Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Ruby Jones. Each Sunday, we're sharing one
Speaker 1: of our favorite episodes from our sister podcast, Read This.
Speaker 1: The show features interviews with some of Australia's best and
Speaker 1: most beloved writers. Today, we're going to hear from Bruce Pasco.
Speaker 1: Bruce is a novelist and historian who's twenty fourteen book
Speaker 1: At Dark Emu became a national bestseller. Michael Williams is
Speaker 1: the host of Read This, and he's with me now.
Speaker 2: Ruby Jones.
Speaker 3: Halle Michael, how are you.
Speaker 1: I am great lovely to be back with you again
Speaker 1: for another episode of Read This. So on this episode,
Speaker 1: listeners are going to hear your conversation with Bruce Pasco.
Speaker 1: Tell me a bit about how you first came to
Speaker 1: read his work.
Speaker 3: Listeners are going to have to put up with me
Speaker 3: waxing a little nostalgic in this episode because I first
Speaker 3: met Bruce on a family camming holiday in Malacuta, where
Speaker 3: he was selling copies of his book at the farmer's
Speaker 3: market on a Sunday and I went and bought one
Speaker 3: because I'd run out of things to read on the
Speaker 3: summer holidays, and that was the first time I read
Speaker 3: Bruce's book or Met Bruce the human Being, So we
Speaker 3: do have a little nostalgic reverie about Malokuda. But my
Speaker 3: favorite thing about this episode is that Bruce Pascoe was
Speaker 3: well and truly dragooned into the culture wars when Dark
Speaker 3: Emu came out, News Limited in particular decided that he
Speaker 3: was public enemy number one for the ways in which
Speaker 3: he wanted to rethink First Nations history in this country.
Speaker 3: And so I meant that a lot was written, a
Speaker 3: lot was said about Bruce that didn't represent who he is,
Speaker 3: the kind of scholar he is, the kind of thinking
Speaker 3: he does, and the deep integrity and generosity of his storytelling.
Speaker 3: And so for me, it was very exciting to have
Speaker 3: an opportunity to talk to the actual author about what
Speaker 3: motivated him, rather than rely on secondhand nonsense.
Speaker 1: It's true, so much of the narrative around Bruce is
Speaker 1: around the controversy that has been stood up by what
Speaker 1: he's written, and less on the craft of his writing.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I think listeners will be very surprised to
Speaker 3: hear what the new novels about and hear Bruce talk about.
Speaker 3: And it couldn't be more diametrically opposed to the kind
Speaker 3: of preconceptions that I think people bring to the table
Speaker 3: when it comes to this fabulous writer.
Speaker 1: Coming up in just a moment. All Bruce Pasco needs
Speaker 1: is a burrow.
Speaker 3: When I was a kid, my mother would take my
Speaker 3: sisters and I for camping holidays in the height of summer.
Speaker 3: Of the recurring destinations, Malakuda was a particular favorite, on
Speaker 3: the edge of crowajing Along National Park, at the mouth
Speaker 3: of this series of beautiful inlets. So I'm the far
Speaker 3: north coast of Victoria and it's one of those places
Speaker 3: where while the year round population is only about a thousand,
Speaker 3: in summer, when the camping run is full, that number
Speaker 3: is more like eight thousand. I remember those long, glorious
Speaker 3: days splashing around on Becka Beach, or sitting in the
Speaker 3: basketball hall watching the makeshift cinema. But of those entertainments,
Speaker 3: the app sa lude pinnacle was the farmer's market each weekend,
Speaker 3: not least because it was a reliable source of secondhand books.
Speaker 3: It was there one summer, having exhausted the reading I
Speaker 3: packed for the holiday, that I picked up my first
Speaker 3: Bruce Pascoe novel. In hindsight, it's clear to me that
Speaker 3: the quiet bloke with the big beard who sold it
Speaker 3: to me was the author himself. This wasn't a second
Speaker 3: hand stall. This was someone who loved to write, making
Speaker 3: a connection with potential readers in between the DreamCatcher stall
Speaker 3: and the homemade chutneys. That more than two decades later
Speaker 3: Bruce Pascoe would be a household name was unthinkable at
Speaker 3: the time that he would still be writing, still honoring
Speaker 3: his commitment to telling a great story. That is utterly unsurprising.
