WEBVTT - Read This: Andrea Goldsmith Finds the Poetry In Death 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.759 Hi there, It's Ruby Jones and I'm here to introduce 0:00:02.840 --> 0:00:07.040 another episode of Read This, Schwartz Media's weekly books podcast. 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:10.320 It's hosted by the editor of The Monthly, Michael Williams, 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:13.400 and features conversations with some of the most talented writers 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:17.200 from Australia and around the world. In this episode, we're 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.720 going to hear from writer Andrea Goldsmith, whose latest novel, 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:25.800 The Buried Life, has just been published. And now I'm 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:27.840 joined by Michael to tell me a little bit more 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:28.720 about the episode. 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:32.479 Hi Michael, Ruby Jones. Hello, So Michael. 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:36.479 The Buried Life is Andrea Goldsmith's ninth novel, and she 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:39.040 might be best known for her book The Prosperous Thief, 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:41.920 which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin in two thousand 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:45.200 and three. But for those of our listeners who might 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:47.800 be a bit less familiar with Andrea and her work, 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:49.280 can you tell us a bit about her? 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.800 I am a huge Andrea Goldsmith fan. Her partner was 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.640 the late great poet Dorothy Porter, and so Andrew was 0:00:57.680 --> 0:00:59.960 one of this kind of power couple in the Austraa 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:04.120 literary scene. And her own work, not in poetry and prose, 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:08.000 is really significant and consequential as well, as you say, 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.120 nine novels, one of them shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:13.920 I think I first read her for her second novel, 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:18.640 Facing the Music, which was this terrific Melbourne based campus novel, 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:22.120 And there are too few campus novels in Australian literature 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:25.440 for my liking. It's a great subgenre anyway. Andrea is 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:29.680 known for this capacity to tell beautifully kind of humanist 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:36.200 realist stories generally centered around professionals, academics, people trying to 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:38.920 make a life for themselves in contemporary Australia. 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:43.880 So this latest novel, The Buried Life, it follows three characters, 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:47.560 one of them is a renowned scholar on death, which 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:51.120 is really what this book is concerned with. First and foremost, 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:52.160 would you say. 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:55.400 Yes, as you'll hear in the conversation, Andrea laughs quite 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:57.640 a bit about the idea of this as her death book. 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.000 She writes beautifully about death and loss and grief throughout 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.480 her work, but this is a book that is particularly 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:07.440 interested in the question of how we die, what it 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:09.919 means to us culturally, what it means to us personally, 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:12.320 what the reality of it is. And as you say, 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:15.520 one of the three protagonists of this book, Adrian is 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:20.000 a scholar of death, so he's someone who quite readily 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:23.959 intellectualizes the nature of death. But as the course of 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:26.440 the book goes on, it becomes clear that there's a 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.440 big gulf between what we think we know and what 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:30.840 we genuinely experience. 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:37.640 Coming up in just a moment, Andrea Goldsmith finds the 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:39.119 poetry in death. 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.160 I will come to death inevitably. I mean, we will 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.080 all come to death. But in this conversation today, I 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:57.280 will come to death at some point because it exerts 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:00.680 some centrifugal force on this book in many ways. But 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:02.480 I don't want to start with death. I want to 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:06.920 start with a lightning moment that one of your protagonists, Adrian, 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.800 has while driving back from Adelaide to Melbourne. Could you 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.960 describe that moment in the book for our listeners. 