Gavin James Bower is a hot mess

Don't go to a party in Pimlico, they'll make you smoke Dunhills

Hot Mess is a monthly interview series with the world’s hottest authors

Gavin James Bower is a hot mess. He wrote a book ostensibly about fashion, but turned up on Zoom in Under Armour shorts and a t-shirt. “It didn’t occur to me that I should wear anything special for the occasion,” he said when we switched our cameras on. “You don’t need to include that.” He looks hot, with cheekbones the current crop of super models would kill for, Neon Demon style. He tells me he hasn’t looked at Dazed and Aroused, his debut novel, which we’re here to talk about, in almost a decade. “It’s been great fun reminiscing,” he says at the end, which isn’t surprising. Throughout the interview, he remains several steps ahead, so thoroughly prepared he refers to questions I’ve sent via email before I even get to them. Towards the end of our hour long chat I decide to skip one question, which he answers regardless. Gavin James Bower is a hot mess. He talks as fast as a Gilmore girl and jumps from memory to memory so much so that the interview that follows is only a fraction of what we covered. He refuses to budge on his opinion of West End clubs, but he has interesting thoughts on cigarette brands. He hasn’t published a novel in ten years. In this interview, he teases his third, Descent, which he referred to on Twitter as being about “toxic masculinity.” It’s his fourth book overall, as was pointed out to me. I was so focused on his debut, it didn’t occur to me to look at what else he’s done over the years. Guess I’m a hot mess too. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Dazed and Aroused was at the time of its publication promoted as a novel about fashion. What stood out to me was the socio-political unrest bubbling in the background of the story. The events of the book occur in the 2000s, before the crash. Did you set out to write a political novel?

I did. I predicted the Lehman Brothers collapse. I’d love to be able to say that truthfully. You’re quite right to point out the setting and the discrepancy between when it was published, which was summer 2009, and when it was written, which was winter 2007. Those two dates are not that far apart, but in lived through terms they’re an era, an epoch apart. Everything that happened in between shifted the focus entirely.

When Dazed was written we were at the end of a boom and when it was published we were on the other side of a collapse and the beginning of a long, protracted period of austerity. But there was an unrest preceding it and Alex is, to some extent, aware of it. It’s an undercurrent in the book through his observations. So, when I answer no to your question, I answer it in the sense that he's a model, he's in the fashion industry, which is in certain ways immune to all this. The degree of his perception is limited. 

I wanted to write a book about alienation in the Marxist sense. The Manuscripts of 1844 was at the front of my mind. It was one of the most influential books I read in my late teens and early 20s. If I hadn’t worked as a model, I think I would have still found a way to write about this. It just seemed that for two years I had a voice in my head that naturally and inevitably came out through a model and was set inside the fashion industry. Dazed was the result of about two years of making notes with this voice in my head. So, it was about the late capitalist precipice between 2007 and 2009 and that bubbling unrest, about what was to come. We could all see it, sense it, if we were paying attention at all, even someone as solipsistic and shallow as Alex.

Did I answer the question? Maybe I answered three or four different questions.

It’s been strange revisiting this book over the summer. It was one of the first books I read when I moved here [in 2009]. It feels like a lifetime ago now.

Alex is a fascinating character and narrator. He observes intensely, as I mention at a later question, but everything is lost on him. In one scene, he’s looking at the TV but has it muted. He observes, but is he really paying attention? He doesn’t seem to be all that present in his life. Was Dazed a critique of your generation’s apathy towards politics?

It’s interesting how you chose to word the question. When I reread that again this morning, I had a really clear thought about where I was at that time. It’s strange to go back to 2007 and try and place myself in that space through the conversation we’re having traversing these two periods.

What was I doing then? And can I be honest and objective and really go back to that moment? And what do I think I meant at that time with the power of hindsight? How do I view Alex now? 

Alex is slightly different now that I am 13-14 years older. That said, he'll forever be exactly who he is in the book. That's the beauty of fiction and characters and what we create in novels. What would Alex be doing now? He'd be in his 30s. He probably wouldn't be modelling. 

