"The Great And
Secret Show is, in one sense, the West Coast story.
The second book will be the East Coast story, which is
Harry's stomping ground, and the third book will happen
all over America. It's fun. I've always wanted to do
something with that kind of scale to it."
Clive Barker - Lord of the Breed
By Philip Nutman,
Fangoria, No 91, April 1990 {Note : interview took place in June 1989}
[On the gap between the books of The Art] "I don't mind. They were
designed to be independent of each other. In a sense there will be
narrative connections, but Lovecraft spent most of his life writing
stories which were interconnected and interwoven but had large spaces
between them in many cases. Basically, all I'm doing is plugging into
a mythology again. If they make another Star Wars movie, I'll be there
to pick up the threads of the narrative that was dropped some seven
years ago, whatever it was. I don't worry too much about that.
"I think The Great And Secret Show works as a narrative entirety. Of
course there was some hint that there was going to be further work, not
least the fact that it says, 'The First Book of The Art' on the title
page, and there will be a second and third book of The Art without a
doubt. But at what point it comes? Think of Frank Herbert and the
Dune books, which had large gaps between them.
"I've never felt so full
of imaginative ideas and I want to be able to examine them in as many
directions as possible, rather than feeling as though, 'Shit, I started
this so I have to finish it now.' I'll finish it, absolutely. Steve
has been going on with The Dark Tower stuff, ambling through that stuff,
and it's going to take him a long time to finish that storyline. I
think that's fine too."
Dread Speaks with Clive Barker
By [Michael Brown],
Dread, No 3, December 1991
"There will be two more books [of The Art] down the line, but way down
the line. I have a lot of ideas. And lots of time. I'm only 39.
There's lots of time to do stuff. I don't feel that the years are
ticking away. I feel I've got another 30 solid writing years in me.
This stuff will happen in it's own time."
An Interview With Clive Barker
By Robert Errera,
Hecate's Cauldron, Vol 1, Issue 3, 1992 (note - interview took place
4th January 1992)
"The final part of the Art Trilogy will be published before the end of
the century, I promise! It's going to be a huge book, and with the
large volumes of prose I have to warm up like a marathon runner before
I set to work.
"The final book of the trilogy will be enormous, both in its narrative
elaboration and in its metaphysical echoes. I know the story I have to
tell and I'm excited at the prospect of telling it, but it's a big,
big book."
AOL Appearance
Transcript of on-line appearance, 16 July 1996
"I know what it's going to be, and I think good narratives often happen
in threes. Three acts in a play, in a movie, and the trilogy structure
certainly works in something like the Lord of the Rings. Both the
Great and Secret Show and Everville are preparations for one final
massive novel."
Confessions
By [Stephen Dressler and Cheryl Bentzen],
Lost Souls, Issue 3, [March] 1996
"The third book of The Art takes place in Quiddity, the Dream Sea. What
The Art has been doing is moving toward a massive metaphysical
resolution in another world....I think they're [The Art III & Galilee
II] very, very different kinds of books. The way those narratives go
- and are going to go - will see two totally different resolutions.
"In the case of the third book of The Art, I have been planning that for
five years, and I have 500, maybe 600 pages of notes towards that
novel. A week doesn't go by without my contributing something to that.
So it's not as though I pick up the thing a few years on without having
done anything in the interim. I keep a running tab on how I feel about
the various material and whether I've got it to the critical mass that
I need it to get to before [I write it]."
Lord of New Illusions
By W.C.Stroby,
Fangoria, No 175, August 1998
"Buddenbaum's essentially a European decadent with an American edge. He
has a European sensibility. He feels like old money. When he meets the
pioneers at the beginning of the book, appearing among them with his
fur collar and his silver cane, they recognize him as being completely
different. That's one of the reasons why we think he is the devil.
Later on I think his sexual response, the fact that he's a pursuing a
younger kid whom he basically wants to make over, feels like an
old-fashioned idea of homosexuality. I deliberately characterized him
as a kind of old-fashioned gay who wants to exploit this kid.
"And Seth, the exploited kid, the kid who hears angels hammering on
heaven from the other side, is going to turn in the third book of the
series into a queer boy, a very modern and very volatile and very
in-your-face queen. I wanted to create two gay characters in this
forthcoming book, one of whom feels like he harkens back to the
nineteenth century, the other of whom is going to push forward into the
twenty-first. But in this book, what we see is Seth being changed. We
see him realize that he is a gay man who wants sex with another man,
and he doesn't realize it until he is kissed on the lips."
