Speaker 1: How do you feel about a big, fat book. I'm
Speaker 1: talking one of those enormous bricks, the ones you're a
Speaker 1: little worried about reading in bed for fear of serious
Speaker 1: injury when nodding off. For me, there is something simultaneously
Speaker 1: delicious and slightly horrifying about such a thing. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, who has the time? And yet there's the
Speaker 1: anticipation of immersion of an all consuming, indulgent reading experience.
Speaker 1: I love that feeling, but it puts a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure on the author and on the book. Does it
Speaker 1: have what it takes to grip to compel? Is this
Speaker 1: a world where you're happy to give over and be consumed?
Speaker 1: Can you dip in and out amidst a busy life?
Speaker 1: You may have seen the new novel Caledonian Road around
Speaker 1: the Place. This is a book that offers the exact
Speaker 1: nervous thrill of the epic it weighs in it over
Speaker 1: six hundred and fifty pages, A state of the nation book,
Speaker 1: a portrait of a city. This very twenty first century
Speaker 1: story is wrapped up in an ambitious nineteenth century form.
Speaker 1: There's even a cast of characters in the front, like
Speaker 1: in one of the Russian classics, introducing you to the
Speaker 1: more than sixty key players who inhabit and drive its
Speaker 1: sprawling story. Well, I'm happy to say it's an absolute
Speaker 1: bloody romp and as the latest novel from literary journalist
Speaker 1: three time Booker nominated much loved author Andrew o'hagen, that's
Speaker 1: hardly a surprise. I'm Michael Williams and this is read
Speaker 1: this to show about the books we love and the
Speaker 1: stories behind me. Across half a dozen novels, Andrew O'Hagan
Speaker 1: has made a name for himself as an author of
Speaker 1: delicacy and grace, novels like Being Near Me or The
Speaker 1: Missing or twenty twenty's intimate story of male friendship. Mayflies
Speaker 1: painting the community he comes from in Scotland's West with
Speaker 1: tenderness and wrye affectionate humor, so his decision to move
Speaker 1: to a work in such a different register is exciting,
Speaker 1: even if it is something of a departure. Caledonian Road
Speaker 1: follows a man at a turning point, art historian Campbell
Speaker 1: Flynn who's about to come up against his own downfall.
Speaker 1: There's Russian oligarchs and minor aristocrats, newspaper columnists and factory workers.
Speaker 1: It is, in the best sense of the word, a
Speaker 1: Dickensian world he's created. So it's with Dickens that our
Speaker 1: conversation begins.
Speaker 2: I grew up in quite a chaotic household for boys,
Speaker 2: sort of absent father, hard working mother. Oliver Is I think,
Speaker 2: living through quite difficult times for the country but also
Speaker 2: for the family. And I would hate away in that
Speaker 2: big house and reads Victorian novels. I phone Charles Dickens
Speaker 2: during that period, and I love just codling up both
Speaker 2: physically owned metaphor correally with the wonderful sentences of Dickens
Speaker 2: and his penetrating way of going into human characters of
Speaker 2: different sorts, all sharing the same oxygen of that particular novel,
Speaker 2: being in the same weather of that book.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: I just love those books, and I feel that they
Speaker 2: brought you to our place that nothing else could bring
Speaker 2: you to a place of imaginative contentment. So I hope
Speaker 2: that when I grew up and became a big boy,
Speaker 2: I would I'm still waiting for that to happen. Actually,
Speaker 2: along the way, I always had ambitions to write a
Speaker 2: big Victorian style novel, but very much set in the
Speaker 2: modern day.
Speaker 1: I'm Glad you mentioned character, because it does seem to me. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's lots to be said about the plotting, there's lots
Speaker 1: to be said about the social commentary, there's lots to
Speaker 1: be said about the comedy, and I think all of
Speaker 1: those are both present in his work and in Caledonian Road.
Speaker 1: But first and foremost, the thing that stays with me
Speaker 1: when I think about Dickens, when Ray visit Dickens is
Speaker 1: the characters, both the big, larger than life ones and
Speaker 1: often just the little cameos, the walk home characters who
Speaker 1: absolutely transfix you in a page or two and then
Speaker 1: a gut on he does.
Speaker 2: Glad you mentioned those what we sometimes call secondary characters.
Speaker 2: There is something primary about them by their nature. You
Speaker 2: shall know the novelist the quality of those secondary characters,
Speaker 2: the people who sometimes appear for a page or two.
