Speaker 1: Hi there. It's Ruby Jones and I'm back to introduce
Speaker 1: another episode of Read This, our Sister podcast. It's hosted
Speaker 1: by the editor of The Monthly, Michael Williams, and features
Speaker 1: conversations with some of the best and most beloved writers
Speaker 1: from Australia and around the world. In this episode, we're
Speaker 1: going to hear from Tasmanian writer Robbie are Not Before
Speaker 1: we do, Michael is here to share a bit about
Speaker 1: their conversation.
Speaker 2: Hi Michael, Hi Ruby.
Speaker 1: So Michael. For some of our listeners, Robbie might be
Speaker 1: a bit of a household name at this point. All
Speaker 1: of his books have been very successful, in particular his
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two novel Limber Lost. But for those who
Speaker 1: might be new to his writing, tell me a bit
Speaker 1: about his work.
Speaker 2: Look, my father is generally supportive of what I do,
Speaker 2: but he's from Tasmania originally, and the enthusiasm with which
Speaker 2: he fell on the fact that I was talking to
Speaker 2: Robbie Arnott suggested that he didn't give two shits about
Speaker 2: everything else that we do on Read This as successful.
Speaker 2: Tasmanian for my father is the pinnacle of anything that matters,
Speaker 2: and Robbi Arnott is Tasmania's best export since Richard Flanagan.
Speaker 2: He's an incredible writer and he has three novels to
Speaker 2: his name before this new one, and with each of
Speaker 2: them he would be shortlisted for the Mars Franklin, he'd
Speaker 2: win the Age Book of the Year award again and again.
Speaker 2: This kind of young writer was celebrated as one to watch,
Speaker 2: and his new novel, Dusk is no exception.
Speaker 1: And so, Michael, I know that you are the parent
Speaker 1: two teenage boys. I also have a child, a young child,
Speaker 1: so I think we're both familiar with the sleep deprivation
Speaker 1: of the first year of having a newborn. I have
Speaker 1: say during that time I was only really half alive.
Speaker 1: But Robbie's latest book had actually came out during that
Speaker 1: time for him, which is pretty incredible.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can say the word sickening, Ruby. It's
Speaker 2: fine to say it's sickening that anyone in the fugue
Speaker 2: state of a newborn child who can produce the kind
Speaker 2: of soaring literature that Robbie's himself capable of, can frankly
Speaker 2: go and get stuffed. The book is fantastic. It has
Speaker 2: all his hallmark attention to landscape, to the power of
Speaker 2: the natural world to the kind of beauty of the
Speaker 2: wild places in Tasmania. It's a Western, it follows a
Speaker 2: pair of twins. It's an extraordinary novel, and he did
Speaker 2: it all in the weird half state that is a
Speaker 2: parent of a.
Speaker 1: Newborn coming up in just a moment, Robbie Arnott's restless mind.
Speaker 2: Fans of Robbie Arnott will find in Dusk many of
Speaker 2: the qualities he's already made his own. There's plenty of
Speaker 2: beautifully rendered wild places and creatures here. But while it's
Speaker 2: every bity's own voice, there are echoes here of other
Speaker 2: books Patrick Dewitz The Sisters Brothers, for example, or Kevin
Speaker 2: Barries The Heart in Winter. There's hints of Cormack McCarthy,
Speaker 2: even Annie Prue. Because beyond its letter, this is a
Speaker 2: book with definite genre beats. There's mythical elements and tropes
Speaker 2: from horror, predator on the loose, terrorizing locals. But most
Speaker 2: of all, this is a book with a debt to Westerns.
Speaker 2: Strangers on horseback, hunting for a bounty and trying to
Speaker 2: escape their past. So I wanted to start there to
Speaker 2: ask about Robbie's experience of Westerns. Did he grow up
Speaker 2: loving them, or is it simply a genre that was
Speaker 2: useful for the story he wanted to tell in Dusk.
