WEBVTT - Read This: How Geraldine Brooks Became a Novelist 0:00:00.480 --> 0:00:03.480 Hey there, it's Ruby Jones. Our colleagues that Read This 0:00:03.720 --> 0:00:07.200 routinely hosts the brightest and best writers from Australia and 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:11.000 around the world. Today, we're going to hear from Geraldine Brooks. 0:00:11.640 --> 0:00:15.040 Geraldine is an Australian American writer who began her career 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:18.079 as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Her 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.080 nineteen ninety four book Nine Parts of Desire was in 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:23.000 fact one of the reasons that I wanted to become 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.440 a journalist. I loved her ability to access the inner 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:28.760 worlds of these women in countries that I hope to 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:31.920 one day be able to visit. In two thousand and five, 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:34.840 her novel March was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:39.000 Since then, she's published several more books of fiction, including 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:42.640 her latest Horse. Michael Williams is the host of Read This, 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:49.920 and he's with me now. Hi Michael, Hi Ruby, Great 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:52.280 to see you again. I am such a fan of 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.560 Geraldine Brooks writing. Have you been also following her career 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:56.080 for a while? 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:58.960 Yeah? Look, massive fan as well. And in fact, the 0:00:59.200 --> 0:01:01.840 Geraldine Brooks episode that people are about to hear today 0:01:02.360 --> 0:01:04.600 was the one that we kicked off the twenty twenty 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.319 four season with and it was kind of a very 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:09.600 deliberate choice. We had a chance to sit down and 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:12.560 chat to Geraldine. Her most recent novel, Horse is terrific. 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:15.160 But she's also one of those people who's so thoughtful, 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.080 not just about what she writes, but about what she 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:21.280 reads and the ways in which influence plays a huge 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:22.720 role in her work. 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:23.160 Yeah. 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:25.640 I remember her thoughtfulness and the way that she reflected 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:28.280 on her role as a journalist as she was doing 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.280 the journalism that informed her work that I found really 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:34.560 inspiring when I read it as a teenager. In this episode, 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:38.320 you asked Geraldine about her life sentence, So a piece 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:41.759 of writing advice that has stayed with her? Why were 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.440 you interested in hearing about that from Geraldine. 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:47.400 The life sentence format, which we use occasionally for read 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.160 these episodes, stems from a column that we do each 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.440 month in The Monthly where we ask contributors to reflect 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:56.559 on a piece of advice. Maybe it's an old lyric 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:58.520 from a song or a quote from a work of 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:01.600 literature there or that has really stayed with them that 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:04.440 kind of permeates their day to day routine and their 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:07.680 creative routine as well. Something that underpins the way they 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:09.640 see the world and the way they write about it. 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.560 So the opportunity to ask a writer like Geraldine Brooks 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.000 who's made that transition from award winning journalist to novelists 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:19.160 and has thought about storytelling through all these different prisms 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:21.280 felt like a really great opportunity. 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:27.880 I can't wait to hear what she says. Coming up 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.399 in just a moment, How Geraldine Brooks became a novelist? 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:48.440 Okay phone off, microphone on headphones twenty twenty four, We 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:53.919 are Back? Where were we? Geraldine Brooks is that rarest 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:57.679 of things. A literary bestseller, her two thousand and five 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:01.760 novel March, a retelling of Little Woman, won a Pulitzer Prise. 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:06.000 She's written historical novels about plagues and Puritans, about the 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:09.600 writing of the Bible, and in her most recent novel, Horse, 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:13.680 about the greatest race horse in American history. Her readers 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:18.040 hang onto her vivid retellings of history and literature, but 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:21.920 they also hang on her every sentence because on the 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:25.840 line she's gorgeous. This combination of the poetic and the 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:31.359 forensic see for me, I love reading Geraldine Brooks's novels 0:03:31.400 --> 0:03:33.800 because she's one of those writers whose turn of phrase 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:37.560 is mesmerizing. I'll stop reading and share passages with whoevers 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.640 in the room. I'll take photos of paragraphs and send 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.320 them to friends, like some kind of instagrammer eating a 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:49.040 particularly photogenic meal. Geraldine Brooks writes sentences, so when I 0:03:49.080 --> 0:03:51.040 asked her to offer a life sentence for Read This, 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:53.520 a turn of phrase that had stayed with her or 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:55.960 resonated in her life or in her work since she 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:59.200 first came across it, it made perfect sense that she 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:06.120 might choose a scene for its elegant beauty from Schwartz Media. 