Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Ruby Jones. Our colleagues at read This
Speaker 1: routinely hosts the brightest and best writers from Australia and
Speaker 1: around the world. Today, we're going to hear a conversation
Speaker 1: with Alexis Write. Alexis is one of Australia's most gifted
Speaker 1: and important writers. Her previous books, including Carpenteria and Tracker,
Speaker 1: have won numerous literary prizes, and her latest Praiseworthy, was
Speaker 1: just awarded this year's Miles Franklin. Michael Williams is the
Speaker 1: host of read This, and he's with me now.
Speaker 2: Hi, Michael. Hi, Ruby, Michael.
Speaker 1: I know you're a big fan of Alexis Wright's work,
Speaker 1: so I wonder if you could start by telling me
Speaker 1: a bit about what drew you to her writing.
Speaker 3: She is an absolutely phenomenal author, and her two thousand
Speaker 3: and six novel Carpenteria is a modern Australian classic. I
Speaker 3: recommend if I'm talking to anyone about kind of what
Speaker 3: are the books of Australian literature over the past kind
Speaker 3: of twenty years or so, that you need to read.
Speaker 3: Carpenteria sits atop any list. Alexis is a member of
Speaker 3: the Way New Nation So she comes from the southern
Speaker 3: highlands of the Gulf of Carpenteria and she spent decades
Speaker 3: working as an activist and an advocate for her people,
Speaker 3: and wrote some kind of amazing works of non fiction,
Speaker 3: one called grog Nation that she wrote very early in
Speaker 3: her career. But her novels just absolutely kind of reconceive
Speaker 3: what you can do in the realm of literature in Australia.
Speaker 3: They're exhilarating to read, they're really terrific reads, but they're
Speaker 3: also really important books.
Speaker 1: And Michael praiseworthy. It also won this year's Stellar Prize,
Speaker 1: and it's received critical acclaim both in Australia and internationally.
Speaker 1: So what is it about this book that has everyone
Speaker 1: in agreement?
Speaker 3: It's very funny to call a book praiseworthy and then
Speaker 3: have it attract so much praise. It feels like kind
Speaker 3: of nominative determinism or something. But it is in every
Speaker 3: way a praiseworthy book, as you say with it. Alexis
Speaker 3: has achieved a whole lot of firsts. She's the first
Speaker 3: writer to win the Stella and the Miles Franklin Award
Speaker 3: for the same book. She's the first writer to win
Speaker 3: two stellar prizes. This book's won a heap of awards,
Speaker 3: and I think it's in no small way because of
Speaker 3: a book that feels really timely. It's a book part
Speaker 3: about climate crisis. It's a book about Aboriginal sovereignty. It's
Speaker 3: a book about the ways in which the failures of policy,
Speaker 3: of imagination and of empathy in Australia today function and
Speaker 3: the effect it has on people's lives. I cannot recommend
Speaker 3: it more highly.
Speaker 1: Coming up in just a moment, Alexis Wright is the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four Miles Franklin winner.
Speaker 3: Back when I was at university, I did my honors
Speaker 3: thesis on the Miles Franklin Award. I know, I was
Speaker 3: very cool. It was a useful lens with which to
Speaker 3: think about Australian literature. At that point, the award had
Speaker 3: been going for about fifty years and despite a spotty history,
Speaker 3: it remained the country's pre eminent literary prize, and it
Speaker 3: was supposed to be for the work of literature that
Speaker 3: reflected Australian life in any of its phases. Now you'd
Speaker 3: think that sounds like a generous, open set of criteria,
Speaker 3: one that you'll be able to accommodate a change in
Speaker 3: culture and a multiplicity of voices, but by the early
Speaker 3: twenty first century it had congealed into favoring a particular
Speaker 3: kind of Australian narrative, historical novels, novels with rural settings, anglocentric,
Speaker 3: predominantly mail. For a time, the award made the news
Speaker 3: only when there was some kind of controversy attached, rather
Speaker 3: than to celebrate the winner. Helen Darvill manufactured a Ukrainian
Speaker 3: ancestry for herself and led her publishers in a traditional
Speaker 3: Ukrainian dance when she won, before being exposed as a grifter.
