Speaker 1: When I was a kid, my mother would take my
Speaker 1: sisters and I for camping holidays in the height of summer.
Speaker 1: Of the recurring destinations, Malakuda was a particular favorite. On
Speaker 1: the edge of Crowaging along National Park, at the mouth
Speaker 1: of this series of beautiful inlets, so on the far
Speaker 1: north coast of Victoria, and it's one of those places
Speaker 1: where while the year round population is only about a thousand,
Speaker 1: in summer, when the camping round is full, that number
Speaker 1: is more like eight thousand. I remember those long, glorious
Speaker 1: days splashing around on Becka Beach or sitting in the
Speaker 1: basketball hall watching the makeshift cinema. But of those entertainments,
Speaker 1: the absolute pinnacle was the Farmer's Market each weekend, not
Speaker 1: least because it was a reliable source of second hand books.
Speaker 1: It was there one summer, having exhausted the reading i'd
Speaker 1: packed for the holiday, that I picked up my first
Speaker 1: Bruce Pasco novel. In hindsight, it's clear to me that
Speaker 1: the quiet bloke with a big beard who sold it
Speaker 1: to me was the author himself. This wasn't a second
Speaker 1: hand stall. This was someone who loved to write, making
Speaker 1: a connection with potential readers in between the DreamCatcher Stall
Speaker 1: and the Homemade Chutneys. That more than two decades later
Speaker 1: Bruce Pascoe would be a household name was unthinkable at
Speaker 1: the time that he would still be writing, still honoring
Speaker 1: his commitment to telling a great story that is utterly unsurprising.
Speaker 1: I'm Michael Williams, and this is Read. This the show
Speaker 1: about the books we love and the stories behind them.
Speaker 1: It was twenty fourteen when Bruce Pascoe went from being
Speaker 1: a prolific yet relatively unknown writer to public enemy number
Speaker 1: one in Australia's culture wars. That was the year he
Speaker 1: published his now infamous book Dark Emu and Its Reexamins
Speaker 1: Nation of accepted historical accounts of pre invasion Australia. It's
Speaker 1: a book that struck a chord. More than three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty thousand copies have been sold so far, and
Speaker 1: it's inspired various spin off books, from a young adult
Speaker 1: edition to entire books published to refute its claims about
Speaker 1: First Nations people and their relationship with the land. Newscorps
Speaker 1: in particular, have expended a lot of energy framing Bruce
Speaker 1: as this ahistorical force of propaganda. Its nasty, ugly stuff,
Speaker 1: but part of What I like about Bruce Pasco is
Speaker 1: his calm, implacable generosity. He's engaged critics and detractors and
Speaker 1: welcomed the debate. For all the attempts to co op
Speaker 1: them into the culture wars, Bruce is not so interested.
Speaker 1: He has other stories to tell, and the latest one
Speaker 1: is his novel Imperial Harvest. It's set in thirteenth century Mongolia,
Speaker 1: and it follows a one armed soldier yEnc as he
Speaker 1: contemplates the expectations of others and how a single person
Speaker 1: can navigate war and colonialism with grace and endurance. And
Speaker 1: it begins with a disclaimer, this author's warning that sums
Speaker 1: up how Bruce Pasco approaches the world.
Speaker 2: This novel tells a story of great armies, the calumny
Speaker 2: of powerful men traveling across the vast lands of Eurasia.
Speaker 2: But if there's a date here or a town there
Speaker 2: which seems strange, remember that history tosses all fact in
Speaker 2: the air, so the victor can choose his own confetti.
Speaker 2: In this case, the confetti is chosen by the losers,
Speaker 2: so be patient. It's not always possible to catch the
Speaker 2: policces in their original order, and in any case, it
Speaker 2: will be confetti again tomorrow. Don't be dismayed by this fact.
Speaker 2: You're alive, aren't you.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of returning to confetti and also
Speaker 1: telling your readers not to be dismayed. I mean, often,
Speaker 1: particularly with historical fiction, we have this anxiety of not
Speaker 1: just what's true and what's not, but what's a legitimate
Speaker 1: speaking position from which to tell history and what's not?
Speaker 1: And setting that note at the front of the novel
Speaker 1: seems to be saying, it's a book. It's here for
Speaker 1: you to have fun. See what it sparks that there
Speaker 1: is a lot of implied goodwill in that request of
Speaker 1: your readers.
