Tim Winton

:00:00. > :00:19.Now on BBC News, it's time for Talking Books.

:00:20. > :00:22.Hello and welcome to Talking Books at Hay Festival.

:00:23. > :00:26.Hay has been inviting audiences to talk, to

:00:27. > :00:28.think, to read and to reflect for 30 years.

:00:29. > :00:34.Over ten days 250,000 people will rub shoulders with some of the

:00:35. > :00:36.world's greatest writers, thinkers and performers.

:00:37. > :00:38.All here in the beautiful surroundings of the Brecon

:00:39. > :00:44.Today I'm talking to the Australian author Tim Winton,

:00:45. > :00:45.who once compared writing to surfing.

:00:46. > :00:49.He's written 28 books for adults and children and his latest,

:00:50. > :00:51.The Boy Behind The Curtain is about his childhood growing up

:00:52. > :00:53.in Western Australia and the impact that's had

:00:54. > :01:29.Now, most writers don't have a fish named after them.

:01:30. > :01:31.Most writers don't have their face on a

:01:32. > :01:40.But then Tim Winton is not most writers.

:01:41. > :01:43.He wrote his first novel, An Open Swimmer, when

:01:44. > :01:48.he was just 19 years old, and he's gone on to write nearly 30 more

:01:49. > :01:51.books for adults and children, all very different, but to my mind,

:01:52. > :01:57.all sharing an ear for language, and an

:01:58. > :01:59.eye for the natural landscape, and he's pulled off that difficult

:02:00. > :02:01.combination of both literary and popular success.

:02:02. > :02:03.His latest book is called The Boy Behind The Curtain

:02:04. > :02:07.and it's a series of essays, or true stories, about his life and the

:02:08. > :02:16.Is The Boy Behind The Curtain the manual which explains what makes Tim

:02:17. > :02:26.Well, I wouldn't be so direct as that.

:02:27. > :02:29.But I guess I just got to a point in my life where

:02:30. > :02:39.having made things up for a job for a living I was trying to explain

:02:40. > :02:51.Why did you feel the need to do that?

:02:52. > :02:53.You are a pretty self-effacing guy, you do not court

:02:54. > :02:57.That's the thing, I wasn't initially writing them for a reader,

:02:58. > :03:02.as just to understand where I've come from,

:03:03. > :03:05.the kinds of person I've been, the kinds of versions of

:03:06. > :03:13.So it's just sort of unpacking, I suppose.

:03:14. > :03:15.There are things you forget about your own

:03:16. > :03:18.life that re-emerge once you reach the lofty plateau of middle age.

:03:19. > :03:20.How difficult did you find it writing

:03:21. > :03:26.about yourself and were you any good at it?

:03:27. > :03:30.No, I didn't feel I was any good at it, it was very hard

:03:31. > :03:33.work, because as I've said, I've spent a lifetime making stuff up and

:03:34. > :03:35.it's quite low responsibility really when you are a novelist.

:03:36. > :03:44.I mean, you have a responsibility to the thing

:03:45. > :03:47.itself to make it work, so that it's organically hole and authentic.

:03:48. > :03:49.But when you are writing about yourself

:03:50. > :03:52.in terms of giving an account of yourself

:03:53. > :03:53.you are also including the

:03:54. > :03:56.lives and well-being of others, and no one joined up

:03:57. > :04:06.So, yeah, you have a kind of responsibility not to trample all

:04:07. > :04:09.I just thought, this is why I'm not a

:04:10. > :04:11.journalist, this is why I'm a novelist.

:04:12. > :04:23.And yet I pressed on and I suppose I found accidentally I had a book.

:04:24. > :04:26.Let's delve a bit deeper, the book has in my view, one of the most

:04:27. > :04:29.arresting opening sentences I've read Ian Lawlor long time and I

:04:30. > :04:32.wondered if you would read us a short extract from the beginning.

:04:33. > :04:38.When I was a kid I liked to stand at the window

:04:39. > :04:47.I hid behind the curtain in my

:04:48. > :04:49.parents' bedroom with a 22 and whenever anyone

:04:50. > :04:53.bead on them, I held them in the weapon's sight

:04:54. > :04:57.They had no idea I was lurking there, 13 years old, armed and

:04:58. > :05:04.watchful, and that was the best part of it.

:05:05. > :05:06.Handling the rival indoors without adult supervision was

:05:07. > :05:18.And I saw the sense in this regulation, and yet at 13 whenever I

:05:19. > :05:23.have the house to myself I went straight to the wardrobe, and

:05:24. > :05:30.through the rifle out. I handled it soberly with appropriate awe,

:05:31. > :05:35.respect laced with fear, but then I carried it out, to the window and

:05:36. > :05:40.aimed it at innocent passers by. This didn't only happen in a Time

:05:41. > :05:45.Lord two, I did it for months, I stood behind the curtain alert and

:05:46. > :05:47.alone looking down the barrel of a gun at strangers.

