Speaker 1: Almost fifteen years ago, when I was enjoying the sleep
Speaker 1: deprivation that can come with having your first child. I
Speaker 1: watched every episode of Helen Mirren as Jane Tennyson in
Speaker 1: Prime Suspect, and Robbie Coltrane and Cracker and the HBO
Speaker 1: series Roam. I don't remember conversations or work or just
Speaker 1: about anything else from those first few months of parenthood.
Speaker 1: I just remember bouncing on the balls of my feet,
Speaker 1: making soothing noises while watching people decapitate one another on
Speaker 1: my TV screen. I certainly don't remember anything that might
Speaker 1: be described as generative or productive. For Tasmanian author Robbie
Speaker 1: Arnott that Sleepless Hays was far more fruitful. A lot
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: I don't remember writing, because you know, you flip a
Speaker 2: colin and you keep sleep through it doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to have anything else to do with it. And
Speaker 2: she's the best thing that's ever happened to us. She's
Speaker 2: just in sleep and that's okay. I'm not complaining about that.
Speaker 2: That's just what happens. So parts of it, like I
Speaker 2: remember just swimming through the fog of tiredness in the
Speaker 2: time I had to write and just like, well, you
Speaker 2: just got to do it, and.
Speaker 1: Lots of it.
Speaker 2: I'm like, ay, I don't really remember doing that.
Speaker 1: In those earliest months of parenthood, Robbie Arnott wrote his
Speaker 1: fourth novel, Dusk, in a kind of dream state. The outcome,
Speaker 1: this gorgeously drawn tale of loss, redemption, and survival suggests
Speaker 1: that Robbie's instincts and unconscious have served him very well. Indeed,
Speaker 1: in just three books, Robbie Arnott has established himself as
Speaker 1: a writer to trust in whatever state of mind he's writing. Flames,
Speaker 1: the Rain, Heron and Limberlost were all rapturously reviewed and
Speaker 1: garnered a hefty swag of award nominations and wins. He's
Speaker 1: when celebrated as a writer with an uncommon sensitivity to
Speaker 1: place and landscape, in command of a grounded realism about
Speaker 1: the natural world that nonetheless makes room for the other worldly.
Speaker 1: His clarity about dirt and wind, aches and pains is
Speaker 1: exceeded only by his almost limitless capacity for awe and wonder.
Speaker 1: Robbie's ability to depict inarticulate tenderness and love without mawkishness
Speaker 1: is once again on full display in Dusk, which follows
Speaker 1: Iris Renshaw and a twin brother, Floyd, as they make
Speaker 1: their way into Tasmania's high country on a quest to
Speaker 1: hunt down the titular character, a pumor upon whose head
Speaker 1: there is a generous bounty. If he wrote this through
Speaker 1: a haze of sleeplessness, I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1: Robbiannott is pretty bloody clever. I'm Michael Williams, and this
Speaker 1: is read. This the show about the books we love
Speaker 1: and the stories behind them. Fans of Robbiannat will find
Speaker 1: in Dusk many of the qualities he's already made his own.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of beautifully rendered wild places and creatures here,
Speaker 1: But while it's every bity's own voice, there are echoes
Speaker 1: here of other books Patrick de Witz The Sisters Brothers,
Speaker 1: for example, or Kevin Barry's The Heart in Winter. There's
Speaker 1: hints of Cormack McCarthy, even Annie Prue. Because beyond its
Speaker 1: literary jobs, this is a book with definite genre beats.
Speaker 1: There's mythical elements and tropes from horror Predator on the
Speaker 1: loose terrorizing locals. But most of all, this is a
Speaker 1: book with a debt to Westerns. Strangers on horseback hunting
Speaker 1: for a bounty and trying to escape their past. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to start there to ask about Robbie's experience
Speaker 1: of Westerns. Did he grow up loving them or is
Speaker 1: it simply a genre that was useful for the story
Speaker 1: he wanted to tell in Dusk.
