WEBVTT - Read This: Malcolm Knox Finds Comedy in Toxic Friendships 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.040 Hello, Hello. It's Ruby Jones and I'm back to introduce 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:07.040 another episode of Read This Our Sister podcast, hosted by 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:10.680 editor of the monthly and self confessed book Norde, Michael Williams. 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.680 It features conversations with some of the best and most 0:00:13.720 --> 0:00:18.000 beloved writers from Australia and around the world. In this episode, 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:22.920 we're going to hear from Australian writer Malcolm Knox. Before 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:25.000 we do, Michael is here to share a bit about 0:00:25.040 --> 0:00:27.680 their conversation. Michael, Hello, Hello. 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:28.400 Hi Ruby. 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:33.320 So Michael Malcolm Knox. He started out his career as 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.760 a journalist for Sydney Morning Herald and other places. He 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:41.640 seems to have completely, though now made the transition two novelists. 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:43.720 So can you tell me a bit about his career 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:44.720 as a fiction writer. 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:49.400 Yeah, it's amazing. Malcolm had such a kind of established, 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.560 storied career as a journal and still does that work. 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:55.279 But over the course of half a dozen books, he 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:58.560 really has carved out a niche for himself as someone 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:04.600 who's writing really kind of interesting, divergent realistic fiction, most 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:08.000 often about the plight of the contemporary male in Australian 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:11.640 society and the ways in which that figure is varying 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:13.600 degrees of doomed or hopeless. 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:18.920 It's very resonant, and as the title of this episode suggests, 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:21.720 the humor in The First Friend is really one of 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:25.840 its biggest selling points. But humor is tricky, isn't it. 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:28.720 So tell me a bit about that and about why 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.160 you think that in this case it does. 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.160 Work so well. All of Malcolm's books have a kind 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:37.600 of vein of comedy that runs through that often acquired, 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:41.560 even melancholy vein of comedy, but this one has a 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:45.520 different focus altogether. It's historical fiction for the first time, 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:47.960 and what he's doing is telling a story from the 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:52.000 height of Soviet Russia, a story that centers around Stalin's 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:56.680 chief enforcer, Lovndi Barrier, and fans of Knox are going 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.240 to see lots of stuff that's familiar here. You know. 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.280 It is still about fragile men and the relationships that 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:05.200 enable or sustain them, but by setting it in a 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:09.480 historical period, he frees himself up to be maybe more outrageous, 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:13.160 darker certainly than we've ever seen him before. Anyone who's 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:15.600 seen Armando, in which he's filmed the Death of Stalin, 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:20.920 will know how awful historical moments can be skewed towards comedy, 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:23.880 and there's quite a bit of that in what Malcolm's doing. 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:29.960 Here coming up in just a moment, Malcolm Knox finds 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:31.760 comedy in toxic friendships. 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:41.840 Malcolm Knox began his career as a journalist for the 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:45.000 Sydney Morning Herald back in the nineties. For a while 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:48.120 he was the chief cricket correspondent there, but he really 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:51.919 broke out in two thousand and four when as literary editor, 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:55.639 he broke the story of the fake Jordanian memoirs Nor McCoury. 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:58.960 He won a walk the Award for that effort. Since then, 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:02.040 he's written more than a dozen books of nonfiction and 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:06.000 been publishing novels since two thousand. The First Friend is 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:10.200 his seventh novel. Each of your novels is quite different 0:03:10.200 --> 0:03:11.840 to the ones that have come before in kind of 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:15.960 fundamental ways. But at no point in your career as 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.760 a novelist has it felt like such a seismic shift 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:22.160 to the shift that brings you to the First Friend. 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:26.200 And I'd love you to share with us whether that 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:30.080 was a deliberate seismic shift or if it's something that 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:33.880 crept up on you yeah. 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:37.440 I've always had friendship at the center of the stories 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:41.440 I tell, often male friendship, not always, and that. 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:44.600 Was at the center of this book as well. 