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:09.880 I'm Michael Williams, and welcome back to Read This, the 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:13.240 show about the books we love and the sentences that 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:21.039 make them. French novelist Andre McKean won that country's two 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.799 most prestigious literary prizes with his nineteen ninety five book 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:28.919 Dreams of My Russian Summers. It's a novel about memory 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.040 and loss, one that grapples with the weight and expectations 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:34.479 of history and the ways in which it shapes and 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:38.600 distorts the personal. I'm not surprised that for Geraldine Brooks, 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:41.800 pre eminent author of historical fiction, it's a book that 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:46.000 resonated at several levels. Here she is with the sentence 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:48.000 from that novel that has stayed with her. 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:54.239 By now she knew that this life, despite all its pain, 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:59.040 could be lived. That one must travel through it, slowly, 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:03.880 passing from the sunset to the penetrating odor of the stalks, 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:07.840 from the infinite calm of the plane, to the singing 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.800 of a bird lost in the sky. Yes, going from 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:15.080 the sky to that deep reflection of it that she 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:19.840 felt within her own breast as an alert and living presence. 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:26.919 Geraldine Brooks, thank you so much. What a treat to 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:29.960 be read to, and what a gorgeous choice. Maybe if 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:31.880 you could kick us off by telling us a bit 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:34.200 about why that passage stands out for you. 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:37.919 I was reading dreams of my Russian summers for the 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:43.000 first time in a pretty difficult year for me. It 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.080 was two thousand and four and I was being treated 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:49.760 for breast cancer and you never know how that's gonna go. 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:53.839 And I'm very happy that it's almost what twenty years ago, 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:56.839 and it's just a bad memory and a couple of 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:00.520 fading scars. But at the time, you're right in the 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:04.279 thick of contemplating your mortality. For me, for the first 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:08.360 time quite seriously, because I'd always been in denial about that. 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:13.599 Even when I was in crazy situations covering wars and whatnot, 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:19.920 I always felt invulnerable. But there was something about getting 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:23.159 to that point in the book. And he's writing about 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:27.840 his grandmother who was trapped in Siberia by the outbreak 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:31.920 of World War One, and her husband has gone off 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:34.240 to fight, and as far as she knows, he's dead, 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:38.279 and of course conditions have been terrible. But this idea 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:45.360 that the sad and the happy, the beautiful and the terrible, 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:49.279 they're all going to work side by side in your life. 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:54.000 You're never really going to be in one steady state, 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:58.240 and you have to accept that and still be open 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:02.960 to the beauty as well as accepting the grief and 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:03.480 the pain. 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:09.000 Oh I love that acceptance and openness and steadiness. It's 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:12.640 kind of seeking stillness despite being buffeted at all sides. 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:15.320 Does that resonate with you were still person? 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:19.320 No? Not really. Every time I go to yoga class 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:22.120 and we get to the end and you're lying in savasna, 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:25.280 all I can do is think about all the things 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:27.760 I should be doing if I wasn't lying in Sevastna. 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:32.160 For me, the only time I've ever experienced the full 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:34.880 bee here now is on the back of a horse, 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.320 because if you're not there now, you'll be on the 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:39.640 ground very soon after. 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:44.720 Fair enough. But you only came to horse riding at fifty. 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:45.640 Do I have that right? 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:46.280 Yeah? 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:49.960 I was in my fifties, because that's relatively late to 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:52.240 find the thing that gives you permission to be still. 