SOURCE: Frayn, Michael, and Michele Field. “Michael Frayn.” Publishers Weekly 237, no. 9 (2 March 1990): 65-6.

In the following interview, Frayn discusses the writing of The Trick of It while reflecting on his literary career and writing process.

Michael Frayn is renowned for debunking the interview. In the 1960s he had a column in the Manchester Guardian in which he chatted with visiting celebrities. Very gradually Frayn moved the column toward fantasy, “interviewing” characters he created, gulling the public in the process. And in his new novel, The Trick of It, out this month from Viking, one of the themes is the impossibility of knowing a writer from his or her work, the futility of undertaking an analysis to explain how a book emerges from a novelist's life. These precedents rather stymie an interview with Michael Frayn before the first sip of white wine.

Does “the trick of it,” PW wonders...