Speaker 2: I do enjoy western I'm not a voracious reader of
Speaker 2: them or watcher of them. It's not a huge part
Speaker 2: of my cultural life. But there's a part about Westerns
Speaker 2: and the directness that really appeals to me. I was
Speaker 2: in on holiday in Stanley and Northwest Tasmania and we're
Speaker 2: in a bar and I picked up a book. There
Speaker 2: was a bookshelf and it was called Gun Smoke Cure,
Speaker 2: and I remember just thinking that's a title. It's ridiculous,
Speaker 2: but that's a title. And it just opens this incredible
Speaker 2: scene of a shootout in a bar and everything goes
Speaker 2: terribly wrong for the protagonists, who you assume it will
Speaker 2: go well for, and all that happens in two pages.
Speaker 2: And even though it's not maybe the sort of writing
Speaker 2: I'd like to and emulate, there was a level of
Speaker 2: directness and emotion in there that I thought was really
Speaker 2: quite remarkable. But get sneered upon in a lot of
Speaker 2: genre conversations, and so I think it just kind of
Speaker 2: wormed its way into my head. I wouldn't want to
Speaker 2: write a book that's blunt or didactic or moralistic, but
Speaker 2: there's a level of directness about motivation and narrative that
Speaker 2: I think can be quite arresting.
Speaker 1: Part of what interests me about the relationship between you
Speaker 1: and Westerns, and I think the directness makes perfect sense
Speaker 1: of it. But I heard an interview with you back
Speaker 1: around the time Limberlost came out, and you were saying,
Speaker 1: you're not so interested in plotting, by and large, You're
Speaker 1: more interested in how on it feels than the kind
Speaker 1: of nuts and bolts of what happens in an event.
Speaker 1: But there is something about the rhythm and the weight
Speaker 1: of a Western that is plot forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very much so, And like I quite like that
Speaker 2: tension in almost being forced to have a plot but
Speaker 2: not being personally very interested in it, and being invested
Speaker 2: in characters and landscape and environment and how all these
Speaker 2: things are intertwined with each other and what effects they're
Speaker 2: having on each other in a way that's propelled along
Speaker 2: by a plot, and then having the plot be directed
Speaker 2: by the environment and the characters rather than them being
Speaker 2: yanked forward by a particular plot device. I thought that
Speaker 2: would be really, I guess, challenging and fun to do.
Speaker 2: So I didn't plot dusk Out. I didn't don't plot
Speaker 2: any of my novels out. And that probably sounds a
Speaker 2: bit crazy to some people, but maybe normal to others, in.
Speaker 1: Sense you weren't even conscious for it.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, I was kind of in a waking dream
Speaker 2: the whole time. That it's a really simple element in
Speaker 2: that if I know exactly what's going to happen, I'll
Speaker 2: be too bored to I've got quite a restless mind,
Speaker 2: and I'm quite an impatient person. And if I'm not
Speaker 2: quite excited by the act of creation while I'm writing,
Speaker 2: and the act of figuring things out as I'm going,
Speaker 2: then I'll probably get a bit too bored and move
Speaker 2: on to something else.
Speaker 1: Your books have such faculty with stillness that it seems
Speaker 1: curious to me that you're a restless person. You know
Speaker 1: that again and again. In your books, characters are able
Speaker 1: to approach the world at their own rhythm as a
Speaker 1: way of paying respect to that world even they're not
Speaker 1: rushing around. Your characters are rarely restless. Your characters are
Speaker 1: kind of steady.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think in many ways that's a trait that
Speaker 2: I probably want to embody. I probably need to see
Speaker 2: a therapist about. But that is definitely something I feel
Speaker 2: in connection with the natural world. When I go bushwalking
Speaker 2: or snorkeling and you're floating above a reef, or you
Speaker 2: reach the peak up a mountain or an outcrop, and
Speaker 2: you do achieve that level of stillness is hard to
Speaker 2: achieve elsewhere, and I think that comes through on my work.
Speaker 2: I mean one of the problems I guess in trying
Speaker 2: to be a writer who is responding to their own
Speaker 2: instincts and being instinctive rather than planned, that you're vulnerable
Speaker 2: to revealing things about yourself you didn't meet on doing,
Speaker 2: which I'm learning more and more of the war books
Speaker 2: I write. But yeah, achieving that s illness is something
Speaker 2: that I really value and find quite transformative, and I
Speaker 2: think I feel so passionate about it, and it means
Speaker 2: so much to me that it comes out in the
Speaker 2: characters who are generally nothing like me, but they find
Speaker 2: that much easier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's something comforting about that way to live, especially
Speaker 1: if it's something that eludes you on a personal level.