Speaker 3: I do enjoy western I'm not a voracious reader of
Speaker 3: them or watcher of them. It's not a huge part
Speaker 3: of my cultural life, but there's a part about Westerns
Speaker 3: and the directness that really appeals to me. I was
Speaker 3: in on holiday in Stanley and Northwest Tasmania and we're
Speaker 3: in a bar and I picked up a book. There
Speaker 3: was a bookshelf and it was called gun Smoke Cure,
Speaker 3: and I remember just thinking that's a title. It's ridiculous,
Speaker 3: but that's a title. And it just opens this incredible
Speaker 3: scene of a shootout in a bar and everything goes
Speaker 3: terribly wrong for the protagonists, who you assume it will
Speaker 3: go well for. It all happens in two pages. And
Speaker 3: even though it's not maybe the sort of writing i'd
Speaker 3: like to and emulate, there was a level of directness
Speaker 3: and emotion in there that I thought was really quite
Speaker 3: remarkable that gets sneered upon in a lot of genre conversations,
Speaker 3: and so I think it just kind of wormed its
Speaker 3: way into my head. I wouldn't want to write a
Speaker 3: book that's blunt or didactic or moralistic. But there's a
Speaker 3: level of directness about motivation and narrative that I think
Speaker 3: can be quite arresting.
Speaker 2: Part of what interests me about the relationship between you
Speaker 2: and Westerns, and I think the directness makes perfect sense
Speaker 2: of it. But I heard an interview with you back
Speaker 2: around the time Limberlost came out, and you were saying,
Speaker 2: you're not so interested in plotting, by and large, You're
Speaker 2: more interested in how an event feels than the kind
Speaker 2: of nuts and bolts of what happens in an event.
Speaker 2: But there is something about the rhythm and the weight
Speaker 2: of a Western that is plot forward.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 3: And I quite like that tension in almost being forced
Speaker 3: to have a plot but not being personally very interested
Speaker 3: in it, and being invested in characters and landscape and
Speaker 3: environment and how all these things are intertwined with each
Speaker 3: other and what effects they're having on each other in
Speaker 3: a way that's propelled along by a plot, and then
Speaker 3: having the plot be directed by the environment and the
Speaker 3: characters rather than them being yanked forward by a particular
Speaker 3: plot device. I thought that would be really, I guess,
Speaker 3: challenging and fun to do so I didn't plot Dusk out.
Speaker 3: I didn't don't plot any of my novels out, And
Speaker 3: that probably sounds a bit crazy to some people, but
Speaker 3: maybe normal to others, in.
Speaker 2: Sense you weren't even conscious for that.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was kind of in a waking dream the
Speaker 3: whole time. But it's a really simple element in that
Speaker 3: if I know exactly what's going to happen, I'll be
Speaker 3: too bored to write it. I've got quite a restless mind,
Speaker 3: and I'm quite an impatient person. And if I'm not
Speaker 3: quite excited by the act of creation while I'm writing,
Speaker 3: and the act of figuring things out as I'm going,
Speaker 3: and I'll probably get a bit too bored and move
Speaker 3: on to something else.
Speaker 2: Your books have such faculty with stillness that it seems
Speaker 2: curious to me that you're a restless person. You know
Speaker 2: that again and again. In your books, characters are able
Speaker 2: to approach the world at their own rhythm as a
Speaker 2: way of paying respect to that world, even they're not
Speaker 2: rushing around. Your characters are rarely restless. Your characters are
Speaker 2: kind of steady.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think in many ways that's a trait that I
Speaker 3: probably want to embody. I probably need to see a
Speaker 3: therapist about. But that is definitely something I feel in
Speaker 3: connection with the natural world. When I go bushwalking or
Speaker 3: snorkeling and you're floating above a reef or you know,
Speaker 3: you reach the peak up a mountain or an outcrop
Speaker 3: and you do achieve that level of stillness is hard
Speaker 3: to achieve elsewhere, and I think that comes through on
Speaker 3: my work. I mean, one of the problems I guess
Speaker 3: in trying to be a writer who is responding to
Speaker 3: their own instincts and being instinctive rather than planned, that
Speaker 3: you're vulnerable too revealing things about yourself you didn't meet
Speaker 3: on doing, which I'm learning more and more of the
Speaker 3: war books I write. But yeah, achieving that s illness
Speaker 3: is something that I really value and find quite transformative,
Speaker 3: and I think I feel so passionate about it, and
Speaker 3: it means so much to me that it comes out
Speaker 3: in the characters who are generally nothing like me, but
Speaker 3: they find that much easier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something comforting about that way to live, especially
Speaker 2: if it's something that eludes you on a personal level.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Renshaws are a prime example. They never
Speaker 2: get to stop moving for a variety of reasons. You know,
Speaker 2: I think we've got a wonderful light about for a
Speaker 2: few moments there stood still for once, not rushing, running,
Speaker 2: not fighting the rough grip of a hard world. That
Speaker 2: kind of perpetual motion for them is in a sign
Speaker 2: of distractedness. It's not a sign for kind of agitation.
