Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Ruby Jones and I'm delighted to share
Speaker 1: another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast,
Speaker 1: hosted by editor of the Monthly Michael Williams. It features
Speaker 1: conversations with some of the most talented writers from Australia
Speaker 1: and around the world. In this episode, Michael is in
Speaker 1: conversation with Turkish born Paris based writer I Shagl Chavas.
Speaker 1: As usual, I'm joined by Michael to tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the episode.
Speaker 2: Hi Michael, Hi Ruby.
Speaker 1: So Michael, the title of this episode is nothing happens
Speaker 1: in I shouldgle Chavas's book, and that's great, But as
Speaker 1: a reader who loves a good plot, tell me why
Speaker 1: it is a good thing that nothing happens in this book.
Speaker 2: Yes, Look, that title is tending to be slightly cheeky
Speaker 2: or the very least self parodic, because what I know
Speaker 2: about myself is I am an absolute whore for narrative
Speaker 2: and like I love a good plot. I like a
Speaker 2: crime novel or a thriller. I like fick over nonfiction.
Speaker 2: I want a story that drags me along and is
Speaker 2: gripping and page turning, and where that's kind of front
Speaker 2: and center to what's going on. But I'm also a
Speaker 2: bit of an eclectic reader. So occasionally what you want
Speaker 2: is a book that doesn't do that. It doesn't tick
Speaker 2: those boxes. Instead, what it does is give you world
Speaker 2: building and character and beautiful prose on the line where
Speaker 2: part of the point of the exercise is luxuriating in
Speaker 2: the author and their voice rather than turning the page
Speaker 2: to see what happens next. And as far as books
Speaker 2: like that go, The Anthropologist by Aishagl Savage is a
Speaker 2: prime example.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think you've definitely got me interested. Tell me
Speaker 1: a bit more about the Anthropologists.
Speaker 2: I need to be very clear, it's hyperbole to say
Speaker 2: that this is a book about nothing. It's a book
Speaker 2: about a relationship a couple called Asia and Manu, and
Speaker 2: they're hunting for a new apartment to buy. The city
Speaker 2: therein isn't named. They're both foreigners to that city, so
Speaker 2: they've got a particularly tight kind of unit between the
Speaker 2: two of them. But that's more or less the entire book.
Speaker 2: They go, they see apartments, then they sit in cafes
Speaker 2: and do post mortems about what they liked, what they
Speaker 2: didn't like, the kind of imagined future that they could
Speaker 2: have in an apartment like that, and that's kind of
Speaker 2: the whole thing. There's no conflict, there's no false drama.
Speaker 2: There's just these two people who love each other and
Speaker 2: they're day in miniature, and there's something beautiful about that,
Speaker 2: the immediacy, because it's a reflection not just of a
Speaker 2: book where plot isn't front and center, but it's also
Speaker 2: a reflection of that time in your early twenties where
Speaker 2: you've got adult freedoms but maybe not the full weight
Speaker 2: of adult responsibilities. And so they're luxuriating impossibility and just
Speaker 2: in what's in front of them day by day, and
Speaker 2: there's something kind of delicious.
Speaker 1: About it coming up in just a moment. Nothing happens
Speaker 1: in Asha Gulshavas's book, and that's great.
Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit about a moment when it
Speaker 2: became clear to you that Future Selves, which is such
Speaker 2: a wonderful story but is in many ways the genesis
Speaker 2: of this novel. What was the moment when you got
Speaker 2: a sense that Future Selves could be expanded outwards or
Speaker 2: could kind of encompass a different, broader set of concerns.
Speaker 3: I wrote Future Selves during the pandemic, and that, you know,
Speaker 3: the way that people's lives were going in so many
Speaker 3: extreme directions, and you could really see disparity when when
Speaker 3: people had to be confined, had to go to work
Speaker 3: or had to stop work, were completely alone, or weren't community,
Speaker 3: those extremes became so apparent. And that's when I wrote
Speaker 3: the story about a couple who is looking for an
Speaker 3: apartment to buy and a young boy who has a
Speaker 3: tragic ending. And when the story was published, I was
Speaker 3: a little bit by the feedback I got by how
Speaker 3: many people had connected to it, and I thought, oh, like,
Speaker 3: maybe there is something here, and I was quite heartened.
Speaker 3: And I also thought there is something so liberating about
Speaker 3: the framework of looking for an apartment to buy. I
Speaker 3: could sort of continue writing this for a really long time,
Speaker 3: the story of the boy and the tragedy that befalls him.