Speaker 3: I'm Michael Williams, and this is Read. This the show
Speaker 3: about the books we love and the stories behind them.
Speaker 3: It was twenty fourteen when Bruce Pascoe went from being
Speaker 3: a prolific yet relatively unknown writer to public enemy number
Speaker 3: one in Australia's culture wars. That was the year he
Speaker 3: published his now infamous book Dark Emu and its re
Speaker 3: examination of accepted historical accounts of pre invasion Australia. It's
Speaker 3: a book that struck a chord. More than three hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty thousand copies have been sold so far, and
Speaker 3: it's inspired various spin off books, from a young adult
Speaker 3: edition to entire books published to refute its claims about
Speaker 3: First Nations people and their relationship with the land. Newscorps
Speaker 3: in particular, have expended a lot of energy framing Bruce
Speaker 3: as this ahistorical force of propaganda. Its nasty, ugly stuff.
Speaker 3: But part of what I like about Bruce Pasco is
Speaker 3: his calm, implacable generosity, his engaged critics and detractors, and
Speaker 3: welcome the debate. For all the attempts to co of
Speaker 3: them into the culture was Bruce is not so interested.
Speaker 3: He has other stories to tell, and the latest one
Speaker 3: is his novel Imperial Harvest. It's set in thirteenth century Mongolia,
Speaker 3: and it follows a one armed soldier, yen See, as
Speaker 3: he contemplates the expectations of others and how a single
Speaker 3: person can navigate war and colonialism with grace and endurance.
Speaker 3: And it begins with a disclaimer, this author's warning that
Speaker 3: sums up how Bruce Pasco approaches the world.
Speaker 2: This novel tells a story of great armies, the calumny
Speaker 2: of powerful men traveling across the vast lands of Eurasia.
Speaker 2: But if there's a date here or a town there
Speaker 2: which seems strange, remember that history tosses all fact in
Speaker 2: the air, so the victor can choose his own confetti.
Speaker 2: In this case, the confetti is chose by the losers,
Speaker 2: so be patient. It's not always possible to catch the
Speaker 2: polics in their original order, and in any case, it
Speaker 2: will be confetti again tomorrow. Don't be dismayed by this fact.
Speaker 2: You're alive, aren't you.
Speaker 3: I love the idea of returning to confetti and also
Speaker 3: telling your readers not to be dismayed. I mean, often,
Speaker 3: particularly with historical fiction, we have this anxiety of not
Speaker 3: just what's true and what's not, but what's a legitimate
Speaker 3: speaking position from which to tell history and what's not?
Speaker 3: And setting that note at the front of the novel
Speaker 3: seems to be saying, it's a book, it's here for
Speaker 3: you to have farm. See what it sparks that there
Speaker 3: is a lot of implied goodwill in that request of
Speaker 3: your readers.
Speaker 2: And because of that, it ends in a restaurant where
Speaker 2: people enjoy wine, they enjoy food, and they enjoy sharing it,
Speaker 2: and they are slightly alarmed by their It was meant
Speaker 2: to be a kind gesture of asking people not to hate,
Speaker 2: but to come together a little bit. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's easy for people to polarize their situation and to
Speaker 2: take positions. But I'll never forget being told by a
Speaker 2: very old Hawaiian woman that when you're having these arguments,
Speaker 2: leave no one behind. In my own tale of Malakuta,
Speaker 2: there are debates which have ended up being polarized when
Speaker 2: a perfectly good, compromised situation was available. You know, compromises messy, muddy,
Speaker 2: unsatisfying to most people, but they're usually more right than wrong.
