WEBVTT - Read This: Alex Miller Finally Lets His Friend Die 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:03.920 Hello again. It's Ruby Jones. Welcome back to another episode 0:00:03.960 --> 0:00:08.160 of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast, hosted by 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:11.560 editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features conversations with 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:14.560 some of the most talented writers from Australia and around 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.640 the world. In this episode, we're going to hear from 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:21.080 two times Miles Franklin Award winning author Alex Miller, who's 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:26.880 discussing his latest novel, The Deal. As always, I'm joined 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:29.320 by Michael to tell me a bit more about the episode. 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:31.760 I'm Michael, Ruby Jones. How are you. 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:36.400 I'm well, Thank you so, Michael. Critically acclaimed writer Alex 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:40.519 Miller has just released his fourteenth novel at the impressive 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.200 age of eighty seven, So tell me a bit about 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:44.480 his career so far. 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:47.960 Yeah, Ruby, I feel like we've said this a few times. 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:50.360 I'm read this, but Alex Miller is a two time 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:53.400 winner of the Miles Franklin Award. It is, you might 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:56.560 not realize, quite a rare category and it's an indication 0:00:56.640 --> 0:00:59.160 of how long he's been a writer. Working at the 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:02.120 peak of his career. His first book came out thirty 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.320 seven years ago. It was called Watching the climbers on 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:07.679 the mountain. But since then he's only gone from strength 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:12.680 to strength, awards, acclaim, great reviews. Just before he published 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.240 his latest novel, which is the one you mentioned at 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:19.000 the top, that's the deal, his wife, Stephanie Miller, unearthed 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:23.039 hundreds of his old notepats, diaries, letters and put them 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.480 together in this collection called a Kind of Confession. I 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:28.840 love books like this, you know, where you not only 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:31.360 get an insight into the writer as a person, but 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:33.880 you can if you follow the timelines, you can really 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:36.240 get an insight into what was going on in their mind, 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:39.320 in their life and their correspondence in the lead up 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:42.399 to writing a book. If you love their output, then 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:44.440 you go to the letters, you go to the archive, 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:46.760 and you get a sense of I guess what you 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:49.280 call the stories behind the books we love. 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:52.960 And so this new novel, it's actually returning to a 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:56.400 story that he wrote about more than three decades ago. 0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:57.120 Is that right? 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:01.640 Yeah, that's right. So arguably miller most famous book, most 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:04.440 celebrated book is a book called The Ancestor Game. Came 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:07.320 out back in nineteen ninety two and it won the 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:09.720 Miles Franklin Award. Got a lot of acclaim, and it 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:13.320 centers around this character called Lang Su, who's an exiled 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.840 Chinese artist who's turned art dealer. Now, the thing is 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:19.320 that Lang Sue was based on a real life friend 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:22.760 of Alex Miller's, a guy called Alan o' hoy, and 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:24.960 the pair met in the mid seventies and they had 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:27.360 this kind of deep bond, And much of the Ancestor 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:32.799 Game reads like Miller and his various characters Stephen, August, Gertrude, 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:35.400 all trying to make sense of this puzzle of a 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:39.160 man in the work of fiction. Lang Zu survives and 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:41.400 his kind of triumphant at the end of the book, 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:45.160 But in real life, Alan o'hoy, the guy was based on, 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:49.600 died by suicide. His grieving friend paid tribute on the page, 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:54.040 immortalizing him for the Australian literary firmament. But now more 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.120 than thirty years later, Alex Miller's gone back to the character, 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:00.760 back to the fiction, and back to his late friend 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:04.080 and his new novel. The Deal is really interested in 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:07.600 questions about how writers engage with the world around them. 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:12.320 It's about artists, It's about Australian racism and marriage and 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:16.080 parents and children. But more than anything, else, it's about 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:20.519 giving Lang Su or Alan o'hoy, or even Alex Miller 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:23.959 himself another go at laying out the truth. 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:29.840 Coming up. In just a moment, Alex Miller finally lets 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:34.840 his friend die. 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:43.360 Alex Miller, are you a rereader of your own work? 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:45.840 No, I've never read one of my books from beginning 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:49.760 to end. I've read chunks, bits and pieces of them 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.480 and then sort of remember so much of what's going 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:56.440 to happen, where it's going to go, and even sentences 0:03:56.480 --> 0:04:01.000 that I made up for Edmund to the end. 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:04.040 I ask about rereading your work because it seems to 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:06.760 me the book that came out with your name on 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:09.440 the front of it before the deal was a kind 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.760 of confession, and it was a collaboration with your wife, Stephanie. 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:14.720 It was Stephanie who did it. 