WEBVTT - Read This: We Visited Gerald Murnane at the Goroke Golf Course 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.760 Hey there, it's Ruby Jones. Each Sunday, we're sharing one 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.560 of our favorite episodes from our sister podcast, Read This. 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:09.400 The show features interviews with some of the best and 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:13.320 most beloved writers from Australia and around the world. Today, 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:17.160 we're going to hear from Gerald Manane. Gerald doesn't have 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:20.759 readers so much as acolytes. Described by The New Yorker 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:25.200 as the reclusive giant of Australian letters, He's written ten novels, 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.920 several short story and essay collections, and a memoir about 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:32.200 horse racing, all of which represents one of the most 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:36.360 formidable and singular bodies of work in literature. Michael Williams 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:43.720 is the host of Read This and Here's with Me Now. Hi, 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.720 Michael Ruby Jones. Hello, So this feels like quite a 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:51.880 special episode, not only because Gerald is sort of famously 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:54.240 a bit of a recluse, but also because you actually 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:58.320 met him on his home turf of grog. Can you 0:00:58.360 --> 0:00:59.400 tell me a bit about it? 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:02.720 What was it like? I do have a particular fondness 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:05.400 for Read This. Episode's where we go and visit writers 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:07.959 at home. Our first ever episode was with Helen Ghana. 0:01:08.360 --> 0:01:10.840 We went to Tasmania to talk to Richard Flanagan went 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:13.440 and sought Kate Gremble out. So when it came to 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:16.000 talking to a writer who The New York Times referred 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:20.119 to as Australia's most likely next Nobel laureate in literature, 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.880 it felt worth my while making the trip out to him, 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:26.240 as you say, on his home turf. We didn't quite 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:28.039 go to his house though. Gerald lives in a town 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:32.520 called Garoque, out in the western district of Victoria, and 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:35.480 I met him at the Garoque golf course, where he 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:39.800 is club secretary and has been for many years. If 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:42.200 you think there's a disconnect between someone being a recluse 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.200 and being club secretary at their local golf club, you're right. 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:48.920 The man is relentlessly sociable, but a little bit off 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:49.320 the grid. 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:53.160 And so for those who might not know Gerald's work, 0:01:53.400 --> 0:01:56.040 could you talk a bit about his writing and what 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:58.240 makes him such a singular author. 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:02.320 Gerald Benane is a very literary author, so his work. 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:04.320 I'm not going to pretend his work is going to 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.320 be for everyone. Although the people who love him obsess 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:10.720 about him, They write books about him and hold academic 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.280 conferences and devote their lives to trying to understand what's 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:18.080 happening with Gerald Manine. He's written ten novels, collections of 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.880 short stories, essays. He wrote this memoir about horse racing 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:25.280 that was called Something for the Pain. That sounds prolific, 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:28.960 although he's been added for decades and decades now, and 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:32.960 he writes these singular someone say, even postmodern books that 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:35.800 are as much about the imagination and about the process 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:38.919 of writing as they are about anything else. He's probably 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:41.120 most famous for a novel called The Plaines, which was 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:43.360 the first one of his I read, which is this 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:47.120 terrific novel about Sorry I can't. 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:53.799 Help coming up in just a moment. We visited Gerald 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:55.600 Manine at the Groat golf Course. 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:12.040 I drove out to meet Gerald a couple of months back, 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:16.360 four days before his eighty fifth birthday. His longtime friend 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:20.440 and publisher Ivor Indic helped me make the arrangement. No emails, 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:24.880 just text messages, and Gerald is warm and direct, immediately 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:28.320 agreeable and swift to make arrangements. We're to meet at 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.560 the golf club. On first approach, I completely missed the 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:35.320 dirt track up to the clubhouse. Google Maps has given 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:38.280 up the ghost and it's just me and the scrub 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:41.080 and a quickly disappearing gap in the trees before I 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:44.760 find myself lost on some random back road between the paddocks. 