Speaker 1: Hi there, It's Ruby Jones and I'm here to share
Speaker 1: a very special episode of Read This. Hosted by editor
Speaker 1: of the monthly Michael Williams, the show features conversations with
Speaker 1: some of the most talented writers from Australia and around
Speaker 1: the world. This week, we're going back to where it
Speaker 1: all started and sharing the inaugural episode of Read This,
Speaker 1: featuring Helen Garner. As always, Michael is here to tell
Speaker 1: me a bit more about the episode him, Michael Ruby Jones. So, Michael,
Speaker 1: we're doing something a little different this week, and we're
Speaker 1: actually going to play the first ever episode I've Read This,
Speaker 1: which was recorded back in June of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: and it's a really special episode. It features one of
Speaker 1: my all time favorite writers, Helen Garner, who at the
Speaker 1: time was in the early stages of writing her latest
Speaker 1: book this season, and the reason we're sharing this is
Speaker 1: because sadly, as many of our listeners would already know,
Speaker 1: Schwartz Media has decided to close their audio department, which
Speaker 1: means that Read This no longer has a home and well,
Speaker 1: we hope that the show continues again in the future.
Speaker 1: It does seem like now is a good opportunity to
Speaker 1: reflect on the amazing guests and incredible conversations that you've
Speaker 1: had on the show and see just how far you've come.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Thanks Ruby. This is a little nostalgia kind of
Speaker 2: victory lap from the read This team. We're very sad
Speaker 2: to be finishing up our time at Schwartz Media and
Speaker 2: the show goes into hiatus now, but we thought that
Speaker 2: that was a good time to stop and take stock
Speaker 2: and think about some of the kind of great moments
Speaker 2: that we're very proud of in almost one hundred episodes,
Speaker 2: and so we've decided to go back to the first
Speaker 2: episode we got Helen Ghana and the best thing about it,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's wonderful to listen back to this interview.
Speaker 2: For a range of reasons. Helen welcomed us into her
Speaker 2: home and we did the podcast episode from there, but
Speaker 2: she was also at the start of the project that
Speaker 2: would become the season. It was Helen at the point
Speaker 2: at which she'd found the writing bag again and she
Speaker 2: knew there was a book coming, and she was just
Speaker 2: teasy away at the threads that would eventually become a
Speaker 2: book that is now beloved, I'm sure by many of
Speaker 2: our listeners. So it's so nice to listen to that
Speaker 2: moment when an abstract idea and a moment in her
Speaker 2: life was able to kind of make that shift to
Speaker 2: being a book, and that kind of encapsulates in a
Speaker 2: small way, what we've been lucky enough to do week
Speaker 2: in week out on Read This is talk to writers,
Speaker 2: not just on the publicity trail for the latest thing
Speaker 2: that they've got on the shelves, but talk to them
Speaker 2: in a moment of reflection or a moment of thoughtfulness.
Speaker 2: You know, Tony Birch talked about his grandmother and it
Speaker 2: was while he was writing Women and Children. It certainly
Speaker 2: gives insight into the book that would eventually come out,
Speaker 2: but the interview was someone just talking about the stories
Speaker 2: behind the book, and that, for us is what we've
Speaker 2: tried to do again and again with George Saunders or
Speaker 2: Roxanne Gay, with Michael and Dacci or Miranda Julive. We
Speaker 2: got to go to Richard Flanagan's house or Kate Grenville's house,
Speaker 2: we got to go to fitzro Pool twice. So it's
Speaker 2: been a pretty wild ride and we have absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1: So this is the final episode that we will be
Speaker 1: playing of Read This on seven Am, and it's been
Speaker 1: such a pleasure to share these stories with our audience.
Speaker 1: For those listeners who want to hear more from the
Speaker 1: Read This archive or stay looped about what might be
Speaker 1: next for the show, what should they do?