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:49.320 I began writing this in twenty twenty one, and it was, 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:53.160 you know, in the second year of the pandemic. Everything 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:57.600 in private life and in public life felt as if 0:03:57.640 --> 0:04:01.200 it was moving closer to the edge and the stakes 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:05.560 were rising. For example, in friendships, you needed to do 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:09.960 much less for friendships to be broken. And in my 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:14.480 kind of little area of public life, small indiscretions became, 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:18.120 you know, things that had major consequences. And then when 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.520 I looked beyond that, our public life was dominated by 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:26.880 Trump Purtin Shooting Ping, Boris Johnson, all the way down 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:31.279 to your mini trump in Scott Morrison. So these things 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.960 converged to give me the feeling that my kind of 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:40.599 stock in trade of these domestic relationships needed both a 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:47.400 bigger canvas and something closer to a fantasy canvas, because 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:50.800 reality was outstripping what a fiction writer could do. 0:04:51.520 --> 0:04:54.600 So I was still digging into. 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:58.479 The old material that I've always dug into, but everything 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:01.400 around it needed be enlarged. 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:05.600 I mean, the continuity is certainly there, and the themes 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:08.720 that have so defined your work are there, but there's 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.119 something about the historical lens when it comes to fiction. 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.800 There's something about occupying that space that does present a 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:19.039 completely different set of expectations, I think for the reader, 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:23.320 a different tenor How fun was it to identify what 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.600 people generally want from a historical novel and then decide 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:28.480 to either deliver or withhold. 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:33.760 This book was probably the most fun that I've ever 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:38.440 had writing anything, and I hope that's conveyed because it is, 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:43.680 on a surface level, potentially quite a grim place in time, 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:47.240 in the Great Terror in the Soviet Union in nineteen 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:51.240 thirty eight. Fun is not what immediately springs to mind, 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:55.520 But you know, you change one thing when you're writing 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:58.680 a novel, you change everything, and that seems to be 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:01.600 what you're getting out with the different between this and 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:06.640 my previous work. So I'll give you an example. I 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.760 had been for a long time very keen to write 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:14.480 about a person who had been in my life, who 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:18.719 I'd always thought I'll never come across pure evil in 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:22.039 ordinary life. But I did once, and this was a 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:28.280 person who I really thought enjoyed statistic personality was as 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:30.000 close as you can come to evil, and if you 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:33.520 just twisted the circumstances a little bit and you put 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:37.880 yourself in a place that was a mobster state or 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:42.040 a murderous state, that person would be right into the 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:46.599 heart of it. And basically began interviewing other people who 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:50.359 had had deeper relationships with this person, and one of 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:52.640 them said to me, look, you write about him. 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:54.400 Nobody will believe you. 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:57.839 Nobody will believe that a person like that could exist 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:03.240 and could do what he was doing in contemporary Australia. 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:06.240 But if you place that person in a far away, 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:10.760 almost imaginary place, all of a sudden, they become believable. 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:13.520 I can see why that would be liberating on a 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:15.600 level of fun. I do want to dig in for 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:19.040 a second more though, on that question of believability. One 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:21.480 of your other characters, the protagonist of The Wonder Lover, 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:26.160 for example, that's your book about a guy who is 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:28.720 a bigness essentially, I mean, sorry to reduce it to 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:31.440 a single log line, but there you go. And it's 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:35.720 a kind of extraordinary story about multiple families and about 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.720 this guy at the heart of it. It's a kind 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:44.520 of outrageous story. It's an almost deliberately unbelievable story, but 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:47.560 that centers around a character whose believability seems to me 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.600 to be very important. That you can have wild things 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:54.800 happen around them because he rings true. 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:58.080 Yeah, I suppose it had to be believable to me 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:02.160 because the thing things happening around us was suddenly not 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:03.200 very believable. 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:04.360 You know. 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:07.840 I remember in the early stages of this writing this book, 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:12.080 I was in hotel quarantine. Well, you know, locked up 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:13.920 on my own for fourteen days. 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:15.800 Is that believable. 