[Devil Doll]
By Brandon Judell,
10 Per Cent, March/April 1995
"The concept behind the individual symbols found on the medallion in
The Great and Secret Show will appear in the 3rd Book of the Art. Each
one does have a specific meaning, but you'll have to wait to find out."
Confessions
By [Stephen Dressler and Cheryl Bentzen],
Lost Souls, Issue 7, April 1997
"I now have two mythologies, one being The Art books and the other
obviously being Galilee - which are running concurrently. But I enjoy
that - I like that. I find that very pleasurable in part because The
Art books are very metaphysical, and sort of dense, and phantastical.
And the third book will be extremely phantastical because we will be
entering the other world of those books - the dream stage - in a major
way."
Clive Barker: Master of the Fantastique
By Stanley Wiater,
Amazon.com 1999
"The key thing for me is waiting for the moment when I have all the
ideas in place. Because large narrative structures like that, if you
begin without knowing where you are going, forget it. I've got Tesla,
I've got Harry, I've got all these characters in play at the same time.
And I have to resolve them all in one mammoth narrative line, which I
have in my head... I need to be ready... and I can't really describe
what this is because maybe I don't understand it myself... and even
though you may intellectually have it, that's not all of what you
really need. You also need the emotional sense that this is the
moment... and it's eighteen months of my life. And when I sit down,
I know it's going to consume me. And, I also know, this is not a
rehearsal, I've got to get this right. By the time I deliver it, it
will be probably ten years since I started the first book. And that
mythology has grown and we sold millions of books. And I want to
deliver the best damn story that I possibly can. And I want to make
sure that all the narrative lines are... ...and, also, perhaps this
is, in a sense more important to me than metaphysical life. The thing
is, I need to feel that the metaphysical life of the piece is right,
as well. I need to feel that whatever this book is saying is true.
Well, you might say, this is fantasy so why does it matter whether or
not it's true or not. By true, I mean metaphorically true. True to
what I believe about the world. Tesla Bombeck has been released into
this place about stories, this place where all stories happen with
equal validity, in a way. So, the final book, to some extent is about
what story is. And, it's a big subject for a storyteller. For a
storyteller not to simply write, 'once upon a time', but to write
about what 'once upon a time' means, is a big subject. And I want to
make sure that when I tell it, I have the right answers."
Interview
By Amber Black and Tim Trautmann,
Review(?), 1996
"I have a huge metaphysical book in my head... It will make Weaveworld
look like Nancy Drew. A huge, huge, huge metaphysical book. I want to
investigate the erotic at its most profound, in forms that I think we
possibly begin to see in Burroughs, but which haven't been pursued as
a consistent thesis. We're talking my Bible. I want to write the Bible."
Fuck The Canon
By Dennis Cooper,
LA Weekly, Literary Supplement, 31 August - 6 September 2001
"The third book of The Art is a mother. I mean it's a huge book. It's a huge book in
terms of the scale of its mythology and I think just in terms of its physical scale. And
those books, you know, are like getting ready for a marathon race. You know I've been...
I guess essentially this is my 19th book or something like that and the business of
writing doesn't become any easier. I sort of have to prep myself. And certainly for a big
book like the third book of The Art, which I think is going to be, in some ways,
metaphysically more ambitious than Imajica, he said sort of biting his nails with anxiety.
Part of it is just that there's a lot of threads to tie up. There's a lot that has been
debated and offered up in the earlier books and that's gonna be fun. I mean there's a lot
of really interesting characters and interesting places that have to be re-explored, so
there's a lot that that book is up to.."
Clive Barker (Part Two)
By Spence D,
IGN For Men, 20 December 1999
"Eventually when the third book of The Art is finished we'll do the
master edition which will have the three books in one volume. You'll
be able to read all three books in a single narrative. I think that
what will be apparent is that the scale of the mythology is as big as
it ever was in Imajica, but book by book it doesn't read as big."
Shades Of The Illusionist
By Geoff Sweeting,
Ex Cathedra, No 4, May 1995
"Harry was always intended to be a character we could revisit. And, of
course, he has a large place in the third book of The Art."
