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As smoke rising from the ashtray mingles under the light canopy with the steam off the mug of tea, "the Armistead Maupin of south London" takes aim. The cue ball streaks across the green baize, cannoning into the red that hovers precariously on the lip of the pocket, before both disappear into oblivion.
"Fucking hell," he groans, "I think I'm getting worse at this game."
For the past few months your correspondent has shared many a late night tryst over the table with renowned Glaswegian post-punk author, low-life socialite and slowly improving snooker player Martin Millar. And while his chances of making the last eight at the Crucible are about as remote as the Himalayas, Millar now stands poised to enter the literary and cultural mainstream as his latest novel, 'Dreams Of Sex And Stage Diving', finds its way onto a bookshelf near you.
Once again his is the name to drop, as his previous books ('Milk, Sulphate & Alby Starvation', 'Lux The Poet', 'Ruby & The Stone Age Diet' and 'The Good Fairies Of New York') are repackaged and repromoted, and as august an institution as the BBC begin work on turning his third slice of Brixton subculture and trans-dimensional hagiography, 'Ruby And The Stone Age Diet', into prime-time viewing. But all this seems somehow irrelevant as Martin leans once more across the snooker table in a desperate bid to reduce a 15 point deficit.
Frequently praised for his lucid imagination, what strikes you about Millar after a few months on the periphery of his social circle is how little of what the writes about is actually made up. Maybe the implied criticism is a tad unfair- after all, there aren't that many pagan gods intervening in the average south London sex life, and I defy anyone to sustain any long-term form of social contact with a character as unremittingly self-centred as Elfish, Millar's latest anti-heroine. But he takes the jab on the chin.
"I'd half go along with you. For instance, I remember my agent thought that Alby Starvation being worried about burglars coming into his flat through the ceiling was really funny- she thought it was hilarious that I should make up such a ridiculous paranoia. But I put that in because one day I came back to my flat on the Tulse Hill Estate and there was a hole in the ceiling and all my stuff was gone. I do take incidents and detail from around me, but I don't tend to take the characters from real life."
The real life characters in the snooker hall merely stifle a giggle as Millar's hapless opponent fails dismally to get back down the table for the pink. After devastating breaks from the unflappable novelist of three, nine and six I'm on the rack. In an attempt to put him off his stride I plump for a more difficult conversational tack. The charges of parochialism periodically lobbed in Millar's direction were played not so much with a straight bat as a flamboyant cover drive when he chose to relocate to New York for his fourth novel, but '...Sex & Stage Diving' finds him once again back in his adopted home of Brixton. At a point in his literary career where a step into the wider world may have seemed advisable, Millar has returned to an environment he knows intimately and a teeming mass of characters and situations he is comfortable with in order to fashion his most complete and rounded work. But there's the rest of the world to get through to - the world that doesn't give a toss about "cult" success, or the iniquitous ramifications of the Criminal Justice Bill, or, indeed, whether characters like Elfish live or die. What is there in Millar's writing that will enable his prose to reach this wider audience ?
"Two things," he says, unhesitatingly and annoying unfazed as the brown ball puts him seven points clear. "One which I might go through my whole life never being acknowledged for, because everyone who talks to me seems obsessed by my subject matter, is my skill, or lack of it, as a writer. I think I am a skilful writer, and I think I'm particularly skilled at writing books which people want to read without noticing the style, which is quite important in a world of video games and suchlike. So I suppose if people don't comment upon it then it means I've done well."
"The other reason I like my books is because they're sympathetic to people," Millar continues, sinking the blue without a hint of irony. "What I actually like and feel it's important to write about is love and friendship. I'm not particularly interested in writing adventures, or in elaborate plotting. What I'm interested in writing is about love and friendship in a relationship kind of way, and these I think are quite hard things to write about. I find it personally reassuring, and I hope that it would have that effect on other people. I wouldn't claim to be particularly subtle about it, but it does give me pleasure that Elfish's brother, Aran, starts off really depressed in the book but ends up better through his love for and relationship with his sister."
As the heated play for the final black rolls inexorably towards its close, there can only be one outcome. Millar lines up the shot and, pausing briefly to cackle a manic victory laugh, sinks the obdurate sphere with panache. It's paradoxically reassuring that this pessimistic optimist, incurable romantic, football fan, and Scottish supporter of the England cricket team should win again.
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