Speaker 3: Another year, judges disqualified Frank Moorehouse's Grand Days because it
Speaker 3: was set overseas. Yet another year, every one of the
Speaker 3: shortlisted authors was a man. That last one led to
Speaker 3: the creation of the Stellar Prize, also named after Myles Franklin,
Speaker 3: to provide a counterweight to the limitations of the more
Speaker 3: established award. But somehow the award has prevailed. The Stellar
Speaker 3: Prize clearly led to a shakeup and a greater sense
Speaker 3: of awareness by Miles Franklin administered that Australian life, in
Speaker 3: any of its phases meant more than just sepiotoned realism,
Speaker 3: and this year, for the first time, the same book
Speaker 3: has won both the Stellar Prize and the Miles Franklin Award.
Speaker 3: It's a book that's also won a slew of other prizes,
Speaker 3: including Britain's prestigious James Tate Black Fiction Prize. Its author
Speaker 3: became the first person to ever win the Stellar Prize
Speaker 3: twice and join the limited ranks of people who have
Speaker 3: won the Miles Franklin multiple times. Judges called it an
Speaker 3: astonishing feat of storytelling and sovereign imagination, saying it's a
Speaker 3: capacious work singing the songs of unseeded lands that bears
Speaker 3: witness to the catastrophic transformations wrought by white fantasies against
Speaker 3: which indigenous ingenuity still stands, its connection to country unbroken.
Speaker 3: The book is called Praiseworthy and its author is Alexis Wright.
Speaker 3: She joins us today, I'm Michael Williams, and this is read.
Speaker 3: This a show about the books we love and the
Speaker 3: stories behind them. Alexis Writer is a member of the
Speaker 3: Juan Yew nation from the southern highlands of the Gulf
Speaker 3: of Carpenteria. Her two thousand and six novel Carpenteria for
Speaker 3: which she won her first Miles Franklin is an enduring classic.
Speaker 3: Its follow up, The Swan Book, a future set response
Speaker 3: to the Northern Territory Intervention, is a personal favorite, and
Speaker 3: her polyvocal oral history of visionary Aboriginal leader Tracker Tillmouth,
Speaker 3: won the Stellar Prize in twenty seventeen. Around the time
Speaker 3: she was working on Tracker, she had the idea for
Speaker 3: a new novel, a big novel. Praiseworthy is the name
Speaker 3: of the fictional town at the heart of that story,
Speaker 3: a town that has been enveloped by a cloud of hayes,
Speaker 3: part unsettled ancestors, part environmental disaster. Alexis is an extraordinary author,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to introduce her today with words that
Speaker 3: do her and her contribution justice. And I'm going to
Speaker 3: defer to the words of a previous read this guest,
Speaker 3: Tony Birch, who wrote a profile of her for The Monthly.
Speaker 3: Tony wrote, Alexis right is an Aboriginal woman. From January
Speaker 3: twenty sixth, seventeen eighty eight until this day, the moment
Speaker 3: you read these words, no group of people on this
Speaker 3: continent have suffered greater human rights abuses than Aboriginal women.
Speaker 3: Their country has been vandalized and stolen, as have their
Speaker 3: loved ones. Every conceivable barrier, beit the gun, a prison cell,
Speaker 3: a racist education system, men has attempted to silence them.
Speaker 3: To understand the failures of systems of racism and abuse
Speaker 3: is to know courage and tenacity. Alexis Right is as
Speaker 3: strong as any person I know. Never mistake her auntiness
Speaker 3: as a sign. She's a pushover for when push comes
Speaker 3: to shove and she feels an no need to defend
Speaker 3: her people and country. Right is a ferocious warrior. She's
Speaker 3: also loving and generous, and we will always need her.
Speaker 3: I began our conversation by asking Alexis about her grandmother,
Speaker 3: a woman I know played an important role in her
Speaker 3: conception of storytelling.
Speaker 2: Well, she's somebody that I love dearly. From a very
Speaker 2: early age, I would often run away from my mother
Speaker 2: or away from home, and as soon as my mother
Speaker 2: turned her back, I'd be over the front fence and
Speaker 2: heading to her place. From about the age of three,
Speaker 2: she lived on the edge of town. She just had
Speaker 2: a house of corrugated iron place and it had dirt floors.
Speaker 2: She didn't have any electricity, and she was a fantastic gardener,
Speaker 2: and that comes from the Chinese side of the family.