Speaker 1: I mean the Renshaws are a prime example. They never
Speaker 1: get to stop moving for a variety of reasons. You know,
Speaker 1: I think a wonderful lie about for a few moments
Speaker 1: there stood still for once, not rushing, running, not fighting
Speaker 1: the rough grip of a hard world. That kind of
Speaker 1: perpetual motion for them is in a sign of distractedness.
Speaker 1: It's not a signfick kind of agitation. It's purely survival.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a fact of their lives. In order
Speaker 2: to eat, in order to find shelter, they need to
Speaker 2: keep moving because they're not accepted anywhere, and they generally
Speaker 2: have to work twice as hard as anyone else because
Speaker 2: of their heritage. I think it's an interesting way to write,
Speaker 2: and hopefully it's an interesting way to read, to have
Speaker 2: a propulsion in I guess in narrative and in characters
Speaker 2: that's not of their own making. That's something that is
Speaker 2: forced upon them. And then you are there with them,
Speaker 2: and they keep moving, and they keep doing and changing
Speaker 2: because they have no choice. I think it's a very
Speaker 2: old way of telling a story, but I think it's
Speaker 2: an appealing way as opposed to sitting with someone who's
Speaker 2: actively out there trying to make decisions to enlive in
Speaker 2: their lives.
Speaker 1: So I plots a function of character, and then character
Speaker 1: is a function of landscape. Is it reasonable to assume
Speaker 1: that your starting plan for a new novel is almost
Speaker 1: inevitably a.
Speaker 2: Place almost always? Yeah, you bang on, And I never
Speaker 2: deliberately set out to write about a place years in advance.
Speaker 2: I'll kind of encounter somewhere, or spend time somewhere, or
Speaker 2: feel strongly about somewhere, and just know that eventually I'll
Speaker 2: write about it, and I'll kind of wait. This sounds
Speaker 2: a bit mystical, but I'll kind of wait to figure
Speaker 2: out what that story is, or let my subconscious figure
Speaker 2: that out. So with Dusk. I used to camp on
Speaker 2: a large lake in the Tasmanian Highlands called Lake Echo
Speaker 2: on a friend's farm when I was a child, and
Speaker 2: very magical experiences for me up there. And then as
Speaker 2: an adult I drove through to West Coast to Tasmania
Speaker 2: quite a few times, and we traveled around there and
Speaker 2: did a lot of walking around there and up in
Speaker 2: the highlands, and at various moments I would think this
Speaker 2: is too incredible a place to not write about and
Speaker 2: not set a novel here. I have no idea what
Speaker 2: it will be, and it wasn't until I was a
Speaker 2: few years ago in the South Island of New Zealand,
Speaker 2: traveling around the Fiords there, and it's almost like it
Speaker 2: was a weird melding of these two places in my mind.
Speaker 2: We had a beautiful daughter with us and she was
Speaker 2: not sleeping, and I was probably spaced out in Milford
Speaker 2: Sound somewhere fighting off sand fliers. And then it's almost
Speaker 2: the Tasmanian Highlands, and that place merged into my head,
Speaker 2: and then I remembered gun smoke cure, and I just
Speaker 2: started thinking, that's what would work. Two people driven to
Speaker 2: keep moving, driven to keep finding themselves, driven to find
Speaker 2: somewhere to live. The book kind of then just kicked
Speaker 2: and clawed its way out of my head.
Speaker 1: So how long has that been part of your personal
Speaker 1: mental makeup, that link between the appreciation of a thing,
Speaker 1: a place, the love of it, and an impulse that
Speaker 1: says this place is too special not to write about.
Speaker 2: Look, I think since about twenty seventy, when I was
Speaker 2: about twenty five. Before that, I was a very serious,
Speaker 2: earnest young man who wanted to be a writer, and
Speaker 2: I didn't think writing about place was very interesting. I
Speaker 2: had this notion that, well, everywhere is basically the same.
Speaker 2: People aren't that different wherever you go, and people are
Speaker 2: what matter in stories. That's what I was always told.