Speaker 2: And because of that, it ends in a restaurant where
Speaker 2: people enjoy wine, they enjoy food, and they enjoy sharing it,
Speaker 2: and they are slightly alarmed by their company. It was
Speaker 2: meant to be a kind gesture of asking people not
Speaker 2: to hate, but to come together a little bit. And
Speaker 2: you know, it's easy for people to polarize their situation
Speaker 2: and to take positions. But I'll never forget being told
Speaker 2: by a very old Hawaiian woman that when you're having
Speaker 2: these arguments, leave no one behind. In my own town
Speaker 2: of Malakuta, there are debates which have ended up being
Speaker 2: polarized when a perfectly good, compromised situation was available. You know,
Speaker 2: compromises messy, muddy, unsatisfying to most people, but they're usually
Speaker 2: more right than wrong. And we need to treasure the
Speaker 2: messiness of democracy because the cleanliness of autocracy is to
Speaker 2: be aboard. And we've seen no good example in the
Speaker 2: world of autocracies where marginal groups weren't flayed. So I
Speaker 2: hope we can sit down in a restaurant together, the
Speaker 2: restaurant being the world and keep talking.
Speaker 1: When people think Bruce Pasker, they don't generally think thirteenth
Speaker 1: century Mongolia. So what's that about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know everyone was expecting a certain kind of novel,
Speaker 2: and it did come as a bit of a surprise
Speaker 2: to a lot of people. But the whole idea of
Speaker 2: the novel is to look at the propensity of men
Speaker 2: to commit violence. Where does it come from? And I
Speaker 2: didn't want to just concentrate on the Europeans because people
Speaker 2: are expecting me to be critical of European colonialism, but
Speaker 2: there are other examples of colonialism, and Genjis Khan is
Speaker 2: as good as anything.
Speaker 1: It's one of the biggiest. That's a decent one to
Speaker 1: go for to leave.
Speaker 2: Well, to cover an entire continent is pretty ambitious before.
Speaker 1: We get to carn temperamentially, is that typical of you, Bruce,
Speaker 1: Like you know what people expect from you, and so
Speaker 1: you're determined not to give it to them.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a determined nation. This novel. I've been writing
Speaker 2: for fifteen years, so it began before Dark Emu. So
Speaker 2: I'm not a curmudgeon in that sense. I am a
Speaker 2: curmudgeon in many senses, but not that particular one. It's
Speaker 2: just the way my thoughts have been going, and they're
Speaker 2: a little bit out of sync. But to me it
Speaker 2: doesn't matter. I'm just looking forward to talking about the
Speaker 2: book and for readers to wonder about the book, and
Speaker 2: then let's have a conversation about it, because it's the
Speaker 2: conversations very timely.
Speaker 1: The conversation is incredibly timely, and sadly it always will
Speaker 1: be a conversation about the nature of war, about the
Speaker 1: ways in which it impacts a life, a psyche of people.
Speaker 1: More generally, you're always going to be blessed with that
Speaker 1: feeling topical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, when I went to school, I was taught
Speaker 2: that war is the natural condition of man, and I
Speaker 2: thought at the time, what a bleak prospect for the world,
Speaker 2: what a bleak prospect for people, individuals, that we have
Speaker 2: to do that. I remember in primary school listening to
Speaker 2: the last post on Anzac Day and being so deeply
Speaker 2: affected by it because you know, our family had lost
Speaker 2: people in both wars, and there were very emotional services,
Speaker 2: and I thought, Gee, we're just going to keep doing
Speaker 2: this forever. There'll be a new Anzac Day and it'll
Speaker 2: just repeat ad infinitum. And I thought, how sad that was.
Speaker 2: But I didn't have the resources as a kid to
Speaker 2: look at whether or not that is the truth. And
Speaker 2: I've been very fortunate to have met and lived with
Speaker 2: people who have another experience of the world, original cultural world,
Speaker 2: and our families are connected to that story, and it's
Speaker 2: a story without war. So what I'm really hopeful for
Speaker 2: is that Australia can have this conversation that is war
Speaker 2: the natural condition of man? Is there another way for
Speaker 2: humans to behave towards each other? And I think there is.
Speaker 2: I think that's a fabulous philosophical challenge for this country
Speaker 2: to think that it might have on this continent a
Speaker 2: solution to what's happening in Palestine at the moment.
