Michael Nath’s latest book, Talbot and the Fall: A Comedy (With Support), inhabits different spaces, from home gardens and tube stations to the Thirty Years War and realms of spirits and punk rock. While John Talbot is awaiting the results of a medical procedure, his daughter Charlie is off trying to finish her creative thesis at a writing retreat. Friends and ghosts alike join in to reexamine a tangled, multiplicitous past and reckon with multiple futures. I sat down with Nath to discuss some of his influences for this beautiful and intricate story.
We discussed the book ahead of its release over email. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Eliza Marley
“Tracks” come up in various forms across the book. Most notably, musical tracks and the physical tracks of the London Tube. They form accessible (and inaccessible) paths across the story, which made me think about your mention of Annwfn. How did you envision this space of ‘Otherworld’ for the story?
Michael Nath
I discovered the Annwfn tradition only at quite a late stage of revision (when I was reading The Book of Taliesin) so it answered to what I’d been doing, rather than serving as a foundation – answered very satisfactorily indeed. It may be useful here to quote the following definition (which appears as an epigraph in Talbot): ‘Annwfn […] refers to the Otherworld of early Welsh myth. It can be literally rendered as the ‘undeep’; it is different from the classical Underworld in that its uncanniness exists alongside or even within ordinary life, rather than being a separate territory.’ [Introduction, The Book of Taliesin, trans Gwyneth Lewis & Rowan Williams]
Why did it answer to, or cast ancient light on, what I was doing? Well, it hadn’t been my design to incorporate an explicitly-supernatural element in the novel in its present form: what I was inclining to were certain effects that may suggest the otherworld, while being subject to ordinary explanation. Take the appearance of the Captain’s ghost: this may be a trick of Preeti’s, rather than a visitation.
On the other hand, the use of a chorus that issues from a ‘spirit garden’ may seem to be just supernatural; though it’s among the earthly mysteries of the thing we call ‘narrative voice’ that it commonly outlives its biological author—a matter of relative immortality. The chorus is, perhaps, contingent on that mystery. Besides, the rendering of other, real gardens and green spaces in the narrative is, let’s say, saturated in such a way as to recognise the Annwfn tradition: inviting the question, who/what else may be present here?
Franz Kafka’s had a significant influence on me. I regard Kafka as the greatest surrealist in prose fiction, partly because his world is tilted only a few degrees from the ordinary. Late in the novel, Talbot notices, and is noticed by, a man in a field. Has he been encountered before? Does he remind Talbot/the reader of a figure presented in detail earlier on, now become allegorical, or symbolic?
Eliza Marley
As The Fall comes in different ways, the band also seems to act as a kind of headspace and otherworld as well. Sometimes they are a cacophony, other times coming with a message that can be slowly and periodically digested as Charlie slowly listens track by track. They seem positioned as a form of learning set by her dad, John?
Michael Nath
Maybe I could begin by referring to Chapter five. Here, John Talbot casually introduces Charlie to The Fall, then begins to refuse information. John’s behaviour is more than a trick for inducing curiosity in his daughter, it suggests his attitude to his cult. That attitude is pretty complex.
On one level, it’s a matter of tact, shyness even: John wishes to avoid the crummy habit of playing his daughter ‘Dad’s music’. At the same time, he knows his cult to be a valuable thing, and he is urged, commanded even, by soul and mind, to introduce it to Charlie. You mention The Fall as space/otherworld. Well, think of it as an hermetic space, even as a kind of cave. Who do you bring in? You need to honour the cult, by making converts; you also need to protect the cult from those who aren’t fit for it. This is the esoteric dilemma. A genuinely-secret following attracts the merely curious. Let’s listen to the New Testament on this: ‘And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it.’ [Mark, 7:36]
Because The Fall never fell into commercial compromise, and persistently issued new, surprising, remarkable music (yet, music in which the genuine follower felt at home), they represent a very high station, or ‘standpoint’, of the spirit. There is something to learn from this: The Fall as both church, and alternative university; and a model of how to become an artist. John intuits how this may benefit his daughter; but he wouldn’t coerce her. Which issues in the rationing ‘game’: Charlie limited to two new tracks per week. But, John is also anxious about his daughter’s drinking habits, and the dubious example set by the Captain: this is the ordinary, but needful, care of a parent. The more needful because the Talbots already have an alcoholic son.
