WEBVTT - Read This: This Is Not Michelle de Kretser 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.679 Hi there, it's Ruby Jones and it's time to settle 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:06.040 in for another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly 0:00:06.080 --> 0:00:09.639 books podcast. It's hosted by editor of The Monthly Michael 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:13.000 Williams and features conversations with some of the most talented 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.760 writers from Australia and around the world. In this episode, 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:19.400 we're going to hear from two times Myles Franklin Award 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:24.840 winning author Michelle du Kretze. As always, I'm joined by 0:00:24.840 --> 0:00:27.400 Michael to tell me a little bit more about the episode. 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:29.200 Hi, Michael, Ruby Jones. 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:33.279 So, Michael. While Michelle Decretza might be a household name 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:36.400 for many of our listeners, having won two Miles Franklin 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:39.400 Awards and also the Stellar Prize for her previous work, 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:42.960 for those of us who might be a little less familiar, 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:45.800 can you tell me a bit about her career so far? 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.600 Yeah, I have to say, unabashad Lee, Michelle Dacretz is 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:52.959 one of my favorite Australian writers writing today. She's Sri 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.920 Lankan born and has won the Miles Franklin a couple 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:58.400 of times. As you said, she's received all kinds of 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:01.640 accolades for her writing, and I think at the heart 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:03.640 of it. What people like about her books is that 0:01:03.680 --> 0:01:09.160 they're ambitious, often sweeping in scope, occasionally very focused in scope, 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:13.360 but she's never afraid to muck around and have a play. 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.120 And this latest book, Theory in Practice, has been described 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:20.679 as her most experimental work yet. So how does that 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:21.959 play out on the page? 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.800 Yeah? Absolutely. This is her seventh novel and it definitely 0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:29.160 reinforces that idea that Michel Deecrets is not someone who 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:31.640 sees the novel as a fixed form. She sees it 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:33.720 as something that you should get under the hood and 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:35.760 really have a fiddle around with and see what fun 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:38.960 you can have. Her book before this, Scary Monsters, was 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:41.400 two novellas that were published back to back in the 0:01:41.440 --> 0:01:43.480 same volume, and you would flip it over to read 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:46.240 the second one, and so depending on the order you 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:48.920 read them, and you might have quite a different reading experience. 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.360 Theory in Practice isn't quite that radical, but in other 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:55.520 ways it definitely wants to challenge our expectation of what 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:58.240 a novel is and what it can do. It in 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:01.000 many ways feels like a memoir, It feels like an 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:04.800 essay at different points, but at its heart it's a novel. 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.320 About a young woman in the early eighties who is 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:09.440 definitely not the author. 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:14.079 Coming up in just a moment. This is not Michelle 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:21.959 Dee Kratze. 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:25.480 I love this novel, and its sense of intellectual curiosity 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:29.320 and structural playfulness only enhance the human story at its heart. 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:33.480 But that cheekiness about category about how it should be read. 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.359 Those aren't incidental pleasures. They're front and center of how 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:40.359 the book's were been published, and the obvious starting point 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:44.400 is its front cover, the striking design by Text Publishing's 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:48.359 designer Chong Wing Ho, and the book's author looking out 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:53.240 at us as we begin, I thought I might begin 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:56.680 by asking when you knew you were going to be 0:02:56.720 --> 0:02:59.919 comfortable with or you wanted your own photo on the 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:01.160 cover of this novel. 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:07.160 Okay, well, Cheong asked me for photos of the nineteen eighties. 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:11.680 I sent him a selection, a small selection, because I 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:15.600 don't have many photos full stop. He came back with 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:20.520 that one and said, how would you feel if I 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:28.600 made this famous? I said frightened. He said why. I said, well, 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:31.560 I don't want this novel to be taken for a memoir, 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:36.720 and he said, no, we'll take care of that. Don't 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:41.800 worry while he was working on the layout, I was, 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:47.520 of course still frightened of that misreading, and I was 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:52.320 talking it over with my partner, who met the very 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:58.280 best salient pointer, as he often does that whenever a 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:01.560 woman writes a novel with a first person narrator, it's 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:04.920 taken as sort of biographical. So he said, you know, 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:06.800 you could put a photo of anything on the cover 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:13.400 and it would still be read as autobiography. And I 