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:19.680 Well, no, it wouldn't have been eighteen months earlier. Was 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:25.520 Trump in any way believable? No, you know, even Morrison 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:29.680 was not believable, but it was happening, and so we 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:34.800 were all having to suddenly adjust our personal settings to 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:42.040 cope with a world that had not been believable until then. 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:47.760 So it didn't work for me to delink this story 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:52.280 into a completely made up fantasy world. It didn't feel 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:55.319 right because when I was describing it back to myself 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:58.560 or even to someone who was asking me what I 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:03.360 was writing, I was proing them with a legend to well, 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:07.480 you know, the place I've created, which is called Blair, 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.200 is actually based on the Soviet Union at that time. 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:15.240 You know, the Gangland boss I've created. 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:17.960 Is actually based on Barrier. 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:21.920 So you know, what's the point in doing a fantasy 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:25.600 if it's just a thinly cloaked version of reality. 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:29.000 Does that create a kind of tyranny of expectation? 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:29.280 Though? 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:33.640 I mean, you know, famously, you know, when Kate Gremville 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:37.960 wrote The Secret River, historians took issue with it because 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:42.640 he was a novelist who was using the historical record 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:46.640 and historical facts to underpin a fiction. And even though 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:52.600 it's a very old practice Shakespeare's historical plays spring to mind, 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:55.320 despite it being a very old practice, there is an 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:59.800 anxiety about the novelist or the fabuloust turning their hand 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:02.760 to Are you scared of Russian scholars? 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:05.000 Very much? 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:08.120 Yes and no, because I have fooled around with the 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:13.360 historical record, and you know, I haven't used pure fantastical 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:17.720 names for settings and people. But at the same time, 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:23.120 as any Russian scholar, we'll see, I've departed quite outrageously 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:28.880 in some cases from the record, and openly done so 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:33.240 for the reason that when I was writing this, most 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:36.880 of the world was living under leaders that were pretty 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:43.240 shamelessly gas lighting their own populations, and I did think, well, 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:47.160 where is the place in time where gas lighting the 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:53.200 population was done to an extreme and done with complete impunity, 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:57.120 And that was Soviet Union under Sullen in particular, where 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:00.360 lying to the population was a kind of you, it 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:01.720 wasn't even a pretense. 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:04.240 And I wanted to. 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:11.000 Take that idea of a leader or a country that 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:18.560 was openly giving away any claim to an historical record. 0:11:19.200 --> 0:11:21.720 And that was kind of what Stalin did. He was 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:24.040 making an exchange. He was saying, every time I tell 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:28.440 a lie and every time we cook up fake statistics, 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.600 it's with the purpose of short term gain. It's with 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:35.560 the purpose of the next step in the retention of power, 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:39.600 the consolidation of power. And though he was certainly motivated 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:44.439 by his own paranoia over time, of course, it's zero 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:48.920 sum game. Every lie he tells for short term gain 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:56.360 comes in exchange for long term claim on any historical record. 0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:00.640 And you don't write with a thesis in mind. But 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:03.600 if I did have an idea in mind, and this 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:06.320 is motivated largely by my own anger at what was 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:10.160 going on around me, it was that every little lie 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:14.520 or big lie that Donald Trump tells or Scott Morrison 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:21.959 tells is a direct exchange for how an historical record 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:25.920 of their time will see them. So, you know, Trump's 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:30.160 kind of given everything away for short term gain. Morrison gave, 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.600 you know, probably more than he realized, a way in 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:37.480 striving for short term gain. And so when Russian scholars, 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:42.680 you know, might question things that I've used in this book, 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:47.080 my answer is, well, we all agree that that was 0:12:47.080 --> 0:12:52.000 a regime that lived upon and nurtured itself from lying, 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:57.240 so it has surrendered any true historical record. And when 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:02.040 you're talking about Barrier himself or even Stylin the rulers 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:06.520 that I find them most comparable to, you know, the 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:11.080 ancient rulers that somebody like Mary Beard writes about. And 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.240 I heard Mary Beard speak quite recently, and she said, well, 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:17.800 when you're writing about the rulers of ancient Rome, you're 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:22.200 just piecing together a few clues. But even those clues 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:26.480 may not be true. So every generation of historians that's 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:30.760 written about the Roman rulers has been constructing a fiction 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:34.439 that reflects the time that they live in and their 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:37.160 own culture and their own motivations. So that's what I 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:42.200 think I'm doing. I'm piecing together clues that some of 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:43.079 them may be true. 