Speaker 2: And we need to treasure the messiness of democracy because
Speaker 2: the cleanliness of autocracy is to be a bored and
Speaker 2: we've seen no good example in the world of autocracies
Speaker 2: where marginal groups weren't flayed. So I hope we can
Speaker 2: sit down in a restaurant together, the restaurant being the
Speaker 2: world and keep talking.
Speaker 3: When people think Bruce Pasco, they don't generally think thirteenth
Speaker 3: century Mongolia. So what's that about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know everyone was expecting a certain kind of novel,
Speaker 2: and it did come as a bit of a surprise
Speaker 2: to a lot of people. But the whole idea of
Speaker 2: the novel is to look at the propensity of men
Speaker 2: to commit violence, where does it come from? And I
Speaker 2: didn't want to just concentrate on the Europeans because people
Speaker 2: are expecting me to be critical of European colonialism, but
Speaker 2: there are other examples of colonialism, and Genjis Khan is
Speaker 2: as good as anything.
Speaker 3: It's one of the biggiest. That's a decent one to
Speaker 3: go for.
Speaker 2: To leave me well, to cover an entire continent is
Speaker 2: pretty ambitious before.
Speaker 3: We get to calm temperamentially? Is that typical of you, Bruce,
Speaker 3: Like you know what people expect from you, and so
Speaker 3: you're determined not to give it to them.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a determination this novel. I've been writing for
Speaker 2: fifteen years, so it began before Dark Emu. So I'm
Speaker 2: not a curmudgeon in that sense. I am a curmudgeon
Speaker 2: in many senses, but not that particular one. It's just
Speaker 2: the way my thoughts have been going, and they're a
Speaker 2: little bit out of sync. But to me, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: I'm just looking forward to talking about the book and
Speaker 2: for readers to wonder about the book, and then let's
Speaker 2: have a conversation about it, because it's the conversations very timely.
Speaker 3: The conversation is incredibly timely, and sadly it always will
Speaker 3: be a conversation about the nature of war, about the
Speaker 3: ways in which it impacts a life, a psyche, a people.
Speaker 3: More generally, you're always going to be blessed with that
Speaker 3: feeling topical.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, when I went to school, I was taught
Speaker 2: that war is the natural condition of man. And I
Speaker 2: thought at the time, what a bleak prospect for the world,
Speaker 2: what a bleak prospect for people individuals, that we have
Speaker 2: to do that. I remember in primary school listening to
Speaker 2: the last post on Anzac Day and being so deeply
Speaker 2: affected by it because you know, our family had lost
Speaker 2: people in both wars and there were very emotional services,
Speaker 2: and I thought, Gee, we're just going to keep doing
Speaker 2: this forever. There'll be a new Anzac Day and it'll
Speaker 2: just repeat ad infinitum. And I thought how sad that was.
Speaker 2: But I didn't have the resources as a kid to
Speaker 2: look at whether or not that is the truth. And
Speaker 2: I've been very fortunate to have met and lived with
Speaker 2: people who have another experience of the world, the Aboriginal
Speaker 2: cultural world, and our families are connected to that story,
Speaker 2: and it's a story without war. So what I'm really
Speaker 2: hopeful for is that Australia can have this conversation that
Speaker 2: is war the natural condition of man? Is there another
Speaker 2: way for humans to behave towards each other, and I
Speaker 2: think there is I think that's a fabulous philosophical challenge
Speaker 2: for this country to think that it might have on
Speaker 2: this continent a solution to what's happening in Palestine at
Speaker 2: the moment.
Speaker 3: I love that idea and it's a kind of stirring
Speaker 3: and wonderful thought, but I can't help but feel that
Speaker 3: colonial Australia, settler Australia does what so many countries do
Speaker 3: in its national myth building, which is it appears to
Speaker 3: believe that war is essential for your sense of yourself.