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:19.800 certainly had this experience with my last novel, one half 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:26.880 of which had a young female narrator. So I thought 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:30.760 that that was a good point. And when the cover 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:36.479 came back, well, of course, under the photo were the 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:43.800 words that new novel underlined twice, and I, as I 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:47.600 looked at it, I thought it gestured at the hybrid 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:50.640 nature of the novel. It was saying, this is not 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:57.440 straight fiction, but it's not memoir either, And the more 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:00.400 I looked at it, it all fell into place for 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.719 me when I looked at the photo and it reminded 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:10.679 me of Margrid's famous photo realist painting of a pipe 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:16.320 captioned this is not a pipe. In other words, reality 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:19.160 and its representation and art are not the same thing. 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:24.359 I don't know whether that was what Chong was channeling, 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:27.800 but I do know that certainly towards the end of 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:34.280 the novel a character specifically warns against mistaking realism for reality, 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:38.640 so perhaps that also played its part in Chong's decision. 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:42.680 And I am really pleased we went with that cover 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:48.960 because I think it's very striking visually, and I think 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:53.600 it has meant that a lot of young women in 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:57.240 particular have picked up the novel, and that is of 0:05:57.279 --> 0:05:59.360 course extremely gratifying. 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:05.040 You mentioned several times about the reading that it invites, 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.960 and it seems to me that it invites a particular reading, 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:13.360 but perhaps more than that, and not just to cover, 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:15.599 but moving into some of the choices made within the 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:19.840 book itself, it provokes a particular reading more than it 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:23.120 invites it that there is a sense of challenge and 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:27.360 play here that is designed not just to passively let 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:30.720 the reader come to it on their own terms, but 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:35.880 actively to unsettle or to just just to force them 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:36.960 to do a little bit more work. 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:43.279 Yes, absolutely, I quite like unsettling readers. Why not. I 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.560 like novels set on set on me my expectations that 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:51.600 play with my expectations, and so yes, absolutely I think 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:55.360 that's fair to say that it does, let's say, strongly 0:06:55.680 --> 0:07:02.680 encourage a certain reading which is not necessarily followed through. 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:04.840 We don't want to have any spoilers. 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:08.599 But I love it, and there is a palpable sense 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.240 that I have felt this across your entire body of work. 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:17.120 Your appetite for play and your desire not to allow 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:20.680 the constraints of convention to hold you back seems to 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:25.160 be more acute with each book. Is that a reasonable summation. 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:31.040 Yeah, thank you. I'm flattered by that, of course, But 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:33.680 I would say that, for instance, my second novel, The 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:38.160 Hamilton Case, very much plays with the expectations set up 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:41.960 by the conventional who done it. So I guess that's 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:48.960 a fair way. That kind of interest in form and 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:55.840 narrative convention certainly with this one. And I you know, 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:59.560 as you say, I've had this interest in destabilizing the 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:06.560 realist novel, and so I wanted to write what I 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:10.040 have come to call the hyperrealist novel, the novel that 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:18.640 doesn't read like a novel, and hence the start of 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:26.400 Theory and Practice, which presents a completely conventional realist novel. 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:31.560 And if I might say so without sounding vostful or anything. 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.520 I think quite efficiently, for given the length it is, 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:40.079 sets up an intrigue, a plot, a miscarriage of justice, 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:43.760 a possible romantic entanglement. In quite a few pages. It 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:49.840 does that efficiently, and then it changes completely. And the 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:52.040 reason for doing that is it's you know, it's like 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:55.440 placing black and white, and both colors come up shopper 0:08:55.480 --> 0:09:01.160 when they are placed next to their antithesis. So I 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:05.440 wanted what followed to seem as the narrator. So she 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:10.199 wishes to be telling the truth to seem utterly and 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:15.720 completely truthful and not like a novel. And one of 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:20.680 the other reasons for or secondary reason I suppose for 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:26.400 having that realist extract at the start, is that you know, 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:31.000 the narrator is a novelist, and when you get to 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:35.319 the end of the novel you see how little events 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:40.280 and little details that have happened to her in her 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:46.720 life are reconfigured in the fiction that proceeds that starts 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:49.400 theory and practice, so it's kind of like the theory 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:51.920 and practice of the novel as well. I had in 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:56.000 mind that instruction you get in Matt's exams to show 0:09:56.040 --> 0:10:00.200 your workings. So if you like the whole of of 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:04.800 the hyperrealist novel is kind of the workings showing how 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:11.959 those little bids make it into fiction in disguised form, transformed, 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:17.880 made fictional, often out of recognition. So that was of 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:21.880 interest to me as well, you know, how to demonstrate 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:28.680 how little facts from one's life get turned into fiction. 