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:18.320 It was her project of unearthing your papers, your letters 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:22.360 and compiling them in a way that tells a story 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:26.000 of a writerly life and a body of work. How 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:28.400 did you feel about that process? How was it to 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:31.320 be confronted with your words of forty years ago and 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.240 think about what they meant, what they said about you, 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:35.600 and how you've changed. 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:37.839 How had I done it? I wouldn't have done it 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:41.400 the way she did. She and Annette Barlow, my publisher, 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.440 were in it together, and it took a long time 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:46.600 for them to put it all together. I'm an unbelievable 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:51.360 amount of material. For years since I can remember, I've 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:56.320 kept letters, and then of course when email came in, 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:59.920 I kept what I thought it was significant responses for 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:04.719 and me, so that the letters have a place, and 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:08.560 I love writing letters. I wouldn't have put in the 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.600 stuff that Steph put in. She went through to the earliest, 0:05:12.480 --> 0:05:16.440 went through all my diaries, every diary for bloody years, 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:21.320 and all the notebooks, piles of notebooks. I mean a 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:25.200 lot of those notebooks just had things like dentists three PM, 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:27.400 you know, stuff like that in them about them. 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:30.240 But that's a good name for a future book about. 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:38.200 The dentist three pm root canal. Yeah, So I mean no, 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:41.640 I was very busy while she was doing it, writing 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:44.200 another book. I can't remember what the book was. It 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:48.760 may have even been this one the deal, but I 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:51.600 didn't read it. I had no input to it. I 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:54.000 attempted to have an input to it at one point 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.680 by saying, looking at what had been done at a 0:05:57.680 --> 0:06:00.080 fairly late stage, and I said, well, all my my 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:02.839 essays on art have been left out. There's nothing in 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:07.719 there to indicate really my lifetime interest in art. And 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:11.320 Steph said that's for another collection. We've kept them out 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:17.720 on purpose. I said, okay, so yeah, it was absolutely 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:19.320 STEP's job. 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:20.520 Smart woman. 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:28.000 Yeah, she's my first editor, and she'll save a book 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:31.800 from being discarded altogether and see something else in it 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:35.520 that it needs rearranging, or the perspective's a bit wrong. 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:36.680 That's what the trouble is. 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.120 That's why you're talking about giving it up and doing 0:06:39.160 --> 0:06:42.440 something else. And it again shines a light for me 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:46.040 on the work that's a long way from finished. 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:50.760 It seems directly relevant to me to the deal, because 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:55.200 the deal is partly an act of reckoning with one 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:59.360 of your most celebrated works book of many years ago. 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:03.640 And there is a letter that you send your Chinese 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:08.359 translator in a kind of confession, where you offer a 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:11.000 forward for the Chinese edition of The Ancestor Game. I 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:13.480 really I can't remember that, and it begins I began 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:15.480 to work on The Ancestor Game in order to try 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:18.200 to understand the tragic death of a dear friend the 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:20.400 man on whom the hero of this book is based. 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.800 Langzu was a real person. He was my friend. He 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:27.080 was an Australian Chinese artist who had lived his entire 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.040 life outside China. He failed to achieve recognition as an 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:32.720 artist in Australia and his life came to seem to 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:36.720 him to be more and more pointless as time went on. Eventually, 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:39.000 at the age of fifty, he shot himself. 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:42.440 So really it had been revealed. 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.080 I've forgotten that was in there all that I've. 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:47.920 Written only for the Chinese forward of the book, but 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:51.880 you laid it out there very clearly. That engine for 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:53.160 the Ancestor. 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:54.760 Game, but also for this book. 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:56.120 Yeah, and for this book. 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:57.840 Because in the Ancestor Game he doesn't die. 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:01.400 So I want to begin with the ancest again before 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:06.920 we get to the deal and by what motivated you 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:10.280 as a writer to tell his story and what motivated 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:11.760 the decision to let him live? 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:17.000 Yeah, really good questions that I've asked myself many times, 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:19.360 and there are many different answers to them, depending at 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:23.480 what stage of life you're at. For the first two 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:26.320 or three years after he shot himself, I was very 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:30.040 upset about it and quite depressed. Often and if I 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.240 had a few drinks in the evening, I'd start lamenting 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:39.240 his death, which made me angry and disappointed and a 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:43.719 number of confused emotions for quite a long time. And 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:45.840 Steph finally said, well, why don't you write a book 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:49.160 about him? And I knew immediately that she was right, 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:54.640 I should do it. So yeah, I mean to clear 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:56.600 your mind in a sense, to get it over, to 0:08:56.679 --> 0:09:00.800 deal with it. And that book what didn't become the deal, 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:02.400 It didn't become. 