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:18.080 So Adrian is a temperate sort of man in his 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:25.120 early forties. He doesn't have grand passions. He's a scholar 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.000 of death. Actually he's a sociologist of death. And he's 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:31.560 driving back from a conference and it's winter, and he 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:35.840 stops at one of those coastal towns that are dead 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.360 in winter and he's sitting in a cafe and it's 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:42.480 on the top of a cliff and there's the crashing oceans, 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:47.240 the Southern Ocean, crashing ocean is below, and he's tired, 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:51.160 he's really tired, but he needs carbs to keep going, 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:56.080 to drive back to Melbourne. And suddenly he becomes aware 0:03:56.840 --> 0:04:01.560 of a piece of music. And it's even more singular 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:12.120 than that. It's a voice, it's a woman's voice, and 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:16.640 it seems to be coming to him from a long, 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:22.080 long tunnel, and it captures him and it takes him 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.080 to a place that he's actually never been before. And 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:29.680 yet this place that he's never been before, it sheds 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:35.560 light on his current life. When the music stops, he 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:39.200 dashes over to the woman who's serving behind the counter 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.719 and asks, what is this music. He's not a musical person, 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:49.920 he really isn't. And it's the final movement of Marla's 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:55.520 Song of the Earth. Deir upsheed the Farewell. And this 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:59.160 is a man who, for the past twelve months has 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:04.919 been the leave taking of his long term lover and finally, 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:08.719 finally he's able to say farewell to her. And it 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:11.320 was a piece of music for a man who's not musical. 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:14.560 I love the delicacy of referring to Adrian as a 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:17.799 temperate man, and I want to return to his emotional 0:05:17.839 --> 0:05:22.840 state and his ability or inability to articulate his own 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.880 narrative about his life in a moment. But before we 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:28.960 get to that, I want to know that lightning moment 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.200 of work of art changing a person and opening them 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.040 up to possibility in a way that they never knew before. 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:38.880 Have you experienced that yourself, Andrew Goldsmith? 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:43.400 Yes, I have a few times, in fact, quite a 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:49.520 few times, through two particular art forms, poetry and music. 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:54.080 Poetry which is the metaphorical arm of language, and music 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:57.120 which I kind of think of as the metaphorical arm 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:00.920 to life, and what they do both of them. Because 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:05.560 of this metaphorical aspect, it seems to me they take 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:09.120 the mind, the mind that's not being bothered by social 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.279 media and various other things, takes it to a place 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:17.599 that hasn't been before, and it seems to make connections 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:20.640 so that you come back to the present, you come 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:25.040 back to your life. And yes, there's illumination, something that 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:28.920 is different. It's happened many times, and it's happened once 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:33.640 in the visual arts and it was when I stood 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:35.679 in a room full of roth codes. 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:39.280 Oh yeah, I could say that that's a moment right 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:40.480 to the solar plexus. 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:45.599 Absolutely. I stood in this room and tears started rolling 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:49.600 down my face, and instead of doing what I'd normally do, 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:51.359 which has turned my mind to it and try and 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:54.039 work out what's going on, I said, no, just go 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:55.359 go with this. Go with this. 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:59.120 Do you think you're particularly open as a human being 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:02.240 to that kind of engagement with art? Do you think 0:07:02.279 --> 0:07:04.320 that's a muscle that you develop and then once you 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:06.400 have it, you're more open to it. 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.520 It's an interesting question. I mean, I think it's very 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:12.600 very much LinkedIn with the imagination, and from early childhood 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:16.800 I found a home in the imagination, and it's having 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:20.600 a ready imagination, which is to say, an open mind. 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.400 You are one of those novelists who write about other 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.440 art forms beautifully. Well. I think sometimes it's a hurdle 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:31.520 that writers can't find the right words to evoke the 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:34.000 kind of emotional response you might have to visual arts 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:37.280 or to music, and music has always played such an 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:42.120 important part in what you right. But I'm curious that 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:45.400 you've identified those lightning moments for you coming from poetry 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:50.800 rather than prose. Is that exclusively the case. 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:58.360 No, No, poetry is all about concision. So it's not 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:01.800 by chance that when people people are suffering, when they're 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:04.640 in pain or they're suffering grief, that they reach for 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:09.520 a poem and it sues, I mean, or it illuminates. 