Speaker 3: We fetishize that experience of war rather than look for
Speaker 3: a way to never reproduce it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we see it as essential to ourselves and that
Speaker 2: you know, if an argument gets to a certain point,
Speaker 2: then eventually you will go to arms. And that's a
Speaker 2: legitimate political and philosophical stance to take. So to consider
Speaker 2: something else is going to take maybe two hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty years, and I obviously won't be around, but I'm
Speaker 2: determined contribute to that debate and for Australia to consider
Speaker 2: that their idea of Australian history might need some refinement,
Speaker 2: or that what Aboriginal Australian people were doing was not
Speaker 2: hunting and gathering. We can see by the turmoil that
Speaker 2: has erupted subsequent to that discussion taking place that it's
Speaker 2: really hard to change people's minds and that they won't
Speaker 2: change them peacefully.
Speaker 3: I do think there is something in what you had
Speaker 3: to endure in response to Darkama that is a real
Speaker 3: precursor to the way the Voice referendum took place, which
Speaker 3: is that there was a request, an offering of a
Speaker 3: space for a conversation, and instead of responding to that
Speaker 3: in good faith and taking it as a conversation, recognizing
Speaker 3: that there might be ground to be met in the middle,
Speaker 3: there might be disagreement, there might be whatever, but the
Speaker 3: conversation itself is valuable. Instead of responding in that way,
Speaker 3: the response was vitriolic and violent and about tearing down
Speaker 3: rather than about being willing to take the chat further.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there is a great parallel there. But
Speaker 2: I believe strongly that say, in one hundred and fifty years,
Speaker 2: when kids are at university is sitting down to do
Speaker 2: their essays, that they will be looking at the events
Speaker 2: of last year and the no vote will be a footnote.
Speaker 2: But I think Australia has an enormous and positive opportunity
Speaker 2: to lead the world intellectually on this point. Not always.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not a league ladder and you don't
Speaker 2: remain champion for a But in this particular little moment
Speaker 2: of time, I think Australia can make a really decent
Speaker 2: contribution to world conversation about how we behave as humans.
Speaker 2: And what I love about the old people and all
Speaker 2: the so called myths or stories. It's really philosophy that
Speaker 2: we're talking about, and that philosophy is one of enormous
Speaker 2: piece about the kind of structures you put in place
Speaker 2: to control humans. Because the human is a really difficult animal.
Speaker 2: The human will always be jealous, always be violent, always
Speaker 2: be loving, always be honorable. That mix that is in
Speaker 2: all of us, the humans always going to be like that.
Speaker 2: But to consider how best to use each of those,
Speaker 2: suppress some and enhance others, I think it's an enormous
Speaker 2: I just think it's a great thing for humans to
Speaker 2: consider and for us to discuss. It's not a blueprint
Speaker 2: that will be built tomorrow. It's up for discussion.
Speaker 3: It's one of the things I so enjoy about your
Speaker 3: intellectual and cultural contribution generally, Bruce, is the optimism I
Speaker 3: don't understand. I'm sorry, I'm glad you hold it, and
Speaker 3: I wish I shared it, and that is great. But
Speaker 3: the generosity of inviting the conversation, inviting the chad, responding
Speaker 3: to your critics by saying, absolutely, let's talk about it.
Speaker 3: That's not like. There are very few people in public
Speaker 3: life I can think of who have more grace when
Speaker 3: it comes to believing in the value of what you're doing,
Speaker 3: beyond whether people agree with you or don't agree with you.
Speaker 2: You can blame my mother and grandmother for that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because they insisted on decency. I haven't been able to
Speaker 2: escape that tug in my brain. But also, I think
Speaker 2: I'm in a good position to be in the argument
Speaker 2: because you know, obviously over eighty percent of our family
Speaker 2: is white and a small percentage is Aboriginal. So I've
Speaker 2: got an obligation to both sides. And I've got a
Speaker 2: huge obligation to white Australia because that's where most of
Speaker 2: our genes come from. I have an obligation to that
Speaker 2: side of the family to say, look, I'm not ignoring
Speaker 2: the cornishman. I'm not ignoring the Englishman. But there's this
Speaker 2: other thing, and it's Australia. This is where we can
Speaker 2: have an effect on the history of the country.
