Den eneste ordentlige mannlige modellen jeg noen gang har hatt gleden av å snakke med var en sørgelig sjel som elsket å bli pult i rævva av sex-hungrige homo-sodomitter på afters i Milano. Han elsket det. Som en vakker dimensjon i livet utbroderte han overtydelige bilder av hårete nakne menn som peiset på mens svetteperler og annen veske av diffus konsistens rant nedover de perfekte skinnbeina… please stop. Ellers har jeg vært vitne til ett show under OFW. Det føyet seg fint inn på flauhetsbarometeret, sånn circa et sted mellom norsk stand-up og ansiktsuttrykket til overivrige hip-hop dansere. Gudene av catwalk-underholdning syns heldigvis så synd på oss at de bestemte seg for tippe en stakkars jente med alt for høye heler ned fra paradegaten og rett i det sebrafargede fanget til Kiki Sørum. Hjem til mamma.

Nå har jeg etter hvert lært gjennom nye søte bekjentskaper at det er utrolige mange skikkelige dyktige mennesker innenfor motebransjen som jobber skikkelig hardt for å nå sine kunstneriske mål. Men det var altså ikke med enorme forventninger jeg plukket opp den nylig utkomne Dazed & Aroused. Skrevet av eksmodell, og tidligere Dazed and Confused-journalist, Gavin James Bower og fortalt av hovedpersonen, modellen Alex; er det en autobiografisk refleksjon over den – spoiler alert! – temmelig meningsløse tilværelsen som mannlig modell. Forfatteren Gavin har rikelig med førstehåndskjennskap til modellyrket han beskriver, og har konstruert boken slik at alt fra “plot” til prosa hinter mot en prinsipiell kritikk av den verden som Alex lever i, og hovedpersonens respons til denne. Litt naivt, men ikke anmassende.

Alex sin verden er først og fremst kvelende ensformig. Han flyr fra by til by, Milano eller Paris, samma det, sitter bare på hotellrommet, røyker pot og ser på tysk MTV mens han vurderer homoerotiske eskapader. Dagen etter går han shows, røyker pot, slurper en eller annen new style dirty martini og ser tysk MTV mens han vurderer nye homoerotiske eskapader. Han møter selvsagt vakre mennesker overalt og drar mengder med damer, men de blurrer etter hvert sammen til en og samme karakter av trivielle dialoger og Jimmy Choo-sko. En tiltrekkende, behagelig og overfladisk verden. Where's the coke?

Det er ingen banebrytende bok, på noen som helst måte, men det er også dens styrke. Fuck banebrytende og revolusjonerende – det er en bok som fungerer. Innovasjon er ikke alltid det viktigste kriteriet, tvert imot. Den fungerer fordi den så tydelig viser konsekvensene av Alexs handlinger.

Sammen med blant andre Joe Stretch og Christiana Spens er Gavin en del av den nye Dark Young People-klikken av unge britiske forfattere. Mektig inspirert av Fitzgerald, Ellis og Houellebecq maler de sobre bilder av menneskets mer eller mindre heroiske kamp mot forbrukermonsterets stadige ekspanderende og altomslukende tentakler.

N&D: So Gavin, tell me a little about the history of Dazed & Aroused. For people who don’t know you. How did you come to write the book?

GJB: I started writing as a journalist at university and, after I graduated, I moved to London to do an editorial internship at Dazed & Confused. They seemed to think I’d make a better model than writer, and I ended up doing a shoot for the next issue.

For the next few years I lived in London as a model, did a bit of work in the media, and was also writing on the side.

Dazed & Aroused was in my head for about two years before I actually sat down and wrote it. I knew exactly what I wanted the book to be about, and what I wanted to say. It only took eight weeks to write.

N&D: But if Dazed & Confused first seemed to think you’d make a better model than writer, how did you end up writing a book? Any advice for young writers?

GJB: I knew I wanted to write about the exploitative nature of capitalist social relations, and to create a narrative that captured that completely. The narrator didn’t have to be a model, but the Fashion World worked well as a back drop for what was always going to be an indictment of ephemera and of individualism, of using people to get ahead in life, and of completely lacking empathy. I just wanted to write a story about the consequences of our way of life, as experienced by one individual: Alex.

