Chapter 1: Who was David Malouf and what was his significance in Australian literature?
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I got very used to sort of crawling out of bed and coming and curling up behind an open, half-open door in, you know, the wooden house that we would have lived in in those days, where my parents were playing cards with friends or whatever, and I got used to overhearing what they said. And I think that was my first training, not to be a writer, but for being a writer.
David Maloof was a giant of Australian writing, known and loved for his iconic debut novel, Jono, about a young man in Brisbane during the Second World War, a book partly inspired by his own life. In a career spanning more than 50 years, David wrote plays, poetry, libretto and more novels, including The Great World, and his Booker Prize shortlisted Remembering Babylon.
And today on this special episode of the book show, we're remembering David, who has died this week at the age of 92.
Chapter 2: What early experiences influenced David Malouf's writing career?
Now, I had the very, very great pleasure of speaking to David just last year. He had just re-released some collections of his poetry, but we talked about all sorts of things, his early life, sharing books with his mum, that first novel, and the benefits of a daily walk on the beach.
I started by asking David if writing was still a daily practice for him, and his answer, as you'll hear, was bittersweet.
No, no. I don't write any fiction, which is what keeps you to a routine of having to work every day. And if I have... an idea for a poem or the beginnings of a poem, I jot it down and if the poem comes, that's good. If it doesn't, I say to myself, which is quite true, that I've already done enough so I don't feel any pressure.
That must feel nice.
Well, it means you have to make your life work each day with other things. And if you've actually been a writer who was used to writing, holding your life together, that's not so easy.
Yeah. So what do you do? What makes up your day?
Oh, some reading. My eyes are not great for the moment, so I can only read really by daylight. So I do some reading. I do walking. I walk on the beach every day, which is great.
Beautiful. And you were saying, if you get the beginnings of a poem, I'm interested to know what that moment is like, David. Can that come at any moment? Does it come when you're walking? When does a poem begin to stir?
Oh, it depends what it's set off by. It might be set off by hearing something somebody says. It might be set off by perceiving something that strikes you as new. It's often set off by language, so reading and often misapprehension in reading is what brings a phrase to mind that can be the beginning of a poem.
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Chapter 3: How did David Malouf's relationship with his mother shape his literary journey?
And I think that was my first training, not to be a writer, but for being a writer.
Do you still eavesdrop?
I think I do, yes. And look, I think any writer will tell you that they love sitting on a bus and overhearing conversations in that kind of way or something, because a lot of experience comes to you, not directly, but indirectly through observation. And I think it was Henry James who first pointed out that you only...
needed at the smallest degree at a glance or what you heard through an open door or what somebody dropped in conversation. And if you're a writer, that was the kind of first line on a whole page for your way of dealing with experience, whereas it wouldn't necessarily be... that with someone who was not an active writer.
So when did you know that you wanted to make writing your life?
Oh, fairly late, I think. You know, as a child, I thought I wanted to be other things. I was a musician, I played the violin, and I would have liked to be a composer. I think that was a preoccupation of mine until I was 12 or 13. After that, I thought I wanted to be an actor and I did a kind of course in acting, you know, out of school hours.
I really discovered I was a writer when I found I had a good many poems as it was then written. But, you know, by the time I was 15 or 16, I had a typewriter then and And I was working on a typewriter, writing stories. And in fact, I won a school prize when I was 12 for a short story I'd written, which was an inaugural prize and was open to anybody of any age in the school.
So it was extraordinary when a 12-year-old in college The first year of high school kind of won it.
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Chapter 4: What does David Malouf say about his daily writing practices?
But that didn't necessarily assure me that what I was meant to be was a writer. But what I'm saying is that I had a certain kind of assurance as a writer, which meant that I would eventually produce things. And when I had a certain body of work and looked at it,
I could decide that one day perhaps I would be either a poet or a short story writer, fiction writer, although I became a fiction writer quite late, really. I'd written many poems and published many poems and a couple of volumes of poems before I felt that something I had written in prose was worth keeping and publishing.
And that was Jono?
It was some stories first and then it was Jono, yes.
What about your parents? Were they supportive of this creative kid who wanted to be a composer or a writer or definitely something creative? And what did they make of that?
Oh, they were very, very supportive. I mean, my mother was a great reader and we often read together. I mean, when the war was on, we went to Scarborough, which is a small swimming place in south of Brisbane. And there, my mother and I belonged to the local library in Redcliffe. And every book that she borrowed from there, I read. So we shared a huge amount of reading.
And she went on doing that when I went to university and brought home the books that I was now reading or the books that were set. She read every single one of them. So we had a very, very close relationship.
about reading and about talking about reading and she and the woman who was really our housekeeper nurse, they used to read novels aloud to one another every afternoon and that was another time when I sort of sat quietly in the room and listened.
I've read that your mum, she'd come to Australia from England. She didn't like you kids sounding too Australian. Is that right?
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