Speaker 1: I love that idea and it's a kind of stirring
Speaker 1: and wonderful thought, but I can't help but feel that
Speaker 1: colonial Australia, settler Australia does what so many countries do
Speaker 1: in its national myth building, which is it appears to
Speaker 1: believe that war essential for your sense of yourself. We
Speaker 1: fetishize that experience of war rather than look for a
Speaker 1: way to never reproduce it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we see it as essential to ourselves and that
Speaker 2: you know, if an argument gets to a certain point,
Speaker 2: then eventually you will go to arms. And that's a
Speaker 2: legitimate political and philosophical stance take. So to consider something
Speaker 2: else is going to take maybe two hundred and thirty years,
Speaker 2: and I obviously won't be around. But I'm determined to
Speaker 2: contribute to that debate and for Australia to consider that
Speaker 2: their idea of Australian history might need some refinement, or
Speaker 2: that what Aboriginal Australian people were doing was not hunting
Speaker 2: and gathering. See by the turmoil that has erupted subsequent
Speaker 2: to that discussion taking place, that it's really hard to
Speaker 2: change people's minds and that they won't change them peacefully.
Speaker 1: I do think there is something in what you had
Speaker 1: to endure in response to dark Ema that is a
Speaker 1: real precursor to the way the Voice referendum took place,
Speaker 1: which is that there was a request, an offering of
Speaker 1: a space for a conversation, and instead of responding to
Speaker 1: that in good faith and taking it as a conversation,
Speaker 1: recognizing that there might be ground to be met in
Speaker 1: the middle, there might be disagreement, there might be whatever,
Speaker 1: but the conversation itself is valuable. Instead of responding in
Speaker 1: that way, the response was vitriolic and violent and about
Speaker 1: tearing down rather than about being willing to take the
Speaker 1: chat further.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there is a great parallel there. But
Speaker 2: I believe strongly that say, in one hundred and fifty years,
Speaker 2: when kids at university is sitting down to do their essays,
Speaker 2: that they will be looking at the events of last
Speaker 2: year and the no vote will be a footnote. But
Speaker 2: I think Australia has an enormous and positive opportunity to
Speaker 2: lead the world intellectually on this point. Not always. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not a league ladder, and you don't remain champion forever.
Speaker 2: But in this particular little moment of time, I think
Speaker 2: Australia can make a really decent contribution to world conversation
Speaker 2: about how we behave as humans. And what I love
Speaker 2: about the old people and all the so called myths
Speaker 2: is it's really philosophy that we're talking about, and that
Speaker 2: philosophy is one of enormous piece about the kind of
Speaker 2: structures you put in place to control humans. Because the
Speaker 2: human is a really difficult animal. The human will always
Speaker 2: be jealous, always be violent, always be loving, always be honorable.
Speaker 2: That mix that is in all of us, the humans
Speaker 2: always going.
Speaker 3: To be like that.
Speaker 2: But to consider how best to use each of those,
Speaker 2: suppress some and enhance others, I think it's an enormous thing.
Speaker 2: I just think it's a great thing for humans to
Speaker 2: consider and for us to discuss. It's not a blueprint
Speaker 2: that will be built tomorrow. It's up for discussion.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things I so enjoy about your
Speaker 1: intellectual and cultural contribution generally, Bruce, is the optimism I
Speaker 1: don't understand.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you hold it, and I wish I shared it,
Speaker 1: and that is great. But the generosity of inviting the conversation,
Speaker 1: inviting the chad, responding to your critics by saying, absolutely,
Speaker 1: let's talk about it. That's not like. There are very
Speaker 1: few people in public life I can think of who
Speaker 1: have more grace when it comes to believing in the
Speaker 1: value of what you're doing, beyond whether people agree with
Speaker 1: you or don't agree with you.
Speaker 2: You can blame my mother and grandmother for that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because they insisted on decency and I haven't been able
Speaker 2: to escape that tug in my brain. But also I
Speaker 2: think I'm in a good position to be in the
Speaker 2: argument because you know, obviously over eighty percent of our
Speaker 2: family is white and a small percentage is Aboriginal. So
Speaker 2: I've got an obligation to buy sides, and I've got
Speaker 2: a huge obligation to white Australia because that's where most
Speaker 2: of our genes come from. I have an obligation to
Speaker 2: that side of the family to say, look, I'm not
Speaker 2: ignoring the Cornishman, I'm not ignoring the Englishman. But there's
Speaker 2: this other thing, and it's Australia. This is where we
Speaker 2: can have an effect on the history of the country.
Speaker 1: When we return. Bruce Reveal's whey seaside towns are places
Speaker 1: of descent. We'll be right back. I remember reading one
Speaker 1: of your novels many many years ago and being so
Speaker 1: moved by the way you wrote, being so kind of
Speaker 1: carried along by the story. But also you write books
Speaker 1: clearly from a place of having an idea about the
Speaker 1: world that you want to share, you want to prosecute,
Speaker 1: you want to imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was talking to Melissa Lukashenko and Deborah
Speaker 2: Dank yesterday morning about Charles Dickens. This is a good conversation,
Speaker 2: good literary conversation, because we'd all read Dickens and we'd
Speaker 2: all felt touched by his compassion. But I've just read
Speaker 2: Priya Satia Times Monster where she talks about Dickens's fascism
Speaker 2: as well, and that was incredibly disappointing. But he's a human.