As for becoming a writer myself, I was a writer before I spent two weeks at Dazed & Confused five years ago, and I’m still a writer today.

My advice to other young writers is simple: if someone doesn’t believe in you, ignore them and just get on with it.

N&D: When you first began to write, what was your idea of the writing life, and yourself in it? What were the attractions?

GJB: I write because I enjoy it and it comes naturally. It doesn’t feel like hard work. That’s the attraction.

The hard part is having the courage to ignore doubts, avoid procrastination over plot or characters or whatever, and just sit down and write. As I said, it took me two years to have the courage to start Dazed & Aroused, but only eight weeks to write it.

When I first started writing and thought of what it would be like to be a real writer, I always imagined myself spending my days working on my latest masterpiece, drinking heavily and dressed in silk pyjamas, rich and surrounded by girls – like something from a Fitzgerald novel.

The reality is a life of hopeless penury, divided equally between refreshing my Hotmail inbox and self-Googling.

I do get girls, though. 

N&D: You have had plenty of first-hand experience with being a model. Did you do a lot of research for the book?

GJB: A lot of the book is based on my own experiences – apart from the rude bits and the drugs, of course – but I had to research designers, the most popular models, that kind of thing. The character Bailey is based entirely on a magazine piece I read that featured a young Canadian model, for example.

My experience of modelling was always as a peripheral figure, observing. So the book is just my imagination. Apart from a lot of it.

N&D:What do you mean?

GJB: For instance, the scene in which one model is asked to sit on a rugby ball and show his arse is based on my first paid shoot. The difference between fiction and reality, though, is that I was the boy on the rugby ball in real life, as opposed to Alex, who simply observes the scene in the book.

N&D: So how different or similar are you and Alex, the main character?

GJB: He’s very much a part of me – but one that I’d not, at the time of writing the book, fully explored. For example, where I observed the excesses of the Fashion industry in real life, he immerses himself completely in the novel. That pretty much sums up the dichotomy between us.

An example of this in practice is the relationship between Alex and Juliette. I based Juliette on a girl I met in Paris, at a Fashion Week after party. Alex has an affair with her in the book, whereas I talked to her for five minutes. She wasn’t extraordinary in any way. She just stayed with me. When I wrote the book I created an alternative reality, as all writers do, starring a purely fictional idea of her. I then indulged what were, at least in some way, my fantasies – through Alex.

I suppose Alex is one part of my personality pushed to a logical extreme.
Since finishing the book, however, I’ve found myself becoming more and more like him. In my defence, I’d say he’s a part of all of us – all of us of a certain age, living and working in capitalist epicentres like London– and we’re all, to varying degrees, just like him.

N&D: I like Damian Barr’s blurb on your book, “So shallow it’s almost deep”. It’s very fitting. You are obviously inspired by Bret Easton Ellis. When I read Less Than Zero the first time, I thought that this was a serious book. There had never been a book like Less Than Zero. He did capture a certain thing. What do you think it is?

GJB: Bret Easton Ellis is my favourite writer, and Less Than Zero the first book I read that made me want to be a writer myself. Although a lot of people have tried, I don’t think there’ll ever be another book that captures the hopelessness of wanting to see the worst in life, even revelling in it. He captured an era that I didn’t experience myself first-hand, but I think people of my generation can relate to Clay – a character that’s ultimately disconnected from everything and everyone.

It’s a paradoxical disposition, as an individual living in a highly organised, capitalist society, to be at once a part of and on some innate level also removed from that society. I think Clay represents that awkward juxtaposition – although I would say that I don’t think Ellis created him with that in mind.

N&D: Bret Easton Ellis said in an interview: “That would always bother me when people would say, “the hero of the novel”. Clay “isn't a hero at all to me. He's like this big void. He troubles me more than any other character that I've written about”. Maybe Clay is even worse than Bateman, because he just doesn’t care?

GJB: I think Clay cares. I think that’s clear in the book – for me. But he’s a truly hopeless individual because he sees the decay and wants more. He wants to see the worst.

It’s not whether he cares that matters. It’s that he simply does nothing – and that’s what counts.