Speaker 3: When we return. Bruce Reveal's way, seas had towns are
Speaker 3: places of descent. We'll be right back. I remember reading
Speaker 3: one of your novels many many years ago and being
Speaker 3: so moved by the way you wrote, being so kind
Speaker 3: of carried along by the story. But also you write
Speaker 3: books clearly from a place of having an idea about
Speaker 3: the world that you want to share, you want to prosecute,
Speaker 3: you want to imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was talking to Melissa Lukashenko and Deborah
Speaker 2: Dank yesterday morning about Charles Dickens. This is a good conversation,
Speaker 2: good literary conversation, because we'd all read Dickens and we'd
Speaker 2: all felt touched by his compassion. But I've just read
Speaker 2: Preyo Satia Times Monster where she talks about Dickens's fascism
Speaker 2: as well, and that was incredibly disappointing. But he's a human,
Speaker 2: He's a flawed human. We're all flawed humans. And it
Speaker 2: was just a fascinating conversation and it's very relevant when
Speaker 2: we're having these conversations. It's never black and white. The
Speaker 2: shades of gray and other literary reference are immense, and
Speaker 2: we have to accommodate that. We have to continue to
Speaker 2: have the conversation rather than saying you're too white or
Speaker 2: you're too black, you're so gray, and just keep talking.
Speaker 2: And democracy is the slowest beast on earth, but it's
Speaker 2: a very very good beast to have in our paddock.
Speaker 3: So accepting that you knew you wanted to write about
Speaker 3: the nature and the legacy of war and colonialism, you
Speaker 3: knew you wanted to begin that story that journey in
Speaker 3: the Northern hemisphere, and you knew that actually European colonialism
Speaker 3: wasn't the path that you wanted to look at. That
Speaker 3: kind of explains thirteenth century Mongolia as a choice. But
Speaker 3: tell us a little bit about a particular one armed
Speaker 3: horseman called yEnc and why he was the vessel for
Speaker 3: the story that you wanted to tell.
Speaker 2: Well, I really wanted to choose someone who history would ignore.
Speaker 2: He wasn't a general, he wasn't even a particularly brave soldier.
Speaker 2: He was nothing. He was on the scrap heap of humanity.
Speaker 2: But he had the good fortune to fall into the
Speaker 2: company of a really good man who was also never
Speaker 2: going to be noticed by history, a baker, a Miller,
Speaker 2: But that Miller, his life's journey had taught him because
Speaker 2: of the pain he had endured, that people need care.
Speaker 2: So in a way, it's Penkei who is the driver
Speaker 2: of the story. Yen say, He's just swept up in
Speaker 2: the stream and becomes more worldly and becomes more aware
Speaker 2: of his position as a human and finds himself in
Speaker 2: a position to make change. So I wanted an anonymous person.
Speaker 2: When I began writing Imperial Harvest, I was very anonymous.
Speaker 2: You know. You mentioned having read my novels. Well, I
Speaker 2: wondered who bought that book, because I've written seven or
Speaker 2: eight novels and the sales of each was really small.
Speaker 3: I reckon I bought it from you in person and
Speaker 3: Malakuda camping around there, and when the market's set up,
Speaker 3: and I bought it from you then on a camping holiday.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we sold books from that little tent for
Speaker 2: a decade or more, nearly two decades. And the conversations
Speaker 2: in that tent, if they ever got to the Australia's
Speaker 2: spy Agency, we've been all in trouble. Because it was
Speaker 2: a ferment of rebellion.
Speaker 3: I think the spy agency is known not to look
Speaker 3: at Malakuda, but it's a hotbed. There's dangerous stuff going
Speaker 3: on there. They're better to turn a blind eye.
Speaker 2: Well, one of my novels talks about seaside villages as
Speaker 2: being places of descent because fishermen don't give us stuff
Speaker 2: about anyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they've got time to talk things through. It's
Speaker 3: not about action, it's about about scheming.
