Speaker 1: Thomas Robert Jones just appeared out of nowhere at Crown
Speaker 1: Street Women's Hospital in Sydney and was sat up by
Speaker 1: Tom and Jene Jones in nineteen forty four, and they
Speaker 1: brought me up as theirs. But the wonderful thing about
Speaker 1: being adopted is that you are free not to be
Speaker 1: Thomas Robert Jones if you don't want to be the
Speaker 1: way people whose parents are their birth parents are not.
Speaker 1: And one of the first things that my biological mother
Speaker 1: said to me when she met me is if i'd
Speaker 1: kept you. I was by this time about fifty years old,
Speaker 1: probably forty five years old. She said, I would have
Speaker 1: turned you into a real man. She did not approve
Speaker 1: of homosexuality. Of course, if I had kept you, you
Speaker 1: would not have some program that nobody listens to on
Speaker 1: the ABC. You would have had a proper job, a
Speaker 1: man job. And I thought, yes, I'm lucky. I was
Speaker 1: adopted by Tom and Jane Jones, and I'm free. I
Speaker 1: can concoct a self, and I can change that self.
Speaker 2: That's the voice of the irresistible and incomparable Robert de Sai.
Speaker 2: You may have read one of his many books. He's
Speaker 2: written travel memoir fiction, biography and philosophy. You may know
Speaker 2: him from his long stint hosting ABC Radio, nationals, books
Speaker 2: and writing. He is, any way you look at it,
Speaker 2: a key figure in Australian public intellectual life, a big thinker,
Speaker 2: an inveterately playful, thoughtful contributor to the culture. His latest
Speaker 2: memoir is called Chameleon. It's a memoir of travel, art, ideas,
Speaker 2: and love, and amongst other things, it's a conversation with
Speaker 2: Thomas Robert Jones, the boy he was when he was
Speaker 2: adopted as a child. The idea of the chameleon is
Speaker 2: central to this book. I mean, let's face it, is
Speaker 2: there an animal that more captures the imagination or is
Speaker 2: more useful for metaphor than a creature that can change
Speaker 2: its appearance for protection and self preservation. It's a good
Speaker 2: fit for an adopted boy who has spent a lifetime
Speaker 2: working out how to be in the world, incopting yourself,
Speaker 2: creating an identity, and having the freedom to play with
Speaker 2: that identity, to twist and turn and change as required.
Speaker 2: It's an account, as we've come to expect from Robert
Speaker 2: Dessay's body of work of travels taken, art, consumed, and
Speaker 2: words spun. We kind of expect writer's memoirs to show
Speaker 2: us how the person became the writer, and then the
Speaker 2: writer produced the words. But when you're dancing with Robert Desai,
Speaker 2: it's never that linear and adventure words make the person
Speaker 2: the writer writes themselves into being. I'm Michael Williams, and
Speaker 2: this is read This the show about the books we
Speaker 2: love and the changing selves that lie behind them. I
Speaker 2: think maybe the best, most logical place for us to
Speaker 2: begin is with memory. Are you a man who has
Speaker 2: a good memory? Generally?
Speaker 1: I have a memory for certain kinds of things. They
Speaker 1: come out of me, like those small penance that a
Speaker 1: magician pulls out of a hat. One pulls the next one,
Speaker 1: which pulls the next one, which builds the next one.
Speaker 1: That's how it works for me. I remember certain things.
Speaker 1: I remember faces very well. I just had a visitor
Speaker 1: here with whom I went to Tunisia and went to
Speaker 1: India years and years ago, and he was amazed at
Speaker 1: the way I could remember smells, the way that I
Speaker 1: could remember the music that we heard, the way that
Speaker 1: I could remember the colors that we saw. Other things
Speaker 1: seemed to just disappear. I don't seem to recall well
Speaker 1: at all. But memory is it important to me? I
Speaker 1: know that it's a kind of zeitgeisty word. It's a
Speaker 1: word that is popular with people at the moment. Memory memoir.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's my strong point. My strong point
Speaker 1: is to a certain extent, I think making up memories,
Speaker 1: inventing memories.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to me that you don't think it's a
Speaker 2: strong point when if I think about your body of work,
Speaker 2: the evocation of moments, of sensations, of relationships, of putting
Speaker 2: words to the ephemera of one's past. You're the poet
Speaker 2: laureate of that skill set.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Mike. I mean I think I'm good
Speaker 1: at that. I'm good at the moment. I'm good at
Speaker 1: finding the right English word for the moment. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that I'm good at looking at the big picture. Really,
Speaker 1: I have to leave it to the reader to do that.