Speaker 2: It's purely survival.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just a fact of their lives. In order
Speaker 3: to eat, in order to find shelter, they need to
Speaker 3: keep moving because not accepted anywhere, and they generally have
Speaker 3: to work twice as hard as anyone else because of
Speaker 3: their heritage. I think it's an interesting way to write,
Speaker 3: and hopefully it's an interesting way to read, to have
Speaker 3: a propulsion in I guess in narrative and in characters
Speaker 3: that's not of their own making. That's something that is
Speaker 3: forced upon them, and then you are there with them,
Speaker 3: and they keep moving, and they keep doing and changing
Speaker 3: because they have no choice. I think it's a very
Speaker 3: old way of telling a story, but I think it's
Speaker 3: an appealing way as opposed to sitting with someone who's
Speaker 3: actively out there trying to make decisions to enlive in
Speaker 3: their lives.
Speaker 2: So plots a function of character, and then character is
Speaker 2: a function of landscape. Is it reasonable to assume that
Speaker 2: your starting plan for a new novel is almost inevitably
Speaker 2: a place.
Speaker 4: Almost always, Yeah, you bang on.
Speaker 3: And I never deliberately set out to write about a
Speaker 3: place years in advance. I'll kind of encounter somewhere in
Speaker 3: time somewhere or feel strongly about somewhere, and just know
Speaker 3: that eventually I'll write about it, and I'll kind of wait.
Speaker 3: This sounds a bit mystical, but I'll kind of wait
Speaker 3: to figure out what that story is, or let my
Speaker 3: subconscious figure that out.
Speaker 4: So with Dusk.
Speaker 3: I used to camp on a large lake in the
Speaker 3: Tasmanian Highlands called Lake Echo on a friend's farm when
Speaker 3: I was a child, and very magical experiences for me
Speaker 3: up there. And then as an adult, I drove through
Speaker 3: to West Coast to Tasmania quite a few times and
Speaker 3: we traveled around there and did a lot of walking
Speaker 3: around there and up in the highlands, and at various
Speaker 3: moments I would think this is too incredible a place
Speaker 3: to not write about, and not set a novel here.
Speaker 3: I have no idea what it will be, and it
Speaker 3: wasn't until I was a few years ago. In the
Speaker 3: South Island of New Zealand, traveling around the Fiords there,
Speaker 3: and it's almost like it was a weird melding of
Speaker 3: these two places in my mind. And we had a
Speaker 3: beautiful daughter with us, and she was not sleeping, and
Speaker 3: I was probably spaced out in Milford Sound somewhere fighting
Speaker 3: off sandflies. And then it's almost the Tasmanianhighlands and that
Speaker 3: place merge into my head, and then I remembered gun
Speaker 3: smoke cure, and I just started thinking, that's.
Speaker 4: What would work.
Speaker 3: Two people driven to keep moving, driven to keep finding themselves,
Speaker 3: driven to find somewhere to live. The book kind of
Speaker 3: then just kicked and clawed its way out of my head.
Speaker 2: So how long has that been part of your personal
Speaker 2: mental makeup, that link between the appreciation of a thing,
Speaker 2: a place, the love of it, and an impulse that says,
Speaker 2: this place is too special not to write about.
