Chapter 1: What reading resolutions do authors like Christos Tsiolkas set?
This is an ABC podcast
in summer. I'm Kate Evans.
And I'm Cassie McCullough. Happy New Year. So many books ahead of us. But hang on, you might also want to catch up on some old ones too.
Or maybe you're one of those people with reading projects for the year. You're going to read a book from every country in the world or try a new genre or read only 19th century Australian fiction. You've spoken to people with projects like that, haven't you, Cassie?
Yeah, I was just trying to think who it was, and it's actually Christos Tsiolkas. And we're going to, funnily enough, hear that conversation. He set himself a task every year of something he was going to read, and one of them was Patrick White.
Yeah, he wanted to read all of Patrick White, find out what he was all about, and then, of course, he wrote a book about it, which is what you talked to him about.
Okay, well, let's hear it. Christos Tsiolkas, take it away. Christos Tsiolkas, thank you so much for being with us.
It's a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Can I start with what I think will be called in the law of Patrick White the Cheltenham question? It is such a good question and it came from an audience member at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in 2015. You were on stage with Cathy Lett. That's right. Who, well, she wrote Puberty Blues. Anything she wrote after that didn't matter because that was just the best book ever.
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Chapter 2: How does Christos Tsiolkas reflect on Patrick White's influence?
Christoph, what do Australians think of Patrick White these days was the question.
That's right. And it was actually very much in that kind of forceful voice it was asked. And, you know, the man was, what I think he was, I'm convinced he was doing, was actually asking both a question of... Patrick White and wanting to know my opinion of Patrick White. But he also, through that question, was asking me, what are Australians thinking of their own culture?
So he really got to the heart of it.
He did.
And it spurred you to write the book and go back, in fact, and read every single work by Patrick White within 12 months, which is an amazing thing to do.
Look, I have for years now eschewed making New Year's resolutions that are about denying myself pleasure. I just have no Protestant bone in my body at all. I had made a decision over two years ago on a New Year's Eve night that I was going to read all of Patrick White. And it was one of the best resolutions I ever made, I think, that I did that.
But it also came for all that at a particularly... at the right time for me to do it, to do it as an older man. I've not resolved, far from it, the questions and issues and... antagonisms and confusions I have about what it means to be Australian. That, that's never going to be fully resolved. But it was at a time where, I mean, I was ready to read someone like White and to read him fairly.
I don't think I could have done that when I was younger because he was one of the dead white males. I think that's another thing I refer to in the, um, And I think I had come through my tertiary education. I was at Melbourne University at a time when postmodernism was the dominant way of reading when it came to literature. And I think postmodernism...
was not very sympathetic and I don't think very attentive to someone like Patrick White.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Christos Tsiolkas share about Australian literature?
He opened up the world of European literature that I hadn't been, that I didn't really know about. And so I guess it felt right when I was thinking, who do I dedicate this book to? Do I dedicate it to someone?
And he had passed away a few years ago, sadly, but it felt absolutely right that I say thank you to this man who had been instrumental in making me a reader and in making me a reader, making me a writer. And I think that's... Sorry, I've just been interrupting you and I do apologise, but I actually... I guess that's what I would like to say to people about Patrick Wyatt is...
don't read him through the lens of the dead white male. Yes.
There are critiques we can make, and I try and make some of them in the book, but I guess I'm suggesting, or I'm saying in terms of my understanding of him now, is if you want to know what it is to write, if you want to know what it is to tell a story, if you want to actually know what it is to tell an Australian story, please read this man. He's one of the guides.
Now, Christos, in a moment, you know, I'm going to ask you that dreadful question, which is for people who haven't read any, where should they start in your opinion? What are your top three? But before I get there, many readers are daunted by reading Patrick White because he is such a monolith, you know, such a behemoth of Australian literature and you point out world literature.
And because he's held in this regard and there's this mythology around him and he was cranky. And as I've said, his books are challenging. But there's also, it feels like there's these two books between the reader and the novels. And that's his own autobiography, Flaws in the Glass.
And also David Marr's much quoted biography, Patrick White, A Life, which really feel like they're part of the sort of pantheon of Patrick White in a way. Do you feel like they're a hindrance to people sometimes?
Or is that just me? That's a really good question, Cassie, because I would say to you in response that I do remember when I made the decision to read all the novels that part of that decision was to leave Flaws in the Glass and to leave the Marr biography right till the end because I thought I'm going to...
I'm going to try and, what I wanted to do was read the man's work, you know, not to read his life, read the work and see what the work gave me. I'm really grateful for Mars Biography because once you fall in love with white, and I've fallen in love with white. then the biography gives you this immense wealth of detail.