Speaker 1: I decided that it's the reader's responsibility to take what
Speaker 1: offer further and let it in her mind or his mind.
Speaker 1: It's usually her mind, of course, in my case, come
Speaker 1: up with other images, other smells, other sounds. I think,
Speaker 1: so long as I can trigger that, I'm happy.
Speaker 2: So to what extent is chameleon a process of following
Speaker 2: the pulling out of each of those magicians handkerchiefs and
Speaker 2: seeing where it takes you. And to what extent is
Speaker 2: it a directed task of writing where you had an
Speaker 2: end insight and you were writing towards that end.
Speaker 1: I didn't have an end insight. You know. I wondered
Speaker 1: why anyone would be interested. I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 1: writers think this to themselves. Why would anyone want to
Speaker 1: know this? I love language, I love literature. Are you
Speaker 1: allowed to use such an old fashioned word on this program?
Speaker 1: This is a literary what would you call it? Concoction? Really,
Speaker 1: that's the joy of it. Nobody wants to know about
Speaker 1: my religious beliefs or the first time I was attracted
Speaker 1: to this man or this woman. What they want is
Speaker 1: the words I think they want to float on, the
Speaker 1: language that they think I might come up with. That's
Speaker 1: the only thing I can do. The actual memory itself
Speaker 1: is not so important. It's the language for me. It's
Speaker 1: my all.
Speaker 2: Really, one of the adjectives I be inclined to apply
Speaker 2: to the process of reading your works. It is about
Speaker 2: the joy and pleasure in the sentence, in the paragraph
Speaker 2: in the page and as a reader, pleasure and joy
Speaker 2: in language and the kind of the great life that
Speaker 2: is wallowing around in the articulation of senses and ideas
Speaker 2: and things. That's that's where I want my reading to be.
Speaker 2: And you're a man who delivers that in spades.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm pleased about that. It's what I asked myself. Also,
Speaker 1: is this going to deliver pleasure? Is this going to
Speaker 1: light a fire? I know that's all for cliche, but
Speaker 1: is it going to light a fire in me? I
Speaker 1: want this book to make me feel more alive, not
Speaker 1: just inform me. When I was young, I was very
Speaker 1: interested in being right. It was very important to me
Speaker 1: to be right about this, about that, about politics, about
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, about whatever it might be, about the
Speaker 1: existence of God for that matter. Now I'm not so
Speaker 1: interested at the age I am. I'm really more interested
Speaker 1: in being happy, as I think this book tries to explain,
Speaker 1: and not only this book, really being happy. It's a
Speaker 1: very small English word. It's an over used English word.
Speaker 1: It's a word that all sorts of writers have written about.
Speaker 1: This is the important word to me. What makes me happy?
Speaker 1: Something makes me happy? I want to write about it
Speaker 1: something made me happy about talking to my earlier self,
Speaker 1: myself that always wanted to be right, not just happy.
Speaker 1: So I wrote this book. It didn't come easily at first,
Speaker 1: and then it just came because I take more joy
Speaker 1: in life now at the age I'm at than I
Speaker 1: did when I was forty or thirty or eighteen or nine.
Speaker 1: I just do. I mean, day after day is a joy.
Speaker 2: I do think that that journey from rightness to happiness
Speaker 2: is evident through your work. That increasingly that question about
Speaker 2: what it is to live a good life, what it
Speaker 2: is to age well, what it is to have friendships
Speaker 2: of integrity, what it is to kind of be in
Speaker 2: the world comes through again and again you mentioned them.