Speaker 3: Look, I think since about twenty seventy, when I was
Speaker 3: about twenty five. Before that, I was a very serious,
Speaker 3: earnest young man who wanted to be a writer, and
Speaker 3: I didn't think writing about place was very interesting. I
Speaker 3: had this notion that, well, everywhere is basically the same.
Speaker 3: People aren't that different wherever you go and people are
Speaker 3: what matter in stories.
Speaker 4: That's what I was always told.
Speaker 3: So I spent a couple of years writing basically terrible, minimalist,
Speaker 3: really Tasmanian Raymond carbon knockoff sort of stuff. And they
Speaker 3: were really bad. And I don't say that to be
Speaker 3: you know, so humble. They were genuinely quite terrible.
Speaker 2: Did you show them to people as well? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I submitted them to every magazine you think of.
Speaker 3: I have that you know, white male, middle class confidence
Speaker 3: or I just thought someone would like it, you know.
Speaker 2: And I was about to chastise you, I've been too
Speaker 2: hard on yourself, but go on, Yeah no, no, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I've got pretty thick skin.
Speaker 3: And then I was living in Melbourne and having a
Speaker 3: good time and my girlfriend at the time, who's now
Speaker 3: my wife, was in Higbart and we thought she'd move over,
Speaker 3: but she graduated from UNI and got this wonderful job
Speaker 3: offer in Hobart and I was working in an advertising
Speaker 3: agency in Melbourne and it was going well, but you know,
Speaker 3: I was in love with it, and she said, well,
Speaker 3: why don't you move back here? It makes more sense.
Speaker 4: So I thought I was.
Speaker 3: Going to be on the mainland Australia for twenty or
Speaker 3: thirty years before I could, you know, romantically move back
Speaker 3: to Tasmania. And I moved back after two and the
Speaker 3: minute I got back there, I started writing my first novel, Flame,
Speaker 3: because I went for a bushwalk and I thought I
Speaker 3: had missed this place so much. I didn't know how
Speaker 3: much it meant to me. And then it almost kind
Speaker 3: of poured out of me. And it was only then
Speaker 3: that I realized that that's what I should be writing about.
Speaker 2: Part of what strikes me about the natural world. And
Speaker 2: you capture this so well, the sense of awe and
Speaker 2: wonder and kind of reverence for the natural world. But
Speaker 2: it seems to me that that can often be something
Speaker 2: that's meant with kind of the inarticulate that it's very
Speaker 2: hard to corral words, sentences, this kind of structure to
Speaker 2: something that willfully defies it. Do you feel any crisis
Speaker 2: of measuring up when you put your words up against
Speaker 2: these places you love so much?
Speaker 4: It is tricky at times.
Speaker 3: I focus quite hard on detail before emotion, because if
Speaker 3: you jump straight to the emotion a place of oaks,
Speaker 3: then you get very wafty, very quickly, and it might
Speaker 3: feel real to you, but it won't quite be real, because.
Speaker 4: It's very hard to capture a specific.
Speaker 3: Emotional experience in wage, which is why I do focus
Speaker 3: quite a lot on descriptive writing and then imbuing those
Speaker 3: descriptions with slivers of the sharpest pieces and truest pieces
Speaker 3: of emotion I can, as opposed to making it all
Speaker 3: an emotional thing and then saying also the tree was green.
Speaker 3: That's how I try and do it, because I think
Speaker 3: that best captures these places by looking at them as
Speaker 3: if a photographer would and capturing the truth of them
Speaker 3: and then putting in just the smallest but right amount
Speaker 3: of emotion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean it
Speaker 2: makes sense to me that you know, Tim Winton's a
Speaker 2: fan of your work, for example, and I think about
Speaker 2: what Winton does with inarticulate beauty, and I think there
Speaker 2: is something there that when it lands, it's so incredibly resonant.
Speaker 2: I'm curious beyond that with the natural world. The kind
Speaker 2: of corollary of that that seems interesting to me is
Speaker 2: the role of animals and creatures, because again, he have
Speaker 2: these living things with motivation, with agency. In your stories,
Speaker 2: you don't anthropomorphism, but you're also very careful to give
Speaker 2: them a voice. How do you get that balance right? Yeah.