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:02.920 The real life. 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:07.280 It became a real and an imaginary life. And it 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:11.040 took me back into Chinese history in Australia, and it 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:14.559 brought me to the realization that if you're Chinese, you're 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:17.720 never going to be an icsy bloke. If you're Irish 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:20.280 or English or a German migrant you can be a 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.080 nussy bloke, not if you're Chinese. 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.160 It began to sink into me that that was the case. 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:29.520 And of course I also read in great depth the 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:33.280 history in Australia, the published history in Australia of anti 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:38.760 Chinese feeling and racism, which ran deep. There was even 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:43.640 a I mean, it hasn't hasn't gone away if you're 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:47.000 Chinese you must come across it from time to time. 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:49.560 And I was talking to Alice Pung the other day 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:52.520 and she and I are friends. She came for lunch 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:55.960 and we were talking about it, and she just said, yeah, 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.480 you know, it's normal for it to be in her life, 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:05.000 the lives of her friends who are Asians. And one 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:07.199 of the reviews a very good review of the deal 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:09.880 actually and it was lovely to get it in the 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:14.600 Australian Book Review, and in that the reviewer, who has 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:18.160 nothing negative to say about the book said, it's a 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:22.240 stretch for me to believe that this or you didn't 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:24.400 quite say to believe, but it's a stretch for me 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:32.120 that this Chinese drunk has valued so highly by dealers 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:35.920 and auctioneers in the art world in Melbourne. Anybody who 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:38.880 was involved in the art world in Melbourne in the 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:42.880 seventies and eighties knew Lang Zu, they knew Alan o'hoy, 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:45.679 the man on whom he was based. I mean that 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:48.720 was unconscious racism in the sense that if it had 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:53.360 been a drunken German dealer or a drunken Ossie dealer, 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.160 now I would have blinked an I it was Chinese 0:10:56.440 --> 0:11:00.640 dealer he was a secret dealer and a collector, and 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:04.840 he was relied on by a lot of agents and 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:11.000 also people in the business of auctioning paintings. 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.320 That anger and grief in the wake of his death. 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:17.400 You know that, I understand that as an impulse to write, 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:20.840 But what you're reckoning with the man. 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:23.800 You must look. I loved him, and as you know, 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:27.080 if somebody who loved dies, they're with you forever. 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:28.920 They don't go away. 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:36.200 People like Alan Barry Reid really critically important people to me. Yeah, 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.040 I mean a lot of people have gone into my 0:11:39.120 --> 0:11:43.920 books who are now did friends, people I loved and 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.840 cared deeply about the truth of what they had lived, 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:50.880 the truth of what they'd claimed those things are I 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:53.520 mean yeah to me. I mean Ray Gaetor always says 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:56.960 I'm a searcher after truth, and I hadn't kind of 0:11:57.000 --> 0:11:59.880 realized that there was anything special until he said that, 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.120 and I thought, oh, yeah, I am too, because that's 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:05.880 what interests me, to get to the truth of the story. 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:11.560 I mean the story in a sense, if you're a writer, 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:13.160 you don't have. 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:14.520 This beginning of the story. 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:16.880 You don't have the middle of the story. 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:19.920 It's only when the end of the. 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:23.079 Story appears to you that you realize, oh my god, 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:24.000 there's a story there. 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:25.200 I know. 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:28.120 When that began, you think, and then you've got the 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:29.640 compass of the story. 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:31.440 If you like it. If you like it. 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:36.920 When we return, Alex shares why he had to return 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:39.760 to the story of his friend and set the truth straight, 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:44.240 and why he's no longer scared of death, We'll be 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:58.120 right back. If seeing the shape of the story isn't 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:01.840 clear until you get the end of the story, how 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:08.040 different is telling a story when that end is death 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.920 by suicide, when that end is at the hand of 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:13.280 the person that you're writing about. 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:19.560 Well, writing the Deal wasn't the same as writing The 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:23.840 Ancestor Game. It was a desire to tell the truth. 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:28.960 Because when I wrote The Ancestor Game, people who'd known 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:32.800 Allen wrote to me or rang me up and in 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:36.000 those days left a message saying you brought him back 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:40.720 and thanking me, Well, yeah, but he's dead. 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:42.800 He shot himself. That was the reality. 