Speaker 2: Yes, the best thing you can do if you're listening
Speaker 2: to this on seven am is go across to the
Speaker 2: read This feed and subscribe. If the show does come back,
Speaker 2: that's where it'll come back, and that's where you'll hear
Speaker 2: about it, and I encourage you to do so. Also
Speaker 2: share it with people. The nice thing about these episodes
Speaker 2: is they're a little bit timeless. Once you start digging
Speaker 2: into the archive, there's no shortage of things that you
Speaker 2: can discover and listen to, and it's a deeply pleasurable thing.
Speaker 2: The only other thing I wanted to say to you,
Speaker 2: Ruby and to the rest of the audio team at
Speaker 2: Schwartz is that for me as editor of the monthly,
Speaker 2: it's been a real revelation getting to work with the
Speaker 2: extraordinary audio storytellers who have been part of the Schwartz
Speaker 2: team since I started. They've taught me so much much
Speaker 2: about my own editing practice, about the magazine, about the
Speaker 2: ways in which we do the kind of publishing that
Speaker 2: we do and the work that they've done, You've done,
Speaker 2: all of you on seven AM has been such a
Speaker 2: privilege to watch. You are incredible professionals. You're incredibly talented,
Speaker 2: and I'm super excited to keep listening to seven AM
Speaker 2: and it's new home, and I am sure you will
Speaker 2: all go on to continue to do great things. But
Speaker 2: I just wanted to say personally a big thank you
Speaker 2: from me. You will make us better at our jobs
Speaker 2: and you're going to be missed.
Speaker 1: Coming up in just a moment. We went to Helen
Speaker 1: Garanner's house, so.
Speaker 3: I'm just she works there.
Speaker 2: And this one, Michael, can you check that one so
Speaker 2: I can make sure that it's coming through This one
Speaker 2: here Peter paper pict a peck of public.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're in Helen Garner's study. The bookshelves go to
Speaker 2: the and the crams with books on psychology and piles
Speaker 2: of international editions of her work. On the desk and
Speaker 2: notepads where Helen's been writing ideas for future projects. Behind
Speaker 2: the computer, She's pinned photos, cards, quotes from other writers.
Speaker 2: It feels almost too intimate to take it all in,
Speaker 2: and yet I can't help it. Snoop from Schwartz Media.
Speaker 2: I'm Michael Williams, and this is the first episode of
Speaker 2: Read This, the show about the books we love and
Speaker 2: the stories behind them. In our earliest conversations about making
Speaker 2: this podcast, we made a list of all our dream guests,
Speaker 2: and right at the top of it was Helen Garner.
Speaker 2: So to be in her study is both thrilling and terrifying.
Speaker 2: I've adored Helen Garner's books for decades, but it's not
Speaker 2: just being a fan that makes me nervous. It's because
Speaker 2: one of Garner's great powers is the clarity with which
Speaker 2: she sees the world, the fearlessness of her gaze, the
Speaker 2: sharpness of her judgment. Imagine meeting Helen Garner and having
Speaker 2: her think you are full devastating. But that perception of
Speaker 2: Garner is missing the generosity, the curiosity, and the tenderness
Speaker 2: that runs through her work. And she's a generous host too.
Speaker 2: She puts the cakes we've brought to the side for
Speaker 2: after and we sit down to talk about what she's
Speaker 2: working on, her views on marriage, and what runs through
Speaker 2: her head is she goes about every day.
Speaker 4: I've noticed lately now that I'm all old and officially
Speaker 4: old because I'm eighty that I talk to myself a lot.
Speaker 4: I often think my daughter must hear me from next door, thinking,
Speaker 4: oh God, what's she raving about? But I so try
Speaker 4: to think what it is that I'm doing when I'm
Speaker 4: talking to myself, and I seem to be working things out,
Speaker 4: but allowed or I'm reliving certain encounters I had with
Speaker 4: certain people and rewriting them, you know, so that I
Speaker 4: actually said something or made a point.
Speaker 3: Or in the.