Speaker 2: So I spent a couple of years writing basically terrible
Speaker 2: minimalist realism, Tasmanian Raymond, carbon knockoff sort of stuff. They
Speaker 2: were really bad. And I don't say that to be,
Speaker 2: you know, so humble. They were genuinely quite terrible.
Speaker 1: Did you show them to people?
Speaker 2: I submitted them to every magazine you think of. I
Speaker 2: have that you know, white male, middle class confidence, or
Speaker 2: I just thought someone would like it, you know.
Speaker 1: And I was about to chastise you ever been too
Speaker 1: hard on yourself?
Speaker 2: But go on, yeah, no, no, yeah no, I've got
Speaker 2: pretty thick skin. And then I was living in Melbourne
Speaker 2: and having a good time and my girlfriend at the time,
Speaker 2: who's now my wife, was in Hobart and we thought
Speaker 2: she'd move over, but she graduated from UNI and got
Speaker 2: this wonderful job offer in Hobart and I was working
Speaker 2: in an advertising agency in Melbourne and it was going well,
Speaker 2: but you know, I was in love with it. And
Speaker 2: she said, well, why don't you move back here? It
Speaker 2: makes more sense. So I thought I was going to
Speaker 2: be on them Mainland Australia for twenty or thirty years
Speaker 2: before I could, you know, romantically, move back to Tasmania.
Speaker 2: And I moved back after two and the minute I
Speaker 2: got back there, I started writing my first novel, Flames,
Speaker 2: because I went for a bushwalk and I thought I
Speaker 2: had missed this place so much. I didn't know how
Speaker 2: much it meant to me, And then it almost kind
Speaker 2: of poured out of me. And it was only then
Speaker 2: that I realized that that's what I should be writing about.
Speaker 1: Part of what strikes me about the natural world. And
Speaker 1: you capture this so well, the sense of awe and
Speaker 1: wonder and kind of reverence for the natural world. But
Speaker 1: it seems to me that that can often be something
Speaker 1: that's meant with kind of the inarticulate that it's very
Speaker 1: hard to corral words, sentences, this kind of structure to
Speaker 1: something that willfully defies it. Do you feel any crisis
Speaker 1: of measuring up when you put your words up against
Speaker 1: these places you love so much?
Speaker 2: It is tricky at times. I focus quite hard on
Speaker 2: detail before emotion, because if you jumped straight to the
Speaker 2: emotion a place of oaks. Then you get very wafty,
Speaker 2: very quickly, and it might feel real to you, but
Speaker 2: it won't quite be real, because it's very hard to
Speaker 2: capture a specific emotional experience in language, which is why
Speaker 2: I do focus quite a lot on descriptive writing and
Speaker 2: then imbuing those descriptions with slivers of the sharpest pieces
Speaker 2: and truest pieces of emotion I can, as opposed to
Speaker 2: making it all an emotional thing and then saying, also,
Speaker 2: the tree was green. That's how I try and do it,
Speaker 2: because I think that best captures these places by looking
Speaker 2: at them as if a photographer would and capturing the
Speaker 2: truth of them, and then putting in just the smallest
Speaker 2: but right amount of emotion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It makes sense
Speaker 1: to me that you know, Tim Winton's a fan of
Speaker 1: your work, for example, and I think about what Winton
Speaker 1: does with inarticulate beauty, and I think there is something
Speaker 1: there that when it lands, it's so credibly resonant. I'm
Speaker 1: curious beyond that with the natural world. The kind of
Speaker 1: corollary of that that seems interesting to me is the
Speaker 1: role of animals and creatures, because again he have these
Speaker 1: living things with motivation, with agency in your stories. You
Speaker 1: don't anthropomorphism, but you're also very careful to give them
Speaker 1: a voice. How do you get that balance right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: The thing I always lean on his animals don't care
Speaker 2: about people, particularly wild animals, and I think that's something
Speaker 2: I find doesn't work very well in fiction is when
Speaker 2: a connection is form between a wide animal person and
Speaker 2: then it serves as a lesson and a teaching experience
Speaker 2: for the character, and then the animal is there as
Speaker 2: a function to serve humanity, and even if it's not
Speaker 2: deliberately done, that's how it comes out. And I think
Speaker 2: it's best to write again about animals with ultimate truth,
Speaker 2: which is they are beautiful and savage and they do
Speaker 2: not care one iota for humans at all, apart from
Speaker 2: what they can get out of them. Because animals are surviving,
Speaker 2: focusing on that survival aspects helps them come true on
Speaker 2: the page, I hope, and I think hopefully just my
Speaker 2: own fascination with animals as opposed to people and the
Speaker 2: differences between them and some of the similarities, it just
Speaker 2: interests me. I've learned to lean into your interests as
Speaker 2: an artist and a novelist because you can't fake passion, no,
Speaker 2: and like readers are clever, and I don't just say
Speaker 2: that just to be nice to ear and it picks
Speaker 2: up book. But generally, like most people these days are
Speaker 2: scrolling on their phone and half watching TV and half
Speaker 2: lolling at their phone and half listening to something, And
Speaker 2: the act of actually picking up a book, especially a
Speaker 2: novel like requires a lot of effort, and it's not
Speaker 2: as easy as most entertainment options are these days. Anyone
Speaker 2: who's going to that air first, you have a pretty
Speaker 2: implicit contract with them that they're going to go with you,
Speaker 2: and if they don't, they can put it down. So
Speaker 2: I think trusting that people will realize this might be
Speaker 2: not what they're expecting, but they can feel your passion.