Speaker 2: Her father who had a market garden sort of vegetables
Speaker 2: and up at Lawn Hill in the Gulf of Carpent
Speaker 2: Terrier where he met my great grandmother, who was a
Speaker 2: warn you lady, and she couldn't read or rite, but
Speaker 2: she had a great interest in the world and people
Speaker 2: around her. She often went walking around the dry riverbeds
Speaker 2: and down the rubbish tip to get old tin cans
Speaker 2: for her pop plants, and she liked to visit people
Speaker 2: along the river bank who were camping. She'd always stop
Speaker 2: and say hello and have a talk. She liked meeting
Speaker 2: people and talking to people. She'uld go to town every
Speaker 2: other day because she didn't have any electricity. She had
Speaker 2: an old kerosene fridge and so she would go to
Speaker 2: town to buy some small things that she might need
Speaker 2: for her cooking. Usually she loved to cook cabbage stew
Speaker 2: and rice, which is very good. It's a very popular
Speaker 2: dish amongst Aboriginal people across Northern Australia. When she went
Speaker 2: to town, it was quite a long walk and she'd
Speaker 2: call into anybody's house whether they were averaged all or
Speaker 2: not averaged all people. It made herself very comfortable. She
Speaker 2: would expect people to welcome her and give her, you know,
Speaker 2: a glass of water if she needed a glass of water,
Speaker 2: or make her a cup of tea. She just had
Speaker 2: this ability to treat everybody equally and expect to be
Speaker 2: treated well in return.
Speaker 3: I think that's a nice way to approach the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was just a beautiful person, and I became
Speaker 2: like her little shadow. I think she had lots of grandchildren.
Speaker 2: We have a very big family. I have a lot
Speaker 2: of cousins and you know now we number in the hundreds,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe more, I don't know, but there's a
Speaker 2: lot that's pretty great.
Speaker 3: In a lecture that you gave it the Sydney Opera
Speaker 3: back in two thousand and one, you said your grandmother
Speaker 3: had stories to explain everything who we are, who each
Speaker 3: of us were, and the place on our traditional country.
Speaker 3: That was very deep and special to her. She was
Speaker 3: our memory. She was what not forgetting was all about.
Speaker 3: It was through her that I learned to imagine.
Speaker 2: I think so I learned to imagine through her because
Speaker 2: of the way she described everything around her. At the story.
Speaker 2: You know, she would tell just how she saw the world.
Speaker 2: It was a very cultural way of seeing things, and
Speaker 2: you had to be able to imagine these things, and
Speaker 2: I did. And she always talked about her homeland, you know,
Speaker 2: up in the golf carpenteria. She always wanted to go
Speaker 2: back because it was a time when people weren't able
Speaker 2: to stay on that traditional country. So she always talked
Speaker 2: about that and the way she would describe it, it
Speaker 2: just seemed like the most beautiful place in the world.
Speaker 2: But it was a hard place too. But yeah, she
Speaker 2: did teach me to see things differently and to just imagine,
Speaker 2: and I think that was my saving grace. Really. I
Speaker 2: think I was very fortunate to have had a grandmother
Speaker 2: that I could be close to, because it was a
Speaker 2: struggle for my mother, and my father died when I
Speaker 2: was very young.
Speaker 3: Did she talk to you differently because you were a child?
Speaker 3: Do you remember? I mean, did she edit stories or
Speaker 3: did she shape the world a particular way for you
Speaker 3: as a child.
Speaker 2: I listened to her talking to other people, talking to family,
Speaker 2: you know, family members would come to Grandma's place and
Speaker 2: they'd all sit outside and drag tea and talk and
Speaker 2: tell stories and gossip. But also there were stories about
Speaker 2: traditional cultural things that were just spoken about in passing.
Speaker 2: So I just picked up a lot of that when
Speaker 2: I was a child. I don't think you know she
Speaker 2: especially sat me down just to tell me your particular stories.
Speaker 2: I just heard them through her talking and other family
Speaker 2: members talk together, and her talking to people wherever she went.
Speaker 3: How much do you think those heard conversations in your life,
Speaker 3: and you know, whether their gossips or their old stories
Speaker 3: or whatever the stories they are have infused and influenced
Speaker 3: the way you approach your writing practice.
Speaker 2: I think the writing practice comes from a number of things, Michael.