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:12.440 And that's certainly been the case for me. And there's 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:14.920 a lot of there's quite a lot of poetry in 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:19.480 this new book. Not reams of it, but epigrams, because 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.480 poetry manages to say in two lines what a novelist 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:26.280 would take a chapter to do. I've always looked to 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:31.080 poetry to help me understand the complexities of life. I'll 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:34.560 put it that way. Fiction has taught me about people 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:39.120 who are not me, taught me about places and feelings 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:43.400 and responses that are not me. I escape into fiction, 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.520 but maybe poetry escapes into me. 0:08:47.520 --> 0:08:50.800 I love that distinction, all right. So people who are 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.800 not you who you can hide in in fiction. Agriin 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:56.800 seems to me as a protagonist to be a prime 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:00.560 example of that, particularly as we discover him at the 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.320 start of the book. You know you use the word temperate. 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:07.880 At one point, he reflects that his relatively recently ex 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:11.840 partner would call him emotionally constipated. He is a man 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:16.960 not terribly in command of his own emotional state and 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:20.439 what drives in There's a scene very early on where 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:23.240 one of his friends discovers for the first time that 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:25.640 he was orphaned at a young age, that had lost 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:28.319 both of his parents, and the friend is offended, and 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:31.400 Adrian is a little put out by this. This is 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:33.160 just normal to him. This is the world as he 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.400 sees it, and it doesn't cross his mind that that 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.600 act of sharing stuff about himself is an act of 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:42.240 generosity or an active love. And I want to know, 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:44.680 have you that strikes me? You are not a person 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:47.160 who would hold back in sharing personal stories. 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:50.760 Oh totally hold back? Oh yes? 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:53.280 Oh are you like Adrian in that respect? 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:57.120 No, I think I do it with more panash or 0:09:57.160 --> 0:09:59.839 what I'll do is I'll filter. I'm a great filterer, 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:03.400 which is another reason why it's great to write. I mean, 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:08.120 my novels are all character driven. So no, I don't 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:14.760 see myself like Adrian at all. Adrianne's mother died when 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.400 he was four. His father committed suicide when Adrian was seven, 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:21.760 and he says this has no bearing on his life, 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:26.200 and you can say it was buried or you can say, well, 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:28.120 this was the sort of person he was at the 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:31.079 beginning of the novel, and he's not at the end, 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:35.120 and a buried life seems to surface for him. But 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:37.839 it was enough for him to say, well, of course 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:42.160 I haven't told you Mahindra, his friend, about my parents. 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:46.800 This is my normal. And he actually cites a colleague 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:51.280 whose mother had a long, long, long affair and Adrian 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.240 was horrified, but the colleague said, but that was my normal. 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:58.800 And I'm very interested, particularly in a novel that also 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:03.480 delves into fundaments intellism, both of religion and sought, how 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:08.520 one's normal can become entrenched and kind of blind you. 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:12.080 It seems to me that the great kind of beating 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:16.200 heart of this book, the counterpoint to those unexamined normals 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:20.040 that we endure in our lives, is friendship. This is 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:23.760 one of the kind of great novels that I remember 0:11:23.800 --> 0:11:27.920 reading about the strange business that is adult friendship. When 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:30.200 we think that we're reconciled with who we are in 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:32.920 the world, we think we know what our interactions with 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:35.920 other people are. To open ourselves up to someone new 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:38.240 and to have to give an account for our lives 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:41.839 to someone new. Is this exhilarating thing, And I think 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:43.760 you capture that so beautifully. 