A Lunch With Pico Iyer
We’re sitting at the Raffles Courtyard in Singapore — chosen for its honouring of writers from Maugham to Malraux — as Pico tells us that when he travels he never spends much time bothering over what to eat. “I’d much rather have a quick meal at KFC and have more time to explore the city” he explains, subsequently offering an apology to Mariel, the Singaporean amongst us, for his neglect of hawker centres. “I ate at one last night with the faculty and enjoyed it, but I don’t go out of my way for them”. He’s ordered the lasagne and a Virgin Singapore Sling.
These comments surprised us not because we had brought him to a restaurant we thought he would truly appreciate, but because they contradicted the image of Pico as the quintessential traveler that we each had formed. Any travel blog or article will never fail to mention the local cuisine, giving recommendations of both “must-see” and “must avoid”; yet here we were, sitting with one of the most renowned travel writers, as he told us that he would usually go to KFC, McDonald’s or Starbucks.
But perhaps he’s more of a traveler because of that. The time not spent on eating is spent walking, and walking, and walking around the city, seeing more of it than us food-lovers would have time for. The city itself is his focus, not the way it fills our stomachs. In response to our questioning whether food is an important part of any city, he admits it might be and that it’s something he could be missing. But we get the feeling that this is said for our benefit, not because he actually believes it.
How does he record what he sees in a new city?, Manas asks. In response, Pico pulls out probably the most beaten-up notebook we’ve ever seen. It’s a reporter-style notebook with metal rings at the top, only the rings are all so bent that he can’t properly flip the pages over. There are only a handful of pages left on the notebook, and as far as we can tell most of those pages are already written on, in writing we can’t make out. “Yes, some of my favourite word-choices are made because I misread something I’ve written”, Pico jokes. The pen stuck through the rings is a plastic ballpoint, one he might’ve picked up at a hotel somewhere in the world — or perhaps from an airline. He mentioned numerous times during the course of our lunch how much he loves airports and hotels (he had heard good things about Air New Zealand, I might add, although his favourite is probably Singapore Airlines).
Having seen the many disclaimers on Pico’s website — “All the photos on this site, other than the one on the Welcome page, are taken by Pico Iyer.” — I ask whether he still uses a camera. The answer is a negative; he hasn’t carried a camera for a decade or so. He used to take photos in analog but lost many when his house in California burnt down.
This leads him to another point: he keeps most of his notes in safety deposit boxes at banks. After losing all the notes he’d taken over years for a novel, he no longer takes chances, and doesn’t want to have to rebuild his life yet again. “I handwrite everything, but input them to the computer soon after.” So most of his work will be safe if disaster strikes, but with the older works he’s not taking any chances; hence the bank deposit box.
Over the course of lunch Pico spots a man he spoke to once in Jaipur, and greets him warmly, even asking after his children. He tells us later that he had seen the man reading aloud to his three children, who were a rapt audience. Not long after, two women and a newborn baby from a nearby table come over tentatively to ask Pico for a photo. “Of course! Thank you so much, it’s so nice to meet you.” His graciousness is genuine, followed up with true surprise that people would care to ask him for a photo. He exudes such a casual, warm persona that means over the course of our lunch one could quite easily forget that he’s a man who people travel sometimes half-way across the world just to meet.
After talking books for a while — Maugham, Greene, Fitzgerald, and Ishiguro, who is a friend of Pico’s (and who apparently does not like his own famous novel Remains of the Day) — Mariel mentions she saw Pico speak last year at the Singapore Writers Festival where he mentioned that he didn’t get much out of taking literature as a major at Oxford. “Oh, did I really say that?” he says with a grin. He explains how for someone who loves literature, taking literature as a major probably isn’t necessary; you’ll read the books and write about them regardless. So he doesn’t recommend it for young people today, and adds another piece of advice he often shares: if you want to be a writer, have a day job. Pico says he’s been lucky enough to be able to write full-time, but admits with journalism drying up he may have to move into teaching in the future.
After finishing our food, we get up to walk around Raffles and look at the Writers’ Bar, where a signed portrait of W. Somerset Maugham, one of Pico’s literary heroes, hangs. Pico stares admiringly at it. The three of us stare admiringly at Mr. Iyer, wondering how long it’ll be before his own portrait hangs grandly in one of his favourite hotels.
