been assembled as a pre-teen with a few sequences programmed in. Like the Casio keyboard demo function that could make it look like you were playing ‘Careless Whisper.’ 

I probably read Roald Dahl, I guess. All the normal stuff that kids read because we are forced to, and then as adults claim were life-changing experiences and insist these books be read by our children or they'll grow up wrong. I remember those books half in my own voice and half in the voice of my father. 

I do remember that there was this book ordering scheme at my school. You’d pick a book from a mini catalogue, ask your parents for the money, and then the school ordered them for you. A few weeks later everyone got some books. 

I’d say we were able to afford this once, maybe twice in my life. Those catalogue books were the sweetest books. I didn’t need to read them to know they were precious and brilliant things. I got Carbonel. Don’t ask me what that’s about. A cat. A gorgeous purple cover and a moon.

Bookshops also, I remember, were good places. New books or used books. Bookshops are a place without a top-end. With a few silly luxury exceptions, one book costs the same as another. If you have a book token, it seems, you can go into a bookshop and nothing is out of reach. 

Around the age of 13 I read Exclusively Terry Pratchett (there must have been others but I don’t remember them). There was a guy in my class who would shoplift them for me and I’d pay with the money I was meant to spend on lunch. 

When I was 16 someone handed me a copy of Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. they handed it to me from my Mum’s own bookshelf. It turned out I’d been living in a small but brilliant library for years without even noticing. After that I went crazy for those American writers, Bukowski, Burroughs, a tiny bit of Paul Auster. I tried to read Ulysses and your man hadn’t even finished shaving before I was lost. I guess I was no longer a kid really when I first read Mill on the Floss.  


Which books and/or writers have inspired and influenced you?
I wasn’t really expecting to write fiction at all. I thought I’d become a playwright. Pinter was a big influence there, along with those other A-level classics — Brecht and Artaud. With these last two writers, and I believe in Beckett too, was the idea of making rather than writing. I loved the idea becoming someone like Dario Fo. Doing this kind of chaotic writing that was as much a vehicle for bufoonery, anger and rudeness as it was a place to say pretty things. I liked a bit of Ibsen too, weirdly. I loved Sarah Kane. I loved the kind of theatre made by people like Forced Entertainment — whose artistic director Tim Etchells continues to write and make concurrently, reminding me there is no line.

There are so many brilliant writers right now. I am aware that this has probably always been true, and that only certain work will last through decades and generations. So, what I try to do is to as much as possible be inside this moment. There are inspiring young writers. There are writers who have been in the game for a while but are trying new things or finding new life. It’s not a perfect industry, everyone is working too hard just to keep a lid (and a roof) on it all, but the writing itself is astonishing.

I think I expected to be famous or something by the time I got to 40. But I’m glad I’m not. Everything seems to be happening at its own speed. And also maybe nothing is happening which is also fine.



What’s the worst review you’ve ever received?
If you get a review it means you published something, so, really, bad reviews should be locked away and not worried about. You got the book published — it has been loved by a whole group of people who made it happen. Their investment of time and money and their talent is much more valuable than someone’s review. Maybe if it happens to me I’ll feel differently. I hope that in the long run a bad review from a good critic would be helpful for the next book. 

I try to remember all of this when I find myself agonising over someone giving my book a three on Goodreads. Three is a good score, and someone has read the book. Stop worrying. It goes on for ages. It’s pathetic. Writers looking at Goodreads is like the opposite of what it is all for. But I still do it and I probably won’t stop. I got a one star on there once, and immediately gave myself a five to balance it out. You can only do this trick once, but it’s perfectly legal.

In my rather cowardly view, the worst — absolute worst — reviews are rejection letters. They are why I only submit stories to places if they've asked me to. It saves embarrassment on both sides. If they eventually don’t publish what I’ve sent, that’s fine, they took the time to ask. It seems somehow less horrible than hearing how high the standard has been in this submission window. How nearly we included you. But sorry and so on. Like you’ve entered the x-factor. Jesus.

With books, the risk of rejection is different. If your book is going out, it means your agent was into it. This muffles the pain of the world like a mother's love. Also, I think that commissioning editors for books are making decisions about their own reputation, especially for debut or new-ish writers, when they weigh up your work. They’re deciding whether to climb into the bunker you’ve made. Or rabbit hole. Something odd and possibly structurally dangerous any way.

Stories in magazines seem a bit easier to take a risk on, and no agent is involved. Rejections on these terms feel more personal. It's only a step away from just being told you're shit to your face. 

Tell us a little about your creative process.

Oh god I just try and write as often as I can. 

This usually involves a kind of peripheral fiddling around with whatever is already there (there = in the document on my laptop. I do write in notebooks frequently but rarely for the Main Thing. I don’t copy across. If it’s in a notebook then it’s more for reference).

The more I’m tinkering, the more the world seems able to permeate into the work. Unsurprisingly, maybe, a repeated thing that’s happening now is I’m seeing death as not the end of a character’s life. Most of my new stories exist after life has ended or during some kind of interlude.



Tell us about your experience of the publishing industry.

I have been lucky. As I have tried to get my work noticed, I have found a lot of generosity and support from other writers and publishing people generally. I found out that meeting writers and editors doesn’t mean you have to somehow present yourself as more like a writer. Nobody wants you to pitch to them, which is a massive relief. But everyone (well most people) knows what it’s like when you’re just starting to try stuff out.

Because of the admin job I had at Goldsmiths University, I experienced a lot of the publishing industry vicariously, to begin with. I was just friends with a lot of poets, and they have always been good to me.



What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Never go back.

It only made sense at the time –— but it was exactly right. This is also the kind of advice that is excellent when completely ignored in some circumstances. But it is there as a little unenforceable sign — should I give this up and go back? It’s great to at least have a starting position on this question. No, never go back. Unless you think it would actually be better.

Maybe this should be writing advice. I try never to give non-specific writing advice, it always sounds good. You feel like you know something, and then you try to apply it and the ground vanished from under your feet.

I guess, there’s this editing advice that I give to myself, which is not to try and make the thing ‘good’ but instead keep working until you are sure you are saying what you mean. You see? That feels like good advice to me, but what the fuck is anyone supposed to actually do with it.

Good luck to you all.


What are you working on right now?

Ah — I’m nearly done with this novel. My new Short story collection is already finished and awaiting its friend so they can step out together into the cold night of submissions.

I also keep writing this thing about an almanac that has a life of its own — it seems open ended, like it’s always there when I need to skive off. Maybe that was good advice I read once too — have something on the go that isn’t as important as the main thing. That way you can skive off and still be doing something.