Speaker 2: That answer the decision to write to your younger self,
Speaker 2: and in particular a younger self under the name of
Speaker 2: Thomas Robert Jones, tell us about the kind of young
Speaker 2: man Thomas Robert Jones was and what it felt like
Speaker 2: to commune with him.
Speaker 1: Again. There are pictures of him actually in the first
Speaker 1: non academic book that I ever wrote. And this friend
Speaker 1: yesterday was looking at the book and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: these photographs interesting because they make you look Egyptian, which
Speaker 1: is what my adoptive father thought, being a theosophist of sorts,
Speaker 1: that I might have been in a previous life, an Egyptian,
Speaker 1: possibly a Pakistani. I just always think I looked at
Speaker 1: a Pakistani. When I was young. I was mostly interested
Speaker 1: a a hedgehog. That's what I was in those days,
Speaker 1: in keeping my eyes fixed on the goal. That's what
Speaker 1: I was interested in, in amassing knowledge. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: I am not really a hedgehog. I'm a fox. I
Speaker 1: doubt about all over the place. I fall in holes
Speaker 1: and I scratch myself. I don't get anywhere. Really, I
Speaker 1: just enjoy being a fox and being in the world
Speaker 1: and looking at everything and thinking things through a new
Speaker 1: I suppose the adverb a new is important to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know that we learn much that is really
Speaker 1: new in a lifetime. But one looks at things a new,
Speaker 1: and so I look at the world and you. I
Speaker 1: look at sex and you. I look at religion and you.
Speaker 1: I look at self and you. I look at home
Speaker 1: and you. I look at beauty and you. I've known
Speaker 1: about all these things back. The joy about being older
Speaker 1: is that one can look at them a new. Every
Speaker 1: conversation about these things that I have changes my point
Speaker 1: of view, and I see things and you they are
Speaker 1: not new, but I look at them and you.
Speaker 2: You say that like that might be an inevitable part
Speaker 2: of the human condition. But for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: the older they get, the less capable of that idea
Speaker 2: of a new They become, their orthodoxies harden, their perceptions
Speaker 2: get locked in. They're they're less inclined to revisit old
Speaker 2: certainties and question them. To be a champion of seeing
Speaker 2: things anew is quite a remarkable and open way of
Speaker 2: being in the world. You don't see that as a
Speaker 2: singular thing in particular to.
Speaker 1: You, No, I mean, I don't think about it very much.
Speaker 1: The first name that I had for this book was
Speaker 1: the Balancing Act, and it's a boring name, of course,
Speaker 1: but this book is about balancing, and gradually I come
Speaker 1: to I suppose a way of looking at life towards
Speaker 1: the end, which is balancing on quite a narrow rope,
Speaker 1: not falling to the right or to the left, but balancing.
Speaker 1: And that's what I do. And what I think in
Speaker 1: the morning is different from what I think in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's common or not. It's the
Speaker 1: way I have come to live, and I think it's
Speaker 1: a creative way. I don't see any point in being alive.
Speaker 1: I'm a privileged person. I'm a middle class person, so
Speaker 1: I can make these choices, but I don't really see
Speaker 1: much point in being alive if I am not creative.
Speaker 1: You can be creative in all sorts of ways, but
Speaker 1: I can only be created with words. That's the only
Speaker 1: way I am able to do this. I can't really
Speaker 1: be very creative in the garden, or in driving a car,
Speaker 1: or bringing up children, or in painting paintings. Of course,
Speaker 1: I am with words. And if you want to be creative,
Speaker 1: you must not see the world in one way. Everything
Speaker 1: must be a dialogue or a polyphonous cacophony that you
Speaker 1: move in and out of. This is the key to
Speaker 1: creativity from my point of view, and this is what
Speaker 1: impels me to write. This is what impels me to
Speaker 1: open my mouth and say a new word.
Speaker 2: After the break, Robert explains why the word tango is
Speaker 2: so important to him and reveals the one thing that,
Speaker 2: by his reckoning, Americans can do better than anyone else.
Speaker 2: If Thomas Robert Jones was a hedgehog, what's the moment
Speaker 2: when that creative imperative took over, when you were able
Speaker 2: to break free and play hardly.
