Creating literary fiction feels like the ultimate scientific treachery

Nobody asked me to write a novel, so I can’t complain. It sort of grew out of some writing exercises I’d been set by my teachers at the Writers Studio in Manhattan, which I attended shortly after moving to New York in 2006 to complete a fellowship in medical oncology – specifically, pancreatic cancer – at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre.

I lived in fairly basic accommodation, my studio apartment facing across 67th St directly into the rooms of the patients, whose blinds were always up for some reason. (As were mine. When their nurses left we looked across at each other like the inhabitants of neighbouring but vastly different countries). It was a shell of a room. The first night I emptied my suitcase onto the floor and slept on its contents. It had no television or internet either, so I thought “creative writing classes ... why not?”

Now – 10 years later – my novel, This Living and Immortal Thing, has just been published. It’s a cause for celebration, of course, and that I will do. (You would have found me in Dublin in the Duke on February 3rd, the last to leave, the publicist’s parting words reminding me I had to be up at 6am to go on television.

But there is also ambivalence. Up until now the writing has been done in secret, working at it in the morning before going to work, the way some people do their yoga or take the dog out or whatever. No big deal, an hour a day and some more at weekends. (I emailed a friend about my launch and he had no idea. He’s done three Ironmen. I was embarrassed by his effusive praise. I can’t even swim).

So now my secret is out. I’d better tell the folks I work with. They’re on the intense side: scientists, brilliant at what they do, but not normal exactly. They think I’m one of them. Perhaps they’ll fire me when they find out. More likely – hopefully – they’ll be indifferent.

During the first gulf war, one of the stories the media latched on to, to humanise the whole thing, was that of a young girl who needed a 10-hour eye operation. I remember still the American surgeon, and the proud and virtuous exhaustion in which he sat at the news conference afterwards, saying that things were dicey, and it was hard to know for sure, but hey, he’d given her a shot. We, the audience, felt like applauding. The next night the lead story centred on him. A total fraud it turned out, never even went to medical school. Michael Buerk or maybe it was Kate Adie called him out at that day’s news conference. The doctor thought he was there to give an update on the child’s condition, his plain irritation didn’t disguise what he knew, that the game was up. (Apparently he was an autodidact; you’d never know, perhaps he did good things).

As publication date has come I feel a little bit of that fraud surgeon’s pain; that when I stand next to present a paper or argue for a concept or protocol (or to attack somebody else’s), that some Michael Buerk or Kate Adie or – God forbid – Martin Bashir, will emerge from the dark shadows of the amphitheatre to accuse me of the ultimate scientific treachery, unmasking me as a creator of fiction. And literary fiction at that. Of course, I will defend myself by drawing names out of the ether. There aren’t many of them. Anton Chekhov. Michael Crichton maybe. Or – most presumptuously of all – the ultimate career science man and writer, Primo Levi himself. (I’ve always imagined with a smile the visiting materials reps pitching some product to him in his capacity as general manager of the Turin factory he worked in, producing paints, enamels, and synthetic resins; the majority must not have known who it was they were sitting across the table from.) Oh God. I think I’ve just compared myself to Primo Levi. Fire me now.

This Living and Immortal Thing by Austin Duffy is published by Granta, £12.99. It will be reviewed in The Irish Times this Saturday