When I read this question I thought of Mark Fisher and Capitalist Realism, which is another book that has stayed with me. It's quite a slim text published by Zero Books, who also published my essay on the French artist Claude Cahun. Fisher wrote about “reflexive impotence” as opposed to apathy. The idea that we’re not bothered never really washed with me. Looking at my generation, we weren’t apathetic when we were young. We just didn’t think we could change things. Capitalism is inevitable. The money economy is inevitable. There's nothing post, nothing coming. 

But I referred to late capitalism earlier, as if this is another period. I've always fixated on the notion that actually this is a phase, like feudalism, like everything else and there is something beyond it. Without that belief, without trusting that it is possible, what do we do? We’re making the best of a bad situation, aiming for capitalism with a kind face, or Tories with a lighter shade of blue. The feeling that it is inevitable and nothing can change is a crushing blow to any sense of optimism and idealism, and so, no, I don't think it's about apathy. I don't think I made Alex apathetic. He’s not completely shallow and hopeless. He can certainly come across in that way, but again, I don't think that's really getting to the bottom of who he is and what young people certainly in that time were all about.

You mentioned earlier you wanted Dazed to be about alienation. I think this is reflected in how Alex carries himself through the events of the book and how he interacts with his surroundings. He observes, but he rarely has solid interactions with the world he inhabits. He rests on the surface of things. Was this an intentional choice when writing the book or did it come about during the editing process?

I think other writers have said this and I get the sense that it is accepted that when you write, the characters come to visit, they turn up at your door. Until they do, you’re helpless as a writer. Once you get the visitation, once you have the voice(s) in your head, you have the impetus to start telling the story. In this instance, Alex was a voice in my head for about two years. So, it was about listening to Alex and walking around London chiefly, which is where the book is set, as well as Milan and Paris, and about observing with him in my head. It wasn’t about the editing process, but letting Alex live through me. I wrote most of Dazed in Patisserie Valerie on Marylebone High Street. I’d write for two hours a day with an Americano.

Speaking of walking around London...and this is the beauty of not working for a newspaper, you can say whatever you want...but a lot of London bars and clubs pop up, such as Aura and Cafe de Paris, and no offense but they all suck.

I read that question and it really made me laugh because Cafe de Paris...I saw Dita Von Teese in Cafe de Paris. I have great memories at that place. I’m not going to go on the record or off the record and criticise the bars and clubs that appear in this book. They’re amazing. They’re amazing in that way that your childhood holidays are. If you go back to that place, it won’t ever be the same. I certainly didn’t go to these clubs when I was in my 30s. But when I was a young man, I would always be in the West End clubs. The fireworks on the bottles...What more do you want from a West End club? I’m going to disagree.

Did you meet Dita Von Teese then?

Oh come on, I wish. She did a show. She came out of a giant martini glass. We were up on the balcony somewhere. I'd like to say we had a VIP table, we were probably hovering around someone else's table who got us in. I knew a club promoter around that time who would hop from West End club to West End club. We’d get into places like that and that’s how I saw her perform. No, I did not talk to Dita Von Teese.

In one scene, toilets are covered in diarrhea because the models have taken laxatives before the show. Is this something you witnessed in your modelling days?

It was part of my research. I work as a lecturer now, so I’m in the mindset of referring to my writing as my work as a practitioner and my work as a researcher. The two run parallel and sometimes crossover. There are lots of details in the book and if I think back to that time, it's a combination of personal direct experience, anecdotal experience and stuff that falls between the cracks. 

You asked me a question about cigarettes, I’m sorry to skip ahead, but you asked me why Alex smokes Davidoff Light, which really made me laugh. I couldn't even remember that. I reread the section and he's smoking them because of Juliet, a young woman he meets who is hopelessly in love with someone else. That’s why he smokes them. There's no other reason that I can tell of him smoking Davidoff.

There was a phase of smoking with a nod to the brand, the style. Marlboro Lights is a classic. I remember you could get Lucky Strikes in certain bars in the West End.

I love Lucky Strikes. That’s what I used to smoke at the time.

There you go. I mentioned Parliament cigarettes somewhere else in the book. That was again part of the research. I also thought about Dunhill recently. If you smoke Dunhill you’re probably at a party in Pimlico. 

