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‘Somebody told me recently it was like the Coen Brothers directing PG Wodehouse’: Author Jonny Sweet on his new darkly comic thriller

Jonny Sweet on moving from writing stand-up shows and plays to fiction with The Kellerby Code

Jonny Sweet: 'I do think of myself as a comedian in many ways'

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Martin Doyle
Fri Apr 26 2024 - 05:00
Tell me about your debut novel, The Kellerby Code.

The Kellerby Code is a darkly comic thriller – a kind of Jeeves and Wooster-ish murder farce, for want of a better phrase. It’s about Edward Jevons, who comes from an ordinary background, and at university falls in with a glittering aristocratic set. He’s completely taken by them, especially Stanza (with whom he falls instantly in love) and Robert. Years later, to cling on to their friendship, he has become deferential to the point of complete servitude: he books their taxis, picks up their dry cleaning, sands and varnishes their kitchen worktop. He reverts to a classic British mode in relation to the upper classes: he’s Jeeves.

But he’s finding it harder and harder to bear, and he’s getting angrier and angrier. One night he discovers Robert and Stanza are together. He also discovers a secret about Robert that he thinks might destroy him – and decides that destroying Robert is a good idea.

It goes terribly. Everything unravels, quite bloodily. He has to smuggle a Martian meteorite, battle the criminal underworld and evade the police on horseback. Somebody told me recently it was like the Coen Brothers directing PG Wodehouse, which I liked. It’s a comedy and it’s thrilling, but it’s also tender and underpinned by a set of fairly serious ideas.

Class conflict, envy, snobbery and social climbing, typified recently by Saltburn, seem to be a particularly English obsession and a comic staple. Why is that and are you leaning in or coming at it differently?

I think this is a kind of foundational English myth, and the most successful iterations interpret it differently each time. It can be about class rage, or snobbery – but really I think these stories examine how political power operates between people. My book is a comedy, if a murderous one, but I still think that’s what interested me. I think power interests everybody and country houses for about 200 years have been the most potent symbol of that. They’re also a great setting for story: they gather people together, they’re beautiful, and there’s something about them that feels threatening. These days, they threaten us with their history. Often they were built on slavery, or imperial conquest. How do we feel about Brideshead Revisited with that thought in our heads? The myths change because they mean different things to us.

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You’re a fan of PG Wodehouse? What other writers or books make you laugh?

Yes, my book is called The Kellerby Code after the Code of the Woosters. The first pang I got for the book was wondering if Jeeves ever feels class rage. If he imagines strangling Bertie at the end of a long day. I know I would: Bertie’s an absolute pain. I like comedy that delves a little bit and is mucky in that way. Having said that, I love the pure innocence of Wodehouse. Mostly at the moment I love Tim Key’s poetry. I like Sam Lipsyte. Dickens is very funny. Both Amises are funny. Most of my favourite writers are funny sometimes. I love when Lydia Davis is funny. And Patricia Highsmith, too.

You won best newcomer at the Edinburgh fringe with your one-man show Mostly About Arthur, whose hero writes blurbs for a living. Have you always been bookish?

Yes, I have really. I’ve always felt more like a bookish person than anything else. That show was quite odd for a comedy hour. It was about a character who wanted to devote his life to correcting the reputation of his late brother – which would be more suited to a novel than a comedy show (I realised since it is basically the plot of Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight). My brother was a bit freaked out I’d fictionalised his death but I think we’ve moved beyond that now. My character had a limp and not being a particularly precise actor, the limping leg would alternate throughout the show, which the director hated.

Your book is endorsed by fellow comedian turned author Richard Osman. Was it a natural progression from writing stand-up shows and plays to fiction?

In a way I do think there’s a clear progression from the show above (in 2009) to this book but probably that would be hard for anyone else to see! My instinct was always to tell stories rather than do straight stand-up. I always felt I needed a reason to be telling a joke, rather than a joke existing for itself. Having said that, I adore comedians and I do think of myself as a comedian in many ways. It took a while to work out how to tell the sort of story I wanted to tell – that could have humour integral to it, but in a way that didn’t take away from the character, the propulsion of the plot, or its capacity to move and mean something to the reader. I think reading is really intimate and sometimes jokes can disrupt that – sometimes jokes make us feel controlled, perhaps, in the reading experience.

You’ve also enjoyed success with your first screenplay, Wicked Little Letters. It’s a poison pen mystery based on real events and set, interestingly, in a working-class community. Tell us more.

This was an incredible true story I was lucky to stumble across. I was attracted to it because it was about language, and it offered an opportunity to write a period film that felt very different. Normally period films are about royalty or politicians or aristocrats. This is about two working class neighbours who get embroiled in a scandal that occupied the nation and the front pages of many newspapers. The real letters are incredible: like a child trying to swear like a grown up.

Really the film has a similar subject to the book: it’s an entertaining story about how imbalances of power crop up in unlikely relationships. In this case, a woman receives some obscene, bizarre, anonymous letters. Her neighbour – infamous for her unladylike manner – is sent to jail for them based on little to no evidence. She’s really sent to jail because she doesn’t conform to the ideal of how women ought to behave. The film’s about her fight for justice. The true story – and therefore the film – is a wild, unlikely ride, and you’ll think it was all made up. It wasn’t!

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