Posted by: Mark Haddon - Author, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, A Spot of Bother

Being a few of the most enjoyable questions I’ve been asked over the last four years, together with my answers

1. Name the best Simpsons episode of all time, and explain why it’s the best. (Ink Magazine)

‘Time and Punishment’, the one where Homer ‘mends’ the toaster, accidentally turns it into a time machine, and finds himself repeatedly sucked back to the Age of the Dinosaurs where he keeps squashing something, thereby altering the course of evolution with horrific consequences. There’s a crescendo of high-density jokes at the end which made me almost sick with laughter the first time I saw.

If I make any attempt to describe the jokes I’ll kill them stone dead. But anyone who’s seen the episode will remember the bit where it rains donuts.

Actually, to be precise, ‘Time and Punishment’ is a mini-episode contained with the ‘Treehouse of Horror V’ Halloween special, which also contains the rather wonderful ‘ Nightmare Cafeteria’ where the staff at Bart’s school are killing, cooking and eating the children…

2. Which are your favourite flavoured crisps, and why? (Guardian online Q & A)

I’ m not really a crisp kind of guy (though my wife quite rightly points out that if I have to buy crisps for any reason I am a sucker for any big bag with the words ‘hand-made’ and ‘gourmet’ on it). In truth, if I am going to indulge myself, white chocolate and flapjacks would be my unhealthy snacks of choice.

3. How important were your five unpublished novels to your development as a writer and eventual success? (Writer Magazine)

Hugely. Most of them were absolutely dreadful and coming to that realisation each time was not a pleasant experience. Curious Incident was a better book, I think, because I put into practice everything I’d learn when writing for children (brevity, humour, a well-shaped plot…). Doubtless if I got to the age of sixty with twenty unpublished novels in my bottom drawer I would be on a locked ward somewhere full of heavy-duty tranquilisers. But I now realise that I am in the enviable position of having spent a great deal of time under the bonnet (or hood, as you say). I know why my writing works when it works and I know why it doesn’t when it doesn’t. And that’s the kind of knowledge I don’t think you get if you are one of those writers who are blessed with a natural talent and produce a wonderful novel at twenty two.

4. Why did you decide on a poodle as the murder victim [in Curious Incident] - don’t you like poodles or are all breeds as likely to meet an equally horrible end in one of your novels? (Dogs Today)

I don’t bear a grudge against poodles per se, though if I had a dog it probably wouldn’t be a poodle. It is simply that, for some obscure reason, a dead poodle seemed funnier than a dead Alsatian or a dead Boxer (though come to think of it, a Jack Russell with a fork through it would also be quite funny). Oh dear, I’m going to attacked in the street by dog-lovers now, aren’t I.

5. Which are your models of Bildungsroman? (Italian Vogue)

None, to be honest. For the simple reason that I have a shamefully bad memory for the novels I have read. To take one example, I read Catcher in the Rye [occasionally cited as a model for Curious Incident] many years ago and can remember, quite literally, nothing about it. This is true of most of the thousands of novels I’ve read in my life. It used to scare me. Why spend so much time doing something if you can’t remember having done it? These days I realise it’s a blessing. If you can’t remember, you can’t copy. I now think of my brain as a compost heap. It’s not an efficient place to store stuff, but if you keep adding things to the pile it makes good fertiliser.

6. What activities/ideas/discoveries outside of your field most excite you? What makes you think, “Damn, I wish I thought of that?” (Seed Magazine)

Perhaps if I’d been born in the late 18th century and possessed a large private income I might have been able to fulfil one of my early childhood ambitions to become a scientist and attempt to make some great discovery, if only because that was a period in history when an intelligent young person with time on their hands and money at their disposal was still able to push back the frontiers of geology or astronomy or biology. But nearly all scientific discoveries in the last fifty years have come as a result of years of hard and often tedious labour illuminated by occasional flashes of insight. And that’s something I could never have done, if only because I have no eye for detail. You miss a zero out of a mathematical equation and it crashes through the guardrail into the ravine. You make a spelling mistake in a novel and it’s neither here nor there.

If anything, it is music which makes me think, ‘Damn, I wish I had thought of that’. Sometimes when I’m listening to a well-loved CD (whether it’s The Flaming Lips or Harrison Birtwhistle, Radiohead or Elliott Carter) I find myself moved almost to tears and wish I could have made something that wonderful. Being an amateur guitarist and viola player I can sometimes kid myself that it would have been possible if my life had been a little different. Though I do like a nice cup of tea and an early bedtime, so being in a band was never a genuine possibility.

7. What were your favourite books as a child? (Oh, loads of people)

Origins of the Universe by Albert H Hinkelbein.

I read very few picture books and very little fiction as a child (The Night Before Christmas, Diggy Takes his Pick, The Log of the Ark, a boxed set of Puffin war stories I got as a school prize but which I have no memory of reading…) Mostly I read encyclopaedias and science books. I knew that I was not butch enough to go into space, and at that time astronauts had all been fighter pilots in their previous jobs and Trained Killer was never an appealing career. So, for a long time, I wanted to be a paleoanthrolopgist searching for Australopithecus bones in the Rift Valley in Kenya. Stupid, really. These days, I find even Southern France too hot in the summer.

Writers, publishers, librarians… everyone interested in literature and education seems to believe that books are the golden gateway to personal fulfilment and productive citizenship. It’s a bit like footballers thinking everyone should play football. The important thing for any kid is to find a passionate interest, some way of making the world thrilling.

And if you love science and end up writing novels, well, there’s sure to be some way of marrying the two.