Speaker 1: Was when my wife left me. I think, and I
Speaker 1: disagree with the Pope on this question. I think there
Speaker 1: should be more divorced in the world. People should say
Speaker 1: thank you, it's been special and move on, just what
Speaker 1: my wife said. And I was distraught for some years,
Speaker 1: but she was right. It had been special, it was
Speaker 1: time to move on. It opened me up because I
Speaker 1: didn't have to be anyone for anyone when I was married.
Speaker 1: I had to be a husband. Ultimately, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a husband. I want to be a man
Speaker 1: who wears many costumes. So I want to be harlequin.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be Piero, and the book is
Speaker 1: partly about that. I want to be many colors, and
Speaker 1: I want to be like a chameleon of whatever color
Speaker 1: makes this moment work. I think I had to divorce
Speaker 1: before I could do that. I really do. And I
Speaker 1: think going to Morocco earlier on, long before I even
Speaker 1: got married. So the seed of what I could be
Speaker 1: if I lived a gay life. I suppose to use
Speaker 1: a very simple modern word, something that is closer to
Speaker 1: the core of my being. I don't really believe in
Speaker 1: cause of being, but I can't think of another English
Speaker 1: expression except core of my being. I mean me stuck
Speaker 1: with these words. I sometimes find myself using the word soul.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in souls, but it's a fabulous word.
Speaker 1: What can I do? I use it.
Speaker 2: If I had to think of a word capturing some
Speaker 2: of these ideas, some of these energies that I would
Speaker 2: think of as synonymous with you and your work, it
Speaker 2: would be dance, and it would be dancing that the
Speaker 2: dance of ideas, the dance of feeling, living life as
Speaker 2: a dance seems to me to be something that you
Speaker 2: have articulated better than anyone else I can think.
Speaker 1: Of when you've just made me happy. Because the word
Speaker 1: tango is the really important word for me. I'm hopeless
Speaker 1: at the tango. I've tried to learn to tango. It
Speaker 1: is too difficult. But what is good about the tango
Speaker 1: is that it's playful, but it's also disciplined. There are
Speaker 1: a few dance which are playful and disciplined at the
Speaker 1: same time at the same instant as tanger is. You
Speaker 1: have to sort of do the tango to kind of
Speaker 1: realize quite how disciplined and quite how playful it is.
Speaker 1: It's erotic, of course, it's beautiful. Everyone is beautiful when
Speaker 1: they do the tang. Your clothes become beautiful, your shoes
Speaker 1: become beautiful, your coffeel becomes beautiful. Everything is fabulous. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it is strict. You cannot make
Speaker 1: a mistake, or you could practically stamp your partner to death.
Speaker 1: Tango is the important word, and it explains a lot
Speaker 1: about me, and it explains a lot about what I
Speaker 1: value in life. The dance. Unfortunately, at a certain point
Speaker 1: in your life, dancing becomes a little difficult, physically difficult.
Speaker 1: I don't do it anymore. But I used to go
Speaker 1: to dancing classes and they gave me a pleasure that
Speaker 1: was so great, so intense, so penetrating, that I couldn't
Speaker 1: sleep when I came home. And this went on for years.
Speaker 1: My whole body was thrilled to have had the evening
Speaker 1: I just had. It's partly why I enjoy American musicals.
Speaker 1: I'm not feeling very how should we say warmly towards
Speaker 1: the United States America at the moment, Because I grew
Speaker 1: up in the Doris Day era, when America was somewhere
Speaker 1: we all wanted, ultimately, I think to be now. I
Speaker 1: never want to go there again. But what Americans do
Speaker 1: that no one else in the world can do. Nobody
Speaker 1: can do them, the Checks can't do the Bolivians can't
Speaker 1: do it is write musicals. Why do we love musicals
Speaker 1: because they take over your whole body in a way
Speaker 1: that opera simply doesn't. I was watching some Mozart last night.
Speaker 1: Doll compared to Oklahoma. Oklahoma and even South Pacific just
Speaker 1: have something that Don Giovanni doesn't have. There's a total
Speaker 1: involvement of every part of the body and the mind,
Speaker 1: and the joy is ineffable.