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:56.840 Yeah, Because for me reading it's a bit like that 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:02.600 Andre McKean experience. You're associating it it always with things 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.560 in your own life. And I should also say that 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:10.760 the reason I love that sentence is as a writer, 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:17.160 it's just a magnificent sentence. The punctuation is incredibly complicated. 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:21.160 You're breathing on the semi colons and the commas. It's 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:25.840 a long, single sentence, and I'm just blown away by 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:30.400 it technically, So I'm never one hundred percent there in 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:34.600 the book because I'm thinking, wow, this is really beautifully written, 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:38.319 or I'm thinking, yes, he's got that right, because it 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:41.400 associates with something in my own life that. 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.480 Makes perfect sense. But that seems inherently sad to me 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.120 that as a writer you might not be able to 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:50.800 just read for joy. I mean, are you always aware 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:52.480 of the mechanics reading as a writer? 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:53.120 Oh? 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:56.520 Look, no, sometimes not. And when that happens, the minute 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:58.679 I finished the book, I go back and start it again, 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:01.680 to read it for the cross. Yeah no, I do 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:06.840 that myself, get carried off by story and emotion and 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:09.080 the reality that the writer has created. 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:11.880 Have you changed as a reader throughout your life? 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.800 I think we all do, don't we. I mean, the 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:19.400 more tread you get worn off your tires just by living, 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:25.600 the more you can see. I mean, all those classic 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:29.200 books that they marched us through in high school, they 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:31.920 were great, It was a great experience, but when you 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:37.839 come back to them, having actually lived, you read them 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:39.400 as a completely different book. 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.360 I couldn't agree more. It's one of the great delights, 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:44.040 I think, is to go back to a book that 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:46.760 you either read too young, or that your reading of 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:49.800 it was kind of consumed by some wider cultural context 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:52.000 rather than the book itself, and then you come back 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:54.320 to it and you discover the magic on the page, 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.240 or the ways in which it confounds your expectations. I 0:09:57.320 --> 0:09:58.320 adore that feeling. 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:01.760 Yeah, you know, I I used to read a lot 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:04.880 to my kiddos before they could read for themselves, and 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.720 it's you know, there was really a day that really 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:14.480 amused me. We'd been reading the Philip Pullman his Dark 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:18.720 Materials trilogy, and talk about a book that I was 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:23.120 getting on entirely other levels to what my eight year 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:26.359 old son was getting in terms of the Milton references 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:28.400 and the string theory and all that. When we get 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:33.080 to the end, and it's this absolutely heartbreaking bit whether 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:37.080 two young protagonists realize that they have to go back 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:41.680 to their own universes and they talk about how they're 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:43.920 going to sit on this bench at Oxford at the 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:48.760 same time every year in their separate universes. And I'm 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:53.120 in absolute floods of tears, and my son is like, Mom, 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:55.320 could you stop crying and just get on with the 0:10:55.400 --> 0:11:00.280 story because he hadn't experienced deep romantic love like that. 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:04.080 You know, no, of course, But tell me, were you 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:06.600 read too when you were a kid? Did your parents 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:07.080 read to you? 0:11:07.440 --> 0:11:10.240 Oh? Yes, that was one of the great things of 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:13.880 my childhood. We didn't have a lot of material stuff 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:16.160 when I was growing up, but books were huge, and 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:19.360 we would go to the library every weekend and we'd 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:21.880 all come back with our stack. You know, my parents 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:26.480 were voracious readers, and my dad read to me every 0:11:26.559 --> 0:11:31.640 night from six thirty to seven, and wherever we were 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:34.960 at at seven o'clock, that was where we left it. 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:38.680 And it was all a big plot, of course, because finally, 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.960 when my reading skills were sufficient and the book was 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:44.760 so good, I just you know, that was when I 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:47.840 finally took off as a reader. But yeah, no, being 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:50.280 read to was a huge part of my childhood. 