Speaker 2: You know, Joe the crossing sweeper in Bleak House sort
Speaker 2: of carries the whole kind of moral ethos of the novel.
Speaker 2: He's only there for a page or two. He comes
Speaker 2: back and he's instrumental in the action in a big way.
Speaker 2: And I've certainly learned a lot from that is looking
Speaker 2: at the people who aren't obviously the leaders or the
Speaker 2: big colorful characters. They have colors that you need to observe.
Speaker 2: They have sides to their natures that will give you
Speaker 2: a fruitful sense of the whole story. In the end,
Speaker 2: I have a character, Missus Boyles, who's sitting tenant, as
Speaker 2: we say in London, that's to say, a protected tenant
Speaker 2: living in an otherwise landlorded situation, but they have the
Speaker 2: right to remain in their room or they're part of
Speaker 2: the house. These sitting tenants have become a real kind
Speaker 2: of symbol of what happened in contemporary London when the
Speaker 2: property prices went insane and there were a number of
Speaker 2: new people to literature, including the sitting tenant. I've never
Speaker 2: really read about in the volume that I wanted to
Speaker 2: read a London character who has power in the situation
Speaker 2: that she's in, but also is in a hopeless predicament,
Speaker 2: can never own the house, can never own their part
Speaker 2: of it, but is condemned to watch while the landlord
Speaker 2: gets richer and richer. And in the ethos of a
Speaker 2: big place like London now, a Missus Voyles can become
Speaker 2: not just the fly in the ointment, the troublemaker, but
Speaker 2: somebody who wields subtle power in that situation, and with
Speaker 2: you're interested in money and relationships and belonging and power,
Speaker 2: as I am with Caledonian RhoD, then such a person
Speaker 2: becomes kind of fully alive. You know, are we of speaking,
Speaker 2: are we of thinking the words that she uses, the
Speaker 2: fact that she's an ex ballei dance and she's always
Speaker 2: sort of extending her limbs as she stands there talking
Speaker 2: to people, She's a sort of whole existence to me.
Speaker 1: She also embodies the kind of fundamental principle of drama,
Speaker 1: which is that her understanding of our tragic protagonist, Campbell Flynn,
Speaker 1: is entirely at odds with his understanding of himself. And
Speaker 1: so you have these two characters. Neither of them are wrong,
Speaker 1: particularly in their perception of one another. You know, she
Speaker 1: is difficult and cantankerous and everything else. And also she's
Speaker 1: a person with a rich inner life that he can't see.
Speaker 1: And likewise, he is the villainous landlord, even if we
Speaker 1: understand him to be something quite different, and he certainly
Speaker 1: understands himself.
Speaker 2: To you put it brilliantly, Michael, that is the central
Speaker 2: problem of a novel like this is that you are
Speaker 2: people who they think they are. The reader has a
Speaker 2: privileged position. They have a you know, a private box
Speaker 2: on this drama. They get to see it from the
Speaker 2: best vantage point. That's to see all vantage points. That's
Speaker 2: why a big novel like this should be dramatic and
Speaker 2: gripping and involving, because you, the reader, will no more
Speaker 2: than any of the individual characters do, even about themselves.
Speaker 1: One of the wonderful kind of recurring refrains that happens
Speaker 1: through Caledonian Road throughout the book Campbell's wife, Elizabeth, who
Speaker 1: is a very smart woman, a very insightful woman, a therapist,
Speaker 1: will in talking to someone else about Campbell, offer us
Speaker 1: some insights, some really quiet, acute insights about who he
Speaker 1: is and what his limitations are. But the great tragedy
Speaker 1: of their marriage is that ultimately there are bits of
Speaker 1: him she can't say or can't know.
Speaker 2: And can't impart some of these wisdoms. I mean, anybody
Speaker 2: who's been in even a good marriage, there are failures
Speaker 2: of identification that are failures of sharing. You are, in
Speaker 2: the end, no matter how deeply married, you are divisible,
Speaker 2: you are individual. It's two human beings with two sets
Speaker 2: of DNA, came from different worlds, came from different universes,
Speaker 2: really into each other's house, in each other's company, in
Speaker 2: each other's hearts. And what you watch, if you watch closely,
Speaker 2: is that no matter how bright they are, and no
Speaker 2: matter how open their marriage can be in so many
Speaker 2: ways that there are things hidden from each other. And
Speaker 2: again that's part of the drama of a book like
Speaker 2: this is trying to unfold. Poor Campbell Flynn, my central character,
Speaker 2: man in he's fifties, an art historian, appears to have everything.