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:44.360 Some of them may not be. 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.280 Many of them have just been repeated so often that 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:52.680 they seem true. But I think anybody who writes about 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:55.760 the Soviet regime at that time. 0:13:56.000 --> 0:13:57.880 Is a fiction writer. 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:03.920 Return, Malcolm reveals the major novelistic challenge of The First Friend. 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:07.319 How do you balance out the blackness of this book 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:11.880 with comedy? Where are the laughs in Barrier? We'll be 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:25.600 right back. This is a question I kind of could 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:28.920 have asked you after any one of your books was 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:30.800 written and came out, but I'm going to ask it 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:34.040 here because it still applies. Malcolm, what's wrong with men 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:36.720 of a certain age? 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:45.000 You know, I've expended a lot of words on dramatizing 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:48.360 what's wrong, because I don't know. If I knew what 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:50.960 was wrong, I'd be in a slightly different job. I'd 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:55.560 probably be a counselor or a psychiatrist, or you know, 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.640 somebody out in the real world doing things rather than 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:02.040 about them slash us. 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:08.080 In this case, at this time, it was. 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:12.200 That upwelling of anger, and in the real real world 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:17.640 we've seen this ever since the pandemic, that fearing of 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:22.920 greater and greater danger physical danger. I know that doesn't 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:26.640 really answer your question, because it doesn't. It doesn't get 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:31.240 back before, you know, before the anger and before the 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.960 outcome of the anger. But you know, it can feel 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:40.560 so overwhelming that as a storyteller, the only place you 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:45.200 can get to is the final stage, the explanatory stuff 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:51.840 before it just feels so overwhelmingly complex and interlot with 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:57.840 so many social, economic, political factors that. 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:00.920 It's beyond me. 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:05.280 And I would say it's beyond if they're being honest, 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:08.000 it's beyond anyone who's writing novels. 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:11.000 I'm glad it's beyond you, because it means that that's 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:13.280 the impetus to keep going back and writing it again 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:17.600 and again and writing ways into it. At the heart 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:20.840 of the book, as its title would suggest, is this 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.480 friendship and this question of the lack of a less 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:29.320 resolutely twenty first century therapy word enablers and the ways 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:34.480 in which love and friendship see us enabling other people. 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:37.160 Was that the initial engine was that did you know 0:16:37.280 --> 0:16:40.080 that was the kind of dynamic that you wanted to explore? 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:45.080 Yeah, And that's always been my interest, going back to 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:50.119 my first novel, I've always been really much more interested 0:16:50.320 --> 0:16:55.760 in the dog's body of the very active person, the enabler, 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:59.120 as you put it, or the fixer, because very often 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:02.280 it is the fixer who, while they seem a passive character, 0:17:02.920 --> 0:17:07.359 they're actually the one that does things. And within friendship, 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:11.639 I guess one of my recurrent themes has been friendship 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:16.240 before and after power flips, and this one is very 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:22.159 kind of concretely that, because Myrtov was the rich boy 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:27.840 whose family adopted this kind of smart, little semi orphan, 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.280 young Barrier, and the relationship is one of a great 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:38.280 power imbalance that gets very suddenly overwhelmingly flipped by the 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:41.760 Russian Revolution, where Barrier becomes the boss, and he keeps 0:17:41.840 --> 0:17:47.200 Myrtov alive as his driver, as his enabler, as his fixer, 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:52.360 and also as his witness. Barrier needs that witness. But 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.760 at the same time, due to the circumstances, the stakes 0:17:55.800 --> 0:18:00.480 have been increased to the extent where ordinary miss steps 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:03.199 in a friendship that I've written a lot about before, 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.400 the stakes in this book are life and death. 