Speaker 2: He's a flawed human. We're all flawed humans. And it
Speaker 2: was just a fascinating conversation, and it's very relevant when
Speaker 2: we're having these conversations. It's never black and white. The
Speaker 2: shades of gray and other literary reference are immense, and
Speaker 2: we have to accommodate that. We have to continue to
Speaker 2: have the conversation rather than saying you're too white or
Speaker 2: you're too black, you're so gray, and just keep talking.
Speaker 2: And democracy is the slowest beast on earth, but it's
Speaker 2: a very very good beast to have in our paddock.
Speaker 1: So accepting that you knew you wanted to write about
Speaker 1: the nature and the legacy of war and colonialism, you
Speaker 1: knew you wanted to begin that story that journey in
Speaker 1: the Northern Hemisphere, and you knew that actually European colonialism
Speaker 1: wasn't the path that you wanted to look at. That
Speaker 1: kind of explains thirteenth century Mongolia as a choice. But
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about a particular one armed
Speaker 1: horseman called Yene and why he was the vessel for
Speaker 1: the story that you wanted to tell.
Speaker 2: Well, I really wanted to choose someone who history would ignore.
Speaker 2: He wasn't a general, he wasn't even a particularly brave soldier.
Speaker 2: He was nothing. He was on the scrap heap of humanity.
Speaker 2: But he had the good fortune to fall into the
Speaker 2: company of a really good man who was also never
Speaker 2: going to be noticed by history, a baker, a Miller.
Speaker 2: But that Miller, his life's journey had taught him because
Speaker 2: of the pain he had endured that people need care.
Speaker 2: So in a way, it's Penkei who is the driver
Speaker 2: of the story. Yen say, he's just swept up in
Speaker 2: the stream and becomes more worldly and becomes more aware
Speaker 2: of his position as a human and finds himself in
Speaker 2: a position to make change. So I wanted an anonymous person.
Speaker 2: When I began writing Imperial Harvest, I was very anonymous.
Speaker 2: You know you mentioned having read my novels. Well, I
Speaker 2: wondered who bought that book, because I've written seven or
Speaker 2: eight novels and the sales of each was really small.
Speaker 1: I reckon I bought it from you in person in Malakuda.
Speaker 1: That's had the camping ground there, And when the market's
Speaker 1: set up and I bought it from you, then I'm
Speaker 1: a camping holiday.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we sold books from that little tent for
Speaker 2: a decade or more, nearly two decades. And the conversations
Speaker 2: in that tent, if they ever got to the Australia's
Speaker 2: spy agency, we've been all in trouble because it was
Speaker 2: a ferment of rebellion.
Speaker 1: I think the spy agencies known not to look at Malakuda,
Speaker 1: that it's a hotbed. There's dangerous stuff going on there.
Speaker 1: They're better to turn a blind eye.
Speaker 2: Well, one of my novels talks about seaside villages as
Speaker 2: being places of descent because fishermen don't give us stuff
Speaker 2: about anyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they've got time to talk things through. It's
Speaker 1: not about action. It's about about scheming.
Speaker 2: It is, and in imperial harmsy or a whole groups
Speaker 2: of sailors and fishermen, and that's what they do. They
Speaker 2: because their life is on the sea. They feel themselves
Speaker 2: totally independent of the land, and they have contempt for
Speaker 2: politicians and their pirates. You know, the sea and piracy
Speaker 2: go together.
Speaker 1: It's one of the very nice things about how the
Speaker 1: book functions. Imperial Harvest functions. And you kind of alluded
Speaker 1: to this before. But because it centers around a protagonist
Speaker 1: who is passive is the wrong word, but is kind
Speaker 1: of buffeted by war, by circumstance, by history, it means
Speaker 1: that the characters who emerge around the fringes of the
Speaker 1: story are often incredibly compelling. They're pushing it forward in
Speaker 1: really interesting ways.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad you see it like that, because I
Speaker 2: was afraid that my mangling of history would have become
Speaker 2: a theme because it's not an historical novel because I've
Speaker 2: shifted geographies, I've shifted historical events. But I'm more fascinated
Speaker 2: by people than i am by history, and people generate history.
Speaker 2: But it's more or less like an aside. It's the
Speaker 2: people themselves, and I think goodness and badness drive the world,
Speaker 2: and it's that's up to us to decide which is which.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Finally, just because
Speaker 1: I have to ask for myself, because I haven't been
Speaker 1: back for years, how's Malakuda going post the fires?