Speaker 2: Part of it comes from my conscience that's been shaped
Speaker 2: by people like my grandmother and family members, and also
Speaker 2: through the work that I've done through my life working
Speaker 2: for our own people, in our own organizations, and for
Speaker 2: our concerns and land rights. I think I was very
Speaker 2: fortunate that you had access to some really great orators
Speaker 2: from our world. I think I was very lucky and
Speaker 2: fortunate to have had access to people like that who
Speaker 2: were always given us guidance as younger people, and in
Speaker 2: fact they are about my real university and where I
Speaker 2: really learned, you know, from coming through you know, a
Speaker 2: school system that wasn't particularly something that I could embrace.
Speaker 2: And there's when I less school, there was a number
Speaker 2: of older people, you know in our world who you
Speaker 2: took on a younger people like us, like myself, and
Speaker 2: taught us. They've virtually taught us to read and write.
Speaker 2: They taught us to have an inquiry in mind, and
Speaker 2: to imagine and to research and you know, find ways.
Speaker 2: They expected us to do all these things. When I
Speaker 2: first started working, you know in our world, you know,
Speaker 2: with a lot of people like that, they would have meetings,
Speaker 2: you know, and they would go on for hours, and
Speaker 2: that want someone like me to take the minutes. They
Speaker 2: expected me to write down every word, not just the
Speaker 2: points of what came out of the meetings, but write
Speaker 2: down every word. And I guess we didn't have money
Speaker 2: to buy a tape recorder, okay, with the human tape recorder.
Speaker 2: But it was more than that. It was an education
Speaker 2: that were teaching people like myself to listen to here,
Speaker 2: to think, to see what's happening in our world and
Speaker 2: who we are, you know, what culture is all about.
Speaker 2: And they expected us to go out do the reading,
Speaker 2: do the writing and find out what are the indigenous
Speaker 2: people are doing across the world. You know, what's happening
Speaker 2: in the legal system in other places in the world
Speaker 2: that could help us here. I then studied literature from
Speaker 2: across the world, and I still do that to find
Speaker 2: out how I could write the type of writing that
Speaker 2: I'm doing now. It's been something that I'd be building
Speaker 2: for a long time now. To reach something like praiseworthy.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's such a towering achievement and so utterly
Speaker 3: your own voice, your own rhythms. The thing that strikes
Speaker 3: me above all else about this book is the ways
Speaker 3: in which you've found entirely a kind of different register
Speaker 3: in the way it's done. In one interview you talked
Speaker 3: about to write it, you knew you had to write
Speaker 3: it off key from regular fiction and find that different,
Speaker 3: different note.
Speaker 2: That's right. I thought really deeply about how to write
Speaker 2: this book. I knew it would be a big book.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize it would be this big. And you know,
Speaker 2: I wanted to write a book that the spirit of
Speaker 2: the times, and I was deeply concerned about environmental issues.
Speaker 2: I'm deeply concerned about our ability as Aboriginal people to
Speaker 2: cope with climate change, and you know, we've gone through
Speaker 2: a climatic change in the past with the longest living
Speaker 2: culture in the world, and I thought really deeply about
Speaker 2: those things and how did our ancestors survive over tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of years. So I was thinking about that
Speaker 2: and trying to figure out how to put this book together.
Speaker 2: And it's not just a story. It's also about the
Speaker 2: tone that I wanted to capture in the book, that rhythm.
Speaker 2: And I knew that, as you said, beter to be
Speaker 2: written off key in a different rhythm. And I thought
Speaker 2: about what we say in the Gulf, we're of one heartbeat,
Speaker 2: and I wondered, well, what does that heartbeat sound like?
Speaker 2: And I felt it sounded like a slow rhythm, and
Speaker 2: that's you know, the sound of digeral dooah, darky collapsticks,
Speaker 2: women singing, ceremony, and it's a slow beat and those
Speaker 2: sounds that come from the earth in instruments made, you know,
Speaker 2: from in a country, and that's the tone I wanted
Speaker 2: to bring it in this book. So I've really worked
Speaker 2: and reworked and reworked to make that tone consistent throughout
Speaker 2: the book.
Speaker 3: I can't I mean, this seems like a non sensical
Speaker 3: thing to say, but you achieve a kind of sense
Speaker 3: of slow urgency. You know, the book is never less
Speaker 3: than kind of furious and grief stricken and full of
Speaker 3: these kind of big emotions, but manages to temper them
Speaker 3: through a kind of prevailing spirit of patience or a
Speaker 3: long view. When I spoke once years ago, and I
Speaker 3: remember you saying that when you were younger, you were
Speaker 3: a real hothead and would you know, fly off the
Speaker 3: handle about things. And I'm interested in a career in
Speaker 3: advocacy and activism, caring about these issues and these ideas,
Speaker 3: and caring about your community and trying to find ways
Speaker 3: to impress upon an audience the urgency of the thing.