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:50.800 I circle back, retrace my steps and there it is 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:55.880 a squat fibrobuilding, nestled in the trees, lazy cockies strolling 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:59.280 around an overgrown garden. It's not exactly clear where the 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:03.320 golf course it's a elf is, but Gerald is there, unmistakable, 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:05.640 ready to talk. Now. 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:08.080 I'm just going to take these ten minutes to eat 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:13.760 the sandwich and have a drink of cherry. Hurry. 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:18.120 I'm in no tearing hurry whatsoever. Drink of the room 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:21.000 is quiet. He's worrying about the hum of the fridge 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:24.120 as I set up my recording equipment. He's already laid 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:26.560 out all his books in various editions on one of 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:29.119 the tables and has clearly put a lot of thought 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:31.240 into which chairs are best for us to sit in. 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.360 And the chat flows immediately for about twenty minutes. As 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:38.279 he eats and I set up, we talk about family 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:42.240 and places we both lived. He's funny, and this disarming 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.239 mix are very considered and deliberate on the one hand, 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:49.840 an idiosyncratic and completely free range. On the other I 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:52.400 keep looking at the spread of books on the tabletop, 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:57.680 the beautiful abstract covers and titles like Invisible yet Enduring 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:02.160 Lilacs and a million Windo tamarisk Row is there. It's 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:06.080 fifty years since it was first published, and I still 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:09.280 remember the little boy at the heart of it, Clement Killaton, 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:13.000 sitting on a mat and building an imaginary life, pushing 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:17.039 marbles around through which he builds an entire reality. I 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:20.160 want to ask Gerald about that boy, about those marbles 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:24.440 and stained glass and horse racing, and about perfect sentences. 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:27.680 But when the microphones are on and we start talking, 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:31.320 it's his late wife, Catherine who comes to the foreground first. 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.480 It was in two thousand and nine, following her death, 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:37.400 that Gerald moved to Garogue, and it's clear that she 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:41.960 remains a significant ongoing presence, not just in his daily consciousness, 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:46.040 but in how he regards the world of writing. In 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:47.880 the mind, we. 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:51.880 Had an extraordinary relationship as author and wife. Never mind 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:55.159 all the rist of our marriage, which was a turbulent marriage, 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:57.839 not always by any means a happy marriage, but a 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.760 successful one. To judge from the ending of it, all 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:06.800 ended well. She seldom asked me about my books. I 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:09.640 don't even remember asking her had she read the books. 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.320 I know she did read them, but she had this 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:15.200 strange well, I don't know really what she had. I 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:21.200 suspect that she was puzzled and intrigued to read what 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:25.760 I'd written, because it was not often what I talked about. 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:29.400 We were very close. We had no hesitation in talking 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:34.080 about the most difficult matters or what's it with controversial 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:36.839 things that people say, the three those difficult things to 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:42.880 talk about on a deep level, of sex, the afterlife, 0:06:43.320 --> 0:06:48.440 and money. We managed to talk about those with a 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:52.920 few differences, but we didn't ever, very seldom talked about 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.640 my books. Sometimes I would read to her just a 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.880 paragraph and she would make a comment, but not often. 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:05.040 And then when I stopped writing for publication, I've never 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:08.680 stopped writing. When I stopped writing for publication after the 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:13.880 publication of Emerald Blue in nineteen ninety five, and I 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.160 didn't tell her straight away, And when she found out 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:20.760 that I wasn't writing anything for publication, I was very 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:24.880 much affected by the disappointment she displayed, and I thought, well, 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:27.280 my writing must mean more to you than you've ever 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.640 told me. And I've ever suspected, and then after a 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:34.720 year or two she began to well in common pilance, 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:36.840 niggle at me and say when are you going to 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:40.960 start writing again? And when I didn't show any evidence 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:43.800 that I was writing again, then she went into a 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:48.160 different mode and started to say it's a tragic or yes, 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:50.680 she might have used that word, it's a very tragic 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:54.200 thing that you haven't got the recognition that you've got 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:56.880 for your books. And that's all she said. I'd had 0:07:56.880 --> 0:07:59.440 seven books published up till then, and of course the 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:02.040 planes have may be almost famous for a few years, 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.200 but it wasn't enough for her, and she regretted it. 