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:53.920 You might not, but I'm just curious, do you remember 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:56.360 any moments when you were aware of your father enjoying 0:11:56.360 --> 0:12:00.320 a book? Is reading to at a level you worked at. 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:02.680 But you know, the great thing about my dad was 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:04.400 when I was coming up, he was working as a 0:12:04.400 --> 0:12:07.760 proofreader for the Women's Weekly, and often the books that 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:10.040 he would choose for me were ones that had been 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:12.280 serialized in the Weekly. And I remember one of them 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:15.960 was Paul Gallico Scruppy, which is about the apes on 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:19.480 Gibraltar during World War Two. And it is a book 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:22.480 that works on two levels, because you know, the wartime 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:25.480 part of the plot didn't intrigue me as much as 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:30.840 the character of Scruppy, who is this absolutely impossible ape 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:36.360 that they have to convince to mate with a female otherwise, 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:38.640 you know, the legend is that if the Apes disappeared 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:44.000 from Gibraltar, the British Empire will collapse. Anyway, my dad 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:48.640 was incredibly in love with the English language. He was 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:55.880 very astute grammarian, and he had like certain things that 0:12:56.000 --> 0:13:01.840 drove him crazy. Misuses of were like decimate. He could 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:05.160 not bear it. He could not bear the expression centered 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:09.040 around anyway. So he would stop in the middle of 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:15.200 the book and explain grammatical niceties. And also he was 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:18.000 very patient about if there was a word I didn't understand, 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:21.680 I would get a definition that was worthy of the oed. 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:24.320 Did you have a similar dynamic with your mum? Like 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:25.560 did she read to you? 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:28.680 She was a huge reader. She didn't read to me, 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:31.600 But she was the one who taught me to be 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:34.560 a writer, I think because she was more into the 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:41.040 imagination and she would make up these incredibly involving games 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:46.119 that had a strong narrative line through them, had characters 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:48.319 in dialogue and all that, and we would play those 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:51.679 games together and I think that that you know, I 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:56.400 wasn't thinking about being a writer, but it was the 0:13:56.400 --> 0:13:59.560 best training possible. And you know, I loved hanging out 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:03.640 with her because it was so instructive and I learned more. 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:08.400 So I became a bit of a school avoid and 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:11.720 she was pretty okay with that. So I would just 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:13.600 miss a lot of school and hang out with her 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:15.839 and we would make up stories. 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.000 Oh, I love that. And it's like they're the essential 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:22.400 building blocks for any writer. Your dad offering the technical 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:24.800 side of things and the rigor of language, and then 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:28.920 your mum's imagination and story and love of play. What 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:30.680 an amazing combination. 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:33.400 And you know, throw in the third thing, which is 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:40.120 the Irish heritage, the uncles and the great uncles and 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:45.880 their aunts. And my grandmother loved poetry, and so when 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:47.800 they would get together, you know, and they'd had a 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:53.000 few Sherris or whatever, they all had their party piece, 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:56.800 these long narrative poems that they would recite, and it 0:14:56.920 --> 0:15:01.000 was transfixing for a kid. Wait for them to get 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:05.280 a bit tipsy and launch into Alaska or the charge 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:07.080 of the Light Brigade or whatever it was. 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:24.880 We'll be right back. For the past several decades, Geraldine 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:28.280 Brooks has split her time between Sydney and Martha's Vineyard, 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:30.800 where she lived for many years with her late husband, 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:35.120 writer and historian Tony Horowitz. The two met while they 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:38.720 were foreign correspondents, Tony for the New Yorker and Geraldine 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.080 for the Wall Street Journal. Eventually both made the move 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.880 from journalism to books, history for Tony and ultimately the 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:50.640 novel for Geraldine. I was curious about how that transition 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:51.480 was for her. 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:55.480 It wasn't so smooth that it was a little bit 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:59.920 more gradual. So the first turtle to get over is 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:05.600 the transition from writing reasonably short to sustaining a narrative. 