Speaker 2: It is and in imperiod harvest through whole groups of
Speaker 2: sailors and fishermen, and that's what they do. They because
Speaker 2: their life is on the sea. They feel themselves totally
Speaker 2: independent of the land, and they have contempt for politicians
Speaker 2: and the pirates. You know, the sea and piracy go together.
Speaker 3: It's one of the very nice things about how the
Speaker 3: book functions. Imperial harvest functions, and you kind of alluded
Speaker 3: to this before, But because it centers around a protagonist
Speaker 3: who is passive is the wrong word, but is kind
Speaker 3: of buffeted by war, by circumstance, by history, it means
Speaker 3: that the characters who emerge around the fringes of the
Speaker 3: story are often incredibly compelling. They're pushing it forward in
Speaker 3: really interesting ways.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad you see it like that, because I
Speaker 2: was afraid that my mangling of history would have become
Speaker 2: a theme. Because if it's not an historical novel, because
Speaker 2: I've shifted geographies, I've shifted historical events. But I'm more
Speaker 2: fascinated by people than i am by history, and people
Speaker 2: generate history. But it's more or less like an aside.
Speaker 2: It's the people themselves, and I think goodness and badness
Speaker 2: drive the world, and it's that's up to us to
Speaker 2: decide which is which.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Finally, just because
Speaker 3: I have to ask for myself, because I haven't been
Speaker 3: back for years, how's Malakuda going past the fires?
Speaker 2: Malakuda is his wonderful self. You know, three rivers, two lakes,
Speaker 2: the ocean. It's hard to destroy the beauty of that.
Speaker 2: The bush recovered very quickly, the people not as quickly.
Speaker 2: Friends of mine put the roof on their house a
Speaker 2: fortnight ago after losing their house in the fire. Another
Speaker 2: good friend of mine was a renter, doesn't have a
Speaker 2: house at all. The psyche of the town is different.
Speaker 2: And maybe it's my age group because I've lost a
Speaker 2: lot of friends I've known since nineteen seventy in the
Speaker 2: last few years, and they were the real rebels and
Speaker 2: rat bags and the people with whom if you caught
Speaker 2: their eye in the street, they would not let you
Speaker 2: go because they'd want to talk to you about politics.
Speaker 2: They'd want to tell you how disgraceful the Australian cricket
Speaker 2: team is all that conversation. A lot of that's gone,
Speaker 2: so the fun for me has gone out of the town.
Speaker 2: But there are young kids. They are making their own
Speaker 2: legends and their own society to which I'm not a part,
Speaker 2: and I have to get used to that because I'm
Speaker 2: an old man.
Speaker 3: We all have to get used to that one way
Speaker 3: or the other. But as long as you keep writing books,
Speaker 3: you've got that entry point straight back into that. You
Speaker 3: can be an old man on the edge keeping an eye.
Speaker 2: Look, I'm writing such a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I look at musicians, you know, tugging their cello onto
Speaker 2: the airplane, artists you know, with rolls and rolls of
Speaker 2: fine paper, and you know, I jump on the plane
Speaker 2: with a buyer.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Perfect, perfect. Bruce Pasco, thank you so much for
Speaker 3: your type. Thank you Bruce Pasco's latest novel, Imperial Harvest,
Speaker 3: is out now and you can get it at all
Speaker 3: good independent bookstores. And just to piss off Andrew Bolt,
Speaker 3: go buy another copy of Dark Emu while you're at it,
Speaker 3: just to twist that If.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Bruce Pasco and read this. For
Speaker 1: the next couple of months, we're going to bring you
Speaker 1: some of the best interviews from the show. Every Sunday,
Speaker 1: listen out for conversations with Eric Beacher, Mary Beard.
Speaker 3: And more.
Speaker 1: And if you don't want to wait until next Sunday
Speaker 1: to dive in to read this, you can search for
Speaker 1: it wherever you listen to podcasts. There's a whole year's
Speaker 1: worth of fascinating conversations ready for you.