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:09.880 And then she lived to see well, she just lived 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:16.560 to see the finishing balley patch. And I wouldn't have 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:20.280 been so bold as to say this outright in earlier years, 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:22.840 but my age, I can say anything and get away 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:30.720 with it. I have an unquenchable, absolutely utterly confident belief 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:34.760 that we live on as parts of the survived death. 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:39.400 And it's just spooky to me to see that she'd 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:41.920 only been dead a few months and I won the 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:46.319 Melbourne Prize, and then all the rest has happened in 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:48.839 the last few years. I don't say any more than 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:53.000 that it's maybe just a wonderful coincidence. The strange thing 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.920 is that what I won't say I yearned for it, 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.120 but what I felt, with a sense of grievance that 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:02.240 I deserve that didn't have in all those years I 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:06.040 now have, I don't really take the trouble to appreciate it. 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:12.200 I played golf at garaagu andsing at them, erasing archives 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.400 and stuff. I hear the sounds of distant thunder and 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:19.400 the applause of distant crowds and things, and like the 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:23.000 poor guy dying at the end of the duty obscure 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.280 there's a festival in the street or something. He's dying upstairs, 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:29.000 and it's not quite like that. But yes, I've got it. 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:34.280 All that I won't say yearned for, felt that I deserved. 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:36.880 I could have done without. I could have survived without it, 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:39.800 but would have been a tough life. And now, if 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:42.760 I want to just suppose I was feeling a bit 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:46.560 miserable one night, I just go google Jeralm the name 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:50.040 her bloke was playing golf as me at a tournament 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:52.240 at Eden Hope. A bloke come up from somewhere in 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:54.319 the Western district and he said, oh, you're from Garaque. 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:57.079 We just finished playing shook heads. He said, you're from 0:09:57.080 --> 0:09:59.920 garagu He said there's somebody, there's some sort of famous 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.960 painter or somebody visit. And I said, I think so. 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:05.600 And I got out of the phone and I said, 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:10.000 would this be heare? It should not be playing off 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:12.520 for the idea and people do. I mean, it's not 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:16.600 a welcome thing because the storekeeper and the post office 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.880 lady and the people in the town know not to 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:22.160 direct people to my house, tell them to put a 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:23.920 note in the post office. And if I want to 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:26.679 answer them or answer them, it's happened occasionally. 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:29.760 There's not many writers to whom readers would do a 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:32.440 pilgrimage like in terms of a marker. 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:35.840 Of I think. I think that I'm not saying this 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:39.640 from a sense of mock modesty, but I think that 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:45.000 the oddness of Garoaque as a name and as a 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:48.360 locality that's nearly four hundred k from Melbourne. I think 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.800 if I lived at South Geelong that might there might 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:53.079 be so many pilgrims. 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.120 By my account, and I may have this wrong, so 0:10:56.200 --> 0:10:59.600 please correct me, but by my account, you have four 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:03.240 times I think declared that a book that you're bringing 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:05.440 out is going to be your last fault. 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:10.120 That wasn't any sort of pose. I actually have a 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:12.960 couple of times in recent in the last year or so, 0:11:13.440 --> 0:11:16.000 I thought I could. I've never thought I could make 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:20.040 something into a book, but I was coaching writing letters 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:23.240 of help to a young writer, and I started. I said, 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.600 here is the beginning of what could be a long 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:28.679 piece of short fiction. And I wrote the beginning, and 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:31.240 I thought for a couple of days I thought, you know, 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.560 I could go on with that, and then a tiredness 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:38.440 overcame me. I thought, you know, but I'll tell you 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:43.840 that because it's it's it's my stating that I won't 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:46.520 write again, has been always an honest thing. And then 