Speaker 2: I like you're comparing Mozaut to Oklahoma. I want Salzburg
Speaker 2: with a fringe on top.
Speaker 1: It would be the way through.
Speaker 2: I read in an old interview with you that you
Speaker 2: said at one point that you thought, in many ways
Speaker 2: you were a nineteenth century man. Do you do you
Speaker 2: still stand by that?
Speaker 1: I think I am really a nineteenth century man because
Speaker 1: I'm a humanist in a very Turgenevan way. It was
Speaker 1: Turghenev the Russian right, the author of well six important novels.
Speaker 1: I suppose in Russian literature, particularly Fathers and Sounds. That
Speaker 1: will be the best known translation in English was Ivan
Speaker 1: Turgenev that I wrote my doctorate on. I spent several
Speaker 1: years on Tourghenev. He was the civilized nineteenth century man.
Speaker 1: He was Russian, but he was also German. He was
Speaker 1: also French. I'm not German, but I am Russian, i
Speaker 1: am French, I am English in my mind because Turgenev
Speaker 1: was such an important part of my life at a
Speaker 1: formative time when I was in my twenties, I think
Speaker 1: that that kind of humanistic relationship that he had with
Speaker 1: other people, that his characters have with each other, a
Speaker 1: love of the human in the other, is something I
Speaker 1: still aspired to. I think that humanism is probably not
Speaker 1: some that people appreciate so much these days, but I
Speaker 1: can't help it. I feel that I should have started
Speaker 1: loving the human earlier in my life. I tried to
Speaker 1: overcome it. I'm not trying anymore to overcome it. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to appreciate it and to go back to being
Speaker 1: more fully human than I was when I was young.
Speaker 1: And it's the nineteenth century which teaches me to do that.
Speaker 2: Coming back to the idea of the balancing act that
Speaker 2: typewrote walk that Chameleon represents in many ways, there was.
Speaker 2: It did strike me at one point. You make the
Speaker 2: observation that you say, you're talking about your friend and
Speaker 2: you point out that he's at ease in the world,
Speaker 2: and you find yourself jealous at that that you're not
Speaker 2: at ease in the world. You come across as someone
Speaker 2: at ease in the world, and I'm curious that you
Speaker 2: feel that you're not on.
Speaker 1: My own person. But I'm not at decent in the world.
Speaker 1: But I am envious. I suppose it's the word, not jealous,
Speaker 1: but envious of those who are. The character you're talking
Speaker 1: about is Nile, who is the other important character in
Speaker 1: the book. He is an aspect of me. He is
Speaker 1: my bossier aspect, and I have a bossy side to me,
Speaker 1: a sort of finger wagging side. But he's made up.
Speaker 1: I made him up. And then I went to Ireland
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. I'd never been in Ireland.
Speaker 1: I never wanted to go to Ireland because I thought
Speaker 1: it was priest ridden and I've read so much John Banville.
Speaker 1: I went there. I really liked Ireland. I really liked
Speaker 1: Dublin loved Cork, and I thought, I'm going to go home,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to rewrite Nile and make him a
Speaker 1: bit more irish, a bit more argumentative, a bit more
Speaker 1: self assured, but a bit more at ease with himself
Speaker 1: in the world, because I realize, still, despite this book
Speaker 1: that you've just read, despite everything that I've done, I
Speaker 1: realize that I am not the kind of man that
Speaker 1: the world admires. I'm just not. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they still admire Robert Mitcham and Tab Hunter and the
Speaker 1: other actors who strutted across the screen when I was
Speaker 1: young and who don't now. It's a much more sort
Speaker 1: of David Bowie era. I suppose that I've lived on
Speaker 1: into but I still do not feel that I am acceptable.
Speaker 1: I throw my hands around too much, I talk too much,
Speaker 1: I move my body too much, I speak a little
Speaker 1: too carefully, and I know that that's not completely acceptable
Speaker 1: to everyone, and so I'm not at ease, but I
Speaker 1: can't do anything about it. It's who I am. I'm
Speaker 1: stuck with it. Sel for sured is a different matter.
Speaker 1: I am assured. I suppose that my life has been
Speaker 1: a good one, but I'm not at ease in the world.
