Latest / The BSB Podcast / Exclusive Interview: Andrew H. Murray, Author of 'Everything Happens So Much'

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Exclusive Interview: Andrew H. Murray, Author of 'Everything Happens So Much' · The BSB Podcast

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  Today we're stepping into a world where the possibilities
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  are quite literally endless. Our guest is comedian,
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  writer, broadcaster, and podcaster Andrew H.
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  Murray, whose new novel, Everything Happens So Much,
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  takes the idea of alternate realities and turns it into something fun,
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  surprising, and deeply human. What happens when you discover there
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  are countless versions of yourself out there,
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  all living incredibly different lives?
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  It's story about identity, choice,
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  possibility, and the terrifying realization that maybe escaping your life isn't
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  as quite as simple as it sounds.
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  Thank you so much for being here,
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  Andrew.
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  ~ my pleasure. Thank you for having me,
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  Brian.
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  So the premise of everything happens so much is wonderfully bonkers.
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  Where did this ideal of this concept of jumping into other versions
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  of yourself come from?
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  Well, I spent, I'd say, a good 10
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  or 15 years thinking every time I met up with a friend or every time
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  I encountered any other way of living my life,
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  ~ I should have done that. It was pretty chronic.
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  And I
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  Sure.
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  don't know exactly what caused it.
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  Maybe we'll get on to that later.
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  Maybe I'll save it for therapy.
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  But I just had this experience every single time I thought I should have done,
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  I should have done medicine. I should have been a doctor.
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  Wait, there's still time. There's still time.
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  If I drop everything now, I can do it.
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  And so this idea slowly developed of,
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  wouldn't it be wonderful to see what your other selves did with their lives
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  or have done or are doing? And if only you could just experience for
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  a little bit what might have been.
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  You might be able to see what it was like,
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  whether you enjoyed it or not,
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  whether you were satisfied. Because I think we live in an age where we have more
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  and more unfettered access to each other's lives.
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  And we're able to see so many people doing so many wonderful things.
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  Every time you go online, every time you use social media,
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  you see people you think, my God,
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  I should have learned to do a perfect backflip.
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  I should have learned to do blah,
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  X, Y. It goes on and on. And I think this has really affected us as
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  a culture and probably as a species.
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  And so this story grew out of that,
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  really. It's just me attempting to sort my personal problems out through
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  the medium of fiction.
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  So that's where it originated really.
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  What I love about that too is,
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  you know, I'm constantly ~ telling clients in therapy that like fairy it's called
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  fairy tale syndrome, you know,
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  where you see the the perfect life of other people and you assume that like maybe
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  Yeah.
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  I'm not living up to the expectations that I should be,
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  or that ~ maybe that other people have,
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  you know. And so it's interesting to be able to turn that to a concept that blends
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  so many different aspects of like reg regret,
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  but also like science fiction and all those different pieces.
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  Yes, exactly. There's a bit of because it's not that doesn't,
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  as you say, it doesn't have to be science fiction.
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  There is a bit of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath,
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  which is about she's she's in a fig tree.
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  She's wondering which fig to eat.
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  She can't eat all the figs at the same time.
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  One of the figs is her going to New York and one is her going to Paris
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  and one is her, you know, staying where she is,
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  but settling into a domestic life.
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  And that has become a bit of a meme online in the last couple of years.
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  People
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  posting clips of all their amazing activities and saying,
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  sorry, Sylvia, I ate all the figs.
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  And actually, the point is that no,
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  haven't. It's not possible to eat all the figs.
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  And the problem is in our attitude to the fig tree rather than in anything else.
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  So.
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  I mean it and that's so that's so interesting that you were able like you've been
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  you said for years been kind of thinking about this.
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  When did it kinda
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  Yeah.
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  start to feel like this book was maybe you're like where didn't it kinda turn from
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  like just a thought to like the process started to happen?
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  Hmm, maybe five years ago, I started off,
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  right? mean, editors hate me because I have
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  Yeah.