Speaker 2: He has the big wedding cake of a house in
Speaker 2: North London and Islington, which is gained and gained and
Speaker 2: gained and value through the last two decades. He has
Speaker 2: two very very bright children doing interesting things in the world,
Speaker 2: as you say. He has a fantastic wife, a bright
Speaker 2: and beautiful woman who has her own pursuits, and he
Speaker 2: has the career that any art historian, any writer in
Speaker 2: contemporary life may imagine would be wonderful. But there's something
Speaker 2: wrong at the center of Campbell Flynn. Something is off
Speaker 2: in his life, and the drama of the book takes
Speaker 2: that up. But it's not always the case that he
Speaker 2: can see it himself largely he can see it. The
Speaker 2: people around him, as you've suggested, are the ones who
Speaker 2: really slowly and incrementally bring the news to the reader
Speaker 2: about what's off about this guy who should have everything
Speaker 2: but at some level is absolutely falling apart.
Speaker 1: It's very base to be concerned with questions of sympathy
Speaker 1: when it comes to literature, I think, in fiction. But
Speaker 1: I am curious, if not about Campbell, specifically about the
Speaker 1: type that he represents. You know, if this liberal, successful, moneyed,
Speaker 1: white middle aged man is in a moment of crisis,
Speaker 1: and if it is in part as I think the
Speaker 1: book suggests, a crisis that comes from a kind of reckoning,
Speaker 1: a second guessing of what it means to be good
Speaker 1: and the night of privilege for lack of a betterprise,
Speaker 1: Is that a reckoning that's over a d I.
Speaker 2: Think it's always overdue. If you're a really moral society,
Speaker 2: it's always overdue that everything be questioned. I mean, we're
Speaker 2: all on a clock. None of us get to, you know,
Speaker 2: sidestep the big questions, including some that you've already elucidated
Speaker 2: for us. Am I A good man is a question
Speaker 2: that no man should be allowed to sidestep on account
Speaker 2: of his position, or his authority, or his money or
Speaker 2: his social status. We've lived through the years when men could,
Speaker 2: and I say men advisedly, men have been able to
Speaker 2: sidestep the big questions because they're covered in privilege and
Speaker 2: concealment in all our societies. I'm talking about contemporary London
Speaker 2: in this book, but it could be many societies in
Speaker 2: which the cloak of decency and respect stability has been
Speaker 2: so tightly wrapped around these guys who are privileged that
Speaker 2: the question are you actually good in your moneyed position
Speaker 2: of self satisfaction and fairness and self conscious goodness? Have
Speaker 2: you ever actually given anything up for people poorer than you?
Speaker 2: I mean they could ask that of me, they could
Speaker 2: ask it of any of us. And I think novelists
Speaker 2: should be in a position to ask these questions, and
Speaker 2: very often of their targets for these questions are are
Speaker 2: not the people who would normally be asked them. We
Speaker 2: find it easy to criticize people on the right, greedy
Speaker 2: oligarchs or fantastically self involved industrialists who think of themselves
Speaker 2: as being separate to society, and media figures who think
Speaker 2: they're above it all. We find them easy to bring down,
Speaker 2: and there's plenty of literature that does bring them down.
Speaker 2: But what about the people who are asking the questions
Speaker 2: of them? What happens if you turn the tables and
Speaker 2: you say to the Campbell Flynns of this world, with
Speaker 2: their amazing professorships at London Universities, with their regular contributions
Speaker 2: to The New Yorker, with their appearances on the Today
Speaker 2: program of the BBC every morning, these respectable, utterly trustworthy voices,
Speaker 2: we as readers are as creative artists on and say,
Speaker 2: and what about you? Then? What have you given up
Speaker 2: recently to address the great inequalities in our society? Or
Speaker 2: are you like the people you profess to hate, covered
Speaker 2: in privilege, concealed if you like, by status. So I
Speaker 2: think it's right that their time has come around. When
Speaker 2: I say they, by the way, I mean me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: my time has come around. A white, middle aged liberal,
Speaker 2: you know, possibly successful journalist who gets to publish whatever
Speaker 2: he wants, gets to make announcements on the radio and
Speaker 2: in lovely podcasts like this. You know, I think it's
Speaker 2: time for self questioning to come into my work.