Speaker 1: When we're returned, Robbie reveals the simple rules that he
Speaker 1: writes by and explains why he sees himself not just
Speaker 1: as an Australian writer, but as a Tasmanian one. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back, and the heart of this book not
Speaker 1: for the first time in your books. A sibling relationship
Speaker 1: is crucial, and Iris and Floyd know each other so
Speaker 1: well that the shorthand they use and the ways in
Speaker 1: which bluntness and affection play out are really really beautifully
Speaker 1: captured in this book.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, thank you. I found them such a
Speaker 2: fascinating pay to write about. You know, I initially didn't
Speaker 2: imagine their relationship at the start of the book. I imagined
Speaker 2: it would be a really interesting way to follow a
Speaker 2: novel by essentially having two protakes but always staying close
Speaker 2: to one and really getting to know one of them
Speaker 2: through by sticking third person close narration to them, and
Speaker 2: the other one always being there but almost at arm's length,
Speaker 2: and coming to know the meat through the way they
Speaker 2: interacted with each other, and then having a brief dive
Speaker 2: to the other protagonist. But as I created the character,
Speaker 2: so I was going the depth of love and tension
Speaker 2: and anger and mistrust and devotion to each other all
Speaker 2: kind of spoiled out. He was actually really enjoyable to
Speaker 2: write and painful at other times. I do sometimes wonder
Speaker 2: what my brother and my sister think of I guess
Speaker 2: most of my books, actually, but I.
Speaker 1: Leave you guessing they're not giving you like robust commentary
Speaker 1: and or WhatsApp group a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they read them. They're always eager to read them.
Speaker 2: They're very proud of me. They're not really like me.
Speaker 2: They're much more kind of analytical people, so they find
Speaker 2: me a bit bizarre, but you know, they're very happy
Speaker 2: that it's working out, and the fact that I write
Speaker 2: about siblings is a confusing to them as it is
Speaker 2: to me. But here we all are.
Speaker 1: Do you have a consciousness It's like I I'm always
Speaker 1: delighted when Richard Flanagan's a great pains to insist is
Speaker 1: not an Australian writer as a Tasmanian writer. Do you
Speaker 1: feel a similar kind of sense of that difference being
Speaker 1: an important defining one for.
Speaker 2: All my scenes? I think I do not out of
Speaker 2: you know, I don't have a problem any more of
Speaker 2: a problem with mainland Australia than anyone else should. But
Speaker 2: like growing up at Tasmania, and I'm sure everyone listening
Speaker 2: to this, it's butt of a joke, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like incest jokes and nobody can read, nobody can write.
Speaker 2: You're it's boring, there's nothing to do sort of stuff,
Speaker 2: and it's all generally said in good humor, but like
Speaker 2: you know, you just get so used to it and
Speaker 2: then we have this like Bond Villain who sets up
Speaker 2: a giant art layer in Hobart and suddenly Hobart's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and everyone wants to come down and visit, and everyone
Speaker 2: wants to buy a condo and Hobart and it makes
Speaker 2: us all very wary because we're thinking, like, how long
Speaker 2: is this going to last? Until you're all making fun
Speaker 2: of us? So it does set you apart from mainin
Speaker 2: Australia a little bit.
