WEBVTT - Read This: Tim Winton’s Got the Juice 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.880 Hey there, it's Ruby Jones. Welcome back to another episode 0:00:03.960 --> 0:00:07.360 of Read This, which we're running each Sunday on seven am. 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:10.920 Hosted by editor of the monthly Michael Williams. It features 0:00:10.960 --> 0:00:14.120 conversations with some of the best writers from Australia and 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.360 around the world, and in this episode, we're going to 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:21.480 hear from one of Australia's most famous authors, Tim Winton. 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:26.360 Before we do, Michael is here to share a bit 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:28.960 about their conversation. Michael, welcome back. 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:31.680 How are you, Ruby Jones? Very well, how are you? 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:37.160 I'm great, So, Michael, I think that almost everyone who 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:41.080 listens to us will be familiar with your guests today. 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:44.680 What do you think. Look, it's always nice to shine 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:49.520 a spotlight on a plucky, upstart, fresh new talent. Introducing 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:52.040 people to a writer who's a bit wet behind me 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:54.400 is what I reckon has a bold future in front 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:57.720 of him now. Tim Winton is such a fixture of 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:01.720 the Australian landscape. It's over forty years since his first 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:04.920 book came out and in the intervening time he has 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:09.960 become kind of emblematic with Australian literature. It's hard to 0:01:10.000 --> 0:01:11.479 think of a time pre Tim Winton. 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:14.880 Absolutely. And Tim has really spent his career writing these 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:19.680 big stories that focus on the Australian landscape. It's natural beauty. 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:24.480 But his new book, Juice, that's really about what losing 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:28.080 these environments through the climate crisis, what that might mean 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:30.720 for humanity. So tell me a bit about what the 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:32.000 book's like. Yeah. 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:34.880 One of the reasons readers so loved Tim is his 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:39.240 synonymous with a kind of capacity to capture the beauty 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:40.880 of the natural world and a sense of kind of 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:45.399 joy and wonder with these kind of inarticulate lost protagonists 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:48.880 who are making sense of their place in a world 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.840 that seems so much bigger than they are. For his 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:56.200 latest book, Tim combines that storytelling instinct with decades of 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:59.520 activism and he's a man who's deeply exercised by the 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:02.640 climate crisis. People may have seen the documentary made for 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:05.840 the ABC last year about an Ingaloo reef. It's a 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:09.320 gorgeous documentary and a celebration of a place that he loves, 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:12.040 But the thing that underpins it is this sense of 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:15.359 grief and fury at the fact that it's in jeopardy. 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:19.080 And to a certain extent, Juice is the culmination of 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.480 that grief and fury. It's opposed to apocalyptic story. It 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:26.600 follows an unnamed narrator who just between us I kept 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:29.920 trying to imagine as an older Lucky Leonard as he 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:34.600 navigates the wasteland with a young girl who he's responsible for, 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:37.160 who's not his own child, but a child who he 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:41.840 needs to look after. It's a classic setup, a terrifying story, 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.320 but it is also Tim Winton. I think it is very. 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:49.600 Best coming up in just a moment. Tim Winton's got 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:50.880 the juice. 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.200 This is, of course, this is the topic that nobody 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:01.680 really wants to write about, and nobody wants to read about. 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:05.280 Let's be honest. I knew that right from the start. 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:08.919 It's like, you're really you're going to You're going to 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:10.040 write about this. 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:14.200 Have you in your writing career before ever had that 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:18.120 feeling that the thing you're writing about is the only 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:19.680 thing you can write about. I mean, is that a 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:22.360 feeling you have to find for any book anyway? And 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.960 it's just more acute this time around, that sense that 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:29.520 this is the only thing to devote your novelist's mind too. 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.960 I look, by and large, a story grabs your attention 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:36.839 and has to earn it, keep and keep you at it. 