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:51.600 out of the blue comes a possibility and a few 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:56.920 words with it, a mental image, a few scenes, and 0:11:57.480 --> 0:11:59.600 and I get started, or I have got started in 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:04.439 the past the very last book was written. The explanation 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.840 is simple. I was writing these essays for the archive, 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:13.400 and not writing them with elaborate care, just writing them 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:16.880 as you write a diary entry. And then I was 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:19.560 writing about my own books, what they meant to me 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:23.920 at my advand stage, and I let my publisher know 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:27.479 of this, and he urged me and succeeded in persuading 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:30.840 me to write them for publication. So that's one example 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.080 of how a book came about that I never intended 0:12:33.520 --> 0:12:37.079 to write, but the others genuinely came. See. When I 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:39.320 came to Gark, I didn't think i'd write anymore. I'd 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:42.240 finished Balley Patch in the History of Books, and I 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:45.040 had I don't often take notice of dreams, but I 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:48.520 dreamed about colored Glass. And I noticed a church of 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:51.920 little Old Wesleyan Church around the corner from the house 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:54.840 where I'm living at my son's house, and I looked 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:57.640 at the colored glass, and I realized that colored glass 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.840 was a strange thing. To understand what colored duce the 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:05.040 true appearance of colored das you didn't stand outside in 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:08.360 the light, you stood inside in the darkness. I couldn't 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:11.560 see what these windows represented in the church because I 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.440 was out in the bright sunlight. And to understand I 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:16.840 had to go into the dark the gloomy church, which 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:19.640 I eventually did and saw what they were. And just 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:25.640 that mystery of vision and the appearances fascinate me. So 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:29.360 the book Border Districts came from there, although as I said, 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.600 i'd announced the people. Now I've given up writing for publication. 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:36.280 The same with a million windows. Once upon a time, 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:41.199 I got a lot of my just background knowledge from 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.800 reading good Old Time, not Time, Australia, Time, International, way 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:48.360 back in the sixties and seventies. And I also used 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:51.680 to admire when I went to films, which I've stopped 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:54.360 doing a long time ago, I used to admire some 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:57.280 of the films or scenes in the films of Ingemar 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:00.920 Bergman and looking through the I was looking through some 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.880 old time magazines from about the eighties and I noticed it. 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.600 In his last years Bergmann decided to make a film 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:11.680 I don't know if he ever succeeded, and it was 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:13.960 to be set in a castle, and in every room 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:16.520 of the castle was one of the characters from one 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:19.840 of his other films. And I thought straight away it 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:22.360 just came to with that I could write a book 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:28.600 about a house. And I thought of Henry James's words 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.480 that the house of fiction has a million windows. All 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:35.920 the books that I've admired, or the writers that I've admired, 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:38.880 are all living in this castle. I'm there among them, 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:42.480 nameless and anonymous, and we're all writing, and we have 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.040 a few drinks together at night and talk about our 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:49.880 writing methods and such things. And out of those daydreams 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:54.040 almost came the book A Million Windows. So once again 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:58.200 a chance happening, something catches my eye takes me notice, 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:01.680 and I should speak in the past, And something took 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.400 my eye, and a statement that I'd made to the 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:06.960 effect that no more books would emerge from me had 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:08.120 to be negated. 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:12.720 I mean, as a reader, I'm grateful that something else 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:17.160 took your fancy afterwards each time. But I'm curious about 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:22.440 even the physical impulse to say I think I'm done. 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:23.480 Is it fatigue? 0:15:23.800 --> 0:15:27.800 Is it just a preparedness to apply your brain somewhere else. 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:30.160 But it would have to be some element of tiredness 0:15:30.200 --> 0:15:35.600 in it. But also see, I think a lot about infinity. 