Speaker 1: At the start of that though, you said that reckoning
Speaker 1: is dove in a moral society. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that's very clear in Caledonian Road is you are
Speaker 1: not positing contemporary Britain certainly, but the contemporary world in
Speaker 1: general as a moral society. This is a place that
Speaker 1: is deeply broken.
Speaker 2: I think that is that's right, and the brokenness becomes
Speaker 2: if you like the landscape of this book, that London's
Speaker 2: lively and colorful and in many ways adorable and beautiful
Speaker 2: and admirable, but it's also become a place which could
Speaker 2: be mistaken for a modern day Casablanca, the place where
Speaker 2: somebody wanted to park a dodgy fortune would choose London
Speaker 2: over many other places because it's easy to buy luxury
Speaker 2: housing and it's easy to buy artworks of a magnitude
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't believe. Hundreds of millions of pounds worth
Speaker 2: of mediglianies can be bought via London without much checking
Speaker 2: going on. So if you have an offshore account, as
Speaker 2: all the oligarchs did, and not only the oligarchs, by
Speaker 2: the way, minor royals, industrialists, individuals from all over the
Speaker 2: world flocking to London in the last twenty five years.
Speaker 2: This deregulated city Tony Blair advertised it as a new
Speaker 2: glittering glass and steel deregulated zone. His successor, Gordon Brown,
Speaker 2: gave out what they called golden visas to industrialists and
Speaker 2: entrepreneurs from around the world who wanted to park themselves
Speaker 2: in London and their fortunes. And then, of course, since
Speaker 2: then David Cameron and his wild enthusiasm for foreign money
Speaker 2: and foreign investment, and Boris Johnson, the age of Johnson
Speaker 2: going beyond satire, beyond ridiculousness, in my opinion, to make
Speaker 2: welcome oligarchs as proprietors of newspapers in London, in some
Speaker 2: cases as members of the House of Lords. This is
Speaker 2: a society breaking down before our eyes, using hospitality as
Speaker 2: a kind of means to corrupt the equation, to make
Speaker 2: the very living economy a sort of living hypocrisy, where
Speaker 2: people who are poor are getting poorer in people who
Speaker 2: are rich are getting not only richer but more protected
Speaker 2: in their richness while austerity reigns. We've lived through austerity
Speaker 2: in Britain, through a migrant crisis, through like most other places,
Speaker 2: a pandemic, and in the middle of all this what
Speaker 2: we saw governments do was to make the people who
Speaker 2: had too much more safe in their too muchness, whilst
Speaker 2: benefits were cut, housing was falling apart, and people who
Speaker 2: were poorer in that society were in a rougher position.
Speaker 2: That is why novelists under the shadow of say Dickens
Speaker 2: come into play and say, well, let me dramatize this happening.
Speaker 2: Not in a self serving way, because I in my
Speaker 2: generation don't come out particularly well from this story. I'm
Speaker 2: very happy to take that on the chin I devised
Speaker 2: if you like a mouse trap, in which I'd be
Speaker 2: one of the people who the cage come down on.
Speaker 2: But you know, if you're going to criticize society, you
Speaker 2: should involve yourself. If you're a novelist, in my view.
Speaker 1: And there's almost now a form like the novel that
Speaker 1: can have you move with such grace and speede from
Speaker 1: a country estate to a billionaires penthouse to housing and
Speaker 1: staff not.
Speaker 2: With that level of subtlety, Michael, I'd agree with you.
Speaker 2: I mean, of course, we are delightedly living through the
Speaker 2: era of the box set, of the great television drama,
Speaker 2: the serial drama of which this will become one. I'm
Speaker 2: sure we'll talk about that in due course. But the
Speaker 2: extended television drama has mimicked the great tradition of the
Speaker 2: novel in going from scene to scene, from high to low,
Speaker 2: from as it were, the oligarch's vast sitting room in
Speaker 2: Chelsea to a tower block where poor people are living
Speaker 2: in South London. But I would argue that the novel
Speaker 2: has the premium energy subtlety. It can go inside the
Speaker 2: minds of the people in Lewis Dwellings as well as
Speaker 2: into the dwellings themselves.
