Swift's book chronicles the adventures of a group ofworking-class Englishmen, most of them from the World War IIgeneration, as they follow the final instructions of their deceasedpal, the butcher Jack Dodds. Jack requested that his ashes bescattered off the pier at Margate, on the southeast coast of England.But he probably didn't count on getting the kind of detour-filledfinal ride he gets, as his three buddies, along with Vince, hisadopted son who works as a car dealer, set off in a big, blue,borrowed Mercedes.
Though written well before his nation's "mad cow disease" scare,Swift's story, already deeply resonant in its depiction of a dyingbreed, now seems marbled with yet one additional streak of pathos."It's a sort of meaty book, in more senses than one, I hope,"said Swift, groaning slightly at his own pun as he poured himself acup of tea during a recent interview. "In fact, the beef problem athome is very sad. This is one of our best industries, and a greatmany lives are going to be ruined."The choice of a butcher as a pivotal character in his book wasdeliberate. Last Orders is, in part, a novel about death. And allthe images of slaughter and dead flesh associated with butchers comeinto play, as did the notion that "butchers are traditionally thoughtof as cheerful, jovial people, which Jack is, in part. And of coursethere's an element of black humor here, too, because what Jack reallywanted to be was a doctor."In fact, nearly all of the characters in this book are shaped bytheir trade, either directly or in terms of rebellion. Ray, theinsurance clerk with a passion for betting on horses, wanted to be ajockey. Lenny, the produce seller, was briefly a boxer. Only Vic,the undertaker, and the most contented man in the book, settledeasily into the family profession.Swift believes that one of the keys to forming character in anovel is livelihood. And too many contemporary novels, he says,"are filled with people who never seem to work, despite the fact thatwe are formed by our work, or by the dream of what we might havedone."Swift's desire to become a writer was formed in his early teens.And by his early 20s, after graduating from Cambridge, he was doingsomething about it, getting his short stories into print. He wasonly 28 when his first novel, The Sweet-Shop Owner, was published.The writer, who will turn 47 next week, has carved out adistinguished reputation with work that is marked by an exceptionalspiritual and historical depth and lyric power. Waterland (1983),his best-known book, is a haunting tale set against the history ofEngland's boggy Fen country. (It is now being made into a filmstarring Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack.) Next came Out of This World(1988), about the estranged relationship between a Britishphotojournalist who has covered some of the horrors of the 20thcentury, and his daughter, and Ever After (1991), a look at the oddlyparallel lives and loss of faith of two scholarly men from differentcenturies.Swift grew up in south London and still lives there - not farfrom Bermondsey, the run-down neighborhood that stretches south ofthe Tower of London and that is home base for the men in Last Orders.His father, a civil servant "of fairly junior station" in theNational Debt Office, served in World War II as a pilot."He was trained to fly in Pensacola, Fla., so for a while he hadit easier than my mother, who was in London while the bombs wereraining down every night," said Swift. "After the war, he returnedto the same job and stayed at it until he retired on a pension."But it's that generation, which survived the war, that is nowdwindling, and that is at the heart of my book.""The direct passage of history through memory is coming to anend now," said Swift, who admitted his dad was, like many veterans,rather close-mouthed about his experiences. "We celebrated the 50thanniversary of the war last year, and I think a lot of peoplethought, `O.K., now we can pull the curtain down on all that.' Butit was such a massively important, catastrophic event - withrepercussions that will be with us forever - that I think it's wrongto just draw the line."Swift described the beginnings of novels "as mysteriousthings.""I don't get the idea for a novel very often," he confessed."Writing has a great deal to do with waiting, with being patientuntil something happens. So it wasn't a particular conversationoverheard in my local pub that got me started on this book, althoughI do go to pubs, and I do listen. I just envisioned a group ofpeople going on a very specific journey of the living and the dead.And I knew their voices. I'd heard them nearly every day of mylife."Swift said he wasn't consciously thinking of William Faulkner,either, although he greatly admires him. But in a sense, Last Ordersbecame a homage to the American writer's As I Lay Dying - stronglyechoing the structure and soul of that book, which also follows atragi-comic burial rite."Both books are about laying to rest the dead and about how theliving come to terms with it," said Swift. "But this is theperennial, mythic story - one that Homer and Shakespeare andcountless other writers have dealt with.""Funerals are curious things, too. They're often strangelymechanical, yet they carry an immense burden. A lot of what thecharacters in my book are trying to do is make something big anddignified and respecting out of this event, despite the extraordinarybanality of the actual process. And what's funny and wonderful inall of it is that in the midst of such sobering, awe-inspiringcircumstances these people don't just suddenly lose their essentialnatures and become less obstinate or mean or selfish. The journey toMargate almost threatens to become a pub crawl at one point, and itcontinually erupts with all the latent antagonisms and secrets thesemen (and the women in their lives) possess."In one of the book's loveliest passages, the quartet of mournersmake a stop at the imposing Canterbury Cathedral, and each, in hisown way, tries to match the grandeur and solemnity of the place."They feel a sense of something beyond time and beyond theindividual struggle," explains Swift. "Ray's thoughts vault into theother world, but he fails to see it, but I think there is comedy andgreat sadness and compassion in that flawed attempt to glimpse whatis transcendent."Although he does not practice any religion, Swift said he has"the residual and fragile religious feelings that artists tend tohave. Words like `the soul' and `the spirit' do have a meaning forme. The whole purpose of writing books has to do with reconcilinglife and death and coming to some transcendent view of humanity."I grew up reading the typical boys' adventure books of mygeneration, and they sowed the seeds of my ambition to write.Whatever their literary value, they suggested that you could getpeople excited with words. And that's still magic to me. I supposeI still believe in the primal appeal of telling a story. It's aprimitive compulsion, deep in our nature. A kind of magic. Everywriter wants to cast a spell and every reader wants to be underone.
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