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:39.480 And so it has to be it has to be 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:43.480 interesting enough to you as a tradesperson to press on 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:49.320 and rattle the tools about over. But I suspect that 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.720 in this instance, this is a book that I would 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.760 rather have not written. But I've felt obliged to attempt, 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:00.240 I guess. So I don't really think that I've felt 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:06.480 external forces on me, you know, in terms of determining 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:11.000 what I should write about. Any way, I can lace 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:13.080 that sense of obligation and. 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:14.800 Force. 0:04:14.880 --> 0:04:17.000 It's not really the right word, but you know, being 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:20.440 harried by something, you know. I try to imagine what 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:22.960 it would be like to have. 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:25.000 Been alive and been a writer in. 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.160 The thirties with the rise of fascism, and you know, 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.279 to be a European and lots of people decided that 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:34.200 they couldn't or wouldn't write about the state of the 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.560 world in the thirties, or they would do it very 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:41.400 artfully and obliquely because modernism, I suppose, which. 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:42.880 Is always gave us an out, you know. 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:46.960 So modernist quietism was always going to give you an 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:48.640 out at a certain point in history, and I just 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:50.080 don't think it does Now. 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:52.680 This book is being framed again and again as a 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:57.160 kind of dystopian vision, but it's funny. The other way 0:04:57.160 --> 0:04:59.360 you can read it is it's a historical novel about 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:03.240 the present, a novel about the implication of a world 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:06.440 that's so enamored with the idea of the individual that 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:10.560 it loses track of solidarity, and so juice becomes about 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.919 whether it's possible to put that idea of care for 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:17.560 others and care for the whole ahead of care for 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:18.080 the self. 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:20.800 Yeah, I mean, that's the central argument of the book. 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:22.680 It's two blokes and a. 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.920 Little girl down a hole in the ground, yacking away, 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:28.920 or one of them's yacking in particularly the other ones listening, 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.600 pretending not to listen, but as essentially a guy telling stories, 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:35.400 just trying to save his life, you know, apart from 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:39.200 giving his bona fides and explaining. 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.680 Himself to the other guy. And he's also, as it turns, 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:46.600 explaining himself to himself. But what he's really trying to 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.440 do is get through to the other guy and say, look, 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:52.720 if there's three of us, I've got skills, you've got skills. 0:05:52.720 --> 0:05:55.159 The kid can do things. If there's three of us, 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.159 we can make it go of it, where our odds 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:00.960 are improved if we cooperate. And that's a sort of 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:05.520 fundamental conundrum. Whereas as you say, you know, the other 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:09.799 guys seems to be giving off the vibe that he's 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:12.360 fine on his own and two more mouths to feeds, 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:13.159 just to pain in the house. 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:15.039 So he's not going to pop it. 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.680 And he's he's a person who has shared the ideals 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:22.160 and the service ethic of our narrator, but he's jaded 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.920 and he's lost. He's fallen out of love with life 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:28.320 in a way, he's fallen out of love with people. 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:34.240 He's lost faith in humankind. And so in that sense, yeah, 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:37.960 that these three people, the voiceless child who has no 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:41.719 agency I'm going to just thinking of this now, and 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:49.880 the wounded idealist and the sorely wounded former idealist whose 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:53.760 idealism is curdled into cynicism. There they are out sort 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:56.120 of duking it out at the end of the world. 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:59.960 And I guess it is a It is emblematic, isn't it, 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:04.000 of where we find ourselves, and those of us who 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:08.040 feel the world turning, as well as those of us 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:12.120 obviously who can read the data. We really do have 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:18.400 to get through to the people who are either callous 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:24.360 nihilists or unconscious, you know, or so entrapped in their 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:30.160 own cynicism that they can't hear sense anymore, they can't 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:35.720 feel empathy, and also they can't feel opportunity. 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:37.680 It's really interesting. 