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  changed direction very dramatically twice already in my writing career.
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  This is only my fifth published novel.
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  So I wrote two quite serious thrillers,
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  science fiction as well. I wrote two rather lighter,
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  kind of more funny contemporary thrillers,
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  which weren't sci-fi at all. But all the way through,
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  I had had this idea bubbling away.
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  And really, I think for me, everything happens so much is the...
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  This is the one that has been on my mind for a very long time.
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  mean, probably since I first thought precociously that I'd really like
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  to be a writer at a very young age,
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  this is the book that I've been hoping to write all that time.
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  So it's terrifying. It's terrifying.
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  incredible. I mean to be a but
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  also what a also to be able to finally have it out in the world.
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  I mean, I know people haven't read it yet,
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  yeah. Most people haven't read it yet,
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  but like to have it out into the world in in a big way,
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  yeah, it's terrifying, but that's also like what a what like a crowning achievement.
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  It's very exciting. And it's, it's not at all like the book I thought
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  it was going to be. But it is the book that expresses exactly what
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  I'm trying to say. So I've rewritten it twice along the way.
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  ~ So it's been a yeah, it's been a very,
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  yeah, very big journey, this one.
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  And, you know, authors sometimes say,
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  well, I don't mind if it,
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  I don't know if it sells or it doesn't sell.
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  I mean, they're always lying about that.
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  Everyone wants to sell 10 million copies in hardback alone.
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  But I do think that this one,
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  I'm confident it will find its audience of people who feel the same way.
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  You mentioned about rewriting it twice.
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  How did this book kind of change throughout the years as you're writing it?
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  It was a lot weirder to start off.
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  Okay.
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  Believe it or not, what you've read is the sanded down version.
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  One of the characters was Yeti at one point.
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  In fact, for most of it. And then just at the end,
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  thought, no, he can't be, this too much.
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  And it sort of distracts from what we're trying to say.
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  So it was a lot weirder.
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  It was a lot more sci-fi. And it owes a lot to the greats,
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  people like Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.
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  And it was...
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  I would say when I'd read the first draft of the first version,
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  it felt almost too much like I was in their worlds rather than building my own.
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  And now I think it's,
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  Sure.
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  you know, which is always a thing.
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  mean, when you're writing in a style or a genre and not many people write
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  in this genre because it's hard and it doesn't always work.
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  And if it doesn't work, it really clangs,
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  you it really doesn't sound good.
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  Sure.
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  So.
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  Now, after all this rewriting,
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  feels much more like you can see the debt to those things
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  and you can see that it's writing in that vein of that tradition,
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  but it doesn't feel, you know,
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  there's no element of cosplay there really.
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  one of the most
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  fascinating aspects for me is definitely the tension between like
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  the cosmic scale of what this story is,
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  but also how very ~ like it also brings in a lot of that human aspect,
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  you know. It's kind of like a grounded story told on a very cosmic scale.
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  How do you almost balance the epic sci-fi elements here with
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  the everyday human comedy? And also I just want to say this is a very funny book.
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  Like this is it has a lot of that humor.
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  Good. ~
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  That's that's you.
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  that you would want from like you know,
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  a sci maybe a sci fi heavy book,
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  you know. ~ but how do you find that balance between the two two aspects?
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  Well, I'm not very good at doing the kind of grandiose space opera stuff.
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  And I just think you have to keep on bringing it back to character.
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  Ultimately, the story you're telling is something about a person who's going through
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  a set of experiences. And always as people,
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  no matter what you're caught up in,
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  you might be involved in the biggest and most grand adventure in the world,
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  you notice things around you. You notice the ordinary human moments every single.
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  ~
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  day you think you might be Lawrence of Arabia riding across the desert
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  to seize the city and win the first world war,
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  whatever. But you will notice there's sand in your pants because of
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  the blood and the bloody camel
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  Sure.
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  is cross with you again. And almost all stories are just a matter
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  of picking what you're noticing.