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, it's too finite, it's too soon,
Speaker 3: and that can't really define the novel, or that it
Speaker 3: will not lead the story further. So I had to
Speaker 3: get rid of it, and so I was left with
Speaker 3: just this apartment hunt and I started expanding from there.
Speaker 3: And also something else that happened at the same time,
Speaker 3: which was because we weren't going out, and because we
Speaker 3: weren't seeing friends or eating in restaurants, daily life started
Speaker 3: appearing as something very exotic, and it's you know, some
Speaker 3: people ask like, oh, it's so courageous that you wrote
Speaker 3: about daily life, or you know, you can see it
Speaker 3: so crisply, But actually I wasn't. I was removed from it,
Speaker 3: and that's why I was able to write it. And
Speaker 3: I thought, wouldn't it be so fun to write a
Speaker 3: book in which characters are going to cafes and hanging
Speaker 3: out and having drinks.
Speaker 2: That does make a lot of sense, that it's wild
Speaker 2: fantasy that they could experience these basic, mandane things that
Speaker 2: we take for granted and the rest of the time. Yes,
Speaker 2: in us here a manner, you have possibly one of
Speaker 2: the happier couples committed to the literary page in a
Speaker 2: long time. And I want to know, is that kind
Speaker 2: of wish fulfillment as well? Is that just kind of
Speaker 2: Was that a deliberate choice to have them be so harmonious?
Speaker 3: It really was, And this was the number one greatest
Speaker 3: challenge and obstacle for the book. When I knew what
Speaker 3: the structure was and that what the novel was going
Speaker 3: to be, I said, Okay, this is a book about
Speaker 3: a couple who love one another, and that's sort of it.
Speaker 3: And again, you know this, it's within the framework of
Speaker 3: early youth, so they don't have that many reasons for arguments.
Speaker 3: I'm sure Manu and Asia, when they have children or
Speaker 3: when their parents get sick, they will start getting into arguments,
Speaker 3: but it's this time in their life that's totally idyllic.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, for some reason, you are
Speaker 3: not allowed happy couples in literature, even though it's the thing.
Speaker 3: I know people who are happy. I know lots of
Speaker 3: young couples who love one another and that's sort of it,
Speaker 3: and they have silly arguments but nothing existential, And I thought,
Speaker 3: why can't that be the basis of the book? And
Speaker 3: it kept on becoming a problem with editors who wanted drama,
Speaker 3: who wanted who said like, oh, you know, how nice
Speaker 3: that this is the background, but surely now we need
Speaker 3: some big plot development. And they get separated and then
Speaker 3: they come back together, and I say, but no, that
Speaker 3: you know, life doesn't always work that way, and people
Speaker 3: can continue peacefully loving one another and seeing these apartments
Speaker 3: and the thing is that they don't have that much
Speaker 3: at stake with the apartments hunt. I think that's why
Speaker 3: they're not arguing. They're like, ah, well, we can still
Speaker 3: continue living in our rented place. And they really are children.
Speaker 2: You say, not that much at stake, But seriously, if
Speaker 2: you put in a chapter where they go to Ikea
Speaker 2: to get some furniture, then they'd be broken up by
Speaker 2: the end of the book.
Speaker 3: It's very sty they're not buying furniture. They you know,
Speaker 3: they buy things from the flea market, so it's probably
Speaker 3: very cheap and they don't have to assemble it. And again,
Speaker 3: it doesn't feel like a big commitment when they buy
Speaker 3: it from the free markets, so there are no arguments
Speaker 3: acquire right.
Speaker 2: The introduction of an Alan cab would just main kind
Speaker 2: of conflict avoid I am. I do think there's something
Speaker 2: too in the point you make about how old they are.
Speaker 2: You know, part of this period in their life. Part
Speaker 2: of what you're capturing is that period where adult capacity
Speaker 2: has arrived, but adult responsibility is just around the corner.
Speaker 2: That it's a period where you're kind of in a
Speaker 2: bit of a bubble, right, and it's.
Speaker 3: It's such a short period and it's so it's full
Speaker 3: of freedom and joy and hypothetical conversations and getting drunk
Speaker 3: and you know, smoking joints, And I thought, what a
Speaker 3: fun time to try and capture. And I guess I
Speaker 3: was also writing it at a time when I was
Speaker 3: about to cross to the other side of real adult responsibility,
Speaker 3: and that that time of being youthful adults started feeling
Speaker 3: quite exotic to me as well.
Speaker 2: It is funny because the book resists nostalgia about family tradition,
Speaker 2: that resists nostalgia about homelands or about whatever those concepts mean.