Lord of New Illusions
By W.C.Stroby,
Fangoria, No 175, August 1998
"I owe to my readers a third book of that much delayed trilogy [of The
Art]. I know what the book is going to be about, and that's why I've
been slow to deliver it. It'll be enormous (and you know I mean
enormous!). I'm a little anxious about the challenge of what needs to
be done in the book; but it's going to be one helluva book. I'll start
in a couple of years' time."
Horror In Books And Movies: Clive Barker
By [ ],
USA Today Online Chat, The Nation Talks : Live, 31 October 2000 (Note - full
text at usatoday.com)
"[Everville] begins... earlier than the first book of the trilogy (and
I have a notion, though I'm not certain of this, that the third book
may begin earlier still) and it travels much further than The Great
and Secret Show, advancing and even contradicting the metaphysics of
that book...
"The image [of the cross] is a kind of goad to me. My ambition for this
trilogy - which will be completed when I write the Third Book of the
Art - is clear whenever I look at the image: I want to put my readers,
for a time, into that sacred [central] spot; to make them feel the flow of
energies between states of being."
Introduction
By Clive Barker,
Everville, 1999 HarperPerennial edition, 13 August 1999
"I'm going to spend the next two years on the four books of the Abarat,
and then I will do two big books back-to-back: one will be the sequel
to Galilee, which will be the end of that story; and the other will be
the third book of The Art.
"At the back of my head I have another, enormous-sized book like
Imajica which I also want to get under my belt within the next five or
six years, but before I get to that I must finish the final book of The
Art. It will be another enormous book; I know what it is, and
sometimes I get intimidated by the scale of what I'm going to attempt.
But it's a mythology I love and, fortunately, it's a mythology people
are still interested in."
The Dark Backward
By Philip Nutman,
Fangoria, No 200, March 2001
"I almost don't want to do the third book of The Art because I don't
want to say goodbye to that. There's an inbuilt reluctance; once you
say goodbye it's a kind of death and the world is dead to you - it's
alive to the reader, but... There is something fun about books that
contain an entire world - Imajica, Weaveworld - but there's something
wonderful about the open-ended book, books which you're going to fill...
"It's interesting that there are hundreds of pages on the third book
of the Art and hundreds of pages on Galilee too already written,
hand-written drafts, just because [I've never left them]. Going back
to your point about Tolkien never leaving Middle-Earth, I never
actually left Maddox on the road and I certainly never left Quiddity,
and so those remain open worlds in my head and that's kind of exciting
in a way. In any day in my imagination I might totter along any given
roads."
Open Roads... What Price Wonderland?
By Phil and Sarah Stokes,
3 April 2002 (note - full text here)
"I will go straight on to Abarat 3, knowing that two huge projects wait in the wings. The huger of the two being the third Book of the
Art, which sort of itches at me to just get to. It's sort of interesting that in the time since The Great and Secret Show was written a
lot of stuff has come along both in areas of fiction, like the Matrix, and in the area of physics and science which has given me fuel for
thought for this debate which goes on in those books between the world of reality and the world of dreams. In a curious way the
longer it actually takes me to reach that book, the more anxious for that book I become. And that's not a bad thing. I think it's going
to be a big book...
"But they're both year and a half long books. They're big projects that are very strong in my head. I wish I could clone myself.
It would be very useful."
Confessions
By Craig Fohr, Lost Souls, 1 August 2003 (note - full text online at Lost Souls - see links page)
"I know I've got a third book
of The Art and the second book of Galilee to write and two more Abarat books and it excites me that those things are there
somewhere in the menu of things that I have to choose from as I continue my writing and painting career. It's lovely to feel that there's
important (and I mean important in the sense of important to me) important stuff to do; stuff that really moves me. Characters to pick
up and bring to a conclusion and stories to tell, stories that audiences, readers worldwide have got an interest in - as I found out when
I got into Holland and a whole bunch of people were going, 'Where's the third book of The Art?' and I felt, 'Yeah, yeah, I gotta get on
with these books!' "
In Anticipation Of The Deluge: A Moment At The River's Edge
By Phil and Sarah Stokes,
1 and 12 July 2004 (note - full text here)
"I think, as a writer, you learn to take in information and find the moment
when it's right to tell the story... Sometimes I find
I need to allow myself to grow into the moment of writing the book. And, the
mythology of The Art - as the title suggests - is a mythology incredibly close
to my heart. I am an artist, so, of course, I want to write the book of The
Art - the third and final book - with as much feeling as possible. It's going to
be a big book when it comes, and I beg for patience, and promise that it
will be well worth the wait. I think what the third book will concern itself
with is what the very origins of Quiddity, what the connection between
humanity's origin and the origin of the conscience - the dream
consciousness - that is there in the Sea of Quiddity, what that connection is.