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:48.120 I've delved into friendship in most of the novels, particularly Reunion, 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:51.600 which is about a group of friends. Here as it 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:57.959 evolves the Lynchpin, there are three main characters. Adrian, a 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:01.200 woman Laura who's your town planned in her late fifties, 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:05.720 who has been long married to her husband, whom she 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:11.040 met at university. She fell deeply and blindly in love 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:15.160 and that has not changed. And the third person is 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:21.040 Kezy Kaziah. She's in her late twenties. She was raised 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:25.960 in a fundamentalist Pentecostal community on the outskirts of Melbourne, 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:29.080 and because of the choices she's made, one of them 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:32.400 is to do with her sexuality, she has been banished 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:36.640 from that community and also exiled by her family. And 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:40.520 the interesting thing about friendship is that I actually see 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:45.600 Kesey the youngest, the youngest being the full crumb the 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:50.320 lynch pin. They all become friends, there's and more, but 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.240 I see Kezy as that full crumb, and it was 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:55.600 nice to give it to the young one. 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:57.880 I'm interested in that phrase. Nice to give it to 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.080 the young one. When you write a book like this, 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:04.280 and as you said, it's very much a character driven book, 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:08.000 do you create the characters and then follow it where 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:10.559 it takes you, or do you have a more schematic approach. 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:15.240 It's very organic with this book. The first character was Adrian, 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:19.480 and I've long wanted to write a relationship between an 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:22.640 older woman and a younger man. So Laura came next, 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:27.200 and in fact Kezy was the third. Because I've got 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:32.240 deeper into the novel, I understood that I wanted to 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:38.680 explore this notion of fundamentalism in relationships. I mean that 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:43.080 black and white, it's the opposite to uncertainty, that the 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:48.000 human project is all about uncertainty, and yet we chase 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:52.559 against it instead of embracing it. And one way of 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:58.120 getting rid of the uncomfortable chaf is by seizing on 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:02.160 an ideology or or anything where all of the answers 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:05.360 are there. And I think it also happens in relationships too. 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:12.640 I think it absolutely does so when building the character 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:16.320 of Laura, because the key thing about how she defines 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:20.280 herself when we're first introduced to her is her marriage. 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.600 She has more or less subsumed everything else about her identity, 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:29.200 about her imaginative life, about her sense of possibility to 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:32.760 this marriage with a man who she believes is a 0:14:33.040 --> 0:14:37.280 perfect husband. I don't want to give away the pleasures 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:39.040 of narrative in this book and the ways in which 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:42.280 stuff unfils, So I'm going to be a bit circumspect 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.720 about how to say this. But Laura and Tony's marriage 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:50.080 was that written as the product of marriages. You've observed people, 0:14:50.120 --> 0:14:50.480 you know. 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:55.520 I just want to say one thing. When we meet Laura, 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:59.440 we actually meet her in her work role, and she 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:04.160 is wrong and she's in control. She is everything that 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:08.800 she's not when she's with Tony. And we also learn 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:13.920 when she first met Tony and why why she just 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:18.520 fell for him. As for the relationship that does develop, 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:22.359 one very dominant partner and the other one that subsumes 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:27.880 themselves despite being so capable and intelligent and having friends 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:30.840 and all of those sorts of things, but subsumes themselves 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:37.280 in the marriage under the husband. I've seen it in marriages. 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:42.360 I've seen it in relationships where there is no marriage. 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:46.720 I've seen it between sisters and brothers. I think it's very, 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:53.760 very common. I mean in any relationship. Striving for that equality. 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:57.760 It's very very hard. It's very hard, and particularly if 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:02.560 I mean Tony has tickets on himself, he shared those 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:07.720 tickets with Laura throughout their marriage, really, and he knew 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:10.640 which buttons to press with her. That's the other thing. 0:16:10.920 --> 0:16:15.960 Yeah, No, it's a kind of chilling portrait, partly because 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:17.760 it's you know, I think we've all had that thing 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:21.040 of having someone we love with the partner who we 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:25.280 can see diminishes them or holds them back from what 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:29.240 they're capable of. It's quite a distressing thing to be proximant. 