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:32.560 When I finished reading, I went out and got myself 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:35.080 a copy of Virginia Wolf's The Years, which I have 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:38.199 to confess I had never read. I mean, Wolf obviously 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.160 is very important to this book and to you as 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.480 a writer, but could you talk for a moment about 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:47.520 The Years in particular and what it is that piqued 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:49.559 your interest about that particular book. 0:10:50.240 --> 0:10:53.840 So in the novel, the narrator is writing a thesis 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:59.439 on Virginia Wolf's late fiction and on the three last novels, 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:04.640 The Waves, the Year's and Between the Acts. I'd actually 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:08.360 read both The Waves and Between the Acts, and I 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:13.240 hadn't read The Years. It was Wolfe's bestseller in her day, 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:17.839 and it's really underread now. So I read it because 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:21.720 I wanted the late fiction, because everyone writes about the 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:24.400 you know, the missus dellaway into the Lighthouse. I wanted 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:28.960 something different, and I read it, and I read about 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:34.120 it in Wolfe's diaries, her composition of it. I was 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:36.760 quite surprised when I read it, because it's a very 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:43.199 conventional novel, largely realist really, and coming after the extreme 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:49.560 modernist example experiment that was The Waves, it was strikingly different, 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.959 and I understand a writer's wish to do something different, 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:57.840 but this seemed almost like a return to Wolfe's first 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:01.920 to pre modernist novels. So what I found out about 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.240 her original plan for the novel was that she wanted 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.560 to do something very distinctive and different. She wanted to 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:13.120 write a novel made up of alternating chapters of fiction 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:18.040 and nonfiction, so a novel about an English family that 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:23.479 would cover about fifty years, and in between those fictive chapters, 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:29.480 she would have an essay commenting on the social changes 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:34.040 that had taken place in Britain at that time. She 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.120 wrote an awful lot. She wrote about one hundred thousand 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:44.240 words and then discarded it, which is sort of heartbreaking 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.160 thing for a writer to have done. But she didn't. 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:51.680 She discarded the plan. I should say, she used fiction 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:56.480 to write the novel that became The Years, and she 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:03.080 used some of the essays stick material her book Three Guineas. 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.280 So I liked that idea. I thought that was a 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:09.880 really fabulous idea, actually, the sort of mix of fiction 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.360 and non fiction. But I also felt that the reason 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:16.400 Wolf abandoned it, And I don't know why actually abandoned it, 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:19.040 but I felt the reason must have been that it's 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:23.720 terribly schematic, you know, chapter fiction, chapter of nonfiction, chapter 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:28.839 of fiction, essay, and Wolf the least schematic of writers. 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:32.400 I don't feel could have sustained that very long. And 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.000 I certainly felt that if Virginia Wolf couldn't do it, 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:41.000 I couldn't. And it seemed much more satisfactory to me 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:46.640 to have kind of tangle of fiction and non fiction, 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:51.000 whether that was essay or a little bit on memoir, 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:56.120 and for the reader to not necessarily always be able 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:58.480 to tell where one ended and the other began. 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:01.920 I'm really glad you had that point about how schematic 0:14:02.000 --> 0:14:05.360 that plan was, because it strikes me hearing you talk, 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.760 you know that desire to write a novel that doesn't 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:12.840 feel like a novel. You know your narrator in theory 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:16.360 and practice makes the same point. But she says, I 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:20.160 wanted to form it allowed for formlessness and mess and 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:23.960 I think, you know, I think part of the real 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:28.880 achievement here is to do something that is so kind 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:33.440 of intellectually robust and rigorous and curious on the one hand, 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:40.200 but also messy and complicated like human beings and tells 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.600 a kind of novelistic story on the other. And I wonder, 0:14:43.720 --> 0:14:46.040 did you have to consciously go in and mess it 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:49.680 up at intervals? Did you find yourself did you find 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:52.000 yourself going, well, no, this is too rigid, or these 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:55.200 modes are too self evident and I have to have 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:56.880 to just blur the edges a bit more. 