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  And so for me, just maybe this is another personality problem of mine.
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  I can't help noticing the funny things no matter what the situation.
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  So that's what I think it is. Just bring it back to the people in your story
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  and what they are sensing. That'll do it.
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  I love that because at the end of the day,
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  you're right. It is a you every person is having their own story.
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  So it's very, you know, human-centric in that way.
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  It doesn't, while there is a bigger story going on,
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  it's about the person within that story and how they're kind of navigating
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  all of that. You know, this story also kind of deals with alternate versions
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  of ourselves and it raises maybe a kind of an uncomfortable question
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  for some reasons. You know, if there's infinite versions of yourself,
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  what makes you you?
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  is that something that you wanted readers to wrestle with?
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  Ooh, I wasn't conscious of that.
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  mean, I think everyone is a bit concerned about that,
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  maybe more so than they used to be.
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  I mean, we live in a world, as I say,
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  what appears to be infinite choice.
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  And I think, know, if, Brian,
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  if we were doing this podcast 700 years ago,
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  we would know what our place in life was.
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  We would work in the fields. We would...
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  ~
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  raise family, would pray an enormous amount,
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  and then we'd die. And we were sort of set.
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  So I think there is an anxiety about
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  True.
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  ourselves that comes from having choices,
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  you know, and obviously the choices are wonderful to have.
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  But if you feel that the choice is more infinite than your capacity,
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  as is inevitable in this world,
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  then that can really lead to anxiety.
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  And I think that's a besetting
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  problem with this century so far.
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  And I say this is one of the,
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  as it were, the shock troops of social media.
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  So I was allowed on to Facebook,
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  which was launching in the UK in October 2005.
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  That was, I mean, it was month one in the UK.
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  It started in the USA, I think the year before.
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  But in the UK, you had to be at a specific list of about,
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  was only about 20 universities,
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  universities only.
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  Okay.
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  Those were the only places.
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  and that we were the only people who were allowed Facebook in the UK.
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  So I was right there at the beginning of this,
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  this process by which we have all become much more available to each other's minds.
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  have become, we have been able to see what everyone else is up to
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  and what everyone else is thinking and what we're doing with our lives.
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  The great anxiety that social media produces along with all the nice things
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  and benefits.
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  So I feel like I have a pretty unique perspective as one of the first onto
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  the bridge of social media.
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  I it's interesting because having grown up just like I was Facebook
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  My Space and Facebook happened when I like a middle school,
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  high school, you know. So like always kinda living with this the anxiety
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  of social media, it's almost interesting to think of like what it was
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  to not have that and kinda not have that ~
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  Yeah.
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  have to wrestle with that all you know,
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  it just was kind of a part of what we were living every day.
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  Yeah, mean, before it happened,
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  you could still, the human mind is incredible at finding things to worry about.
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  So it would be whether someone's texted you back or not.
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  But it was in some ways a substantially simpler time.
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  And so this book is, again, is kind of a response to this new age of ours,
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  where we've constructed it. We weren't aware we were building it,
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  but it's here now. So we've got to work out how to drive it.
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  You know, one of the things about your character,
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  Esme, that's really kind of stands out about too,
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  is that she kind of spends her whole life trying not to be the main character.
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  You know, I would say like it's most people have like,
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  you know, main character energy.
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  She almost has like anti main character energy.
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  Hahaha
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  Why do you feel like that's such an important quality for her to have
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  as you were writing this book?
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  because who has who in our life really has main character energy
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  and aren't they insufferable, you know,
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  I think
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  True. I I can understand that,
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  yeah.
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  like it's ~ to be we're all I mean,
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  we're all the main character in our own lives,
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  but it's rare that we have to project it onto other people.
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  And again, I think this is a fundamental thing about being a person is that
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  we are exposed to our own foibles and doubts and insecurities all day every day.
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  And we are not aware about the person.
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  we project ~ out to the world,
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  it's quite hard to get a sense of what you are like.