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:42.440 The way that we've in Sato capitalism, the way we 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:45.640 have reduced the word opportunity to a kind of an 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.440 economic idea, in the same way that we've reduced the 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:54.400 word aspiration to quite a mean inception of what it 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:57.880 means to aspire and what an opportunity is. Because really 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:00.320 we're at this moment in the edge of as the 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:03.160 edge of the raiser, which is the edge of oblivion 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:07.160 or the edge of opportunity, to do things differently, to 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:09.680 go forward in a different way. 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:15.480 At a technical level, how different was this to write 0:08:15.720 --> 0:08:18.360 to your previous books? You know, I remember speaking to 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:22.400 you in the past and the extent to which character 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:26.080 and specificity was a kind of crucial thing for you 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:29.720 in finding the voice, finding the rhythm, finding the engine 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.560 of a book. And it seems to me that when 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:34.880 there's an element of world building to be done, or 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:39.600 there's an element of when the framework cannot be accepted 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:42.280 as a given, but has to justify its own presence. 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.560 Did that change the writing process for you? Did that 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:48.320 kind of throw you off your established rhythms? 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:53.280 Not really, I mean I guess in a sense, I 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:54.559 did myself a favor. 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:56.360 Sounds very Molly. 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.319 Of doing as little world build as possible, because that's 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:03.719 the stuff that just bores that tits off me. When 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:08.240 I read Speculator, I didn't have to generate a fake landscape. 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:11.319 So I just started again as I always do. 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.920 You know, I begin with the geographical logic. 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:19.160 I'm writing about a place I know well, studied for 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:24.280 half my adult life, because that's essentially you know, ningaloo generations. Hence, 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:30.080 so I know what that landscape is and what drives it. 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:36.240 I know that in its current form it's an extreme environment. 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:39.640 Everything that lives there is on its geographical and its 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:44.240 climactic extreme, and it's adapted to survive in that environment. 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:48.360 So all I'm doing really is just moving the dial 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:55.480 on the oven and essentially writing, writing according to the dial. 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:59.560 And so the ecological logic, you know, the setting of 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:03.160 the book in our current day, it sweats more than 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:06.040 it rains. There's so little precipitation that you know, the 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:10.200 evaporation rates higher than the rainfall, so if it's three 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:14.120 degrees or five degrees hotter. And of course I know 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:17.040 what it's like to stand in direct sunlight when it's 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:20.880 fifty degrees. I know what it's like for the weather 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:23.920 to be in the high forties for three weeks. I 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.000 know what that physically does to your body. I don't 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:31.000 know how many Australians have really experienced heat stroke or 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.480 proper heat stress, and what the symptoms are and how 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:35.080 it feels. 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:37.320 So at least I've got I've. 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:40.840 Got that sort of kind of peasant knowledge to draw 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:43.800 on so day to day on the page. No, it 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:48.679 was it was just the usual problem of moving the furniture, 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:51.439 you know, shuffling the crockery about you know. 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:58.680 I like that description. Shuffling crockery is perfect. Tim. I 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:01.000 was lucky enough to publish an essay from you in 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:06.080 the Monthly last month about the nightmares both literal and figurative, 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:09.640 that fuelled the writing of Jews. You brought in all 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:13.080 kinds of fascinating ideas that underpin this book, you know, 0:11:13.160 --> 0:11:16.839 Mary Shelley and Dostoyevski. But I was wondering if you 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.360 could talk us through Pankaj Mishra in particularly. You say 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:24.200 in the essay that his book Age of Anger clarified 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:27.640 some key things for you that helped with Juice coming together. 