Speaker 3: How did you find the way to slow down while
Speaker 3: retaining urgency.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is something I've been taught as well, is
Speaker 2: that to take the long view. I think that right
Speaker 2: in those minutes years ago taught me a lot. Patients,
Speaker 2: and that's what they were aiming for, to teach young
Speaker 2: people that you needed to have patients, extreme patients and
Speaker 2: deally what we're dealing with. And I do have a
Speaker 2: lot of patients with enormous patients. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: you know, there's storms ruined and I watched storms and
Speaker 2: seeing you know, the storms that created for us, and
Speaker 2: I see the storms in the Gulf of Carpenteria and
Speaker 2: are huge, the mighty. And the book in the way
Speaker 2: is a response to so little we know about our
Speaker 2: world and what's happening in our world and how it's
Speaker 2: shaping and reshaping us. And I wanted to explore all
Speaker 2: those things.
Speaker 3: Coming up in just a minute. Alexis reflects more on
Speaker 3: the characters at the heart of Praiseworthy, Cousman Steele and
Speaker 3: his family and chairs. While she felt this book was
Speaker 3: so important to write, now here's some more from the miles,
Speaker 3: Franklin judges on Praiseworthy. Through its sheer, ambition, astringency and audacity,
Speaker 3: Praiseworthy redraws the map of Australian literature and expands the
Speaker 3: possibilities of fiction. They said, beyond the environmental allegory of
Speaker 3: the Hayes and a world that feels on the brink
Speaker 3: of end times. The book is fiercely passionately engaged with
Speaker 3: questions of government control and self determination, reckoning with the
Speaker 3: failures of imagination, policy and empathy of contemporary Australia. At
Speaker 3: its core stands the steel family. The eldest son is
Speaker 3: called Aboriginal Sovereignty, and he's in a state of despair.
Speaker 3: His eight year old brother is consumed by the hateful
Speaker 3: stories he reads on the internet. Their mother, Dance, has
Speaker 3: a deep connection with moths and butterflies and a desire
Speaker 3: to escape, seeking people smuggler to take her to China,
Speaker 3: and the family's father, the main character of the book,
Speaker 3: is on an obsessive quest to save both family and people.
Speaker 3: He's known as Widespread and Planet, but mostly by the
Speaker 3: name caused Man Steel.
Speaker 2: You know, he's a culture dreamer, and he says a
Speaker 2: visionary and he decides he's gope to bring his people
Speaker 2: over the burning planet. And you know, he's obsessed with
Speaker 2: it all, and he can see, like anybody can see,
Speaker 2: that we're not getting much support here, you know, in
Speaker 2: recognizing our rights and what our rights really are and
Speaker 2: our sovereignty here. So he's finding a way that he's
Speaker 2: going to take his people over the burning planet, and
Speaker 2: so they're going to be able to survive to tell
Speaker 2: the tale on the other side, which is what ancestors
Speaker 2: did and got shaped in that time. And it takes time,
Speaker 2: and we will survive.
Speaker 3: You compellingly make the case for survival. But Cosman's donkey
Speaker 3: based vision, I mean, he's a wonderful figure in many ways.
Speaker 3: I understand that Cosman knows more than a bit to
Speaker 3: track a till mouth.
Speaker 2: Oh not necessarily. Tracker was a far more sophisticated visionary
Speaker 2: in a way in terms of developing sustainable economic policy
Speaker 2: and an economic vision for Aboriginal people across Northern Australia
Speaker 2: or anyway. He had enormous vision, enormous ideas. And here's
Speaker 2: a totally different kettle of fish. But this is a
Speaker 2: person who is on a community who's not getting any
Speaker 2: support from anybody, and he's trying to create a vision
Speaker 2: to help his people ride through the storm of global warming.
Speaker 2: So he's about this and he is going to use
Speaker 2: his own brain power to try to figure it all out.
Speaker 2: And he's clapped out today and he's going to travel
Speaker 2: all over the country and he's going to fulfill this
Speaker 2: vision of creating this global tradesport company that will replace
Speaker 2: maybe Quantus.
Speaker 3: That's right, Replace the kangaroo with a donkey is the
Speaker 3: only way.
Speaker 2: Well, well, the kangaroo is a native animal and honor.