Speaker 4: Car when I'm driving along, I play out anger. Basically,
Speaker 4: I invent, invent sounds a little bit too purposeful into
Speaker 4: my mind, come or float exchanges that I might be
Speaker 4: having with somebody who might be critical of me for
Speaker 4: the way I'm just I've just driven, and I think
Speaker 4: of all sorts of clever put downs and shattering insults.
Speaker 3: I do a fair bit of that.
Speaker 2: Is that imagined people you're arguing with? Or do you
Speaker 2: do you retread old arguments as well?
Speaker 4: Both? But I noticed one thing I often say in
Speaker 4: these little scenes that come to.
Speaker 3: Mind is how dare you? How dare you take that
Speaker 3: tone with me?
Speaker 4: You know? I talk like that and in your head
Speaker 4: mistressly sort of way, and it's kind of really.
Speaker 2: Enjoyable, if not reprosecuting old arguments or imagining pretend arguments.
Speaker 2: The other thing that you said you do when you
Speaker 2: talk to yourself is your problem solving. You're kind of
Speaker 2: working away at things. Is that a typical part of
Speaker 2: how your brain works.
Speaker 4: No, that's much too organized for what happens to me
Speaker 4: in those moments. I actually, one thing that happened to
Speaker 4: me yesterday interested me to think about that is that
Speaker 4: I've actually been feeling quite well, I think i'd have
Speaker 4: to say depressed lately since the whole COVID thing ended,
Speaker 4: and I don't seem to have much shortageois de viev
Speaker 4: going on. I have hardly been listening to music, and
Speaker 4: I used to listen to it all the time, and
Speaker 4: it's really important to me, and it's just recently it's
Speaker 4: dawned on me that I hardly ever go and put
Speaker 4: on a CD anymore. I sort of can't be bothered
Speaker 4: fighting my way through the drawer and finding it, and
Speaker 4: I haven't got Spotify and I don't want it, and
Speaker 4: I think, well, it's almost as if music has left
Speaker 4: my life. So I thought yesterday, Okay, while I'm hoovering
Speaker 4: I'll put my ear plugs in and I'll listen to
Speaker 4: some music on my phone. I thought, what will I
Speaker 4: listen to? I thought, okay, I'll listened to Jays Bark's
Speaker 4: Matthew Passion. So I put that on and I just
Speaker 4: randomly on YouTube found most exquisite performance of it by
Speaker 4: the Netherlands Bach Society. I listened to half of Matthew Passion,
Speaker 4: thinking I was just going to listen for ten minutes,
Speaker 4: and I found that I was completely absorbed by it
Speaker 4: and not needing to get up or blow my nose
Speaker 4: or make a note or turn a switch or do anything.
Speaker 4: And I just sat quite still for about an hour
Speaker 4: and a half listening to the music. And after that
Speaker 4: I had to turn it off because I had to
Speaker 4: go to my grandson's footage training. But I felt so
Speaker 4: revived by listening to it, and I'm so grateful because
Speaker 4: I thought, I'm not over and done with you know,
Speaker 4: I'm not a dead fish lying.
Speaker 3: On the pavement.
Speaker 4: I can actually listen to music and it still means
Speaker 4: a lot to me, and my mood completely revived. And
Speaker 4: so then I went down to footy training, which is
Speaker 4: always fabulous. I love it and I thought, Oh, I
Speaker 4: suppose I'll wake up in the morning feeling like I
Speaker 4: did duck again. But I'll wake up this morning thinking Wow,
Speaker 4: I'm going to jump out of bed and I'm going
Speaker 4: to do stuff.
Speaker 3: And so then I sat down and.
Speaker 4: Actually started writing something which I haven't done quite a while.
Speaker 4: And when I looked up, several hours had passed.
Speaker 3: That's a very rare thing.
Speaker 2: Is stillness something that comes easily to you, the stillness
Speaker 2: you describe of listening to the music.
Speaker 3: No, it doesn't. It doesn't come easily to me.
Speaker 4: I'm always nervy and twitchy and jumping about. I'm noticing
Speaker 4: that there's removalists next door, and I'm wondering.