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:09.640 And that lesson I learned with my first book, which 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:12.560 was a nonfiction and one hundred percent of journalist's book, 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.960 which was nine parts of Desire. And I was trying 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:19.840 to distill what I had learned over six years living 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:23.920 in the Middle East and basically learning to report the 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.440 region through the advantage that I have had, which was 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:31.480 the ability to speak to the women and get their experiences. 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:35.520 And you know, it had been a mind expanding, mind 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:41.480 blowing six years for me. And when I sat down 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:44.960 to write that book, I had no idea how to 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:48.160 sustain a narrative. More than three thousand words was the 0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:50.680 longest thing I'd ever written at that point, and that 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:55.080 was considered a long story for a newspaper, so I 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:57.520 had to learn how to do that, and so that 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:02.600 was It took me six months, and I've wasted time 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.960 before I could even begin to see the way. So 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:08.359 that was one step, and then the next step was 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:13.040 my second nonfiction book was quirky and a lot more personal, 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:16.200 and it was about the It was call Foreign Correspondence, 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:18.159 and it's about the penthals that I had when I 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:21.280 was growing up in Sydney in the sixties and early 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:24.159 seventies and writing to these kids all over the world. 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:30.200 And when I was thirty nine or forty, I found 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.840 that my dad had kept their letters to me, and 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:37.800 so I went and found them. And that book is 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:43.440 kind of a strange hybrid between a travel adventure, a memoir, 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:48.320 and a reflection on what kind of a dude my 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:51.919 dad was. So all of those three things were the 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:54.119 strands that I had to learn how to weave together, 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:56.520 and I think that doing that loosened me up and 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:00.600 made it possible when I made the leap into fiction, 0:18:02.000 --> 0:18:06.960 because I had learned a couple of lessons earlier on. 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:10.680 So when it comes to writing fiction for you, clearly 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:13.840 one of the bigger engines. The kind of recurring prompts 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:17.600 is history. Where did you love of history come from? 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:21.199 When did that fascination kick in and the novel and 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:23.800 history inextricably linked in your mind? 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:29.199 No, it's just because I'm a lazy bugger, and you 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:35.000 find these wonderful stories from the past. You've got the superstructure, 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:40.080 and you know, I really don't think I know how 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:44.000 to make it up from scratch. I love to find 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.719 these stories that if you did make them up, they 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:51.359 wouldn't be great books because they'd be too implausible. That 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:54.399 a Muslim risked his life to say the Jewish book, 0:18:54.440 --> 0:19:00.040 that a Native American born into his own language and 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:05.240 culture in sixteen forty ends up graduating from Harvard with 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:08.840 the sons of the colonial puritan Italy. If you made 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:13.280 him up, everybody would say, oh, that's bs, But it happened. 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:16.720 And so I'm always looking for a story where you know, 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:22.000 this fascinating thing happened, but you can't know everything about it. 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:26.159 And that's where the fictional part comes in. I wasn't 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:30.159 really that interested in history, but then I fell in 0:19:30.160 --> 0:19:34.600 love with a historian, a guy who was absolutely animated 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:38.880 by history. And I think it's a bit of symbiosis, 0:19:39.040 --> 0:19:42.920 you know, occurred living with a real historian. 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:45.879 Is it the case that if your childhood and your 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:48.359 upbringing was the kind of perfect gift to the person 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:50.840 who wants to go on to become a writer, your 0:19:50.880 --> 0:19:54.280 marriage to Tony somehow became a continuation of that gift. 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:58.119 Yeah, well it's certainly. You know, it was an amazing 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:01.120 thirty five years being married to Tony. Oh, it's that's 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:01.440 for sial. 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:04.760 Was he a different kind of writer to you? How 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:07.160 did that help with your own development as a writer. 