Speaker 2: But it is an intensely nostalgic book for the period
Speaker 2: that it describes, for the lifestyle that it kind of
Speaker 2: demonstrates as possible. And I think that gives it a
Speaker 2: kind of lovely, almost a note of melancholy to my mind.
Speaker 2: But maybe that's what happens when you read it in
Speaker 2: your forty six and this kind of freedom is far
Speaker 2: behind you. But it did seem to me to be
Speaker 2: a kind of captule of a particular kind of hope.
Speaker 2: You know. The idea of having a day where you
Speaker 2: wrote together is such a kind of beautiful concept, I think.
Speaker 3: Yes, And it's only in that phase and it sort
Speaker 3: of vanishes forever and perhaps then comes back when you're
Speaker 3: quite old and have abandoned certain worldly responsibilities once again.
Speaker 3: You know, within that space of freedom or hope or possibility,
Speaker 3: there is also this constant anxiety, right And when you're
Speaker 3: in the period of rotting and hanging out, you're also
Speaker 3: asking yourself, Oh, should I be acting a bit more adults?
Speaker 3: Should I be looking into mortgages, or you know, not
Speaker 3: drinking as much and going out for a run in
Speaker 3: the morning, all of these things. And this is some
Speaker 3: of a question I get asked a lot by young
Speaker 3: people during readings, what would you suggest we do in
Speaker 3: this time of our lives, because we also think we
Speaker 3: should be committing and figuring out what to do. And
Speaker 3: I and I tell them just enjoy it, just relax.
Speaker 3: You know, you are going to have responsibility so soon
Speaker 3: you don't even have to decide or like, go take
Speaker 3: that path. I love the rotting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh no, The only thing to do is do nothing,
Speaker 2: embrace it, be in it. Then how does that connect
Speaker 2: with us HER's work as a documentary filmmaker. How does
Speaker 2: the person who is the observer, who is the chronic,
Speaker 2: who is the anthropologist, are they ever truly in the moment.
Speaker 2: I mean, she feels like she is, but how much
Speaker 2: is there a necessary arms length from the person who's
Speaker 2: studying everything that happens around us.
Speaker 3: He is a pretty anxious person. So as as much
Speaker 3: as she feels nostalgic for that period of rotting and
Speaker 3: nostalgic or very warmly towards this moment of youth, she
Speaker 3: is also very anxious. And she is an observer, and
Speaker 3: she's always going to be distancing herself or taking a
Speaker 3: step back from these moments of pure pleasure and saying, Okay,
Speaker 3: what are we doing here and what does it mean?
Speaker 3: And I think it's with that type of anxiety that
Speaker 3: she embarks on the documentary project because she's very curious
Speaker 3: about how other people live and you know, what are
Speaker 3: things that they do that maybe she and Manu aren't doing?
Speaker 3: An how do people give shape and meaning to their
Speaker 3: daily lives? And I think the documentary sort of mimics
Speaker 3: her quest in life to you know, to give shape,
Speaker 3: to give meaning, to have some sort of a reason
Speaker 3: to account for the hours of rotting or going to
Speaker 3: the park or taking a walk.
Speaker 2: You also capture the ways in which in a relationship
Speaker 2: we all become anthropologists, that the thing about the two
Speaker 2: of them is great rehashes of the things that go
Speaker 2: on in their lives. That they not only go and
Speaker 2: look at these apartments, but then they will sit in
Speaker 2: a cafe afterwards endlessly kind of rehearsing the stories that
Speaker 2: they're going to tell about it. That part of what
Speaker 2: makes any partnership, any relationship, really, but a romantic union
Speaker 2: in particular, is that business of post mortems on everyone
Speaker 2: and everything around you all times.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that's their form of intimacy. I think that's
Speaker 3: sort of their own private ritual and culture. Also, I
Speaker 3: think rehashing is especially important for us in Mono because
Speaker 3: there are so few symbolic or invisible structures that are
Speaker 3: keeping them together. No religion, you know, no ceremonies. So
Speaker 3: the rehashing is a ceremony of its own. It's a
Speaker 3: way of repeating and therefore making solid the narratives that
Speaker 3: they come up.
Speaker 2: With when we return, I should go. Shares the approach
Speaker 2: behind writing the Anthropologists what she calls a fragmentary style,
Speaker 2: and she explains why she wants to make foreignness the
Speaker 2: status quality in her rite, We'll be right back. You
Speaker 2: show extraordinary deadness in this novel as a kind of miniaturist,
Speaker 2: creating these really small moments that absolutely sing that their
Speaker 2: smallness and their clarity is kind of the point. That
Speaker 2: conflict between characters would overshadow that, and geographical detail would
Speaker 2: overshadow that, and by stripping all of that away, the
Speaker 2: very small seems to be your project here.