Speaker 2: Us just what SAIDs that's fine? So that if they're
Speaker 2: talking in the background, if we don't have that.
Speaker 3: It's GUYE delivering a fridge.
Speaker 4: They'll be gone in a minute.
Speaker 3: That they don't know how to get it in. It's
Speaker 3: next door.
Speaker 4: Can you get what they're saying?
Speaker 2: Not just bang it, just bang it through. It'll be
Speaker 2: fine to be in Helen Ghana's house and know she's
Speaker 2: been writing something new is exhilarating. But we've had to
Speaker 2: stop because of trade's coming in and out of the
Speaker 2: house next door where her daughter and grandsons live. Living
Speaker 2: next door to her grandsons is a particular joy for Helen.
Speaker 2: She delights in things like watching them at footage training.
Speaker 2: In fact, it's this that she's been writing about.
Speaker 3: This this whole world of.
Speaker 4: Boys on the cusp of being men that I find
Speaker 4: deeply fascinating and beautiful. All the boys in my grandson's team,
Speaker 4: they've all got broken voices. You know, they sound like men,
Speaker 4: and they look not quite like men, but a lot
Speaker 4: of the I've got big shoulders and they're big, strong boys.
Speaker 4: But when they come close to you while playing, you
Speaker 4: see the youth that's still there in their faces. And
Speaker 4: it's just that strange, kind of magical period before they
Speaker 4: become totally men.
Speaker 2: Are they kind to one another when you watch them
Speaker 2: as a team, like, is that.
Speaker 4: A oh kindness?
Speaker 3: Perhaps not quite the word.
Speaker 4: I noticed an enormous affection and love between them. There's
Speaker 4: a kind of joy they take in each other's mighty
Speaker 4: things that they do. And how when somebody kicks a
Speaker 4: goal they rush to him and envelop them in enormous hugs.
Speaker 4: I actually saw one footballer kiss another one on the
Speaker 4: brow recently.
Speaker 3: I was terribly pleased to see that.
Speaker 4: See, I've only raised a girl, and I never knew
Speaker 4: much about I had a brother, but he was much
Speaker 4: much younger than me, and I didn't have all that
Speaker 4: much to do with him in childhood. So now I've
Speaker 4: got these two grandsons, and I've lived with them since
Speaker 4: they were born, so I've watched them living and growing,
Speaker 4: and I see how hard it is for boys, a
Speaker 4: different sort of hardship from girls. Seeing boys close up
Speaker 4: and sensing I don't know if I would call it
Speaker 4: anguish in the case of these boys. I'm sure they
Speaker 4: had certain moments of extreme on happiness, as everybody does
Speaker 4: in the ordeal with childhood, but I'd love to know
Speaker 4: more about it. And I guess that's one reason why
Speaker 4: I was drawn to looking at the footy.
Speaker 3: Team, just to see.
Speaker 4: And you watch and you watch, and you watch the
Speaker 4: training and you watch the matches, and you can see
Speaker 4: which kids are suffering, not just from the game, but
Speaker 4: in Some kids take naturally to being in a team
Speaker 4: and it suits them, and other kids don't know how
Speaker 4: to do it, and you can see them hovering on
Speaker 4: the outside, even if they're quite a good players. They
Speaker 4: don't have that sort of bond on me that perhaps
Speaker 4: hoping for, so I see, I can take any amount
Speaker 4: of this sort of stuff. I actually love watching the
Speaker 4: training even more than watching the matches.
Speaker 2: What I love about that is that it seems your
Speaker 2: description of yourself as not being a very still person
Speaker 2: almost seems at odds with that creative process, which is
Speaker 2: finding something you're fascinated by and watching it and being
Speaker 2: patient with it. And you know, it sounds like there's
Speaker 2: a kind of conceptual stillness sitting watching training.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 4: Well, that's a very interesting point too, because another time
Speaker 4: in my life when I've had to sit still for many,
Speaker 4: many hours is in a court and watching a trial.
Speaker 4: And sometimes sometimes I'm at training and there's nothing much
Speaker 4: happening and I'm just watching. I'm thinking, am I bored?