Speaker 3: The thing I always lean on his animals don't care
Speaker 3: about people, particularly wild animals, and I think that's something
Speaker 3: I find doesn't work very well in fiction is when
Speaker 3: a connection is form between a wilde animal person and
Speaker 3: then it serves as a lesson and a teaching experience
Speaker 3: for the character, and then the animal is there as
Speaker 3: a function to serve humanity, and even if it's not
Speaker 3: deliberately done, that's how it comes out. And I think
Speaker 3: it's best to write again about animals with ultimate truth,
Speaker 3: which is they are beautiful and savage and they do
Speaker 3: not care one iota for humans at all, apart from
Speaker 3: what they can get out of them, because animals are surviving,
Speaker 3: and focusing on that survival aspect helps them come true
Speaker 3: on the page, I hope, and I think hopefully just
Speaker 3: my own fascination with animals as opposed to people and
Speaker 3: the differences between them and some of the similarities, it
Speaker 3: just interests me.
Speaker 4: I've learned to lean into your interests as an artist and.
Speaker 3: A novelist, because you can't fake passion, no, And like
Speaker 3: readers are clever, and I don't just say that just
Speaker 3: to be nice.
Speaker 4: Tour and it picks up book.
Speaker 3: But generally, like most people these days, are scrolling on
Speaker 3: their phone and half watching TV and half looking at
Speaker 3: their phone and half listening to something, and the act
Speaker 3: of actually picking up a book, especially a novel like
Speaker 3: requires a lot of effort and it's not as easy
Speaker 3: as most entertainment options are these days. Anyone who's going
Speaker 3: to that air first, you have a pretty implicit contract
Speaker 3: with them that they're going to go with you, and
Speaker 3: if they don't, they can put it down. So I
Speaker 3: think trusting that people will realize this might be not
Speaker 3: what they're expecting, but they can feel your passion.
Speaker 2: When we're returned, Robbie reveals the simple rules that he
Speaker 2: writes by and explains why he sees himself not just
Speaker 2: as an Australian writer, but as a Tasmanian one. We'll
Speaker 2: be right back, and the heart of this book not
Speaker 2: for the first time in your books. A sibling relationship
Speaker 2: is crucial, and Iris and Floyd know each other so
Speaker 2: well that the shorthand they use and the ways in
Speaker 2: which bluntness and affection play out are really really beautifully
Speaker 2: captured in this book.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, thank you, I found them such a
Speaker 3: fascinating pair to write about, you know, I initially didn't
Speaker 3: imagine their relationship.
Speaker 4: At the start of the book.
Speaker 3: I imagined it would be a really interesting way to
Speaker 3: follow a novel by essentially having two protagonists but always
Speaker 3: staying close to one and really getting to know one
Speaker 3: of them through by sticking third person close narration to
Speaker 3: them and the other one always being there but almost
Speaker 3: at arm's length, and come to know the meat through
Speaker 3: the way they interacted with each.
Speaker 4: Other, and then having a brief dive to the other protagonist.
Speaker 3: But as I created the character, so I was going
Speaker 3: the death of love and tension and anger and mistrust
Speaker 3: and devotion to each other, all kind of spoiled out.
Speaker 3: He was actually really enjoyable to write and painful at
Speaker 3: other times. I do sometimes wonder what my brother and
Speaker 3: my sister think of I guess most of my books, actually,
Speaker 3: but I.
Speaker 2: Leave you guessing they're not giving you like robust commentary
Speaker 2: or WhatsApp.
Speaker 4: Group a little bit. Yeah, they read them. They're always
Speaker 4: eager to read them. They're very proud of me. They're
Speaker 4: not really like me.
Speaker 3: They're much more kind of analytical people, so they find
Speaker 3: me a bit bizarre. But you know, they're very happy
Speaker 3: that it's working out, and the fact that I write
Speaker 3: about siblings is just confusing to them as it is
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 4: But here we all are.