I've always believed in the idea of a collective unconscious, and Quiddity
is really that. It's the sea we enter, as the mythology goes, where we enter
once on the night when we are born, once on the night when we first kiss,
and fall in love with the world, and once at the time we die. At the most
serious and profound moments in our lives, we are given a moment to enter
this place of pure dreaming, and that's fascinating, my fascination with
dreaming. My dreams are mirrors of my soul. I'm hoping that will all be
reflected in the third and final book."
The Clive Barker Interview
By Brett Alexander Savory,
IROSF.com, Vol I, No. 8, 21 August 2004
"The Art is an even more thorough-going metaphysic than the Abarat in that hopefully the third book will bring this whole
Blakean image of what this is, what the nuncio is, what evolution is, what the connection between magic and
Christianity is, a lot of big issues interplay."
The Lazarus Muse: Nights Of Magic, Days Of Gore
By Phil and Sarah Stokes,
2 June 2005 (note:
full text here)
"That only leaves one book - as yet untitled, as yet unwritten, but roiling around in my brain like ripe with violence, weird sex, and
the kind of metaphysical theorizing that gives Christian fundamentalists ulcers and hemorrhoids - for Chris [Ryall] and Gabriel [Rodriguez]
to recreate for
their own medium. Should that happen, as I dearly hope it will, I believe that in Chris and Gabriel’s reinvented telling, The Art Trilogy
will stand as a benchmark of imaginative and aesthetic excellence."
Introduction
By Clive Barker,
The Great And Secret Show, Part One, 24 August 2006
"I love Liverpool and I always will and I was thinking actually as I’ve been very tentatively looking at Art 3 and just beginning to
focus my attentions there, knowing that in the next few years I’m going to tackle that - you know that Liverpool obviously has a
significant part to play (well, not that significant) but has a part to play in Everville and has another part to play in the third book
and it’s interesting: I’ve got to be careful about this, I’ve got to make sure I’m describing a city which still exists, given this
rapid transformation... and yet I also would like people to be able to go to Liverpool with Art 3 in their hands and be able to go to a
given place, you see what I mean?
"I’d like to make sure that I get the geography right with Art 3 because you’re right, Maeve has a mental construction of Liverpool,
a dream Liverpool which is of course a Liverpool of the very remote past but Liverpool is sufficiently old a city and has been...
careful with some of its older buildings that I’d like to think, as I say, that people would be able to have Art 3 under their arms and
go to a given place and find it there and so I’m going to make myself familiar in the next few years as I back and forth to Liverpool.
"There’s some very magical backwaters, particularly actually in central Liverpool; little alleyways which lead onto squares and I’ve
always had, I think, a love of the secret side of cities... and the first city I was ever in thrall with was of course Liverpool and so I’d
like to celebrate the city in Art 3 and yes, certainly I’ve got to take into account Maeve’s dreaming of it but I’d just like to get the
geography right."
Pinhead's Progress
By Phil and Sarah Stokes,
15 and 22 December 2006 (note: full text here)
The Collected Short Stories
...These stories were originally intended to accompany the 'Pinhead vs. Harry' novella which grew into the full-size novel
now known as The Scarlet Gospels. Originally providing a home for all the previously
uncollected short stories (including, possibly, the Tortured Souls pieces, but not Mercy and The Jackal, nor
Jehovah's Bitch) together with a whole bunch of new pieces of short fiction, this has promised much and is eagerly
anticipated. 'The Scarlet Gospels' was a title originally planned for a standalone collection of
erotic poetry and prose, then (like other titles before it, including Everville and Saint Sinner) had the title recycled and
was planned as the title-piece novella within the collection.
Although the remaining stories have already reached final draft, a publication date remains currently un-planned...
:
"We are delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of The Painter, The Creature and The Father of Lies: Essays by
Clive Barker...