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  People sometimes tell me that they think I seem quite confident and I say,
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  what are you talking about? Have you heard how much I,
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  you have you heard the way I speak to myself?
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  So there is an element of that where you,
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  this is the thing about Esme is she is aware that she's kind
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  of living her worst life and she is aware that she's never really.
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  started living her own life. Which again,
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  is sensation I think that is more widespread than we'd all care to admit.
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  So yeah, I do like that thing of,
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  because she, I mean, not to give away too much about the book,
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  she becomes much more of a main character than she's accustomed to,
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  and she doesn't handle it well.
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  ~ And I think a lot of us, yeah,
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  She's really thrust into that world.
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  and a lot
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  of us, think, would feel just that way if we were,
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  if we were seriously became much more important than we are.
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  Yeah.
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  I would say that again, not giving too much away,
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  I don't know what I would do in her situation if I was thrust into that being much
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  more important than I was. Because I think sometimes we kind of n as we grow older,
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  we kinda know our place and we're we we're okay with that,
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  you know what I mean? And
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  Yeah.
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  then when we're we're in a different world or we're thrust into
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  a different reality not reality,
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  but you know what I mean, another another situation
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  Yeah.
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  we weren't expecting, that does feel very ~ uncomfortable.
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  Yeah, absolutely. And people, of course,
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  people rise to the occasion of all sorts of things.
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  it's, but it's, that's, that's the point of stories,
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  in a way, is you're talking about someone's journey between one point
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  and another in their lives. And there is a reason that as a novelist,
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  we focused on this bit, you know,
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  there's a, this is the important bit.
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  Otherwise, you're just doing, otherwise you're writing Ulysses,
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  you know, which is obviously terrific,
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  but it's so all encompassing.
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  that it needs an edit. And I think Esme reacts so badly because she's
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  hoping that with this great responsibility comes great power.
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  And there's one point where she says to the people she's with,
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  so am I gonna learn kung fu now?
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  They look at her and they say.
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  No, I don't we don't have the capacity to just upload kung fu into your brain.
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  You're on a hero's journey, but this is not the hero's journey you think it is,
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  I'm afraid.
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  Right. You know, you have quite an incredible background with including working
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  on like Q I, no such thing as a fish,
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  journalism, fiction. You've done a quite a bit in your your career.
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  Do you feel like any of those other worlds have influenced the way
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  you approach this particular novel?
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  Ooh, what a good question. Not the journalism,
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  I don't think.
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  I think that QI and No Such Thing As A Fish play a role definitely in
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  the genesis of Everything Happens So Much because there's something about these jobs
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  where as the writers or as the hosts of No Such Thing As A Fish,
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  you're trying to find something interesting.
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  And again, you're trying to observe detail.
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  It's comedy
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  Sure.
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  based on detail and the detail is based in reality,
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  of course. you know, with the novel,
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  there's a lot more imagination involved,
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  but...
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  finding what is funny in any given moment or situation is something that
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  we really pride ourselves on. did,
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  the example we always give is we spoke about William Hogarth,
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  who was an 18th century writer,
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  not very well read for the last 200 years,
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  I would say. But we managed to make 15 minutes of comedy on our show about William
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  Hogarth, and it was fun. And he came away knowing a thing or two about Hogarth,
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  not, you know, it's not a...
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  degree level or anything like that,
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  but we just find we're very proud that we can talk about these things in
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  a way that makes them fun,
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  makes them entertaining. It's kind of education by stealth,
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  you know, because we're serious
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  Yes.
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  about the research and about the facts,
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  but the distractions and the comedy along the way are the main thing for us.
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  I think that's one of the brilliant things too about about your novel
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  as well is that ~ everything happens so much is it's so accessible,
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  I would say, to so many people.
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  I feel like this is not like one of those stories that you're gonna read
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  and you're gonna like, you know,
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  while you're talking about some huge concepts,
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  it's not like it's being like lec you know what I mean?