Speaker 1: What are the rules you set for yourself when you write?
Speaker 1: I mean, you write largely in a realist mode, but
Speaker 1: then you also allow yourself for freedom to embrace more
Speaker 1: things in heaven and earth. Do you have an idea
Speaker 1: of how grounded you have to be, what that ratio
Speaker 1: should be?
Speaker 2: Not necessarily whenever I do anything that veers into magical
Speaker 2: or particularly imaginative, the simple rule I have is like,
Speaker 2: if it's not real, do I want it to be?
Speaker 2: And can I believe it almost to be?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Do I really want that? As a reader? What I
Speaker 2: love that to be something? Rather than is this just
Speaker 2: quite a sparkling piece of imagination? And am I just
Speaker 2: essentially showing off? So no showing off is my biggest rule.
Speaker 2: No self indulgence, because I don't think that does anything
Speaker 2: for anybody. And I guess my other one is just
Speaker 2: no dead sentences. Obviously, you can't have everything be You
Speaker 2: turn around a corner and a man with a guns there,
Speaker 2: but just no dead weight is what I try and avoid.
Speaker 1: One of the things in Dusk in particular is not
Speaker 1: just a kind of reverence for the landscape, but it's
Speaker 1: the brutality of the landscape. You know, the wrenals reflect
Speaker 1: over their life for the many places they've been and
Speaker 1: again and again. The thing that comes through is that
Speaker 1: they're places of kind of great violence. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: about the extent of which that was a deliberate decision
Speaker 1: based on the story you were telling in the genre,
Speaker 1: or whether you think that kind of underlying violence is
Speaker 1: an important part of understanding the physical the natural world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do, definitely the latter. It wasn't so much
Speaker 2: a decision I made, as looking into this novel is
Speaker 2: said in roughly historical times, let's say somewhere in the
Speaker 2: late eighteen hundreds, if we were to be forced to
Speaker 2: put a date on it, and looking at how people
Speaker 2: actually live, particularly outside of large civilization centers, a lot
Speaker 2: of what I think I described is just pretty straightforward,
Speaker 2: and where are remove from that now? In depicting in
Speaker 2: large cities? And I think it's just necessary to include
Speaker 2: their because that informs how people behaved and views they
Speaker 2: had and what they did and why they did it
Speaker 2: for good or for bad. And I think it's a
Speaker 2: level of detailing there that some people might find a
Speaker 2: little confronting. I don't think it's particularly confronting, but I'm odd,
Speaker 2: but I think it's necessary in order to understand the
Speaker 2: characters and societies of these places. Civilization hasn't moved on
Speaker 2: from things like this as much as we think it has.
Speaker 2: So when you read a book like in Dusk or
Speaker 2: one of other maybe one of my other books, where
Speaker 2: maybe someone who's treated with violence or is enacting violence
Speaker 2: on the natural world, it's not that far from where
Speaker 2: we've come from and where we are.
Speaker 1: No is that complicated or added to by as you say,
Speaker 1: the book has a historical setting, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: Tasmania of the kind of late nineteenth century. The proximity
Speaker 1: to violence in relation to land is incredibly acute. You know,
Speaker 1: that's within the generation. You know that the level of
Speaker 1: atrocities that were going on there does that give you
Speaker 1: as a writer pause or anxiety to be kind of
Speaker 1: playing in that sandbox?
Speaker 2: I think, if anything, it gives me a sense of responsibility.
Speaker 2: Because you're looking at a period of history and not
Speaker 2: writing about that, at least on some level, then you're
Speaker 2: doing something very odd. It's the huge and defining feature
Speaker 2: of let's say Tasmania, but for honestly Australia and almost
Speaker 2: every colonial territory of the former British Empire and other
Speaker 2: European empires is the atrocities of colonization and the fact
Speaker 2: that people don't like talking about it, and people like
Speaker 2: it not to be referred to or like to kind
Speaker 2: of at their gaze. I think is a very strange thing.
Speaker 2: When I say responsibility to refer to it, I just
Speaker 2: mean in order to tell the truest version of fiction possible,
Speaker 2: if that makes sense. To not include it would be
Speaker 2: not only the wrong thing to do, but just bizarre.