Speaker 4: I'm thinking this is objectively boring?
Speaker 3: But I am not bored.
Speaker 4: And that's what I used to think in court when
Speaker 4: there were really long, boring passive of court behavior, which
Speaker 4: were lawyers were just droning on.
Speaker 3: And even though that's when I realized that this was
Speaker 3: work I.
Speaker 4: Was born to do, because even when it was objectively boring,
Speaker 4: I was never bored.
Speaker 2: Why do you think you're not bored in those situations?
Speaker 2: Is it not to be pat about it, but is
Speaker 2: it about the human beings? Like is it you're just
Speaker 2: endlessly fascinated in watching people?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think it's that.
Speaker 4: But it's also when I first started going to courts,
Speaker 4: I felt so good when I was there, and I
Speaker 4: couldn't wait to get there every morning, And I thought,
Speaker 4: why does this make me feel so right? And I
Speaker 4: came up with an explanation. I thought, it's because my brain,
Speaker 4: or my intellect and my emotions were both working full bore,
Speaker 4: but they were working in concert with each other and
Speaker 4: not clashing against each other, which is how often we
Speaker 4: think about the intellect and the emotions that they're kind
Speaker 4: of we're going to say enemies, but opponents. But when
Speaker 4: they work smoothly together, that's when you feel this strange
Speaker 4: kind of joy I suppose.
Speaker 2: Coming up after the break, Helen tells us about the
Speaker 2: intellectual and emotional task of revisiting her old diaries and
Speaker 2: what that's shown her about marriage. Welcome Back. One of
Speaker 2: my friends, a fellow Helen Ghana Tragic will often quote
Speaker 2: from a twenty sixteen piece that describes Garna's defining characteristic
Speaker 2: as an awakeness and a liveness to the thinness of things.
Speaker 2: I like this quote for me. The deep pleasure of
Speaker 2: reading Ghna lies in her precision, so sharp, not a
Speaker 2: word wasted going into this interview where our favorite garner.
Speaker 2: For me, it's the children's bark. For our producer, Clara
Speaker 2: monkey Grip. Around the office, there were advocates for just
Speaker 2: about everything she's done, fans of her court reporting and
Speaker 2: her collected essays. The Spare Room rated more than one mention.
Speaker 2: Her most recent books are three volumes of her diaries.
Speaker 2: They range from nineteen seventy eight to nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: and in nothing short of astonishing. The third volume, How
Speaker 2: to End a Story, is as detailed and real an
Speaker 2: account of the breakdown of a marriage as you could read.
Speaker 2: Reading the diaries, you feel like you really know Helen.
Speaker 2: They're shockingly intimate. No one is spared, least of all her,
Speaker 2: so it's not surprising that her fans of all ages
Speaker 2: connect with her and want to write to her. So
Speaker 2: the young new generation of Helen Gharana readers will be
Speaker 2: coming to you not just for kind of writing advice,
Speaker 2: but even life advice. Do you find that there's a
Speaker 2: lot of you know, dear Helen, please advice on marriage?
Speaker 4: No, no, I don't get I get people telling me
Speaker 4: their stories, but they don't seem to be asking for advice.
Speaker 4: It's more like, well, you know what, women tell their
Speaker 4: stories of rage and sadness, and they appreciate it when
Speaker 4: some other woman sort of shrieks over it with them.
Speaker 4: People will say, oh my god, you know, I read
Speaker 4: what happened to you on page so and so and
Speaker 4: and this reminded me of such and such a you know,
Speaker 4: they'll give an incident from there. This is in emails
Speaker 4: from strangers, and I just hugely enjoyed that they're not
Speaker 4: asking for advice.
Speaker 2: Basically, I'm pitching to you an agony. Aren't Colin and
Speaker 2: the Month play where it's Hell and Advisors. I think
Speaker 2: we would get a huge update.
Speaker 4: My advice would be get out now, is one answer.