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:34.640 How so, I've been interested in Pancash Misher's works since 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:39.040 really since he started publishing as a novelist quite a 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:42.720 way back. And I think it was Peter Strauss, my 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:48.280 then British publisher, who put me onto pan Cash, but 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:52.280 just following his work over the years. I don't think 0:11:52.360 --> 0:11:55.320 I knew about Age of Anger when it came out, 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:59.800 but I've found it through maybe Hannah Aarenton. Then, of 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:03.240 course he writes a lot, and it's written quite well 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:06.400 about our it's work. I think what I really came 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:12.640 away from that book understanding more about the fruit of humiliation, 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:18.240 you know, the way the kind of malevolent force of 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:24.240 humiliation and the way it metastasizes and lives on in 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:29.320 a culture, and how it drives the worst outcomes, you know, 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:32.720 of the sort that we're seeing in our news feeds 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:36.120 twenty four hours a day now. And I suppose in 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:39.440 a way it helped me to understand my own country, 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:42.360 even though that was probably the last thing on his 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:47.080 mind when you think about what colonization does to people, 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:51.960 what occupation does to people, and I think on any continent, 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:55.440 you know, if there's any continent that knows enough now 0:12:55.480 --> 0:13:00.320 that it's educated enough about the consequences and the live 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:07.720 unfolding of intergenerational trauma, it has to be our island, 0:13:07.880 --> 0:13:12.440 you know. And the fact that we are living amongst 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:17.560 and with people who are so damaged by what happened 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:20.320 before any of us were born, and many of us 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:25.480 are coming to understand from the outside the kinds of 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:30.959 lives that our first peoples are living, in a way 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:36.240 that helps explain to us some of the behaviors that 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.480 to those of us who aren't indigenous seem inexplicable, you know, 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:44.640 I mean, essentially you Resentment is a big core of 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:50.720 Measure's book. And as as an Indian who'd been an 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:53.040 immigrants live most of his adult life now, I think 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:59.400 in the UK a very sophisticated and stylish thinker, it's 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:03.360 a really interesting perspective from which to learn accidentally or 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:08.000 obliquely about your own place, and for those echoes to have. 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:12.720 Sort of unforeseen consequences in the way you see your 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:13.559 own country. 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:17.000 I want to just come back to that idea of humiliation, 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:22.000 because it seems to me that what humiliation requires is recognition. 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:25.400 You know, for your narrator, that moment, that crucial moment 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:30.800 is it's only recognizing and accepting a truth that allows 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.720 you to feel that sense of humiliation. And part of 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:37.880 the failure we have, particularly on climate in this present day, 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:42.480 comes from a failure of recognition or an inability to 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.320 look directly at a thing and to give it words. 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.160 Do you think it better sums up the modern condition 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:51.840 that people don't know or that they don't care. 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:57.560 Yeah, that's a pointy one. I don't think we can 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:02.200 really tell ourselves any more that we don't know. But 0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:08.680 we're not actually brave enough to own the fact that 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:12.600 we don't care. We're living as if we don't care. 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:15.920 I mean, I've spent a lot of time in Sunday 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:17.400 School when I was a kid, so you know, we 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:20.720 learned all about you know, by their fruits, shall you 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:23.560 know them? You can see what people believe by what 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:27.320 they do. So by that measure, we don't care, but 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:30.680 we tell ourselves that we do, which is kind of interesting. 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:37.240 And you're right, I mean, understanding the force of humiliation 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:44.960 arrives by a form of recognition or of revelation. So 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:49.080 I don't think we actually understand yet. We do know 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:52.120 the consequences of the way we live. We know that 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:56.560 we're addicted as a global community to a way of 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:01.680 life and a way of generating energy, But we don't 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:08.280 allow ourselves the recognition of another kind of humiliation, which 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:12.280 is the way that the way we live humiliates the 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:16.800 poorest in our global community, the way that it humiliates 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:21.560 the world that made us and sustains us, The way 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:25.720 that it feasts on the poverty and the miseration of others. 