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:45.760 And as you just pointed out in that Book of Steps, 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:51.400 I actually wrote about that to Professor Leo, who translates 0:13:51.480 --> 0:14:00.240 my stuff into Chinese. I think that writing this book Deal, 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:06.400 it came simply in a sense, from a desire to 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:10.520 the two things. I suppose one is that I'm continuing 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:15.320 with a kind of autobiography because it's it all comes 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:16.839 from friends and loved ones. 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:17.960 I'm concerned. 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.160 I did try and write about a person I disliked 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:25.320 intensely once, and through trying to write about him, I 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:29.800 began to like him and understand his motivation and have 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.520 some sympathy with it. The real life bloke I still 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:37.400 didn't like. But I find it very difficult to write 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:38.680 about people I don't like. 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.680 You'd written him into someone you understood. 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:45.440 Yeah, Anyway, the reason I wrote The Deal was to 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:52.640 bring a couple of things into perspective. One was the 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:55.800 fact of my father as the good man before the war, 0:14:56.400 --> 0:14:59.920 and his gift to me of the simplicity of art, 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:04.240 in that innocence of art as it can be, and 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:09.040 the corruption of art which happens in the book, with 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:13.640 the substitution of paintings and recognition of things and all that. 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:17.080 And in the end the signature. I mean, neither he 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:19.440 nor I put the signature on that picture, but it 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:22.800 was there, and it was sold in London for some 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:24.640 enormous and. 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:30.640 The heart of the Deal is your surrogate if you 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:36.440 like Andy, and I'm curious at times it's a picture 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:41.160 of the writer as someone who is extractive of the 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:43.200 people in their life. And it seems to me that 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.680 if we understand this book partly through the lens of autobiography, 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:49.240 you seem critical of your chosen profession. 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:52.680 It's the same in the Ancestor Game. I actually call 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:56.760 the writer a parasite in the Ancestor Game because he 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:03.640 is feeding off the material of his engaging main protagonist 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:06.000 of a book that maybe he will write one day. 0:16:06.720 --> 0:16:09.640 So yes, he's kind of feeding off a relationship. 0:16:09.840 --> 0:16:11.720 But both of us were. We were both. 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:14.560 Using each other, And you do have to ask, is 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:18.280 there any friendship in which the two people don't use 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:21.160 each other to some extent? I mean, I know they say, oh, 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:23.600 he's a user or she's a user, and that's a 0:16:23.720 --> 0:16:27.960 derogatory term. But nevertheless, we do use or make use 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:31.200 of friends in all sorts of ways, and they do 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:34.360 of us too. We find we have been used and 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:36.000 not unpleasant way. 0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:39.080 If the Deal is partly about telling the truth of 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:43.160 that relationship and of that time and that story, is 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:44.880 it a stretch then to say that you feel that 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:46.920 you weren't telling the truth in the ancest again. 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:50.280 Yeah, it's not a stretch. I suppose it's just the 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.520 truth to say that I wasn't. I mean, the ancestor 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:57.240 game is a lot of it is history making the point. 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:02.160 I suppose that the Chinese or arrived twelve years after 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:07.280 Melbourne was declared a settlement, and that they came before 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:12.240 the gold, whereas, of course the story is normally that 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:15.800 they came for the gold and then went home again, 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:17.200 which is simply not true. 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:18.959 Maybe true of some people. 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:24.600 It's certainly true of English people who came out with money, 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:29.840 significant amounts of money, and exploited land and sheep and 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:32.000 cattle for a few years and then went back again 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:36.639 to England. Lots of lots of them, and that was 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:38.080 but that's not said about them. 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:44.080 Part of what works so beautifully in the deal and 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:49.159 makes the way it recast the story so moving is 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.800 the perspective of time and age, you know, and his 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:57.399 voice and his story comes from from the other end 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:00.480 of a lifetime, so much so that the book ends 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:04.920 in the first person and his voice and in old 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:08.720 age kind of looking back at this stuff. How important 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:12.720 is that perspective of distance. I mean, I imagine the 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:16.400 Alex Miller who wrote The Ancestor Game not only didn't 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.160 write The Deal then, but couldn't have that. It's something 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.439 that you can only come to several decades on in 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:23.359 your writing career. 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:27.719 Yeah, I mean, I've simplified things in as much as 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:30.320 I'm able to in the last few books. I mean, 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:32.960 I'm not capable of writing a great, big book anymore. 