Speaker 3: Yes, And the fragmentary approach started because I wanted to
Speaker 3: get away from the short story and rewire my brain,
Speaker 3: so I wasn't thinking in the tone of the story.
Speaker 3: But as I kept breaking it down and giving titles
Speaker 3: to each of the episodes, I thought, oh, well, this
Speaker 3: is actually you know, this is the point of the book.
Speaker 3: It's a point about daily life, and daily life does happen.
Speaker 3: It is about the small. And you know, you can't
Speaker 3: write about daily life in a in an epic structure
Speaker 3: or as a family saga, because it would become a farce.
Speaker 3: You know, if I created a traditional novel arc around
Speaker 3: having coffee and meeting up with friends, it just wouldn't work.
Speaker 3: So the episodic also rescued me because it showed me
Speaker 3: a way to write about daily life and to honor
Speaker 3: daily life, you know, without maybe tiring the reader or
Speaker 3: trying their patients.
Speaker 2: I'm interested in the decision not to ground the anthropologists
Speaker 2: in a specific physical place or a specific cultural tradition.
Speaker 2: You know, the city goes Um named, Your characters' backgrounds
Speaker 2: referred to elliptically rather than with any specificity. How important
Speaker 2: was it to you that there was that distance from
Speaker 2: the grounded in that level of the narrative.
Speaker 3: I thought so much about this, and I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: it is an autobiographical book. It's most more autobiographical than
Speaker 3: anything I've written. Why not sort of own up to
Speaker 3: its inspirations. Why not say it's a Turk living in
Speaker 3: Paris and she's married to a Latvian And I would
Speaker 3: try it out and it would be okay. But there
Speaker 3: was something lost which I couldn't quite name, but instinctively
Speaker 3: I knew that that's not what I wanted to do
Speaker 3: in the book. And I think what was lost was
Speaker 3: a universality, This sense of a foreign experience or a
Speaker 3: sense of youthful estrangement that I was trying to get to,
Speaker 3: that exists everywhere. And it's not just you know, expats
Speaker 3: who feel it. It's also people you know who move
Speaker 3: from one city to another in their own countries, or
Speaker 3: maybe it's people in their own cities who feel a stranger,
Speaker 3: who feel foreign just because they're a little quirky. And
Speaker 3: I thought the book is more about that than it
Speaker 3: is about the specific life of a Turk living in Paris,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, that comes with a lot of history,
Speaker 3: it comes with a certain you know, it comes with stereotypes,
Speaker 3: that comes with different expectations. And I didn't want to
Speaker 3: be writing that, but it's something I do quite often
Speaker 3: actually in my stories in my previous book as well,
Speaker 3: that I'll try to blur the lines of geographical settings
Speaker 3: and people's backgrounds. And I think, again, this might be
Speaker 3: my autobiographical instinct, that I don't define myself simply as
Speaker 3: a Turk, or simply as a Turk living in France,
Speaker 3: or simply as a Turk who's also bilingual. There are
Speaker 3: so many aspects to my identity. But I think to
Speaker 3: everyone's identity that it feels restricting to have to pick
Speaker 3: geography and then to to write within the prejudices or
Speaker 3: the expectations of that geography.
Speaker 2: I think you write about foreignness and the experience of
Speaker 2: being a foreigner in ways that are different to any
Speaker 2: that I remember reading before. And I would love it
Speaker 2: if you would reflect on what the concept of the
Speaker 2: foreign means to you.
Speaker 3: I have a short story collection coming out in a
Speaker 3: few months and I was doing an interview for it,
Speaker 3: and the interviewer asked me, are there any things that
Speaker 3: surprised you about the themes in this book? And you know,
Speaker 3: it's so interesting that, you know, I write about people
Speaker 3: in foreign places all the time, and then when I
Speaker 3: put the collection together, I thought, oh, everyone is a foreigner.
Speaker 3: How interesting that I gie born using this trope. And
Speaker 3: I almost think that it comes to me. You know,
Speaker 3: if you're a writer who always writes about characters in
Speaker 3: their homeland, it's sort of like the neutral state. No
Speaker 3: one will question you. You know, no one will say, oh,
Speaker 3: you keep writing about Americans. It's just, you know, that's
Speaker 3: sort of the basis. It is the foundation. And I
Speaker 3: think for me, foreignness is almost like a form of belonging,
Speaker 3: and it's probably through that. You know, that's my neutral state,
Speaker 3: and that's where I start from, and you know, obviously
Speaker 3: from my autobiography, because I grew up in so many
Speaker 3: different places and I belong to different linguistic traditions and
Speaker 3: possibly in my writing, I'm trying to make foreigness something
Speaker 3: that is the status quo.