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:29.280 You know, and I've set elsewhere. Our system runs on 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:35.040 the assumptions of cheap nature and cheap labor or cheap people. 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:37.960 I think it also actually runs on what Dietrich Bonhoff 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:42.360 called cheap grace. It's amazing how able we are to 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:47.880 forgive ourselves everything in advance, perpetually. So is this that 0:16:48.320 --> 0:16:51.880 weird thing of what is knowing? I mean, I think 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:54.200 most of us really understand the science. We know that 0:16:54.320 --> 0:16:57.560 this is a one way street, and it comes to 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:02.480 the central problem of the I guess juice is clearly 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:06.920 about generating energy but juice is really also used, you know, 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:08.720 by the people in the book as a kind of 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:12.560 code for moral courage. Do I have the juice to 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:15.480 keep going? Do you have the juice to make the 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:17.720 hard decision? Have you still got the juice for this? 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:20.160 You know, people ask each other, and I guess that's 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:23.399 what I'm asking myself in relation to your question, And 0:17:23.560 --> 0:17:27.200 you know, in general, in this moment on the knife's 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:30.800 edge as we are, I'm asking myself, I'm asking my culture, 0:17:30.880 --> 0:17:35.080 and I think I'm asking lawmakers and the people who 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:38.840 inhabit the sea suites, who seem to have such an 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:42.960 inordinate influence over our lawmakers. Do you have the juice 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:46.320 to make the hard decisions, to make the right decisions? 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:49.399 Are you on the side of life or are you 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:53.560 on the side of the money? You know, to put 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:55.840 it boldly, I mean it might sound a bit manichy, 0:17:55.920 --> 0:17:59.639 and but ultimately we're on this raiser's edge where we 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:03.600 have to make make hard choices, and in order for 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.880 life to prosper after us, for people to flourish after 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:09.520 we're gone, we have to make hard decisions now. And 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:12.960 I hope that we do have the juice to make 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:17.159 that call. The moral and practical and political decisions to 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:20.959 do the right thing by life. Typically pisces people off 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:23.320 that I have these open endings in a book, And 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:25.680 I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to 0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:28.560 say that, you know, this book has a characteristic ending, 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:33.159 and it's an open question. You know, do we have 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:35.680 the juice to do the right thing? And I guess 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:38.119 the end of the book leaves you wondering personally, I 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:38.600 hope we do. 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:45.120 When we returned, we discuss what it's like to write 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:48.719 a book like Juice, and how Tim despite it all, 0:18:49.160 --> 0:18:52.879 remains optimistic in the face of climate crisis. We'll be 0:18:53.000 --> 0:19:07.080 right back. Given the book is a vision of the future, 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:12.639 the book reaches conclusions about the present day, answers to 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:17.720 the questions that you're posing there, about political will, about courage, 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:22.359 about juice on the razor's edge rather than after the event. 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.040 And I think, when I allow myself to think about it, 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:28.240 I'm a deeply pessimistic person about some of this stuff 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:31.959 that I there is. It seems to me an innate 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:38.680 structural selfishness to our Western way of life now and 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:42.399 late capitalism. That means that inertia is almost baked on, 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:46.200 or a lack of willingness to give up comforts that 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:50.560 we have is baked on and I want to I 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:57.600 want to ask you about the relationship between emotion and writing. 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:02.120 For you, about the extent to which Juice is an 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:06.920 angry book, or a sorrowful book, or even a despairing book. 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:10.240 Tim Winton's head sitting down at the desk to write 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:13.480 each day, and to write about this and to live 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:16.239 and breathe in this imagined world for months on end, 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:20.200 what's the emotional state of that writing process? 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:23.920 Oh? 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:29.920 That was It was a nervous laugh. Yeah, it was 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:33.920 years and years on end, just from the off. 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:35.480 I have to say, I don't think this is a 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:41.040 despairing book, because I'm not a despairing person, Because despair 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:43.520 for me is anathema. 