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:36.439 I'm too old to take on a subject that requires 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:39.639 a lot of research, and He's going to finish up 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:42.120 being a sort of six hundred page book. So it's 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:46.080 kind of in my interests anyway, to be much tighter 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:47.880 and more disciplined about the way I. 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:48.800 Deliver a story. 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:55.480 So yeah, a kind of not a kind of confession. 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:58.600 What was it called? A brief Affair and a Deal? 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:04.200 I were both relatively short books compared to Ancestor Game, 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:07.919 which is not huge, but still it's big in terms 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.160 of its subject and its grasp of things, and it's 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:12.800 historical reference and all that. 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:15.080 But the. 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:22.359 Deal runs from when I was a kid to now 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:27.240 I'm what eighty seven, I'll be eighty eight next month December. 0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:29.600 It's distressing to me, Alex, You're in better nick than 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:29.960 I am. 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:31.920 And then you know, well I work at it. 0:19:32.080 --> 0:19:34.560 Yeah, I work at it. Two, that's not having any 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:36.240 and me of the same success you're having. 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:38.240 It's just luck. 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:44.000 But yeah, So the perspective that I now have on it, 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:48.280 I think needs to be stated in this book because 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:51.200 the guts of the book, the deal is a story 0:19:51.240 --> 0:19:54.680 that happened a long time ago. It's also the story 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:57.480 of Stephanie and our meeting and having our first child 0:19:57.680 --> 0:19:59.800 and what that did to me. And for a lot 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:02.199 of people, that's the most important part of the book. 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:07.360 None of the reviewers so far has mentioned Australian racism 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:10.600 as having any part to play in it, except Chinese people. 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:15.000 That is, it's the most important part of the book 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:15.400 for them. 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:21.560 I'm so curious about whether the writer in their eighties 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:26.320 is more comfortable letting their friend die on the page 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:30.159 than the writer in their forties, you know, whether that 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:35.040 or their fifties. You know, whether whether that distance allowed 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:37.359 you to be truer this time around. 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.959 Yeah, I think that's probably an insight, of valuable insight. 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.960 But you're not afraid of death when you're old. I mean, 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:48.560 why be afraid of death when you're in your eighties. 0:20:48.600 --> 0:20:51.280 For Christ's sake, you should be dead and it will 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:53.680 be soon. I used to call it, and I probably 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:56.359 still do. People don't like it, of course, is the 0:20:56.400 --> 0:20:59.520 death zone. Someone turns eighty and they let me know 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:02.080 a party, and so you're in the death zone now, 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:04.880 and they say, oh fuck felks for Christ, cheer up, mate. 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:07.080 You might want to work on the messages you're writing cards, 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:08.240 if that's what you're doing. 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:11.359 But that's when we die. We die in our eighties. 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:14.880 Ninety percent of us die in our eighties. A few 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:17.600 slip through to their nineties. Not too many are still 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:22.520 being productive in any sort of serious way into their nineties. 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:27.880 So that's another challenge yet to be faced. I mean, 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:31.439 when you're forty five, you're scared of death. When you're 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:33.840 fifty year scared of death, you think, oh fuck, I've 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:36.240 got bloody cancer. Now you never think that. 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:37.800 At my age. 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.919 I've never give it a thought. I just look at 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:44.840 Steph and I think, I hope you're okay when I'm gone, you. 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:48.600 Know, before I let you go, I just want to ask, 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:51.880 just cut and ride for the record, if there's something 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:55.280 that you want readers of the Deal to understand to 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:59.879 take away and remember about your friend Allen. What would it? 0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:04.760 No, people read their own book, and my books hopefully 0:22:05.119 --> 0:22:08.480 are open to readers to read their own book, so 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:12.920 that a young person in Bowel will picked a book 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.040 up and read it, and they'll read their own book. 0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:17.919 They won't notice the racism, or they will notice it, 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:21.679 or they won't notice the innocence of art and the 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:26.320 corruption of art as a possible dichotomy a subject, if 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:29.119 you like. They might notice the falling in love on 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:33.280 the bus, maybe that will be the main story for them. 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:35.119 Or the way a man talks to his daughter. 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:39.679 Yeah, that having children was the greatest of end of 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:42.880 my life, and I think probably of many parents' lives. 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:46.560 The event of having a child changed everything. 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:47.639 It humanized me. 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:51.919 Well. I concur with your other readers who think The 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:54.719 Deal might be the finest thing you've done. It's a 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:59.680 masterpiece and thrill to discover that you're still delivering masterpieces. 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:02.280 And I'm excited for the next one. 0:23:02.640 --> 0:23:04.320 Thanks for your churn vote. 0:23:04.400 --> 0:23:08.560 It's an absolute pleasure. Great as ever to see you YouTube. 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:15.840