Speaker 1: That's the important thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that distinction seems important, that one can be not
Speaker 2: at ease in the world, but in a different way,
Speaker 2: at ease in themselves, that they identify both their advantages
Speaker 2: and their limitations. One of the things that I so
Speaker 2: love about Chameleon, that I think comes through whether you're
Speaker 2: having conversations with imagine selves or previous selves, or I
Speaker 2: think you touched on it when you talked about what
Speaker 2: the experience of being adopted meant for Thomas Robert Jones,
Speaker 2: is that you are a writer who and a person,
Speaker 2: it seems to me, who is singularly open to the
Speaker 2: idea of possibility. Does the question of possibility, the possibility
Speaker 2: of world's lived languages, learned places, travel to is that
Speaker 2: something that has driven you in your life and continues
Speaker 2: to drive you.
Speaker 1: It's why I leave home, It's why I travel. That's
Speaker 1: why I go to India. That's why I go to
Speaker 1: Austria or wherever else I might go. I don't go
Speaker 1: to Austria in order to look at some Stephen's Cathedral
Speaker 1: or go to the opera. I go to see what
Speaker 1: is possible in Austria because it's probably not possible in Hobart,
Speaker 1: and that word is a key word to me in
Speaker 1: motivating me to leave home, to open the front door,
Speaker 1: go down the steps and go to the import and
Speaker 1: get out, to open up possibilities, not probabilities, but possibilities.
Speaker 1: It's the most wonderful word.
Speaker 2: Well, Chameleon made me feel alive to possibility and also
Speaker 2: made me feel a deep sense of joy with the
Speaker 2: words on the page. And I'm very grateful to you
Speaker 2: for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Grateful to you for your questions. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Robert Dessai's latest novel, Chameleon, is available at all Good bookstores. Now,
Speaker 2: before we get out of here, I wanted to tell
Speaker 2: you what I've been reading this week. I am not
Speaker 2: one of these people who makes grand proclamations about my
Speaker 2: ability to read an entire long list for a prize,
Speaker 2: but the International Book a Prize this year has an
Speaker 2: absolutely delicious list of twelve books, and I'm two or
Speaker 2: three in. So I'm going to share those ones I've
Speaker 2: read with you over the next few weeks. And off
Speaker 2: is Vincenzo Litronico's Perfection. It's translated by Sophie Hughes from
Speaker 2: the original Italian and it is a weird, starchy, fascinating book.
Speaker 2: It's about a millennial expat couple living in Berlin. Their
Speaker 2: names Anna and Tom, and they are just going through
Speaker 2: the motions. Their apartment is very nice, everything is good.
Speaker 2: They're kind of late capitalism personified. But they're disaffected and
Speaker 2: they're empty. The publisher calls it a sociological novel about
Speaker 2: the emptiness of contemporary existence, and it's hard to go
Speaker 2: up on that. I do recommend it nonetheless. As long
Speaker 2: as a sense of existential holiness is what you're looking
Speaker 2: for this week, you can find it and all the
Speaker 2: other books we've mentioned today at your favorite independent bookstore.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week's show. If you enjoyed it,
Speaker 2: please tell your friends about it and rate and review us.
Speaker 2: It helps a lot. Next week I read this. I'm
Speaker 2: chatting with Tanzanian born Noble Prize winner Abdul Razak Gerner.
Speaker 2: He's seventy six, and he's still finding new things to say.
Speaker 3: The loveliest thing and most wonderful thing I can feel
Speaker 3: as a writer is to say I haven't said this yet,
Speaker 3: and I haven't done that yet, and I haven't done
Speaker 3: the other yet so it's not only what's there is alive,
Speaker 3: but the anticipated next parts are also already kind of
Speaker 3: like stirring.
Speaker 1: Read.
Speaker 2: This is a Schwartz Media production, made possible by the
Speaker 2: general support of our A group. This show is produced
Speaker 2: and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing by Travis Evans
Speaker 2: and original compositions by Zalton Fetcher. Our transcripts are edited
Speaker 2: by Posing mckayey. Thanks for listening, See you next week.