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:04.720 No, not really, not as far as form was concerned. 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:09.600 But the mess I was interested in was much more 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:15.520 human mess. So that you know, for the narrator as 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:17.720 well as for many of the of the other characters, 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:24.200 there is this messy gap between theory and practice, between 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:28.360 our ideals and our actions. I'm always interested in that 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:32.200 when it comes to character. And I would say that 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:38.120 art really is energized by that mess because it's complex 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:42.640 and contradictory, and those are things that art feeds on. 0:15:43.120 --> 0:15:47.200 Those are things that the novel feeds on, or maybe 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:51.680 just I feed on them as a writer and reader, 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:54.960 and so that was the kind of mess I was 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:59.720 interested in. And as for the formlessness, well, just because 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:02.240 sometimes you can't tell what is fictive and what isn't. 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:08.960 When we return, Michelle discusses sexual jealousy, feminism, and what 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:12.400 it means to be a writer in the public eye, 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:28.840 we'll be right back the gulf between theory and practice, 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.360 between who we want to be and who we are. 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.680 It might be best served by the novel artistically. Is 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:39.560 that best embodied by our twenties in a life? Is 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:42.120 that what that period of big a university in your 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:43.400 twenties is for? 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:46.600 Not really, I think, you know. I mean, I'm sure 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:50.400 I'm still quite out of mess between my theories and 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:50.840 my mind. 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:53.400 No, you're reconciled as a human being at this point. 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:56.200 But I do think that, you know, in one's early twenties, 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:59.560 one is asking the question, you know, how should a 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:03.880 person be? So it's an attractive period for a novelist 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:08.000 because you're still trying to figure out what life is 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:10.840 for and what it will hold for you and how 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:13.399 you can get there and what you should do. So 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:15.919 I think there is a lot of energy and a 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:20.800 lot of mess when you are in your early twenties 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:28.439 as the narrator is I think that you know, Wolf, 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:32.040 for instance, there's someone who went on being contradictory and 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:35.720 messy right to the end of her life, and we 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:36.440 all do that. 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:41.440 I think, do you think culturally we're at a low 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:46.919 point for capacity to process those contradictions in the people 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:49.160 and in particular in the artists who we admire. 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.119 Yeah, that's such a good question, isn't it. I mean, 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:56.640 it is a very topical one what we do with 0:17:56.200 --> 0:18:02.800 the failings and flaws of writers. And the emblematic writer 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:08.240 for me when that comes up isn't Wolf, it's Visnipole. 0:18:09.359 --> 0:18:13.080 I mean, the man was a monster. You know what 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:23.040 can you say? Racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, Brahminist, you name it. 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:25.240 He's been there, he's done that, He's got it on 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:31.280 a T shirt. And yet an extraordinary, brilliant writer, really 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:37.359 brilliant and really really important for hundreds of thousands of 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:44.680 diasporic writers. So you know, there's the man and there's 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:49.760 the work. I really understand someone who's young and hasn't 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:53.680 read on Ipol and says I don't want to read 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:57.199 those people. I really understand that. I really get that 0:18:57.720 --> 0:18:59.600 or an older person it says, I don't want to 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:04.040 read this people totally, but for me, you know, I 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.560 did read them and they are part of who I am. 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:12.679 So well. Remember McCaulay, you know, he says judgment is 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:16.320 simply trying to reject a part of what we are 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:21.600 because it hurts. The living cannot call the dead collect 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:25.840 they won't accept the charge, and it reverts. 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:27.920 Oh that's fantastic. 0:19:28.480 --> 0:19:33.639 I don't expect artists of any kind to be saints, 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:37.200 you know, to be without feelings and flaws and shortcomings. 