Speaker 2: I think the kangaroo is going to do our bidding.
Speaker 2: But a donkey might, a donkey might.
Speaker 3: The great tragedy of the book is while Corsman's on
Speaker 3: this quest for the next generation of the Steel family,
Speaker 3: for Tommy Hawk, and for Aboriginal sovereignty, the stories they're hearing,
Speaker 3: the stories they're being told, the national reality they've inherited,
Speaker 3: is one that is limiting their options and indeed steering
Speaker 3: them down paths that are not their own.
Speaker 2: This is true, true, And I wanted to think about
Speaker 2: what happens to people for generation to generation of bad
Speaker 2: decisions made on their behalf and they're not being able
Speaker 2: to do a thing about it, and people spend their
Speaker 2: whole lives fighting or you know, for the chance to
Speaker 2: be able to design our own future. I've work with
Speaker 2: people in the past, you know, we're on ideas of
Speaker 2: abertial self government, and I always remember some of these
Speaker 2: really senior people, you know, who know this country back
Speaker 2: to front. No, it's stories and it's you know, and
Speaker 2: so much about this country. It's not funny, and we
Speaker 2: don't hear them, and we don't understand what culture is
Speaker 2: all about, this long term culture that belongs here. And
Speaker 2: I wanted to explore those issues and those concerns and
Speaker 2: what happens to people when you make those people making
Speaker 2: those wrong decisions. Government keep making those wrong decisions that
Speaker 2: take away that power that senior people would always say
Speaker 2: to me, we've always governed ourselves, we have always governed ourselves,
Speaker 2: And what do you do? And someone else says, they
Speaker 2: govern them for you, and they make the wrong decisions
Speaker 2: all the time, what do you do? So I wanted
Speaker 2: to try to address that in the book, and address
Speaker 2: that idea of Aboriginal sovereignty, and through that young character,
Speaker 2: that beautiful young man who his father had named from
Speaker 2: birth Aboriginal sovereignty so you'd always remember who he was.
Speaker 3: I think you say in the book he names him
Speaker 3: Aboriginal sovereignty because they're the only words his father loves
Speaker 3: to say.
Speaker 2: That's true, and only words a lot of Aboriginal people
Speaker 2: love to say and say that they will and say
Speaker 2: they must and will continue to say it. I guess
Speaker 2: I thought it was necessary to write this book and
Speaker 2: and to really show the complexities and the growing complexities
Speaker 2: of what's happening here. And it's not all it's not
Speaker 2: cut and dry, and and I you know, I hope
Speaker 2: that people would understand that, you know that, Oh what
Speaker 2: am I saying? And I think there's there's gonna be
Speaker 2: a realization is that you're not going to get an
Speaker 2: understanding of Aboriginal people from social media or soundbites or
Speaker 2: or manipulation and what a you know, a national narrative
Speaker 2: is about who or what Aboriginal people are. And there's
Speaker 2: a lot of depth here, and there's a lot of complexity.
Speaker 2: And this is why this book became what it was,
Speaker 2: because I wanted to try to to bring this, you know,
Speaker 2: out in some way. It's it's I don't think this
Speaker 2: book could be. It could have couldn't have been less
Speaker 2: what it was, and I'm just amazed that I was
Speaker 2: even able to finish it. It's you know, it's I
Speaker 2: look at it and I'm in are of it because
Speaker 2: I don't think, you know, someone like me is capable
Speaker 2: of writing something like this. But I really think it's necessary, Michael,
Speaker 2: that we look at things, you know, and more deeply.
Speaker 2: We have to, and as we move into a new
Speaker 2: era of you know, global warming and the world getting
Speaker 2: harder and more things to be really insecure about about
Speaker 2: our survival, that we need to really think about these
Speaker 2: things and really try to understand, and for me, one
Speaker 2: of the best ways to try to understand it is
Speaker 2: through reading. And I think that we need to be
Speaker 2: writing huge works of literature, and we need much more
Speaker 2: than this throughout the world well so that we can
Speaker 2: create better understanding of each other. And as we move
Speaker 2: into the future, we're really going to need to It's
Speaker 2: a book I wanted to put, you know, to have
Speaker 2: a universal feel that you know, anybody could understand it anyway.