As a rule, I don't dip back into things I've written. But I really laughed with this. I couldn’t believe you smoked that out, that was brilliant.

At a club in Paris he almost arrives at a breakthrough about his job when he sees a man showering as part of a performance art piece of sorts. But he carries on with modelling regardless. Why did you have this episode half way through the book only to have him carry on with his life as it was?

That was a formative experience. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Club Comparison. I went there and I didn’t add or embellish details [for the book]. I did the John Galliano show in Paris. It was up in Saint-Denis, which I only knew in connection to football. It’s a bit out of Paris, you have to jump on a different type of train to get there.

My girlfriend at the time had come up to Paris with me from the South of France, which sounds unbelievably pretentious, but it’s true. Her parents had an apartment, we were on holiday there. I got a call on a BlackBerry or something, I booked this show. There’s loads of other details, I don’t know why I’m going down this road, but now I’m reminiscing and I can’t stop. I’m on the beach and they call to say Galliano wants you. So, we got on a flight and went to Paris. All the build up took forever, hours of waiting for one look, one walk down the catwalk and then the end.

I got back on the train on the outskirts of Paris and I remember chipping away at nail varnish that had been applied. I found myself needing to chip away at the paint on my nails, ignoring the fact that I had concealer on my face. I was between these two spaces in my head, happy to keep the makeup on but not keen on the nail varnish. That tells you everything about the conflict around my sexuality and how I viewed myself in the world as a young man.

I met my then girlfriend and her two friends who were at that time in a relationship. We went to this club and these guys are taking a shower. It was an unbelievable experience. This guy, the expression on his face...he was in pain really and I love that you described it as performance art because it was in a way. I’ve seen people strip, I’ve seen things much more sexual. And yet he was being pretty sexual. But the look on his face...he was sort of pleading for it to be over. He looked amazing though.

The reason why it went into the book is obvious. Alex is in Paris, so that was as good a reason as any. He’s definitely conflicted about his sexuality and who he is as a man. He’s between relationships, which I was too, although I didn’t recognise that at that time. I think it represents a key point in the story for Alex. It comes in the middle of the book, as you say, it’s a midpoint where Alex finds himself in a very different position to where you meet him at the beginning. And he’s learned something, but he hasn't quite learned everything he needs to learn. He’s not there yet. 

I’ve never been since. I don’t know why, I’d like to go back. I will go back. I really did see one of the models there and we did look at each other. We probably thought the exact same thing. We probably felt the same thing. We just said it with our eyes. He was the model I’d seen have water from a can sprayed on his body when we did makeup for the Galliano show the day before. He had an unbelievable physique. So, I really remember him. I knew him and he knew me. I should have said something I don’t know why I didn’t. Regrets. I don't know where he is now, what he’s doing. I wonder if he read the book. Who knows?

Did anyone from your fashion days read the book?

Yeah, 'cause I was friends with other male models. I spent next to no time around female models. You go to shows and you go to castings with other men. I was good mates with one of them that I met early on. He was similar to me: he was Northern, he had no aspirations to be a model, it just happened to him. Most of the other men I met had fallen into modelling, they had no dreams of being a model. From my experience, they were kids who had either gone to or dropped out of university, or they were somewhere in between that phase in their life and they were modelling for a few years; like the guy I shared a room with in Paris, who had been doing it for ten years and was making a good living out of it. He hadn’t intended to be a model. He just had this amazing face, blue eyes and a great physique and made money off it. Why not? Why not do that as opposed to whatever else you could be doing? Most of the models I met were reading and were engaged with the world. I don't think he was. He wasn’t the brightest. But he was the one who was making the most of a life out of it. He obviously knew something I didn’t. I think he took a shit on the floor in the hotel once by mistake. I know, gross. You can’t imagine someone that beautiful doing something that ugly. I think he did a student wipe. You know what that is?

No, I have no idea. Do I wanna know? This isn’t where I imagined the conversation would go. I have to include it, I guess. 

It was one of those where they’ve separated the sink. It’s not hygienic, right? He went with his shorts down, he wanted to wash his hands and he just dripped. It’s disgusting. Beautiful, but not the brightest.