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:10.920 Yeah, yeah, no, The flawed friendship being shifted into this 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:14.000 kind of setting is fabulous. As you say, the effect 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.560 that has on the kind of sense of stakes. Were 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:19.440 there times in writing that you're worried that you've made 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:21.960 the stakes too high that the kind of atrocities, that 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:27.399 the monstrosity is so stark, such an extreme example of 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:33.960 monstrousness and its consequences. Was that hard to write or 0:18:34.040 --> 0:18:37.480 did that have a kind of joyous weight of inevitability 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:37.800 to it? 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:40.399 Yeah? I think I think it's hard to keep a 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:44.879 sense of proportion and that balance between, you know, up 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:50.359 being the suspense for fictional purposes and also making it 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:54.840 palatable to the reader. Where you know, the fun quotion 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:58.080 you know is black comedy, but it's very, very black, 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:02.000 So how do you balance out the blackness with the comedy? 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:04.600 And at the same time, if. 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.920 You over balance on the comedy, you're letting them off 0:19:06.920 --> 0:19:10.680 the hook. So you are dealing with life and death 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:14.200 and you can't forget that. So I would say what 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:19.159 you're pointing to is the major novelistic challenge in a 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:19.840 book like. 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:24.840 This, returning to the kind of allegorical reading of this 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:28.320 book and the ways in which wherever you are in 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:32.439 history or in fiction, fetishizing a particular kind of strong 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:37.240 man leader has some kind of inevitable and terrible outcomes. 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:42.160 What was the temptation to try and find something redemptive 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:45.159 in this story something redemptive for Murdov, whether it's with 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:49.160 his family, whether it's with the fact that he's motivated 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:52.040 at a personal level, not at a political level, or 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:54.920 at a wider level. You know, does that redeem him 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:57.119 to you? And is that important that it does? 0:19:58.840 --> 0:19:59.040 Yeah? 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:03.760 Definitely, that he has as individual agency if you like. 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:08.719 But you know, he's redeemed by his love for his 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:14.760 wife and his children. But that love must remain encoded 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:19.080 and secret all through the book, and secret to a 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:23.639 point where Babylina, his wife, can't even be sure if 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:27.000 he knows what he's doing, so she will have to 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:30.320 ask herself the question of how much she trusts him, 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:34.480 and ask herself whether she has to has to take 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:38.000 matters within her own hands. You know, redemption is a 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:41.480 funny a funny word because it can seem like such 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:46.480 a formulaic out for a novelist, and probably even more 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:47.560 so where you've got. 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:49.000 Pretty pretty black. 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:53.760 Surrounds, as this book does. Oh you know, well, we'll 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:57.320 suddenly make him do something good and you know the 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:01.160 reader will be happy in the air and that we've 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:03.320 kind of pulled him out of the fire. But I 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:06.399 think as you get to know this character. You know, 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:13.000 he's an every man because he's passive. And I feel 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:15.520 that in our days that we live in, that's how 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:18.560 a lot of us try to redeem ourselves. 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:23.640 Not writers though, or artists, you know, like, if you're 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:28.360 creating art, you're not guilty of being passive. 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:33.000 No, No, isn't that Isn't that weird that? 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:34.159 You know? 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:38.919 I kind of regard myself as a pretty passive person 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:40.600 and a pretty scared person. 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:42.720 I don't see. 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:50.160 Myself as courageous or active until I sit at the 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.760 keyboard where a fantasy of my own self takes over. 0:21:56.359 --> 0:22:00.400 Well, I'm glad it does, and very grateful to read 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:03.160 the product of it. Yet again, it's been a treat 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:05.600 to chat to you today. Thank you so much, Malcolm Knox. 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:07.119 Thank you by thanks. 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:12.360 Malcolm Knox's new novel, The First Friend, is available at 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:13.880 all Good bookstores now. 0:22:16.240 --> 0:22:18.760 Thanks so much for listening to another special episode of 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:21.600 Read This. Join us each Sunday to hear our favorite 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:24.919 interviews from the show. Listen out for upcoming conversations with 0:22:25.119 --> 0:22:27.919 Robbie Arnott and Melanie Chang, and if you don't want 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:30.000 to wait until next Sunday to dive in to read 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:32.200 this you can always search for it wherever you listen 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:32.919 to podcasts,