Speaker 1: When we return, Andrew shares the secret to writing a
Speaker 1: successful satire and reveals why Caledonian Rhade might be his
Speaker 1: most optimistic book. Yere, We'll be right back. This is
Speaker 1: a comic novel. This is you know, this is a
Speaker 1: comedy of manners. It's a big social satire, and comedy
Speaker 1: relies on specificity, and it relies on jokes not being
Speaker 1: at your character's expense, but situations being deeply funny in
Speaker 1: and of themselves.
Speaker 2: I think that's what comedy is, you know. And you've
Speaker 2: mentioned satire, and I think it's one of the great forms.
Speaker 2: And you need to have an absolutely determination to depict
Speaker 2: if you're going to be a satirist. And the depictions
Speaker 2: have got to be as specific as they can be.
Speaker 2: You know, no writer worth her soul sits around worrying
Speaker 2: about whether they're entitled to represent things or not. They
Speaker 2: just use all five senses and the deepest intelligence that
Speaker 2: they can apply to make these things alive and comical
Speaker 2: and true in all the ways that they can, and
Speaker 2: they'll leave it to other people to worry about whether
Speaker 2: permission has to be sought. In my opinion, I will
Speaker 2: never require to ask permission to do something with my brain,
Speaker 2: which I feel I'm entitled to do, and that's just
Speaker 2: a human right as far as I'm concerned, and it's
Speaker 2: a one that I would fight to extend to people
Speaker 2: of all classes, colors and creeds. But satire is a
Speaker 2: whole subject in its own, and it depends on this
Speaker 2: one big thing, a relationship between the classic and the topical,
Speaker 2: you know. And I spent as much time on the
Speaker 2: one half as in the other, working out classically how
Speaker 2: to create on the page a structure and a movement
Speaker 2: of voice and tone, dialogue and action that would somehow
Speaker 2: bring this comedy to fruition. And at the same time,
Speaker 2: the other half that goes with classical topical That's why
Speaker 2: I kept shunting the action through the ten years of
Speaker 2: this book's writing, closer and closer to the present day,
Speaker 2: because I wanted the novel that eventually landed in your
Speaker 2: desk and the desks and on the bookshelves of people
Speaker 2: all over the world to be as up to the
Speaker 2: minute as it could be. Classical meets topical. That's the
Speaker 2: heart of the book.
Speaker 1: So then, where in the writing of it did you
Speaker 1: find surprise? Like, given the nature of it, given what
Speaker 1: we've said about the nature of the plotting, how kind
Speaker 1: of intricately this is a big machine, like the city
Speaker 1: that it's riding about. This is a machine with lots
Speaker 1: of moving parts that are dependent on each other and
Speaker 1: have links it. I imagine you at home with a serial
Speaker 1: killer pin board with red string on it, linking the characters. Expay, okay,
Speaker 1: this person to that person. Did things take a life
Speaker 1: of their own during that process? Or are you much
Speaker 1: more methodical than that? No?
Speaker 2: I think both things are true. It's thoroughly methodical, but
Speaker 2: within the method, within everything that's as it were ordained
Speaker 2: by the plotting and the structuring and the research and
Speaker 2: the pinboard with the mad bits of strain going from
Speaker 2: when they I used to look at it some days
Speaker 2: and said, look up there, it's an unbeautiful mind. You know,
Speaker 2: this complete sort of elaboration of these characters that I'd
Speaker 2: started with ten years ago. I'd brought them into company
Speaker 2: with each other, because as in life, we do share
Speaker 2: the same oxygen. As it turns out, we can make
Speaker 2: a many of our differences if we like. But actually
Speaker 2: there's red blood going through our veins, and something of
Speaker 2: our communality was always going to be the central engine
Speaker 2: of this big State of the Nation novel. But have
Speaker 2: to say, you know, I was surprised again and again
Speaker 2: how that a well invented character will begin to behave
Speaker 2: as themselves. And that happens to writers, not just because
Speaker 2: of writers. As the writer yourself, you begin to see
Speaker 2: it happening under your fingers, Michael. You can see as
Speaker 2: you're pressing the keys that your fingers are going for
Speaker 2: letters that were not preordained, nothing was set in stones.