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.440 We started off being quite similar. You know. I met 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:16.159 him in journalism school, and we were passionate news reporters 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:19.000 for more than a decade and a half. That was 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:22.359 all we thought about doing. And then, you know, for me, 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:26.400 it was having a child at the age of forty 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:28.760 and realizing I didn't want to be running off to 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:34.720 dangerous situations on open ended assignments, and that I needed 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:39.880 to try and find something else that would be gainfully employing. 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:45.760 And for Tony, it was just realizing that book writing 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:50.720 made him happier than having to answer to a squad 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.879 of editors at The New Yorker. He was desperately unhappy 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:57.560 there because they would handpeck every sentence, and they also 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:00.080 wanted him to tell them what the story would be 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.040 before he'd reported it. And he had by that time 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:06.840 written two or three books, and he realized that he 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:09.160 was a much happier man when he was working under 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:10.000 his own direction. 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:13.040 That makes a lot of sense. But it is funny 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:16.280 to me that you describe your use of history as 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:19.560 evidence of laziness in some way, kind of delving into 0:21:20.040 --> 0:21:24.399 artifacts and incidents, that's this whole additional layer of work 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:29.000 and responsibility, not to mention pressure. Surely that's the opposite 0:21:29.280 --> 0:21:31.200 of lazy grappling with the past. 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:34.640 Oh well, look, I don't know, but at least you've 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:36.440 got an idea of what the plot is. 0:21:37.160 --> 0:21:40.680 And where it's going to go exactly. But isn't there 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:43.600 a burden of responsibility when you're doing that? I mean, 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:45.639 I imagine if you're going all the way back to 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.520 the Bronze Age Israel or whatever, you don't feel like 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:53.000 very similitudes essential. But at the same time, the way 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:55.919 people use history, the meaning they derive from it, is 0:21:56.040 --> 0:21:59.840 so loaded and so charged. Is that something in your head? 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:04.119 Look, there's a huge burden and responsibility being a journalist. 0:22:04.160 --> 0:22:06.000 I used to have like a tick in my eye 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:09.640 from thinking about have I been have I you know, 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:11.960 have I reported it well enough? Have I been fair 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:16.040 to that? You know, international conspiracy of bad guy representative 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:19.440 who's going to get completely shellacked on the front page 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:21.760 of the Wall Street journel tomorrow. And I didn't sleep 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:24.960 the night before those big stories were going to come out, 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:28.800 So there's a huge responsibility there. And yes, I like 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:32.280 to follow the line of fact as far as it leads. 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:36.239 I don't willing nearly change things. And if I do 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:39.440 change some small thing, I always come clean about it 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:42.359 in the afterward of the book, because I do feel 0:22:42.359 --> 0:22:43.800 a responsibility to that. 0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:47.479 But even though the historical kind of provocations are central 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:50.600 to your novels, you'll often make the point of framing 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:54.119 them with a contemporary thread, or making a point of 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:58.479 the relationship between retroactive storytelling and hindsight and how we 0:22:58.560 --> 0:23:01.040 kind of extract meaning from them in the present day. 0:23:01.400 --> 0:23:04.720 I mean, in Horse, it's fundamentally important to the power 0:23:04.760 --> 0:23:06.840 of that book that the stuff you have to say 0:23:06.880 --> 0:23:09.520 about race and about slavery is seen through a lens 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:12.080 of present day racism in the US as well. 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:15.800 Yeah. Well, I realized that if I was going to 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:20.280 be discussing racism in the nineteenth century, and I was 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:23.320 going to have a contemporary story, which I always wanted 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:26.760 to because I was fascinated with the science around the 0:23:26.760 --> 0:23:32.359 horses skeleton at the Smithsonian, I couldn't leave racism in 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:34.399 the past as if it was something over and done with. 0:23:34.520 --> 0:23:38.520 That would have been irresponsible. And I have to say 0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:41.359 when I realized that that was where I was going, 0:23:41.880 --> 0:23:44.040 my heart sank a little bit, because you'd have to 0:23:44.040 --> 0:23:47.240 be living under a rock not to be aware of 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:51.480 the discourse around appropriation and about who has the right 0:23:51.520 --> 0:23:55.560 to tell what story. And I wasn't thrilled about walking 0:23:55.560 --> 0:23:59.440 into that particular threshing machine, but I didn't see any 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:03.560 way to responsibly tell the story without doing that. 0:24:04.280 --> 0:24:06.760 When it comes to anxiety about stuff that you feel 0:24:06.960 --> 0:24:10.040