Speaker 2: Why would you bother even writing about it? So I think,
Speaker 2: whether it hangs large or small in the backdrop of
Speaker 2: a novel, I think it just should be there because
Speaker 2: why else are you doing it? And it definitely crops
Speaker 2: up in the book.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah. I mean, are those twin polls of
Speaker 1: violence and horror on the one hand and beauty and
Speaker 1: wonder on the other. I mean, that's your quintessential Robbie
Speaker 1: Arnott novel right there, in the space careening between those two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose so. And you know, I feel compelled
Speaker 2: to write about it and to look into it and
Speaker 2: to I guess, interrogate it in fiction because it's something
Speaker 2: that's unresolved in Australian society today. We have absolutely no
Speaker 2: reconciliation in this country. It's very hard to imagine a
Speaker 2: sensible or harmonious path forward without any of it. And
Speaker 2: so you know, it comes out in this book and
Speaker 2: it comes out of my work because like why wouldn't it.
Speaker 2: You know, I come from a culture in Northern Tasmania
Speaker 2: of people who just don't like talking about the Frontier
Speaker 2: conflict and they just basically it didn't happen, or if
Speaker 2: it did, stop winging and I wasn't there, it's nothing
Speaker 2: to do with me. Get over it. And it's that's
Speaker 2: that's a stance that's incredibly comfortable where I'm from, and
Speaker 2: it just makes my head spin because like, not only
Speaker 2: is it a level of denial that seemed childish. It's
Speaker 2: also just the little of not even wanting to talk
Speaker 2: about it. I don't, I don't. I won't go on
Speaker 2: too much about it. But I guess it becomes president
Speaker 2: in the work because I don't see how it couldn't be.
Speaker 2: It's strange that all this stuff is happening and it's
Speaker 2: come out of me writing a novel set about some
Speaker 2: children of books for ages hunting a puma in Tasmanian highlands.
Speaker 2: But there we go.
Speaker 1: It's never a straight line. There's things no no.
Speaker 2: Maybe if I planned these things out, it would make
Speaker 2: a lot more sense.
Speaker 1: And you'd enjoy yourself so much later. Robbie arnat Dusk
Speaker 1: is absolutely a wonderful read, and I imagine your legion
Speaker 1: of fans are going to love it too. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2: That's so kind of you, and thanks so much for
Speaker 2: having me.
Speaker 1: Robbie Arnott's latest novel, Dusk, is available at all Good bookstores. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get out of here, I want to let
Speaker 1: you know what I've been reading this week, and it's
Speaker 1: a work of nonfiction. It's called Paris in Ruins, Love,
Speaker 1: War and the Birth of Impressionism, and it's by Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prize winning art critics Sebastian Sme. Sme is Australian currently
Speaker 1: based in the US and is one of the world's
Speaker 1: best arts writers. But it turns out he's also one
Speaker 1: of the most extraordinary historians as well. It looks at
Speaker 1: political turmoil in Paris from eighteen seventy to eighteen seventy,
Speaker 1: and it takes in everyone from Mane to Mone Pizarro
Speaker 1: to renoird des Gar. It's just phenomenally good and very
Speaker 1: addictive reading. I can't recommend it enough. You can get
Speaker 1: Paris in Ruins or any of the other books we've
Speaker 1: talked about in this episode at your favorite independent bookstore.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week's show. If you enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: please tell your friends, rate and review us. It helps
Speaker 1: a lot. Next week, I'm read this I sit down
Speaker 1: with Nardi Simpson to discuss her new novel, The Bellbird.
Speaker 3: I wrote a list of things I was not going
Speaker 3: to do for this book, and so then did not
Speaker 3: write a thing for a year. And once it became
Speaker 3: you know, I got to write something here.
Speaker 1: I've got long enough not writing. I need to.
Speaker 3: Start, and I started breaking my rules, and that was
Speaker 3: the beginning point for an evolving story.
Speaker 1: Read this as a Schwartz Media production, made possible by
Speaker 1: our generous sponsor's AR group. It's produced and edited by
Speaker 1: Clara Ames, with mixing by Travis Evans and original compositions
Speaker 1: by Zalton Fetcher. Thanks for listening, See you next week.