Speaker 2: Suddenly your characters speaking a line that they, I would argue,
Speaker 2: in the solidity of their character want to say. And
Speaker 2: it's a lot of the specific comedy that comes into
Speaker 2: a book like this comes from characters just beginning to
Speaker 2: announce themselves as they should do. It's a bit like
Speaker 2: acting in that way. If you're a good actor, you
Speaker 2: can learn your lines. But a really great performance and
Speaker 2: I'll pu China moment is when he begins to speak
Speaker 2: fully in character. He begins to say things that they're
Speaker 2: not on the page. Some of the greatest unscripted scenes
Speaker 2: in movies like The Godfather Godfather Too, are just when
Speaker 2: the characters are so immersed, they've traveled so far into
Speaker 2: what they believe to be the reality and the truth
Speaker 2: of their character, that they just start to speak as them.
Speaker 2: And that happens to novelists under their fingertips that your
Speaker 2: characters do have the power to surprise you, and sometimes
Speaker 2: surprise you in mega ways. I've jumped back from my
Speaker 2: chair once or twice in the writing of this book
Speaker 2: when I realized that a character had just predicted their
Speaker 2: own death, had just determined their own fate. Now I
Speaker 2: look back at the board and I see that the
Speaker 2: string didn't go that that way. You know they determined it. Now,
Speaker 2: of course I hocus focus in that, and of course
Speaker 2: I directed it. I'm the one writing it. But I
Speaker 2: can tell you with all sales up. When you're really
Speaker 2: sailing as a novelist, the characters begin to tell you
Speaker 2: something you didn't.
Speaker 1: Know then that question of surprise, that the counterweight to
Speaker 1: it is inevitability. And while this is a comic novel,
Speaker 1: it is also a tragedy. It's several different tragedies. It's
Speaker 1: the tragedy of contemporary Britain and the tragedy of money. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the inevitability of people coming to a sticky end.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Are you a pessimist?
Speaker 2: I do think I am. Funnily enough, this is my
Speaker 2: most optimistic book. I mean, I see you smile, and
Speaker 2: I'm not surprised because you know, many readers, you know,
Speaker 2: seeing the accumulation of debts and fates and the accumulation
Speaker 2: of losses in a book like this think, oh my god,
Speaker 2: a lot's crumbling. But a lot of it had to
Speaker 2: crumble in order for the new optimistic age to happen.
Speaker 2: And I would say that the not just the young people,
Speaker 2: some of them aren't particularly young who noticed this, but
Speaker 2: the fate of Campbell, Flynn and of London, and of
Speaker 2: many of the major forces in this book is to
Speaker 2: clear the decks for something truer and I really believe
Speaker 2: that the order of Milo Mangasha, my young student who
Speaker 2: questions everything. He's a sort of moral hacker. He's a pest,
Speaker 2: he's a disruptor, but he really does I think, without spoilers,
Speaker 2: disrupt and I think that our societies are up for
Speaker 2: disruption at the moment as never before. That change doesn't
Speaker 2: just happen because it's time for a change. Change has
Speaker 2: to be forced, has to be enacted, has to be invented.
Speaker 2: We live in the end, not in countries that are
Speaker 2: settled places. They're just imagined communities. We imagined them into being.
Speaker 2: Australia doesn't really exist as a thing outside of human
Speaker 2: beings imagining it. It was human beings that make Australia,
Speaker 2: made it in the first place, and continue to remake
Speaker 2: it through their imagination and the power of their fictive energy.
Speaker 2: That is an imagined community. So it has to be
Speaker 2: reimagined by every generation, or every few generations, in order
Speaker 2: to address the problems of before. And that's what this
Speaker 2: novel is about. It's my most optimistic because it sees
Speaker 2: an arrow going out of the present troubles, out of
Speaker 2: contemporary Britain into something cleaner, truer, fairer, more representative, and
Speaker 2: that for me is something I've never been able to
Speaker 2: do before. Then this is my tenth book, but even
Speaker 2: in Mayflies, the one just before which was taken up,
Speaker 2: is a great Clarine call to friendship, into camaraderie, into
Speaker 2: you know, the common experience of living. Actually, this is
Speaker 2: the most optimistic.
Speaker 1: You're talking about the kind of redemptive power of the
Speaker 1: novel and fiction, and the ways in which that makes
Speaker 1: this ultimately an optimistic work. It makes me think of
Speaker 1: that great gram sky line the old world is dying
Speaker 1: and the new world's not ready to be born. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the time of monsters. Yes, And that came
Speaker 1: to mind, and when I was reading Caledonian Roade that
Speaker 1: this kind of generationalism was almost as powerful an engine
Speaker 1: as money. In this book, and the ways in which
Speaker 1: different generations fail to talk to one another and fail
Speaker 1: to understand one another.