Speaker 2: Do you have a consciousness like I am always delighted
Speaker 2: when Richard Flanagan's a great pains to insist is not
Speaker 2: an Australian writer as a Tasmanian writer. Do you feel
Speaker 2: a similar kind of sense of that different being an
Speaker 2: important defining one.
Speaker 4: For all my scenes?
Speaker 3: I think I do not out of you know, I
Speaker 3: don't have a problem any more of a problem with
Speaker 3: mainland Australia than anyone else should. But growing up at
Speaker 3: the Tasmania and I'm sure everyone listening to this it's
Speaker 3: butt of a joke, you know, it's like incest jokes,
Speaker 3: and nobody can read, nobody can write. It's boring, there's
Speaker 3: nothing to do sort of stuff, and it's all generally
Speaker 3: said in good humor. But like you know, you just
Speaker 3: get so used to it, and then we have this
Speaker 3: like Bond villain who sets up a giant art layer
Speaker 3: in Hobart and.
Speaker 4: Suddenly Hobart's cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and everyone wants to come down and visit, and
Speaker 3: everyone wants to buy a condo and hobart and it
Speaker 3: makes us all very wary because we're thinking, like, how
Speaker 3: long is this going to last? Until you're all making
Speaker 3: fun of us again? So it does set you apart
Speaker 3: from Mainland Australia a little bit.
Speaker 1: What are the.
Speaker 2: Rules you set for yourself when you write? I mean
Speaker 2: you write largely in a realist mode, but then you
Speaker 2: also allow yourself freedom to embrace more things in heaven
Speaker 2: and earth. Do you have an idea of how grounded
Speaker 2: you have to be, what that ratio should be?
Speaker 3: Not necessarily whenever I do anything that veers into magical
Speaker 3: or particularly imaginative. The simple rule I have is like,
Speaker 3: if it's not real, do I want it to be?
Speaker 3: And can I believe it almost to be? Like?
Speaker 4: Do I really want that?
Speaker 2: As a reader?
Speaker 3: What I love that to be something? Rather than is
Speaker 3: this just quite a sparkling piece of imagination? And am
Speaker 3: I just essentially showing off? So no showing off is
Speaker 3: my biggest rule. No self indulgence, because I don't think
Speaker 3: that does anything for anybody. And I guess my other
Speaker 3: one is just no dead sentences. Obviously, you can't have
Speaker 3: everything be turn around the corner and the man's with
Speaker 3: a guns there, but.
Speaker 4: Just no dead weight is what I try and avoid.
Speaker 2: One of the things in Dusk particular is not just
Speaker 2: a kind of reverence for the landscape, but it's the
Speaker 2: brutality of the landscape. You know. The wrenals reflect over
Speaker 2: their life for the many places they've been, and again
Speaker 2: and again. The thing that comes through is that they're
Speaker 2: places of kind of great violence. And I'm curious about
Speaker 2: the extent of which that was a deliberate decision based
Speaker 2: on the story you were telling and the genre, or
Speaker 2: whether you think that kind of underlying violence is an
Speaker 2: important part of understanding the physical the natural world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do, definitely the latter.
Speaker 3: It wasn't so much a decision I made, as looking
Speaker 3: into this novel is said in roughly historical times, let's
Speaker 3: say somewhere in the late eighteen hundreds, if we were
Speaker 3: to be forced to put a date on it, and
Speaker 3: looking at how people actually live, particularly outside of large
Speaker 3: civilization centers, A lot of what I think I described
Speaker 3: is just pretty straightforward and where to remove for about
Speaker 3: now in depicting in large cities, And I think it's
Speaker 3: just necessary to include their because that informs how people
Speaker 3: behaved and views they had and what they did and why.
Speaker 4: They did it for good or for bad.
Speaker 3: And I think it's a level of detailing there that
Speaker 3: some people might find a little confronting. I don't think
Speaker 3: it's particularly confronting, but I'm odd, but I think it's
Speaker 3: necessary in order to understand the characters and societies of
Speaker 3: these places. Civilization hasn't moved on from things like this
Speaker 3: as much as we think it has. Some when you
Speaker 3: read a book like in Dusk or one of our
Speaker 3: maybe one of my other books, where maybe someone who's
Speaker 3: treated with violence or is enacting of violence on the
Speaker 3: natural world, it's not that far from where we've come
Speaker 3: from and where we are.