N&D: Which other writers do you feel have an influence on your style, and could you take me through some of your favourites?

GJB: The books and writers mentioned in Dazed & Aroused – Sartre, Fitzgerald – have an influence on me, as does Marx. And I’d say Marx, specifically his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, was the most influential when it came to developing the premise for the book – the central idea that I had for it, before I even made the decision to set it in the Fashion world.

N&D: So you have a profound admiration for Marx. What aspects of today’s society are you pessimistic about?

GJB: It’s interesting that you used the word ‘pessimistic’. I’d never thought of myself as being a pessimistic person. I do think to criticise capitalist society is to be optimistic – optimistic that things can change. I believe in revolution for instance. If I was a cynic, a nihilist, and didn’t think we could change the world around us, then I think that would make me pessimistic.

With the book, and Alex, I’m criticising capitalist society for what it is at its core – a society of competing individuals, detached and at on the basest of levels at odds with one another.

I’m not pessimistic, because I think we can do better.

N&D: You said somewhere that you, at least earlier on, were more interested in philosophy than novels. Has it changed? What do you think is the function of novels in society?

GJB: Philosophy is my starting point when I write anything, including fiction, but it’s not for me to say what function I think fiction should have in society – only what function I think fiction has for me.

Fiction is a vehicle for me, as a writer, to say what I want to say – about society, about life. It’s very different for other writers, I’m sure, but that’s its function for me.

N&D: How does being a model influence the mind of a male and his sexuality?

GJB: I was already very open-minded and aware of my own sexuality when I started working as a model, but I do think I became far more aware of the way I looked and how people saw me. This, in turn, influenced my own sexuality, because it created a level of self-confidence that I’d never had before – one that had nothing to do with being intelligent or kind, or whatever, but was in fact all about the way I looked.

Incidentally, I wouldn’t say that this was ‘a good thing’.

N&D: Is it true that female models don’t go out with male models, or is it just a myth?

GJB: It’s completely true. In my experience.

N&D: Who is your favourite female model? Why?

GJB: Bar Refaeli. I’d like to say I admire her, or find her professionalism and outlook on life inspiring. But she’s my favourite female model because I think she’s hot.

N&D: We always hear that our girls here in Norway are the best, have you ever hooked up with a Norwegian model? If so, who?

GJB: No I haven’t. And even if I had, I wouldn’t tell you…

N&D: No behind the scenes? Orgies, famous models, drinks with Lagerfeld?

GJB: Nice try…

N&D: What’s the thing with the models in your book always searching for German MTV, when they’re in hotels in Milan or Paris? Here in Norway MTV is like that foul ex-rebound from many years back that you never want to see or hear about, but for some reason is brought to your attention regularly. Is German MTV better than other MTV channels?

GJB: That’s a nod to Bret Easton Ellis, as it’s a recurring refrain in his novels. When I first went to Paris as a model, I noticed German MTV was one of the channels in my hotel room. I remembered it when I started writing the book, so put it in.

N&D: That’s too bad. I had hoped German MTV resembled something like former VIVA, the best music channel that ever existed. You do a lot of drugs?

GJB: My mum will read this, so my answer is ‘just say no’.

In all seriousness, I’m so well-behaved that I had help from friends on the drugs-related stuff in the book – to make it as authentic as possible.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it…

N&D: Finally, what projects are you currently working on? Tell me about your next novel, Made in Britain.

GJB:I’m currently editing the final draft of my second novel, Made in Britain, which is about three sixteen year old kids growing up in the North of England, the reality of what’s come to be termed ‘Broken Britain’ by the press in this country, and what it feels like when hope leads inevitably to despair.

N&D: Why this book now after Dazed and Aroused? Why this story?

GJB: Made in Britain is not in any way linked to Dazed & Aroused. It’s a story I’ve wanted to write since being a teenager, and experiencing first-hand what it’s like to grow up in a place that, at times, is without hope. I’m all three characters and the world is my world – the world I grew up in.

I spent last winter at home, and wrote the first draft then. In some ways, I suppose, it was inevitable I’d write it as my second book.

I’m also working on the screenplay of Dazed & Aroused with a friend. If you know any Norwegian models who’d like a small part, you have my email address…