Speaker 4: That's one great thing about not being married anymore and
Speaker 4: being old being you know, when the world of romances
Speaker 4: is over and it's like that's all over and.
Speaker 3: You go into this wonderful world.
Speaker 4: Of freedom, you can be friends with men in ways
Speaker 4: that you know when you're still out there in the
Speaker 4: sort of dating world, or if you've still got hopes
Speaker 4: that you're going to meet some guy that you'd like
Speaker 4: to live with or or sleep with or something you know,
Speaker 4: and all that's just plainly overs It's wonderful. It's like
Speaker 4: having swum across a raging torrent and you're standing on
Speaker 4: the opposite bank, and you know, I look back and
Speaker 4: I see all these other women thrashing their way across.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say, keep swimming. It's great over here.
Speaker 2: That's an unexpected part of your advice, Colgide. I mean
Speaker 2: the amazing achievement that is the three volumes of the
Speaker 2: diaries and absolute privilege to read it as a reader.
Speaker 2: But for you, I'm going to think them revisiting them,
Speaker 2: editing them, but literally immersing yourself in your own past.
Speaker 2: Were you surprised by finding what younger Helen where she was,
Speaker 2: what she needed to do, her understanding of herself?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I felt going through those old diaries. I
Speaker 4: was quite shocked sometimes by what a wimp I was
Speaker 4: and what I put up with. Points at which I
Speaker 4: didn't spit the dummy or say this isn't how.
Speaker 3: I want to live. You know, I don't want to
Speaker 3: live like this? Why am I still here?
Speaker 4: Luna used to draw these cartoons of angels flying in
Speaker 4: the sky and they had these little kind of fluttering
Speaker 4: nighties on and little wings on their backs, and they'd
Speaker 4: be looking down at all the human beings on the
Speaker 4: earth kind of tearing each other apart, and the angels
Speaker 4: would have their hands up to their faces like this,
Speaker 4: and their faces would be distorted with horror as they
Speaker 4: look down on what people were doing. And when I
Speaker 4: was doing the diaries, off that that's what it was
Speaker 4: like to do the diaries. I couldn't change anything that
Speaker 4: was there. All I could do was just look down
Speaker 4: in horror within my nighty flapping in the breeze. It's
Speaker 4: really awful actually talking about with you now. I'm thinking
Speaker 4: maybe that's one reason of being kind of depressed and
Speaker 4: loan spirits, because it takes a lot of getting over
Speaker 4: dragging yourself through that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh, I hadn't thought of that.
Speaker 4: That's ridiculous that I hadn't thought of it.
Speaker 2: It's an extraordinary thing to go through lost, disappointment, all
Speaker 2: of that stuff to unearth it. I mean, it's in public,
Speaker 2: in public, yeah, mother. What a strange thing. Forget therapy,
Speaker 2: unearthing your old diaries and sharing them with the world
Speaker 2: seems kind of excoriating.
Speaker 3: Well, it sort of was.
Speaker 4: And yet I've been amazed to find how many people
Speaker 4: have got in touch with me about them. I'm in strangers,
Speaker 4: and how many women have said to me, this could
Speaker 4: be my marriage, and I've found that really shocking.
Speaker 3: It's made me realize again that.
Speaker 4: Marriage is terribly, terribly difficult, and it's.
Speaker 3: Not really set up for the flourishing of women.
Speaker 2: With the release of the diaries and with your backlist
Speaker 2: being picked up overseas in a way that it hasn't
Speaker 2: necessarily been published before. Something that I take great pleasure
Speaker 2: from is finding people who are discovering alan Ghana at
Speaker 2: this point and feel like, you know, have you heard
Speaker 2: of Helen Ganna? She's fantastic. I had a colleague at
Speaker 2: an old job who my first day and I went
Speaker 2: in and above her desk and her office were photos
Speaker 2: and like pictures of you from magazines and things. It
Speaker 2: was like Shay Gavara, but it was you, And she
Speaker 2: was maybe twenty two twenty three and was just an
Speaker 2: obsessive fan. Is it strange? Having a different.
