Michael Ondaatje opens archive to reveal his writing methods

An image of a drunken Oxford party that Michael Ondaatje clipped from a magazine and stuck into a notebook would, years later, inspire a scene in The English Patient, according to the novelist’s archives, which have just been acquired by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ondaatje, in an interview with the Center’s director Stephen Ennis, said he writes around four drafts of a book by hand before moving it on to a typewriter or computer and then “reworking it, printing it out, rewriting it by hand”.

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