The glamorous world of fashion.

Exactly, it's ugly. People are shitting all over the place.

Fashion work, in your book, seems repetitive. Did you find modelling boring?

I think a lot of waiting around for nothing most of the time is quite boring. I don't think I had the right attitude to really throw myself into this experience and fully commit to it intellectually and emotionally to make it a success. I think if you're going to experience something like modeling and get the most out of it, you have to, much like anything else in life, commit to it and part of committing to it is accepting that there's a lot of waiting around and doing little. 

One casting in Milan really sticks out. This was at a point in my career where I was jaded and fed up of going to places and waiting around and spending my money being there (in the sense that I wasn't doing something else to earn money). They’ve paid for the flight, they’ve paid for the hotel, but the trip is still costing me money.

I remember being in this casting and we were all waiting around - every male model in Milan. We were all different sizes, we weren’t the exact same chest and waist. We all looked different, different skin, different hair, different everything. There was a guy who wanted us to try on a jacket. Well, the jacket is one size, so you know if it will fit me or him or that other one over there. This jacket doesn’t fit you. Well, you knew that already. I’ve been here for two and a half hours. What a waste of time!

This could have been an email sweetie.

Exactly! What’s your chest measurement? Oh, 38? Well, don't bother coming. Go for a walk, chill out, maybe lie in bed and watch a film. It's frustrating in that sense. When you want to do something else, it's difficult to commit. But I think I committed to it enough. I did give it a fair crack and gave all my time to it. But I did come home from Milan because I was miserable.

What was more boring? Was it modelling or interning at Dazed and Confused?

Interning at Dazed landed me my first shoot. It was a brilliant day. We were on a rooftop just around Old Street. Just a great way to spend a Saturday in the middle of the summer when you’re 21. I don’t know that I got a huge amount out of it at the time. But I did after the fact; the connections I made, understanding how a magazine works, how the world of work works. Youth is wasted on the young, right? That goes for everything, your internship, your holiday, your relationship, being in Milan. I don’t know that I appreciated it enough at the time. When I went back to Manchester I got scouted and that connected the dots for me. I went around different agencies and nearly signed with the first one after that Dazed shoot.But I'm not sure, I don't know if I’d have been scouted without it. Maybe I was walking around with a spring in my step and I was noticed. If the internship hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have done the shoot and I wouldn’t have fallen into modelling. Would Alex have visited me?

Almost all of your characters feel isolated, lonely. Is this specific to the world Alex inhabits, or do you see this as the reality of society at large at that time?

I saw a headline today about young people - it classed young people as under 35 which slightly jammed with me, but nevertheless I’ll allow it. It said that young people only have one close friend or none at all. Loneliness is rife. Dave’s got a new album out in two weeks that’s called We’re All Alone in this Together. It’s in the air. Loneliness is a reality for young people. It certainly was then, seemingly becoming even more of an issue now. We’re all individuating, we’re all atomised. We’re not really connected and we look for that connection wherever we can find it. I don’t think Alex connects with anyone at all in the entire book but he’s not alone. Because neither is everyone else.

Nathalie can’t let go off the past, of being “in a bubble” during university. In a love letter she wrote Alex years earlier she said she didn’t want things to ever change. Do you think that a reason we all torture each other is because we move on from situations at different speeds?

Things fall apart. Do we change at different speeds? Yes. That's the only permanent, inevitable thing, apart from death. Change. I think in the case of Natalie and Alex, like so many people who get together when they're young, they change at different speeds and different rates and in different directions. I had relationships like that. So I could point to personal experience, but I could also say that there's something inevitable about being in a bubble with someone and eventually that bubble bursting. How many relationships endure the sheer amount of change that we go through over a lifetime? What tends to happen is you make relationships work for as long as you can. I think that's the case for Natalie and Alex. They've grown apart and they've changed at different rates in different directions. And we do torture each other, as you say. We fight to stay together in relationships that are failing. Ultimately, it is inevitable that the relationship is over. It might not be over there and then, but it is over and staying in it for another six months or two years won't change that fact.