Eliza Marley
The Captain cuts a very striking figure. How was he created as a character?
Michael Nath
The Captain is a name I began using for Mark E Smith some years ago; John Talbot uses it in the same way. The novel is set in the spring of 2018; Mark Smith died towards the end of January that year. His spirit is still around, as of course is his voice (in the music John plays Charlie). He’s also in charge of the chorus that sometimes takes the place of the third-person narrator. And of course, his ghost seems to come to Charlie, though it’s Preeti who sees it, so she says; and she knows all about the spirit ‘patrons’ who are called up in James Merrill’s Changing Light at Sandover. One of my favourite writers is M.R. James, whose ghost stories are justly famous; though not many of them contain ghosts in the sense we’re considering here. M.R. James also appears in certain songs by The Fall.
Eliza Marley
There’s mention from various characters about the ‘old’. Old ways, old times, old people, old language and old cultural references are brought in sometimes as old relics of a past and sometimes as something more presently occurring. It makes me think of how folklore tales have a sort of anywhere, anytime or out-of-time quality. How were you thinking of story time?
Michael Nath
Story-time is quite tight in Talbot—though on one level only. The whole thing begins on a Saturday in April in 2018, and the final chapter is set on the evening of the Monday after next: i.e, the narrative occupies 10 days (though the Epilogue takes us on a few days later). The reason for this is that John has to have a definite and limited time in which to reckon morally with the clinical procedure he has on the first Monday: a week allows him time for reflection, resolution.
Readers may feel that Charlie’s time at the Hudsbury retreat has a different durational quality from her father’s time in London. She’s actually away for only four days; but her time there may seem comparatively unlimited?
The time of memory is also significant. John’s thoughts of years, phases of his life, Charlie’s childhood, his old friend Billy Shaw and Billy’s father, his marriage to Rita; then Charlie’s memories of her Bampa’s storytelling, her talks with her Nan about Nan’s youth in Swansea, her care for Nan’s own memories …
Nan opens the narrative to historical time, recalling as she does the German bombing of her town during WW2, and taking a gasmask to school. Through this opening, enters John’s worries about Europe, Brexit, and another European war. The worries are intensified by John’s visions of the Thirty Years War, which was the first large-scale European conflict. Historical time enters as well in the projects of two of Charlie’s pals. Paloma Ruez is writing about the German intervention in the Spanish Civil War, and an evil figure she calls El Flaco. Meanwhile, Vicky Thorndyke is writing about a 17th century ancestor.
I suppose Talbot admits a lot of time into what seems quite a small vessel. Before beginning the book, I was affected by the thought of the passing of all who’ve ever lived, and their number; also by the Latin phrase, ad plures ire (= ‘to go among the many’/ ‘to die’). When Talbot and Banks chat to the blotchy regular in The Nightingale, this thought is converted to arithmetic; then cartoon, as the three men imagine all who’ve died travelling in Talbot’s tube.
Eliza Marley
Related, Charlie and John Talbot both have distinct investments with language; Charlie’s “staining” phrases and John’s “hwyl”, while not direct nor perfect parallels, open up very exciting ways these characters are steeped in and endlessly frustrated by language. As a writer writing about a writer, I wonder if you share some of these frustrations. I’m curious about how the process of storytelling became a central throughline of the story?
Michael Nath
I’ll begin by saying I’m not really in favour of writing about writers: it’s like fishing in a puddle.
Proust’s OK though, seeing as his narrator isn’t a writer, but a character like Charlie, searching for a subject. As a matter of fact, Charlie and her struggle with her project became more prominent over successive drafts; earlier on, the struggle wasn’t motivating things as it does now. Still, I had a madcap notion after I’d been working about three years on the book: how about when we get to the end, it turns out that Charlie has finally found her subject, and that subject is … Talbot & The Fall. So, she’s written the bloody thing! Which of course is Proust’s trick, or something like.