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:32.960 To, it is, and you can't when someone's caught in 0:16:33.000 --> 0:16:36.880 a situation like that. They are caught, they've got all 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:42.800 of the answers. You cannot say anything. You can't because 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.880 they'll do what Laura says. I mean, Laura turns around 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:47.000 and says, you don't understand. 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:50.800 I think one of the things that's so delighted me 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:54.240 in this book was you don't fall into any of 0:16:54.320 --> 0:17:01.040 the ubiquitous traps about generational misunderstanding or disagreement. Even though 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:04.840 Kezy is younger than the other two characters and significantly 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:10.280 younger than Laura, their friendship is firstly has real integrity 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:12.720 to it. But the ways in which they relate, the 0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:14.800 ways in which they understand each other, the ways in 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:18.399 which they view the world, has nothing to do with 0:17:19.119 --> 0:17:21.720 generational divide. And I think it's really lovely. Did you 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:24.199 have to work at that? Or is that reflective of 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:25.399 the kind of friendships you have? 0:17:26.840 --> 0:17:31.359 It's something that I don't know how common it is. 0:17:33.040 --> 0:17:37.040 I actually didn't even think in those terms. It was 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:42.120 more that Kezy she's only twenty eight, but she's been 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.920 through a lot, and she has understandings that a lot 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:51.160 of much older people don't have, and Laura actually needed 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:56.639 those understandings. And maybe it's the very difference of Kez 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:01.520 that allowed Laura then to take what she was seeing 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:06.280 and hearing and relate it to her own her own situation. 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:10.320 But certainly, I mean in the real world, I mean 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:14.800 I have friendships with younger people and I really really 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:18.639 value them. 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:22.360 When we return, Andrea reveals why she's always been fascinated 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:25.600 by death and shares some of the poems that make 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:28.359 it all make sense to her. We'll be right back. 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:41.960 I don't want to give anything away, but suffice it 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:45.440 to say death isn't only an abstraction. In this book, 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.680 it's not only the subject of Adrian's field of study. 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:51.520 He and the other characters in the book have to 0:18:51.560 --> 0:18:54.239 contend with a very real death that occurs late in 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:57.760 its pages, and that contrast between the theory and the 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:01.560 reality is almost like an assault, as this brutality to 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:05.320 it after pages of thinking about it philosophically, thinking about 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:09.520 it poetically, the prose of death is a very different creature. 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:12.520 There's an amazing passage in this late part of the 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:16.240 book where Adrien is reflecting on that gulf between imagined 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:19.359 and real death. And I asked Andrea to read it 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:20.240 to us. 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:24.760 But I know nothing about death, nothing about death in 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:27.880 the hand, death in the heart. I don't know how 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:32.920 to watch someone die. Death has been and he paused 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:37.280 and took a deep breath. A curiosity for me, a fascination. 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:42.320 I've been half in love with easeful death, but there's 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:46.080 nothing easeful about death. I knew nothing about how death 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:50.480 attacks you, colonizes you, how it brings on horror and 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:56.439 sadness and futility and anger. I know nothing about death. 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.359 That bit really doubt at me, because that gulf between 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:06.280 the imagined, I mean you talked about how the ability 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.240 to be moved by art is about imaginative suppleness and capacity. 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:13.040 But the gulf between what we imagine and what we 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:18.159 experience is a vast one always, And I think that's 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:20.520 why that passage so jumped out at me. Is it 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:26.840 suggested that there's the poems, there's the beautiful kind of 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:29.760 words that are said about it, and then there's the reality. 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:35.560 Yep, absolutely absolutely got it. I think also what feeds 0:20:35.640 --> 0:20:40.159 that is that sense of the sense of rupture, and 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:44.320 there's nothing, there is nothing that compares with that. 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:48.679 As we've touched on already, Adrian is a scholar of death. 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:51.639 He is at great pains to say that that's got 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:53.639 nothing to do with being often at a young age. 