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:40.640 And I mentioned before about my reluctance to use terms 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:47.560 like intellect, feeling, memory, imagination. But the mind, now, some 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:53.920 people say there's a superrego and unconscious. I have never 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:57.360 found any evidence for that view of the mind. My 0:15:57.480 --> 0:15:59.680 view of the mind is rather like the view that 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:03.000 I can see around me all day in the Western 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:07.120 Wimrock mostly level landscape with a line of trees in 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:10.200 the distance. I think that's what my mind really is. 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:14.080 I know to some it would seem a childish thing, 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:18.920 too bad. And the next question is what's behind the 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:22.760 line of trees. Well, if you go through the trees, 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:28.160 you're in another sort of bare landscape, and ten kilometers 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:31.520 further over is another line of trees. And that gets 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:36.320 me going on the business of infinity is time, infinite 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:39.600 is space? Infinite is my mind? And is my mind 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:43.920 just an infinite part of infinitud Now I don't think 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:47.240 in those words, but I think visually. And the thing 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:49.160 that might lead me to write the next book or 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:52.480 in the past when I was writing, might be beyond 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:54.920 the third or fourth line of trees, which might take 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:57.520 me some time to reach in my mind or rich 0:16:57.680 --> 0:16:58.360 with my feet. 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:04.080 But when he does finally reach that third, maybe even 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:07.280 fourth line of trees, where does that spark of an 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:10.480 idea come from? How does he discern whether something is 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:14.119 worthy of his time? An answer to this came to 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:17.560 Gerald when he was preparing a paper The Breathing Author, 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:20.320 to read at a conference held at the University of 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:22.280 Newcastle back in two thousand and one. 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:28.520 I kept several times using this expression, the image that 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:31.240 winks at me, and it had only come to me 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:33.520 a few days before, sitting in the hotel room with 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:37.880 my wife preparing this speech, I thought, why do how 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:41.760 do not so much? Well? How do certain things tell 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:44.639 me that I should write about them? Where are certain 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:50.280 other things seemingly more important? Things? They make no appeal 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:52.399 to me? And the only way I could think of 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.920 it was they have a way of winking. And it's 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:58.320 not literally a human wink. It's a kind of the 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:00.280 sort of way that the roof of a house us 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:03.000 in the very far distance will wink at you when 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:06.080 the sun catches it as you're driving on a distant road. 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:09.239 And so these images that wink at me. And if 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:11.919 I wink at somebody or I don't. But in the 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:14.120 old agement people wink at each other, it was often 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:17.520 it was to signify that a bit of shared knowledge 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:21.120 You and I know better than that, don't we wink? Wink, nudge, nudge, 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:25.200 wink wink. So when these things wink at me, they're saying, gerald, 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:28.119 I know something that you ought to know, or we 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:31.679 really share something that we ought to talk over and 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:36.040 elaborate on. And it's that feeling that this utterly ordinary 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:40.360 looking image has something to tell. Well, what it has 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:43.360 to tell is that I've come to understand this after 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:47.560 years of experiencing it. It's connected with another image, which 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:51.520 I didn't know it was connected with beforehand. And then 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:53.840 when you get to that image and write about it, 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:56.119 or when I get to write about it, I find 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:59.240 that three other images are appearing in the further background, 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:03.119 and they're all connected to Hey, presto, I've got a 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:03.800 book of fiction. 