Speaker 2: No is that complicated by or added to by As
Speaker 2: you say, the book has a historical setting, and we're
Speaker 2: talking about Tasmania of the kind of late nineteenth century.
Speaker 2: The proximity to violence in relation to land is incredibly acute.
Speaker 2: You know, that's within the generation. You know that the
Speaker 2: level of atrocities that were going on there. Does that
Speaker 2: give you as a writer pause or anxiety to be
Speaker 2: kind of playing in that soundbox?
Speaker 3: I think, if anything, it gives me a sense of
Speaker 3: responsibility because you're looking at a period of history and
Speaker 3: not writing about that, at least on some level, then
Speaker 3: you're doing something very old. It's the huge and defining
Speaker 3: feature of let's say Tasmania, but honestly Australia and almost
Speaker 3: every colonial territory of the former British Empire and other
Speaker 3: European empires is the atrocities of colonization and the fact
Speaker 3: that people don't like talking about it, and people like
Speaker 3: it not to be referred to, or like to kind
Speaker 3: of avert their gaze. I think is a very strange thing.
Speaker 3: When I say responsibility to refer to it, I just
Speaker 3: mean in order to tell the truest version of fiction possible,
Speaker 3: if that makes sense. To not include it would be
Speaker 3: not only the wrong thing to do.
Speaker 4: But just bizarre. Why would you bother even writing about it?
Speaker 3: So I think, whether it hangs large or small in
Speaker 3: the backdrop of a novel, I think it just should
Speaker 3: be there because why else are you doing it? And
Speaker 3: it definitely crops up in the book, I guess yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, are those twin polls of violence and horror
Speaker 2: on the one hand and beauty and wonder on the other.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's your Quintessential Robbie Antt novel right there
Speaker 2: in the space careening between those two.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I suppose so.
Speaker 3: And you know I feel compelled to write about it
Speaker 3: and to look into it and to I guess, interrogate
Speaker 3: it in fiction because it's something that's unresolved in Australian
Speaker 3: society today. We have absolutely no reconciliation in this country
Speaker 3: and it's very hard to imagine a sensible or harmonious
Speaker 3: path forward without any of it. And so you know,
Speaker 3: it comes out in this book, and it comes out
Speaker 3: of my work because why wouldn't it. You know, I
Speaker 3: come from a culture in Northern Tasmania of people who
Speaker 3: just don't like talking about the Frontier conflict and they
Speaker 3: just basically it didn't happen, or if it did, stop
Speaker 3: winching and I wasn't there.
Speaker 4: It's nothing to do with me.
Speaker 3: Get over it. And it's that's that's a stance that's
Speaker 3: incredibly comfortable where I'm from, and it just makes my
Speaker 3: head spin because like, not only is it a level
Speaker 3: of denial that seemed childish, it's also just the little
Speaker 3: of not even wanting to talk about it. I don't,
Speaker 3: I don't, I won't go on too much about it.
Speaker 3: But I guess it becomes president in the work because
Speaker 3: I don't see how it couldn't be. It's strange that
Speaker 3: all this stuff is happening and it's come out of
Speaker 3: me writing a novel set about some children of books
Speaker 3: for ages hunting a puma in Tasmanian highlands.
Speaker 4: But there we go.
Speaker 2: It's never a straight line these things.
Speaker 3: No, No, maybe if I planned these things out, it
Speaker 3: would make a lot more sense.
Speaker 2: You'd enjoy yourself so much later, Robbiana, Dusk is absolutely
Speaker 2: a wonderful read, and imagine your legion of fans are
Speaker 2: going to love it. So thank you so much for
Speaker 2: joining us today.
Speaker 4: That's so kind of you, and thanks so much for having.
Speaker 2: Me Robbie on It's latest novel, Dusk is available at
Speaker 2: all Good bookstores now.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to another special episode
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