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  Like I sometimes when you're talking about,
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  like you said, ~ like Hogarth,
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  you're it it could be preachy in some ways or it could be like very like dense.
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  But you like with comedy, you kind of make it funny and light and people can like
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  learn more from And I feel like that's what also,
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  ~ Everything Happens So Much also does where the comedy really does help
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  to kind of break down the the walls of what science fiction c can kind
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  of be and make it more accessible to a lot of people as well.
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  Well, that's extremely nice to hear.
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  Thank you. I think it is my personal mantra,
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  which you and anyone watching or listening are welcome to steal
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  is sugar coated broccoli. ~ Because
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  Love that.
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  my aim is to, you know, everything happens so much.
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  I talk about the existential stuff.
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  It's about why life feels so difficult and unsatisfactory so much of the time.
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  But, you know, I'm not Nietzsche.
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  I want sugar on this broccoli.
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  And
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  Sure.
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  the stories I enjoy most are stories which are saying something,
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  but they wear it lightly. You don't have to beat the audience over
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  the head with whatever your message is,
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  because people can smell when they're being sold overt propaganda.
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  So tacit propaganda is much better as far as I'm concerned.
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  I would agree with that. I would say that,
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  you know, as a therapist,
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  Hahaha.
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  sometimes that's what I do in my job is you have to s give them
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  the sugar coated broccoli version of whatever the truth is that you have
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  to talk about, you know.
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  Hey, that's great.
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  So for you, I I have a question.
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  What is what is more frightening?
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  Discovering that perhaps you're the only version of yourself left in existence,
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  or discovering that there are millions of you and they're all doing better.
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  I think the human ego is so enormous that we all think,
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  I mean, most of us think we're the only person there is,
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  you know, most of us struggle to seriously believe that anyone else's feelings
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  or opinions or thoughts really,
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  really, really matter. I would say it's much harder to discover that there
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  are millions of you out there.
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  But wouldn't it
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  Yeah.
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  be nice? mean,
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  I think it would be lovely to have access to the Elsewheres,
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  this technology that Esme has completely wasted her life on,
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  because it's so tempting and it would be fascinating.
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  And the idea is when you go into an Elseware,
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  another version of you, you're kind of,
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  it's like you're on a roller coaster.
• 18:18
  You're not able to influence their life,
• 18:21
  but you are seeing what this person's up to,
• 18:23
  and they're you. I fascinating.
• 18:26
  ~ I would be most terrified, I think,
• 18:27
  to find out that they were all doing broadly the same thing
• 18:30
  and that nothing mattered very much and that none of my choices have made
• 18:32
  a huge impact. Yuck.
• 18:34
  I could see that, you know, you're just like,
• 18:36
  it's ~ i everything is exactly the same.
• 18:36
  Yeah, terrifying. Yeah,
• 18:38
  ~
• 18:40
  that's
• 18:40
  a great title for the sequel. Everything is exactly the same.
• 18:42
  I quite like that. All right. You're on 10%.
• 18:45
  Look at we like this.
• 18:50
  do you think that if Esme had one completely consequence free elsewhere experience,
• 18:54
  where do you think she would go?
• 18:55
  my goodness, in this one she can choose where she goes.
• 18:58
  I mean 'cause like
• 18:59
  what would she want to see, I guess,
• 19:00
  for her life in that way?
• 19:02
  Well, the start of the whole novel is her in and elsewhere.
• 19:09
  I mean, we begin with Esme on a boat.
• 19:10
  She's a philanthropist. She's got a handsome husband
• 19:17
  and she's never looked better and she's never felt better.
• 19:20
  And somehow she's become a trillionaire,
• 19:23
  but by giving money away or by stopping all the diseases in the world
• 19:26
  and then giving away the cures.
• 19:27
  know, it's that.
• 19:29
  I mean, that's what we would all like to think we're capable of if only we hadn't,
• 19:32
  you know, done English at university or whatever it might be.
• 19:37
  They're
• 19:38
  all exactly that. We're all the the kindest best person.