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Chapter 4: How does Patrick White's writing challenge readers?
And so the focus is entirely on what they have to say. And by doing that, by sort of being a largely invisible narrator, we're sort of a lot of Faye's personal life is withheld from us. And I think that's quite a deliberate strategy in the wake of what we discussed about Cusk's earlier work.
And yet Kate and I, well, I certainly hadn't any knowledge of that kind of baggage that she came along with. And we haven't read the other two. in the trilogy. So it's quite a different reading experience that we've had.
This book, Kudos, opens with, I think, one of the most extraordinary first chapters, if it is structurally actually a chapter, I'm not even sure, because the structure of this novel is also a major departure from just about anything I've read before. It kind of sidles up to you and just starts in the most casual way. And before you know it, you're hearing...
She's on a plane sitting next to a guy whose legs are too long and before long, you know, they start this conversation and you hear this story about his family dog, which sounds so mundane and banal, but it is the most extraordinary story. I think it's the best first chapter I've read since Enduring Love by Ian McEwan, which had that extraordinary first chapter about the balloon incident.
Yes.
Yeah. amazing first chapter. And from there, it just kind of flows on in this kind of, I felt like I was inside a lava lamp with this kind of these globules of ideas kind of rising up slowly and softly. And the language is so perfect that you just, it's just effortless and you're drawn into the next thing and you don't even know where you've been. It's like a drug.
It's actually like taking some kind of medication in this book.
Yeah.
A drug is an interesting way of putting it, Cassie, because what it did was it then changed everything else I've read since. Because for me, it was a novel all about storytelling.
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Chapter 5: What are the themes explored in Rachel Cusk's Kudos?
These books almost approach works of philosophy, really, don't they?
There's a real clarity and sharpness through here. But Cassie and I have read Kudos as a standalone novel. You two have read it as part of a trilogy. How did it stack up, Mireille, when you looked at the three? Was it satisfying?
I found it very satisfying, but it is quite different to the other two. I adored Outline because I think I, because it is the first of the three and I was coming to something entirely new. I had that thrill of discovery and the joy of kind of seeing what she'd done, how she'd developed from her previous work.
And so that never left me, even though I've spoken to other writers who prefer the second one. I actually, I think just because of that thrill of finding the first one and that's become, that became my favourite. But interestingly, with the three, they're quite different in the sense that, I mean, this question of the dreamlike quality of kudos, I don't know that that exists so much anymore.
It didn't exist so much for me in transit and I think it's something to do with the setting because in Outline we're very much placed, it's mostly set in Greece where the narrator is.
Where do you think this is set? Where do you think Kudos is set? Because Kate and I have a few theories but it doesn't seem to be clear to us.
Well, she's deliberately withheld the names of the locations, which she didn't do in the previous novels. Transit was based in London. It was very clear it was about renovating a dilapidated London flat. But this one really floats. It's a floating world. And I guessed that the first of the two locations was Germany and Portugal.
I only thought there was one. I only thought there was one location.
I thought there was two European cities.
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Chapter 6: How do Mireille Juchau and Susan Johnson discuss Rachel Cusk's work?
Yes, it absolutely is. It's one of my favourite books. It's a book that I still read as an adult. I read it usually every summer on Boxing Day. I get it out when the year has finally ended and you have a few hours to do just absolutely nothing. I get on my couch, put my feet up and have a revisit with Anne.
It's got a particularly sentimental sort of, I've got a particular sentimental attachment to that book because I first read it when I was about eight years old.
I have a really close friend who I'm still friends with to this day, Fiona, and that was the first experience I had of reading a book at the same time as somebody else and sharing that, going to school the next day and saying, oh, are you up to the bit about when Gilbert dips her hair into the inkwell? And she'd say, oh, no, I haven't got to that bit yet. Yeah.
Yeah, I've got a lot of fond memories of that book. Explain the book for people who don't know it. Anne of Green Gables is essentially a book about an orphan. It's a book about a young girl who accidentally ends up in the care of two elderly people, a set of siblings, Matthew and Marilla. What's so endearing about Anne is that she's an imperfect character.
And throughout my life, I think I've been drawn to characters who are relatable, but not perfect. You know, she's got red hair, which she hates, although, you know, other people find it quite fetching, but she's not in love with it. and is short-tempered and gets herself into scrapes. And she's always, you know, she's a good-hearted girl who makes sometimes unusual choices.