You touched upon this earlier, but there are homoerotic undertones throughout your book, so...

[Interrupts] I would say overtones, wouldn't you? [Both laugh]

The narrator seems motivated in part by male on male jealousy.

Yes, Dazed revolves around Alex’s friendships with other men, like Rupert. Think about Bailey too and the other encounters he has with other male models. There’s clear rivalry between them. I didn’t write the book thinking of it as a narrative about male models. I think it’s about men around each other. Everything is inevitable. I don’t know how to answer this question. I interrupted you earlier to say it’s not undertones, it’s overtones. I touched on my sexuality earlier and I think what I was writing with Alex was my first real attempt to write through my own sexuality. I allowed a lot of people into the room in order to tell the story and really only told part of it, I think.

I have a tendency to write obliquely. I'm touching on things, then dot dot dot. Or something is about to happen, then the door closes and we move away. A lot goes unsaid in this book. I've been asked before about Alex and Bailey. Do they have sex? I wrote up to the part just before that. 

When I was in castings and when I was walking around, I was looking at lots of good looking men and I was observing them and some of that was to do with comparisons and some of that was to do with rivalry. He's blonder than I am. His abs are harder than mine. He's a bit taller than I am. I prefer his body to mine. His skin’s clearer than mine. All of that stuff which isn't really sexual at all, but about whether I can get the job. But then, there's a lot of men hanging around with each other with not much else to do. They room up with each other. We all go to the next room, so there's three or four in that room. What do you think happens? They play PlayStation. And get high. And go to sleep.

Did you get high?

[Long pause] On life. [Laughs] Yes, I did. I remember walking into a room. This is an honest answer. I walked into a room with other models playing video games, smoking pot, or whatever you call it these days. I just started thinking, what is everyone doing here? This is really, really boring. It's dumb, actually. Lots of men around each other. Most of them are straight or straight-ish. They're playing games and they’re smoking. It's not that interesting, but you wonder, in that next room, what's happening there? Probably the exact same thing. 

Can you edit out when I said smoke pot and call it whatever people actually call it? Smoking a doobie?

[Neither can stop laughing] They definitely don’t call it that. What can you tell me about book #3?

I'm looking at your questions and you asked about innocence and that was an interesting one. I just went back to that scene and looked at it again and I just thought of what Alex is really saying and doing in that moment. I wish I had an answer to it, whether the book is really about innocence at all or whether anyone is innocent. I'm not sure they are. Everyone seems like they’re willfully abandoning their innocence throughout. And they're desperate to no longer be [innocent]. That's probably the best I could do at answering that question.

Book #3...It’s been a long time. My last novel came out in 2011.I have, as part of a PhD, written a narrative nonfiction book, which I would describe as book #3.  I’ve written another novel, so I do have a third novel if we’re calling it that. It’s finished. It’s about desire and consequences and the impossibility of atonement. And sex. 

Sounds hot.

It is hot. I would definitely describe it as hot. That's how I'm going to pitch it to people. I’m really fed up with the English/British self-deprecation, where you can be really cocky and arrogant but then also feel the need to undercut everything and be self-deprecating, which is the worst habit that’s part of our culture. Other cultures aren’t like this, they don’t feel the need to undercut everything they do. They just do something and if they believe in it, if they think it’s good, they just say it’s good and that’s it. I don’t take myself seriously, but I can and should take what I do seriously, so yeah, it’s hot. I’m gonna go with that.

Is it currently being pitched to publishers?

It's ready to go out, so that's what I've got to deal with now over the next month or so. I’m also working on a script. I came up with something last night that I think I can work on over the next month or so. It’s the same as any stage in your life as a writer. You get excited about something, you take it out into the world and see what happens.

Why are you in Somerset? Is that where you live now?

Yes, I moved here from London in 2015, after my dad died and not long after my now eldest daughter was born. I also got a job at Bath Spa University as a lecturer. One thing led to another. We left London, moved to Somerset, where my wife is from. This is home.

How many kids do you have?

Two daughters.

So, you're in a house full of women.

I'm in a house full of women. Perhaps the best place to be right now.

Next up on Hot Mess: Scott McClanahan