Speaker 3: Alexis. I mean, firstly, I think it's reception not just
Speaker 3: here but in the US and in the UK suggests
Speaker 3: you've achieved that spectacularly. But also it's not just a
Speaker 3: tool in creating a more literature literate world because of
Speaker 3: the ways in which you are defining your own literary
Speaker 3: traditions in here, you're demonstrating how fluid those boundaries of
Speaker 3: what literature can be and what it can do.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I decided very early in my literary career as such,
Speaker 2: I wasn't going to be trapped in in anyone's box,
Speaker 2: you know about how I should write, what I should write,
Speaker 2: and what literature is or what Australian literature is and
Speaker 2: I was going to write in my own way, trying
Speaker 2: to find the way that I could write in this country,
Speaker 2: about this country, and to consider it its depth in
Speaker 2: our history here, which it goes back, you know, thousands
Speaker 2: of years, not just two hundred and something years, but
Speaker 2: thousands and the stories, the big stories, the interconnected stories
Speaker 2: here that are ancient. It's something that's I've been working
Speaker 2: on for a long time. And I'm happy with what
Speaker 2: I've been doing.
Speaker 3: And that's some delightful understatement there.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's and I've always wanted to and I thought,
Speaker 2: if I you know, if I am to write, you know,
Speaker 2: I wanted to always challenge myself and to keep challenge
Speaker 2: myself and I'll take risks in what I do, how
Speaker 2: I write. Yeah, I did that with Carpenterier. You know,
Speaker 2: started from Carpenterier and that was his huge race. And
Speaker 2: it really didn't get published and until one, you know,
Speaker 2: until either Indic you know, my publisher at t Romando.
Speaker 2: He looked at it and asked me some really hard
Speaker 2: questions about why I wrote it the way I wrote it,
Speaker 2: and then he said he'd be happy to publish it.
Speaker 2: And so he's been He's a great publisher. He really is.
Speaker 2: He's you know, I always say he's, but he's best
Speaker 2: publisher in the world.
Speaker 3: It's a pretty phenomenal collaboration, the one between the two
Speaker 3: of you. It's great when a publisher is able to
Speaker 3: have the space for an author's vision and to help
Speaker 3: bring that vision to life. And I think watching the
Speaker 3: way the two of you have done that together over
Speaker 3: years now is one of the great satisfying stories of
Speaker 3: Australian literature.
Speaker 2: Thank you, I'll be happy to hear that. I think
Speaker 2: it's a well.
Speaker 3: I think you've given either many rolling reasons to be
Speaker 3: happy to hear things over the past little bit, and
Speaker 3: it's been thrilling to see that not only has the
Speaker 3: risk paid off, but that there's some deep reading and
Speaker 3: deep listening going on in response to praiseworthy and it
Speaker 3: deserves all the credit it's getting.
Speaker 2: Grandma was a great gardener. She grew all sorts of things,
Speaker 2: so she grew Chinese cabbage, and she had an old
Speaker 2: fashioned flower garden. On one side. There were very old
Speaker 2: fashioned types of flowers, like a zennius. I grew a
Speaker 2: garden of zenius last year, after I've finished praise with
Speaker 2: when it got published. They were gigantic, they were huge,
Speaker 2: but she had small senior flowers in her garden. I
Speaker 2: remember that.
Speaker 3: I love that you had to finish writing the book
Speaker 3: before you would let yourself indulge in go out to
Speaker 3: your own garden and do that that you couldn't play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our garden was totally overgrown because I just didn't
Speaker 2: have time. I didn't have time, and probably the last
Speaker 2: decade of doing Tracker and Praiseworthy at the same time,
Speaker 2: so I really didn't have time. All I did was
Speaker 2: think of the book or the job at hand, or
Speaker 2: whatever I had to do, and the book always stayed
Speaker 2: with me. But in the last three years, I had
Speaker 2: collected a few packers of z in as seeds each
Speaker 2: year that I was going to grow in the garden,
Speaker 2: and I got the chance and I just put all
Speaker 2: the seeds in and they all came up. It was
Speaker 2: just amazing.
Speaker 3: I'm very happy as a reader, and I'm very happy
Speaker 3: as a person in the world that this astonishing book
Speaker 3: is out there in the world. But I'm almost as
Speaker 3: happy for you. Alexis right that you finally got back
Speaker 3: to your garden after that decade. Alexis right, Thank you
Speaker 3: so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Michael, it's such a joy talking to you.
Speaker 2: As always.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Alexi on Read This. For the
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Speaker 1: of the best interviews from the show every Sunday. Listen
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