Speaker 2: Malakuda is its wonderful self. You know, three rivers, two lakes,
Speaker 2: the ocean. It's hard to destroy the beauty of that.
Speaker 2: The bush recovered very quickly, the people not as quickly.
Speaker 2: Friends of mine put the roof on their house a
Speaker 2: fortnight ago after losing their house in the fire. Another
Speaker 2: good friend of mine was a renter, doesn't have a
Speaker 2: house at all. The psyche of the town is different,
Speaker 2: And maybe it's my age group because I've lost a
Speaker 2: lot of friends I've known since nineteen seventy in the
Speaker 2: last few years. I know are the real rebels and
Speaker 2: rat bags and the people with whom if you caught
Speaker 2: their eye in the street. They would not let you
Speaker 2: go because they'd want to talk to you about politics.
Speaker 2: They'd want to tell you how disgraceful the Australian cricket
Speaker 2: team is all that conversation. A lot of that's gone,
Speaker 2: So the fun for me has gone out of the town.
Speaker 2: But there are young kids that are making their own
Speaker 2: legends and their own society to which I'm not a party,
Speaker 2: and I have to get used to that because I'm
Speaker 2: an old man.
Speaker 1: We all have to get used to that, one way
Speaker 1: or the other. But as long as you keep writing books,
Speaker 1: you've got that entry point straight back into that. You
Speaker 1: can be an old man on the edge keeping an arc.
Speaker 2: Like writing such a wonderful thing. You know, I look
Speaker 2: at musicians, you know, take in their cello onto the airplane,
Speaker 2: artists you know, with rolls and rolls of fine paper,
Speaker 2: and and you know I jump on the plane with
Speaker 2: a buyer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Perfect, perfect, Bruce Pasco, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your type.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Bruce Pasco's latest novel, Imperial Harvest, is out now and
Speaker 1: you can get it at all good independent bookstores, And
Speaker 1: just to piss off Andrew Bolt, go buy another copy
Speaker 1: of Dark Emu while you're at it, Just to twist
Speaker 1: the life before we go, I wanted to tell you
Speaker 1: what I've been reading this week, and we could probably
Speaker 1: give over an entire episode of Read This to talk
Speaker 1: about cover endorsements in the book industry. That they're known
Speaker 1: as puffs. That's where another writer is asked to give
Speaker 1: a recommendation for a new book that's coming out. If
Speaker 1: you love this person, then you'll love this book. That
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and there are fabulous stories about it.
Speaker 1: Some writers I'm going to name us writer Gary Steinard
Speaker 1: for Exit, are so synonymous with cover endorsements that actually
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean anything to hear from them anymore in
Speaker 1: that capacity. But when a new book lands on my
Speaker 1: desk and it has a cover endorsement from Eleanor Catton
Speaker 1: and Max Porter, when it compares the readability of that
Speaker 1: book to Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow or Audrey Iffernegger's
Speaker 1: Time Traveler's Wife, then I kind of know it's going
Speaker 1: to be my cup of tea. The book in question
Speaker 1: is a time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy.
Speaker 1: It's called The Ministry of Time. It's by Kelly and Bradley,
Speaker 1: and Frankly, I can't wait to get back to it.
Speaker 1: You can find these books and all the others we
Speaker 1: mentioned at your favorite independent bookstore. That's it for this
Speaker 1: week's show. As always, rate, review and share. It helps
Speaker 1: us enormously. We don't normally do TV recommendations on read this,
Speaker 1: but I have been adoring the new HBO show The Sympathizer.
Speaker 1: You may be aware it's an adaptation of Vie ten
Speaker 1: wins Pulitzer Prize winning novel a few years ago, and
Speaker 1: next week on the show, I talked to the man
Speaker 1: himself about his new memoir and why becoming a writer
Speaker 1: made him a man of two faces.
Speaker 3: The more I acquired English, the more I became a
Speaker 3: better reader, the more I learned about English language literature
Speaker 3: of the Anglo American tradition. The more I became a writer,
Speaker 3: the more I became an American, the further away I
Speaker 3: was taken from my parents. And that that alienation, I think, is,
Speaker 3: you know, partly what motivates me as a writer and
Speaker 3: gives me the fuel and the motivation to be a writer,
Speaker 3: which led to some success. But it's also ironically the
Speaker 3: alienation that distanced me from my parents.
Speaker 1: Read This is produced and edited by Clara Ames, mixing
Speaker 1: and original compositions by Zalton Fitcher. Thanks for listening, See
Speaker 1: you next week.