Speaker 2: I think you do it so effectively. And I'm glad
Speaker 2: you made that point about foreigness as a state of belonging,
Speaker 2: because I think that's where for me, the great difference
Speaker 2: in the way you approach it presents itself that instead
Speaker 2: of this idea of alienation of the other, or distancing
Speaker 2: your characters the characters who define themselves by their foreigness,
Speaker 2: rather than in opposition to it.
Speaker 3: Right exactly. And I think you know, when when I
Speaker 3: was growing up and a child in the nineties, we
Speaker 3: there was so much emphasis on understanding cultural differences, you know,
Speaker 3: appreciating cultural differences and noticing the ways different people do things.
Speaker 3: And I think as I lived in different places that
Speaker 3: became actually quite strange to me that we would remark
Speaker 3: on so many sort of regular daily things as like
Speaker 3: something to appreciate and mark differences, rather than find some
Speaker 3: sort of a tribe among people who are comfortable in
Speaker 3: that state of not quite belonging.
Speaker 2: Given that, I mean, it seems interesting to me that
Speaker 2: Asia is so committed to the idea of having a
Speaker 2: native friend in the city that they find themselves that
Speaker 2: the idea of having someone who does have deeper links
Speaker 2: to the place where they are is something that matters
Speaker 2: to her.
Speaker 3: I think for her that is more exotic than you
Speaker 3: know what I was saying about, remarking on differences that
Speaker 3: someone could still be living in their town of birth
Speaker 3: and they know, you know, Waiters by name. That to
Speaker 3: her is very very special, and there is something there
Speaker 3: is something embarrassing about being a foreigner somewhere and not
Speaker 3: being integrated to its native culture. And yet that sort
Speaker 3: of is the reality of most of expatriate life. You
Speaker 3: become friends with other foreigners. It's important for her to
Speaker 3: have Lena as this exotic friend, exotic native friend. And
Speaker 3: then you find out that Lena actually also is playing
Speaker 3: on the idea of the native, and that she is
Speaker 3: exoticizing herself in ways that Ussia thinks a native should be.
Speaker 3: And her background is different, that she grew up in
Speaker 3: the suburbs, and she's not this you know, cool and
Speaker 3: chic urbanite as she portrays well.
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the things about foreigness, about living
Speaker 2: in a place that is new to you one way
Speaker 2: or the other, is the capacity for reinvention, and part
Speaker 2: of what's so lovely in The Anthropologists is that, in
Speaker 2: many ways it's a story about the way a relationship,
Speaker 2: a couple, a unit can reinvent themselves towards one another
Speaker 2: rather than distinctly.
Speaker 3: I think also when because they're so free in their
Speaker 3: lack of roots, it's not just that they're reinventing themselves,
Speaker 3: it's also they are deciding on their own culture, siding
Speaker 3: on their ways of life, and they can really say, okay, well,
Speaker 3: what are our traditions going to be, what are our
Speaker 3: rituals going to be? And they can create all of
Speaker 3: that from scratch, and that's quite a joyful experience. That's
Speaker 3: also another way of thinking of foreignness as not a
Speaker 3: state that's constantly lacking or defined by a sort of absence,
Speaker 3: but a state that has a lot of possibility and
Speaker 3: of freedom and creativity to it because of what it
Speaker 3: allows you to recreate or decide on your own.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for the gift that you've given
Speaker 2: us with not just this book, but all your books,
Speaker 2: and for being on the show.
Speaker 3: Today, Michael, this was such a pleasure. Thank you for
Speaker 3: having me.
Speaker 2: I should go. Savalja's novel The Anthropologists is available at
Speaker 2: all good bookstores now, and do keep an eye out
Speaker 2: for her forthcoming collection of short stories. It's called Long
Speaker 2: Distance and it'll hit the shelves this July.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to another special episode
Speaker 1: of Read This. We'll have another episode of read This
Speaker 1: to share with you next Sunday. As always, if you
Speaker 1: want to dive further into Read This, you can search
Speaker 1: for it wherever you listen to podcasts. There are more
Speaker 1: than eighty episodes in the archive for you to enjoy.
Speaker 1: See you next week.