• 19:40
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:41
  It is such a striking
• 19:42
  way to start the novel too. You know,
• 19:43
  I think that ~ again, don't want to give away too much,
• 19:46
  but just such a great way to really
• 19:48
  good.
• 19:49
  start off what the concept of an else world is and where Esme kind of fits
• 19:53
  in that piece of it.
• 19:55
  Because then it all like it's like the bit of Mission Impossible where
• 19:57
  the walls fall down and you know the reality curls up and she's just back
• 20:01
  in her not nice flat on her cheap sofa having to go to work.
• 20:06
  You know, that's the that's the reveal.
• 20:08
  That's why we can spoil a chapter one.
• 20:10
  I think that's no problem at all.
• 20:12
  I mean, yeah, I we chapter one's fine.
• 20:13
  Hahaha
• 20:13
  We don't wanna, you know, but but you're right,
• 20:15
  like it is kind of it's it's such a stark difference that like you're you're sitting
• 20:19
  there and you're like you don't quite know what's hap like
• 20:21
  you know what's happening, but you're also just like once the walls fall apart,
• 20:22
  Yeah. Good.
• 20:24
  you're just like, what what the hell is going on?
• 20:26
  You know?
• 20:27
  so I guess one final question for you is just,
• 20:29
  you know, this book, you know,
• 20:31
  has been described as heartwarming as well as mind bending,
• 20:34
  you know, again, science fiction,
• 20:35
  you know. What are you hoping kind of readers feel or take away?
• 20:39
  From reading Everything Happens So Much.
• 20:42
  I hope they like Esme because I feel very protective of her because
• 20:46
  I feel that she's the kind of,
• 20:49
  you know, the other version of me and she has the same feelings about
• 20:54
  the world and the same personality problems or problems with her life that
• 20:59
  I felt for so many years. So that's it really,
• 21:03
  you know, I hope I just hope people enjoy the chaos.
• 21:09
  and that they like Esme and anything else I'm not too fussed about.
• 21:11
  I think the lovely thing when you write a novel and put it out into
• 21:14
  the world is people come back with very different responses.
• 21:17
  They notice things that you thought were quite throwaway.
• 21:21
  And that's really the most magical bit of the whole process for me,
• 21:25
  because I do seriously believe,
• 21:27
  and this sounds a bit pretentious,
• 21:28
  but the point of...
• 21:32
  writing is not so that you can just put something out into the world and,
• 21:35
  you know, be a writer and blah blah blah.
• 21:37
  The only time a novel means anything once it's written is when a does,
• 21:43
  completes it by reading it. You know,
• 21:45
  that is the sole purpose. It doesn't matter how brilliant the novel is.
• 21:49
  If no one reads it, it's not alive.
• 21:51
  And so it is very magical talking to people who've...
• 21:56
  read my previous books and who've found things in there that they've found exciting
• 22:01
  or funny or consoling, whatever it might be.
• 22:03
  So yeah, that's what I'm hoping happens again with this one.
• 22:06
  That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here.
• 22:08
  It's been such a pleasure talking to you about your novel.
• 22:11
  everything happens so much. This is such an incredible again.
• 22:13
  This is an incredible novel. This is kind of what I would want to be reading.
• 22:17
  This is also what I hope others ~ that I again,
• 22:21
  as a therapist, I can this is one that I recommend to people.
• 22:23
  There's a lot of healing aspects to this as well.
• 22:25
  ~ that I think is just so brilliant.
• 22:27
  So I do hope that ~ people pick this up and they get to experience it as much
• 22:31
  as ~ and they love it as much as I did.
• 22:33
  So
• 22:34
  Thank you so much Brian, that's lovely to hear.
• 22:36
  So everything happens so much.
• 22:37
  It releases on November tenth
• 22:38
  so pre ordered copy now. ~ thank you so much again for being here,
• 22:41
  Andrew. It's been a pleasure.
• 22:42
  Thank you.