Speaker 2: You put it very beautifully, and I would agree with that.
Speaker 2: In fact, that was why I spent ten years writing
Speaker 2: this book, because I felt that conversation between the generations
Speaker 2: was becoming moribund. I think this novel can allow for
Speaker 2: voices to coalesce around subjects in a way that they
Speaker 2: were failing to coalesce in the media, or in education,
Speaker 2: or in society at large. I don't just mean my novel.
Speaker 2: I mean any novel that is worth its solved in
Speaker 2: these times should create the conditions which temporarily I hope
Speaker 2: don't exist in society for as it were, a multiple
Speaker 2: analysis of where we are, because we live in very
Speaker 2: singular minded times in the sense that people who don't
Speaker 2: agree with each other at the moment are so partisan
Speaker 2: to their own view. They don't just disagree with the opposition,
Speaker 2: They want to annihilate the opposition. They want the opposition
Speaker 2: not to exist as part of their program of existing.
Speaker 2: And that describes American politics to me. It describes civilian
Speaker 2: life in the UK. It describes arguments between generations, creeds, colors.
Speaker 2: There are arguments which have been allowed to become dehumanized.
Speaker 2: And I think the novelist has a role in that
Speaker 2: she can insert herself or himself into the debate at
Speaker 2: a level too deep for tears, at a level is
Speaker 2: Wordsworth said, you know, she's recollection and tranquility. Sometimes we
Speaker 2: need the tranquility, you know, and society doesn't give that
Speaker 2: in debate at the moment, there's no room for the tranquil.
Speaker 2: There's only room for the shouting that angry in the
Speaker 2: mercile death. When it comes to the opposition's rates and arguments,
Speaker 2: I like the oppositions arguments in the sense I don't
Speaker 2: agree with them. I want to loathe them the same
Speaker 2: volume as Maine, so that we live in a society
Speaker 2: of pluralism, you know, And that's what a novel can do.
Speaker 2: In my view.
Speaker 1: I think you demonstrate that to be the case. Thank
Speaker 1: God for the novel, Thank God for you, Thank you
Speaker 1: for coming in, Andrew.
Speaker 2: Hagen, Thank you, Michael, What pleasure.
Speaker 1: Andrew Hagen's latest novel, Caledonian Road, is out now, and
Speaker 1: if you're looking for something a little more on the
Speaker 1: slender side, his Mayfliers, which came out in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: is a beautiful, tender story about a friendship spanning thirty years.
Speaker 1: It's really wonderful. Before we go, I wanted to briefly
Speaker 1: pay tribute to the singular and extraordinary Alice Munro. She's
Speaker 1: a personal favorite for many years, and she died earlier
Speaker 1: this week at the age of ninety two. She's best
Speaker 1: known for her short stories, which are as good an
Speaker 1: example of the form as you'll see anywhere. But my
Speaker 1: tip is go to her novel of interconnected stories, Lives
Speaker 1: of Girls and Women. It is a classic and I
Speaker 1: reread it every couple of years because I love it
Speaker 1: so much. Varlet Alice Munro. You can find Munroe's books
Speaker 1: and all the others we've mentioned in this episode at
Speaker 1: your favorite independent bookstore. That's it for this week's show.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, tell your friends,
Speaker 1: tell the Internet, tell anyone who listen. You can rate
Speaker 1: and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Next week,
Speaker 1: on Read This, I chat with writer, director, actor artist
Speaker 1: Miranda Julia about her new novel All Fours.
Speaker 3: When I was making my last movie, Kajillionaire, I was
Speaker 3: pretty much done with that, done rating it, if not
Speaker 3: shooting it. When I began to have all these ideas,
Speaker 3: these just questions. Even on the set of that movie,
Speaker 3: I was talking with Deborah Winger and my producer about aging.
Speaker 3: But you know, I wrote down things they said in
Speaker 3: my notes, you know, and I knew this isn't Kajillionaire.
Speaker 3: This is novel two, which is what the file was
Speaker 3: called for a long time. Novel two read.
Speaker 1: This is produced and edited by Clara and mixing and
Speaker 1: original compositions by Zalten Fitcho and thank you to Melbourne Writers'
Speaker 1: Festival who brought Andrew o'hagen to our shores in the
Speaker 1: first place. Thanks for listening, See you next week.