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:42.920 But I think it is part of our moment that 0:19:43.200 --> 0:19:47.560 artists are so much in the public gaze now because 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:52.520 of social media, for instance, and so there is increasingly 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:58.040 this request, one might almost say, a demand that the 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:03.199 artist's private life, I must conform to an ideal in 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:07.440 the work, that if the artist is a prominent person, 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:13.120 that then their private life must be equally flawless. I mean, 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:14.520 if what am I trying to say? I think if 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:19.280 they're getting accolades for their work, then their selves should 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:20.800 also deserve accolades. 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:24.520 It's also the point that you make so well in 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:28.919 theory and practice about truth about the artist who professes 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.760 to tell law, share a truth, or illuminate a truth 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:38.879 that otherwise goes unremarked upon. Is that then that holds 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:41.000 them to some kind of moral standard, if they're an 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:41.919 arbiter of truth. 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.520 Oh? Absolutely, And I say I mean for Wolf, obviously, 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:51.119 she wrote quite brilliantly about women's lives and took the 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:55.959 patriarchy to tusk on that score. And therefore, you know, 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:59.960 there's the expectation that she has to also be virtual 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:04.399 when it comes to matters of race, for instance, or 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:07.480 anything else. And really she wasn't, you know. I mean, 0:21:07.560 --> 0:21:12.040 she was horrible about pretty much everyone in her diaries, 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:17.520 which are great, wonderful literary documents. And she was gossipy, 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:22.520 she was often hatty, and she was human. 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:27.240 I do like the way in which, in theory and 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:30.840 practice you do put forward a case that it's perhaps 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:34.720 in sexual jealousy that we best see the illustration of 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:39.240 our idea of ourself and how we live our lives 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:45.040 being diverging. You know, it's particularly a cute example, particularly 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:49.600 for a young feminist, to identify sexual jealousy in oneself. 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:52.840 Yeah. Sure, I mean, I think in the world there 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:56.800 are many ways in which the gap becomes evident politically, 0:21:57.000 --> 0:22:01.160 for instance. But you know, writing about a young woman 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:07.560 in any young person's life, you know, sex, desire, romantic 0:22:07.800 --> 0:22:13.160 entanglesments loom particularly large at this point in one's life. 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:16.720 And so that was the narrative I chose to tell. 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:20.199 There is the wish on the narrator's behalf to be 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:25.240 a good feminist and her inability to follow through when 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:30.680 it comes to the woman she constructs as her rival, 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:37.879 who is her lover's official. And I thought it was 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:42.320 good to write about jealousy because it is such a 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:48.480 source of shame, and shame is an interesting emotion because 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:56.480 it has tremendous silencing power. And what is being silenced, 0:22:56.520 --> 0:23:02.000 what cannot be expressed, is always of interest to a novelist, 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:06.359 isn't it. Yeah, you know, you want to express it just. 0:23:06.320 --> 0:23:11.880 At a technical level, at a level of form and process. 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:14.720 The sense of play and the sense of fun in 0:23:14.800 --> 0:23:17.320 this book runs all the way through it. And I'm 0:23:17.320 --> 0:23:19.840 curious about whether that was the experience of writing it 0:23:20.040 --> 0:23:20.520 as well. 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:25.080 That's a good question. I look, it undertook me a 0:23:25.160 --> 0:23:27.800 year to write, which is probably on average, half the 0:23:27.840 --> 0:23:29.680 time it takes me to write a book. But it's 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:34.720 half as long. There were many times of just work 0:23:34.880 --> 0:23:40.240 and you know the kind of dart that visits any writer, thinking, 0:23:40.359 --> 0:23:42.680 I don't know where this is going, who will want 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:45.159 to read this rubbish, etcetera, etcetera. I mean, all the 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:46.919 things that you know wake you up at three in 0:23:46.960 --> 0:23:51.720 the morning. But I would say that when I have 0:23:52.080 --> 0:23:57.200 finished the first draft, actually even when I've finished the book, 0:23:57.480 --> 0:23:59.159 I mean, there's always just a sense of, you know, 0:23:59.200 --> 0:24:04.280 little adrenaline rush because you've just actually made something. So 0:24:04.320 --> 0:24:07.120 there was that, but beyond that, I think I really 0:24:07.119 --> 0:24:09.920 felt a sense of exhilaration. I felt I had made 0:24:10.000 --> 0:24:15.399 something different and that was very pleasing to me. And 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:21.840 I would say that again without in any way trying 0:24:21.920 --> 0:24:26.320 to diminish the amount of work and revision that any 0:24:26.359 --> 0:24:29.880 novel requires. I felt with this bookcas with no other, 0:24:30.720 --> 0:24:36.840 that it was somehow already inside me and I just 0:24:37.840 --> 0:24:40.719 needed to be able to get it out there, to 0:24:40.760 --> 0:24:43.760 give it a form for it to exist in the world. 0:24:46.720 --> 0:24:50.720 Michelle Decretz's latest novel, Theory in Practice, is out now. 0:24:54.359 --> 0:24:56.720 Thank you so much for listening to another special episode 0:24:56.760 --> 0:24:59.600 of Read. This next week, I'll be sharing Michael's conversation 0:24:59.720 --> 0:25:02.560 with a American author Rachel Kong. As always, if you 0:25:02.600 --> 0:25:04.560 want to dive further into read this, you can search 0:25:04.600 --> 0:25:06.840 for it wherever you listen to podcasts. There are more 0:25:06.880 --> 0:25:09.359 than seventy episodes in the archive for you to enjoy. 0:25:09.760 --> 0:25:10.440 See you next week.