Of course, it’s not just time and memory, but mortality, that excites the creative decision of Proust’s narrator, as he attends the ‘masquerade’ of aging characters. Which correlates with Charlie’s rather dreadful epiphany in the salon at the retreat: her friends Paloma and Vicky are thriving in their projects because they are writing about dead ancestors; but if Charlie is to write about her father John and his cult (which has been her semi-design for some time), she must accept, or even will, his death if she’s to succeed. She cannot will this; so love seems to be consigning her to artistic failure. When she choreographs the danse macabre on the island, is this a creative decision? Or just an act of defiance? Either way, its effect is to get her writing, at last—though Edmund Spenser’s ‘Garden of Adonis’, and The Fall’s ‘Garden’, also play their part in this development.
Eliza Marley
Many of the language motifs (like returning phrases) also reminded me of Welsh folklore and how characters, places, and tales are brought back and back again, through different variations and cycles. The French and Welsh language comes up a lot, opening various spheres of reference and culture. And, of course, the oral history element with the compiling of memories and family histories / stories. How do you see these various modes of language interacting with the novel form?
Michael Nath
Consider the memory of Charlie as a child sitting on the knee of her ‘Bampa’ (that’s Welsh for ‘Grandpa’) and listening to stories in which she is the lead-character. Why can’t she tell stories as he could? That’s her complaint. I suppose the reader may notice, however, that the example of Bampa Talbot’s story in Ch1 actually foreshadows the danse macabre with its magical effects, choreographed by Charlie on the wooded island. Also as a child, she insisted (as kids do) on exact repetition in Bampa T’s stories. How does this relate to one of Charlie’s valuable lessons from The Fall, namely, that repetition can bring about a kind of immortality? With her Bampa, she listened to a kind of fantasy narration. Years later with her Nan, she demands bits of personal and social history.
Of course, Welsh and French are two great languages of mediaeval romance; and maybe I can anticipate your question about Rhiannon here! Now I’m guessing you noticed that in identifying herself (a little vaguely) with Rhiannon in Chapter twelve, Charlie gets the wrong heroine. In the context, she seems to have in mind Blodeuedd (Mabinogion, Fourth Branch); Rhiannon appears in the First Branch, and the emotion most explicitly attributed to her is anxiety: did Charlie displace Rhiannon with Blodeuedd in order to manage her own anxiety? One for the psychoanalysts!
We should mention here another element of oral culture, namely, The Fall. Both voice and lyrics of Mark E Smith preserve a form of Northern English in a manner pretty atypical of rock groups. From his words, Charlie is adding carefully to her own stock.
Eliza Marley
Grand scales of time intercross with more localized events, especially John Talbot waiting on his hospital results. You evoke genre, the ‘Old Welsh stories’ romances, heroics, and others which seem to be doing some work to comment on how surreal the passage of time or the state of the present is?
Michael Nath
Let’s think here about John’s historical visions, and the idea of having ‘wings’—which is prompted by The Fall’s ‘Wings’. So, a man whose time may now be limited is allowed to visit the past. How does this affect his present condition? I wonder if readers notice that the visions are stimulated not only by “the University of The Fall”, but also (perhaps) by the envelope of powder John is slipped at the funeral in Chapter three?
Consider now Charlie’s reflections on ‘Wings’ and the interview with the Captain in chapter twelve. She is discovering that time-travel as commonly conceived is a fairly trivial thing, dependent on ‘portals’ and other hackneyed gadgets; for the Captain, what matters is imagination, stimulants, and establishing your own ‘standpoint’: when you’ve a standpoint, you can manage the world, its fashions, forces, ideological seasons, rather than being managed, ventriloquized, by these things. Then, the ordinary world may come to you as ‘wild’, or genuinely surreal. This is Charlie’s lesson, or one of them.
FICTION
Talbot and the Fall: A Comedy (With Support)
By Michael Nath
Indirect Books
Published June 16, 2026