0:20:43.680 --> 0:20:47.360 It's a submission to a defeat I won't accept. 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:51.480 But having said that, I think it's honest of me 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.720 to say that the seven years of writing the book, 0:20:55.160 --> 0:21:05.200 my emotional state was incandescent fury, deep, foreboding, sorrow, alarm, 0:21:05.359 --> 0:21:09.320 particularly when I was you know, in the last decade, 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:13.560 we've just learned so much about the way our world 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:15.960 is changing. You know, for those of us who live 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:18.520 most of our lives, or quite a lot of our 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:24.160 lives in the outdoors. That's bodily registered in a corporeal sense. 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:26.840 But when you read the science and then you watch 0:21:26.920 --> 0:21:30.159 the watch the politics, and then we're reading more and 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:33.200 more material about it. And also the bulk of the 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:35.960 book was written during the years we pissed away, you know, 0:21:36.040 --> 0:21:40.800 the wasted years of you know, when climate deniers and 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:44.879 weirdos were in power. You know, we had the wasted 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:47.800 Abbot years, you know, having a prime minist who says 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:51.520 climate changes crap, and having a prime minister who previously 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:55.040 had wielded a lump of coal in the parliament just 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:57.399 to show us whose side you know he was on, 0:21:58.320 --> 0:22:00.240 you know who then when the country has been earning, 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:05.480 is throwing shackers and telling us that he doesn't hold eyes. So, 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:09.080 you know, obviously you can imagine the state that I 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:12.560 was in watching that as my children are having children, 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:17.320 as I'm kind of writing and producing and shooting for 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:22.240 four hundred and something days and natural history documentary about 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:24.560 you know, one of the last great wild places and 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.520 very vulnerable places in the world. I guess I was 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:30.800 in a state. But in order to get through that, 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:36.159 you get into a kind of disciplined. I'm kind of 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:38.520 reluctant to say the word, but you can get into 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:41.639 a warrior state in order to manage yourself and to 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:47.680 try to produce beautiful pros, which is my gig. 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:49.280 That's what I'm required to do. 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:54.000 Otherwise I might just be an advertising in order to 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:58.800 get the job done, to make something of that foreboding 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:01.800 and anguish and age, I had to go into a 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:04.720 kind of Yeah, I can't think of a better word 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:08.040 for it. I mean, I'm a pacifist, so the warrior state, 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:11.440 it's not comfortable positions for me to be in. But 0:23:11.520 --> 0:23:14.160 of course what I'm writing about, this is a weird 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:17.280 thing to own up to. I was I watched every 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:23.560 episode of every season of The Vikings when I was 0:23:23.640 --> 0:23:29.240 writing this book, and I, yeah, it's it's it's an 0:23:29.240 --> 0:23:31.159 odd it's an odd thing. But I so I had 0:23:31.200 --> 0:23:36.600 to pardon up and get through the hours of the 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:41.040 nightmare because I was essentially cutting myself off into a 0:23:41.160 --> 0:23:45.560 projected nightmare, one that I desperately want us to avoid 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:47.840 and I'll do everything in my power to ensure that 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:49.760 we have a chance of avoiding it. 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:54.879 But to go there every day It's just it's not 0:23:55.480 --> 0:23:56.560 not good on the spirit, you. 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:59.760 Know, So you have to rest your mind in vikings 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:03.520 if that's what you're doing as your escapism, or is 0:24:03.600 --> 0:24:07.359 that where the kind of where a pacifist finds. 0:24:07.119 --> 0:24:10.840 Their killer is watching faking? Oh, it was just interesting 0:24:10.960 --> 0:24:18.359 to watch people so intent on doing what they thought 0:24:18.480 --> 0:24:19.200 was necessary. 0:24:19.359 --> 0:24:20.080 But no, I didn't. 0:24:20.080 --> 0:24:24.080 I didn't watch vikings as respect. I think I did 0:24:24.119 --> 0:24:26.880 it as homework. You know what I get respect from 0:24:27.240 --> 0:24:31.919 that is the healing power of the world and its people. 0:24:32.200 --> 0:24:36.280 I mean, I still proceed from the assumption and determined 0:24:36.359 --> 0:24:39.760 belief that the world is good and we're at home 0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:43.399 in it, and that the people who were made by 0:24:43.480 --> 0:24:47.360 the world are essentially good and want to do good. 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:52.119 So if you're not an emotional optimist and you're not 0:24:52.440 --> 0:24:56.679 a dreamer, it still seems fair to say, through reading 0:24:56.720 --> 0:24:59.400 your work, you strike me as someone with a deep 0:24:59.560 --> 0:25:02.920 sense and I don't mean this in a particularly religious sense, 0:25:03.200 --> 0:25:05.400 but a sense of faith and a sense of joy. 0:25:05.680 --> 0:25:10.240 The ways in which you have reverence and love for beauty, 0:25:10.680 --> 0:25:15.960 for the natural world, for the capacity for goodness infuses 0:25:16.280 --> 0:25:19.240