Speaker 3: Relationship with fantastic.
Speaker 4: Thank you for telling me that that's really wonderful. Yeah, well,
Speaker 4: I don't know how to even think about that. I'm
Speaker 4: just terribly happy about it, because you know, you write
Speaker 4: books and the years pass and you think, well, I
Speaker 4: wrote that book thirty five years ago, forty years ago,
Speaker 4: but it's still in print. I mean, this is amazing
Speaker 4: to me. It's amazing to me that Monkey Group is
Speaker 4: still in print. I don't know what I expected. I
Speaker 4: never had any kind of thought out ambition. Young people now,
Speaker 4: I know, have a much clearer idea, if you know,
Speaker 4: they would use an expression like my career, which I
Speaker 4: never would have.
Speaker 3: But I think that maybe my work falls.
Speaker 4: It's sort of it's in a territory that's between older
Speaker 4: things and then there's all these newer things. But I'm
Speaker 4: just still sitting there and I don't know what that means,
Speaker 4: but pretty pleased about it.
Speaker 2: From my perspective, I think it means that there's such
Speaker 2: integrity to the work. There's no looking over your shoulder
Speaker 2: on the page. It seems like it's all there. And
Speaker 2: yet the thing that struck me reading the diaries was
Speaker 2: how omnipresent self doubt an anxiety was through all of that.
Speaker 4: See, the thing that happens is just say the book
Speaker 4: like The Children's Bark, which I think is like technically
Speaker 4: the best thing I've ever written. People talk about it,
Speaker 4: you know, respectfully, and then if I go back and
Speaker 4: look at it and open it up, I think, gosh,
Speaker 4: it is actually really good. And how did I do it?
Speaker 4: I don't remember how I did it, and I think
Speaker 4: I must have been in almost like a different person
Speaker 4: back then. I must have been going through a period
Speaker 4: of where I was sort of calm and organized and
Speaker 4: my thoughts were working. And then one day when subsequent
Speaker 4: to that, I was trying to write another book and
Speaker 4: groaning and tearing out the hair over it, and I
Speaker 4: sort of flung myself back on the couch in my
Speaker 4: workroom next to the bookshelf, and I saw this little
Speaker 4: notebook sticking out, and I pulled it out, and what's this?
Speaker 4: And I looked and it was a little diary that
Speaker 4: I'd been keeping around the time I was writing The
Speaker 4: Children's Bark. And it showed me that The Children's Buck
Speaker 4: didn't just flow out fully formed from the head of use.
Speaker 3: You know, it was awful. I was going, oh, why
Speaker 3: did I overstart this?
Speaker 4: And I've got all these fucking characters and I don't
Speaker 4: know how to make them do things, and what on earth?
Speaker 3: I had no idea what I was doing.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm getting at, and that surprises me.
Speaker 2: Thinking about your anxiety is about writing now, and you know,
Speaker 2: what if I've lost it or what if it's not
Speaker 2: the reading your diaries, you seem to have those exact
Speaker 2: same anxieties. That doesn't seem to be about being eighty.
Speaker 2: It seems to have been as present when you're forty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as it is now.
Speaker 4: Yes, but doesn't everyone feel that sort of self doubt?
Speaker 2: Yes, but I don't think everyone creates a body of work,
Speaker 2: the masterpieces. I mean, at some point it might be
Speaker 2: okay to be I'm Helen fucking Gunner.
Speaker 4: It's okay.
Speaker 2: I don't feel self doubt anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I don't think I'll ever feel like that.
Speaker 4: The time when I feel the most competent probably is
Speaker 4: if somebody says, ask me to read something that they've written,
Speaker 4: and I can see what is wrong with it, and
Speaker 4: I can see how I could fix it. You see,
Speaker 4: I think when in doubt cut it out.
Speaker 3: That's my rule.
Speaker 4: And sometimes it really hurts to cut something out because
Speaker 4: it's a darling.
Speaker 3: And you have to murder it. But people should murder
Speaker 3: them more.