So I think she's a very relatable character. And as a child, I loved her because she made me feel really good about myself. Whenever I did anything that was a bit silly, I could find comfort in the fact that Anne Shirley had probably done something similar.
So it's a Canadian novel. Who's the author?
Yeah, the author is Lucy Maud or L.M. Montgomery. She's a Canadian author. And the book is set, it's a fictitious setting, but it's actually based on Prince Edward Island. And I think even today, I've not been there. It's a bucket list item. But Fiona, the friend that I discussed the book with, she's actually been to Prince Edward Island and they've reconstructed
the village of Avonlea, which was a fictitious village. But I believe that there's like Anne of Green Gables house is there. So one day I might go see that.
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Chapter 7: What personal connections do authors have with their favorite books?
And again, I'm wondering if there are other books that you've read that have sort of shown that tension for you particularly well, other things that have sort of shaped you as a reader and a writer. Yeah.
Other books that have shaped me, it's funny because I've written this book about toxic friendship in a way, but I spent my childhood and my teen years and even my early 20s reading a lot about strong, powerful, independent heroines. And I think that's what's really shaped me as a writer. And when I explore friendship in both my current book and in the previous book,
I'm looking at women who are making independent choices for themselves. And I mean, in this particular book, these people are trying to get ahead, making the choices that are right for their lives. And it's pushing them apart. In the previous book, the people in that book, their life choices were pushing them together.
But that was the shape of us.
Yes, The Shape of Us. So I think what resonates for me in any book and has been since I've been right back to Anne Shirley is a female protagonist who is not a victim. One of my absolute, probably my absolute favourite all-time book is Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders. which follows the path of a young woman, Anna Frith, during the plague years in Great Britain.
She was in, the story's actually set, it's a really interesting story. It's set in a real village that cordoned itself off during the plague years. The plague was brought into this village on a bolt of cloth and The villagers decided that rather than spread the disease any further, that they would lock themselves, essentially go into lockdown. And many, many, many of them died.
But Anna, who lost her husband, not to plague, but in an accident at the beginning of the novel, and then lost her two children, she becomes... quite unlikely heroine, really. She's a young woman. She's 18 years old. And she's not particularly an educated woman, but she's an independent, clever woman who is not someone who's just prepared to sit on her hands and let other people suffer.
So is that a book that you reread? Yes, I've read that. Look, I'm not a huge rereader just because it's a time factor. There are so many great books to read. I'm not a huge rereader, but that book is one that I reread often. Anne, of course, I keep going back to her. And I also have reread, a couple of years ago, I reread To Kill a Mockingbird.
But I tend to be, I've got a big stack of novels that I'd love to reread. Like one of my favourite books, which I've been meaning to reread for ages is... The Harp in the South, which I haven't read for probably 20 years.
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Chapter 8: How do friendships shape the narratives in contemporary literature?
Ellie is an Irish author but she's living here in Australia at the moment. This is a book that just blew my socks off. It kind of looks like it's just a little sort of lightweight piece beach read kind of thing. But this book is about the protagonist is a young woman in modern day Ireland, and she's got a fiance. She's got the regular set of friends.
Her interests are going out and drinking with her mates. But what she does, every decision she's making, she consults an app, which is called Be Best. And So the app will tell her whether she's wearing the right colour shoes, whether she's making the right financial decisions, whether she can have a loan for a new house.
Everything that you would make a decision on in your life is controlled by this app. You don't have to use the app, but nearly everyone does. And it's just the implications of what happens when you allow technology into your life to that degree. I found it a fascinating read and it made me put my phone away for a few days afterwards.
What do you think you're going to read next?
So I was actually just given today at lunchtime, The Wife in Between to read. So I'm going to read that on the plane on the way back to Melbourne. Thank you so much for speaking to us, Lisa. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.
Novelist Lisa Ireland, who rereads Anne of Green Gables every year. Well, time to squeeze in one more writer. Patrick DeWitt is a Canadian-American and in 2018 we spoke about his book French Exit. But Kate, you also got him on the phone down the blower to ask him about the books that influenced that novel.
Patrick, if you were to imagine the bookshelf that sits behind and influencing this novel of yours, French Exit, where would you start?
I think of it, coming into it, I know that I was thinking of a very specific type of comedic writing, something that is often referred to as a comedy of manners. And typically this is writing that is coming from the Commonwealth.
And, for example, I had a couple of different authors and also one filmmaker in mind, but somebody who was at the forefront of my mind during the writing of French Exit was Evelyn Waugh, somebody who I came to in life as a reader and discovered, I suppose, two or three years ago.
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