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:10.719 When we return, Gerald reveals the obsession that's fulled him 0:19:10.760 --> 0:19:23.560 for nearly eighty years. We'll be right back. Many of 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:26.520 the profiles of Gerald Manane focus on the idea of 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:31.280 his eccentricity, and to be fair, his list of videosyncrasies 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.600 is long and varied. During a two thousand and one 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:38.400 speech that has become somewhat infamous amongst his devoted groupes, 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:41.919 he made an attempt to itemize some of them. I 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:45.840 have never worn sunglasses. I've never learned to swim. I've 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:50.120 never voluntarily immersed myself in any sea or stream. I've 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:52.800 never touched any button or switch or working part of 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:57.159 any computer or fax machine or mobile telephone. I've never 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:00.960 learned to operate any sort of camera. Nineteen seventy nine, 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:03.720 I taught myself to type using the index finger of 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:06.840 my right hand alone. Since then, I've composed all my 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:10.719 fiction and other writing using the finger just mentioned, and 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:14.239 one or another of my three manual typewriters. It's a 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:17.840 fabulous list and well worth reading that essay, Geraldmnane is 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:21.480 it's fair to say singular. So one come as much 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:24.119 of a surprise that the account in tamersk Grow of 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:27.199 a little boy playing imagined horse races with marbles on 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:31.000 a mat provides an insight into a key passion of Gerald's, 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:35.640 a lifelong obsession and an underpinning philosophy for his life. 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:38.440 Talk to me about imagined race horses. 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:43.000 Well. We moved to Bendigo in January nineteen forty four, 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:45.640 and the third house we lived in. We lived in 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:48.320 two places for a few months each. Then we settled 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:52.080 into this little shabby weatherwood place. It's still there. If 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.960 anyone's listing number five, Niel Streep, it was number two 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:57.760 hundred and forty four when we lived in it, but 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:01.600 it's number five there, just off but Carver Hio. Then 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.719 I heard horse races broadcast from Melbourne while my father listened, 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:10.639 and then I'd go out in the backyard and I'd 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:13.600 repeat some of the names of the horses. And I 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:16.920 didn't do this as a parrot might do it. I've 0:21:16.960 --> 0:21:19.600 see now that I did it because I was almost 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:22.920 destined to do it, and it fulfilled a deep need 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:25.920 in me to have at the far end of my vision, 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:28.520 and Melbourne was about as far away as I could imagine, 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:31.280 there was an endless horse not an endless horse race, 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:35.080 an endless series of horse races taking place. Now we both, 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:38.199 my interviewer and I smile at each other then, and 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:43.080 it is a child childlike and the sort of thing 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:47.520 that you'd smile at. But eighty years later, I still 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:51.760 insist that one of my deepest needs is to be 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:55.760 confident that in the background of my mind there was 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:59.679 a horse race going on, and I could elaborate a 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:03.800 lot on that. What were the names of the jockeys, 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:07.400 what was the name of the race course, what were 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:10.240 the names of the horses, what colors were the jockeys wearing, 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:13.480 what were the odds? How was the race going to end? 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:17.840 And this series of questions can occur to me at 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:20.960 any time of the day, I'll be driving somewhere, or 0:22:21.440 --> 0:22:25.240 walking on the golf course, doing any number of things, 0:22:25.600 --> 0:22:30.280 and suddenly one of these invisible horse races will take place. Now, 0:22:30.960 --> 0:22:34.640 when I stopped writing for publication in the mid nineties, 0:22:35.240 --> 0:22:40.840 I had already devised the beginnings of a collection of 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:44.680 pages and notebooks and files which would finally And it 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:46.720 wasn't the first time in my life I tried this. 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:49.960 I tried it at the ages of fifteen and sixteen. 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:53.879 I tried to draw the race courses and name the 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:59.959 horses that were performing invisibly at the outskirts of my mind. 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:03.560 I first concealed it from people. The first person I 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:07.119 told was my wife. I said, I've got this archive 0:23:07.200 --> 0:23:10.600 starting up with just fictitious horses. That doesn't it No 0:23:10.600 --> 0:23:14.320 one knows where they are well, sort of half like 0:23:14.359 --> 0:23:17.400 Australia and half like New Zealand. She said, where did 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:20.320 you find the time? She didn't say you stupid men, 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:23.679 or how silly or how childish? She said where did 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:26.440 you find the time? She said, you brought up three kids, 0:23:26.840 --> 0:23:29.480 you worked at two jobs, you wrote all, one job 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:31.680 being the writing job. Where did you find the time? 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:34.080 And I don't know where I found the time, but 0:23:34.440 --> 0:23:39.920 the archive is grown, it's potentially infinite, as most such 0:23:40.000 --> 0:23:43.320 things are, and it gives me enormous satisfaction to know 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:48.280 that I've documented some of these said far, far reaching 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:53.280 or distant entities. So it's something that developed in me 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:56.320 from an early age, and I thought it was something 0:23:56.400 --> 0:23:59.680