Speaker 4: That's all I'm saying. People don't want to slaughter their
Speaker 4: own work. They don't, you know, they drag it out
Speaker 4: of their guts with pain and suffering.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't mean.
Speaker 4: It's any good just because you dragged it out of
Speaker 4: your guts.
Speaker 2: No, sometimes the opposite.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, I'm interested. I'm interested in this stuff. I mean, see,
Speaker 4: because I really like sentences. I just love them, and
Speaker 4: I love the way you build them, and I'm sort
Speaker 4: of really I'm kind of in love with grammar and syntax.
Speaker 4: It's really important to me. And when people say it's
Speaker 4: not important, I get completely frantic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a wonderful passage in that third volume of
Speaker 2: your Diaries where you imagine a future for yourself, where
Speaker 2: young Helen imagines a future for herself and imagines living
Speaker 2: closer to your daughter potentially eventual grandchildren, and that you know,
Speaker 2: you're imagining what it would be to be a grandmother.
Speaker 2: You're thinking about going to gigs and catching up with
Speaker 2: friends and having a drink and walking the streets and
Speaker 2: one of the beautiful joyous things about reading that in
Speaker 2: the book was thinking, it's more or less a pretty
Speaker 2: accurate description.
Speaker 4: It came true. But you know the other thing about
Speaker 4: that fantasy when I had it was that that was
Speaker 4: when I was in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and I had this
Speaker 4: lovely fantasy about one day I'm going to be out
Speaker 4: of this a mess I'm in and I'm going to
Speaker 4: have this wonderful life and I'm going to have the
Speaker 4: iron set up permanently and anyway, So I go to
Speaker 4: shrink the next day and I say, oh, I was
Speaker 4: just thinking yesterday about you know, one day oh blah
Speaker 4: blah blah. And I explained this fantasy to her and she.
Speaker 3: Said, yes, well it is just a fantasy.
Speaker 4: Of course, that's another fantasy of escape. And I thought, oh,
Speaker 4: like she threw the huge bucket of cold water over me,
Speaker 4: which I needed, because having a fantasy of your life
Speaker 4: being better is not part of getting yourself out of
Speaker 4: the mess that you're in.
Speaker 2: You don't think it gives you something to motivate you
Speaker 2: to get out of that.
Speaker 4: Maybe, but no, I mean her point was, her point
Speaker 4: was always to me that you have to feel this
Speaker 4: you've got to feel what you're going through. And I
Speaker 4: found that terribly bracing and useful. I'm suddenly thinking. We
Speaker 4: read the book Gilgamesh in our reading group a couple
Speaker 4: of years ago, and there's a scene in Gilgamesh where
Speaker 4: he's underground.
Speaker 3: He's in some.
Speaker 4: Frightful dark chasm or cave, and he's thrashing his way
Speaker 4: along and he's got no idea which way is up
Speaker 4: or whether there's a hole out of which you can
Speaker 4: drag himself, and he just has to keep going and
Speaker 4: keep going and keep going, and it's excruciating.
Speaker 3: But eventually he glimpses.
Speaker 4: This light, a tiny speck of light, and he thrashes
Speaker 4: his way towards it, and he finds that there's an opening,
Speaker 4: and he comes out into the air. And then the
Speaker 4: line of the poem says, and then Gilgamesh saw the sea.
Speaker 3: It was so wonderful.
Speaker 4: But I suppose, I mean, Gilgamesh wasn't down there thinking, oh, geez,
Speaker 4: I wish I could see the sea.
Speaker 3: I mean, well, one day I'm going to see the sea.
Speaker 4: He was just fighting his way through the blackness, and
Speaker 4: I sometimes think that's maybe what she was telling me.
Speaker 4: I had to do just stay right in it, you know,
Speaker 4: and not in the middle.
Speaker 2: Of the fight.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Hey, let's go and eat the cakes. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 3: just leave all this.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: Read This. As I mentioned earlier, if you want to
Speaker 1: dive further into the show, oh you can search for it.
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