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:57.520 That's just a coincidence. But he is fascinated by death, 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:00.159 and I do know that that is something that you 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:05.000 draw from a personal fascination. Tell me why death is 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:11.119 such an important, interesting, flexible subject to play with. 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:15.920 Like uncertainty, which is common to us, all, so is death. 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:20.160 And I've always, for most of my life I've been 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:24.720 captivated by the mysteries of death, but also that so 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:29.160 many people are frightened of death, and to me, it's 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:32.560 been I've said this to my father decades ago, who 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:36.840 he had a friend who had cancer and the prognosis 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:40.440 was not good and my father was quite distressed about 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:44.040 it because his friend was very, very depressed. And I said, 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:48.639 you need to let Charlie know that you do it 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:52.919 in your terms. You're alive until you die. And I 0:21:52.960 --> 0:21:57.000 have a great, great belief, and it's here in this 0:21:57.080 --> 0:22:01.000 book too, that you live until you die, and the 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:06.119 idea of a process of dying is an oxymoron. You 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:08.320 live and then you die. That's not to say there 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:10.359 might be suffering and pain and a whole lot of 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:12.879 other things, but the people who suffer death are the 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:16.000 people who are left behind. And this all seemed fairly 0:22:16.480 --> 0:22:21.000 clear to me quite young. At the same time, of course, 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:25.600 there are mysteries about death, so I wanted to plunge 0:22:25.640 --> 0:22:28.880 into it. I mean, I do believe that religion would 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:30.680 be on its knees if we didn't have such a 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:34.520 great fear of death. I think the poets, in particular, 0:22:35.640 --> 0:22:39.280 they've found death a great subject to explore because it's 0:22:39.359 --> 0:22:41.359 totally open ended, which of course is one of the 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:44.880 things that scares people. You know, there are over two 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:49.160 thousand requiems that have been written, so music is there too. 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:53.800 So to me, it's just it's this vast universe that's 0:22:53.840 --> 0:22:56.440 there to be explored. 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:01.399 I understand you've sat with now a different people as they. 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:08.760 Died, but there've been other I've been uncommonly unlucky. Two 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:12.120 of my closest friends from school died before their time, 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:15.280 and of course my partner, Dorothy did. I was there 0:23:15.320 --> 0:23:18.720 when my father and mother died. So I mean there's 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:22.200 been Yes, I've had my fair share. 0:23:22.640 --> 0:23:26.200 There is and I again don't want to give anything away, 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:30.199 but in this novel there is death, and not just 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:32.320 in the abstract or as a field of study, but 0:23:32.440 --> 0:23:37.400 as a reality that the characters have to endure and navigate. 0:23:38.480 --> 0:23:40.840 Did you always know that that was going to be 0:23:40.920 --> 0:23:42.600 part of the story you were telling or did that 0:23:42.640 --> 0:23:43.520 take you by surprise? 0:23:43.680 --> 0:23:47.440 No, it's not. I mean, I just love the way 0:23:47.880 --> 0:23:51.040 novels develop, and the reason why you do twenty drafts 0:23:51.119 --> 0:23:53.479 is because you know they have to find their center 0:23:54.040 --> 0:23:57.760 and the death that happens towards well, actually we know, 0:23:58.440 --> 0:24:02.200 we know those problems about the middle of the novel, 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:05.480 but the death happens at the end. It wasn't there 0:24:05.920 --> 0:24:11.239 first up. I mean, it's quite interesting that it was 0:24:11.680 --> 0:24:18.920 in Adrian's exploration of death that I realized the possibility 0:24:19.080 --> 0:24:21.680 of bringing in a death. 0:24:21.960 --> 0:24:22.080 You know. 0:24:22.200 --> 0:24:24.560 He says at one stage that he's written hundreds of 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:28.679 thousands of words about death, but not about suicide, and 0:24:28.760 --> 0:24:33.080 yet his father committed suicide, and when it comes to 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:36.560 a death that's close to him, he actually says that 0:24:37.359 --> 0:24:41.640 he knows nothing about death. Very different when it's up close. 0:24:42.200 --> 0:24:45.040 Of course. I mean, on that note, are there certain 0:24:45.080 --> 0:24:49.080 poets or poems that you particularly return to things that resonate? 0:24:49.920 --> 0:24:53.280 There are some poets, I mean, look, Dylan Thomas's Do 0:24:53.359 --> 0:24:56.600 Not Go Gentle is a fairly good example, but there 0:24:56.680 --> 0:25:03.840 are some other ones that I've just Douglas Dunn, English 0:25:03.880 --> 0:25:07.399 poet wrote a collection called Elegies after the death of 0:25:07.440 --> 0:25:11.720 his wife. They provide consolation. But as soon as you 0:25:11.800 --> 0:25:14.800 talk about consolation, as soon as you're talking about that 0:25:14.800 --> 0:25:18.719 that quiet tutors you're reading, you're going places. And yes, 0:25:19.040 --> 0:25:23.600 so it's illuminating to Edward Hirsch has written a collection 0:25:23.680 --> 0:25:27.280 called Gabrielle, and it's about the early death of his 0:25:27.440 --> 0:25:33.120 son Gabrielle. So these are sweets of poems, Ted Hughes's 0:25:33.119 --> 0:25:37.400 crow poems, and I have to say Ted Hughes's Birthday letters. 0:25:37.440 --> 0:25:42.760 They are full of regret and anguish and all of 0:25:42.800 --> 0:25:45.840 those sorts of things. And yes, while a lot of 0:25:45.880 --> 0:25:50.600 the poems are not specifically about Sylvia Platt's death, they 0:25:50.720 --> 0:25:52.840