:05:48. > :06:00.LAUGHTER Let's talk about this boy with the

:06:01. > :06:04.rifle, why did you do it? Well, I guess this is what I was asking

:06:05. > :06:11.myself during the writing and one of the reasons I wrote it and for a

:06:12. > :06:16.while I forgot I even did it. We had just moved from suburban Perth, my

:06:17. > :06:21.dad was a copper, he had been transferred to the south coast of

:06:22. > :06:27.Western Australia to a town called Albani which at the time was an

:06:28. > :06:33.active whaling town. I found myself amongst strangers, the weather was

:06:34. > :06:41.different, it was British weather really. -- Albany. That's the

:06:42. > :06:47.politest way I could describe it. I didn't know anybody and I was about

:06:48. > :06:52.to go into high school for the first time. I think I just felt besieged

:06:53. > :06:56.and in an alien place. I was anxious, I think. I would go to the

:06:57. > :07:03.window and I would be calm and I looked down the rifle sight and be

:07:04. > :07:10.able to contain the world and people to just this very narrow focus. But

:07:11. > :07:13.it was a very dangerous thing, even with an unloaded rifle to be

:07:14. > :07:25.standing at a window pointing it at strangers. Had I been seen, had the

:07:26. > :07:28.rifle barrel snagged on mum's pristine curtain and the trajectory

:07:29. > :07:33.of my life would have been altered, in a small town, my dad was the cop.

:07:34. > :07:37.I mean, I could have been shot! Family is important to you and the

:07:38. > :07:40.book indeed is dedicated to your mum and dad and they make many

:07:41. > :07:50.appearances in the book, not all of them flattering. I wonder what they

:07:51. > :07:56.did make of reading it. They said, Tim, did you have any idea what your

:07:57. > :08:01.dad will make of this, soiling himself in public? I said, you don't

:08:02. > :08:07.know my dad, he's going to love this. Mum reads it to him in bed

:08:08. > :08:13.once a month. She took it to a group and the ladies laughed like drains,

:08:14. > :08:16.as they say. You touched at the beginning on how this book enabled

:08:17. > :08:20.you to work through some things that have influenced your fiction and one

:08:21. > :08:24.of the re-occurring themes, it seems to me, our chaos, accidents and

:08:25. > :08:30.chance, the way that life in weight spins on a dime. I'm thinking in

:08:31. > :08:33.your novel Cloudstreet how Sam pickles loses his fingers right at

:08:34. > :08:37.the beginning of the book and Fish has the accident that many ways goes

:08:38. > :08:42.on to define the whole of the book. I just wondered where that came

:08:43. > :08:46.from. I think it came from our family culture which was defined by

:08:47. > :08:55.the old man's job. Dad was a traffic cop. We would go to the police

:08:56. > :09:00.picnic, the Christmas picnic every year, and as families we would hive

:09:01. > :09:06.off into our groups, they would be liquor and gaming over there, heavy

:09:07. > :09:10.haulage up there, the vice families would all gather around the cake and

:09:11. > :09:16.the merry-go-round and we were in traffic. Traficant subgroups, we

:09:17. > :09:22.were in accidents. All our dads and mums were in the job, as it was

:09:23. > :09:27.called, but when we asked what is your old man do, yeah, the old man

:09:28. > :09:31.is in accidents. Accidents were family culture, employment, dad was

:09:32. > :09:38.a motorcycle cop and his job was to go and either stop people from

:09:39. > :09:43.speeding, or fine them for speeding, or pick up the pieces when it all

:09:44. > :09:47.came unglued. So in a sense we lived in a very safe, nurturing household

:09:48. > :09:56.where mum and dad did everything they could to keep disorder outside.

:09:57. > :10:04.But, you know, dad, whether he liked it or not, brought havoc home with

:10:05. > :10:08.him every night, every day. And some days you could tell, some evenings

:10:09. > :10:13.if he came in, you could tell that he even at a prank and you knew it

:10:14. > :10:17.had been a serious one, or a fatal, the old man's been out at a fatal,

:10:18. > :10:23.which sort of made it sound very normal but it's terrible. He'd come

:10:24. > :10:27.home, his mood would be different, he would smell different, he would

:10:28. > :10:41.smell of disinfectant and petrol and this weird iron smell, that was

:10:42. > :10:47.human blood. This confluence he would bring home with him physically

:10:48. > :10:56.you would pick upon as a kid. Trauma was sort of central in a lot of ways

:10:57. > :11:00.to our happy life. Through my dad's work I was seeing how quickly and

:11:01. > :11:10.how often people's safe, predictable happy lives were changed in a

:11:11. > :11:13.moment. You were literally T-bone and by life, something would come

:11:14. > :11:17.along and smack into you and that's been my bread and butter as a

:11:18. > :11:22.novelist in a way. Your father had an accident when you were five and

:11:23. > :11:25.you had a serious accident when you were 18, which in the book you

:11:26. > :11:32.described as a gift. I wondered why that was. It's taken me a long time

:11:33. > :11:38.to realise that some of the terrible things that happened to us in our

:11:39. > :11:47.lives and do providers certain opportunities, and in my case I went

:11:48. > :11:51.to an 18th birthday party, I went late and someone dropped me off just

:11:52. > :11:56.as the cake ran out and I got a lift home with somebody and I woke up in

:11:57. > :12:05.hospital. We'd gone through the front wall of a girls' school in a

:12:06. > :12:10.car and I was in hospital for a while. Physically my life changed as

:12:11. > :12:20.a result. And what it meant was in breach really, was that I hurtled

:12:21. > :12:23.faster into the writing life. It intensified my vocation in a way.

:12:24. > :12:28.There were certain physical things that I had planned on being able to

:12:29. > :12:32.do. By this stage I was committed to being a writer. I always knew that

:12:33. > :12:36.was a dead gig when it came to making a living but I thought I

:12:37. > :12:42.would do that and I'm a big strong lad, I could work on it building

:12:43. > :12:45.site, or work as a deckhand on a lobster boat. After the accident I

:12:46. > :12:49.just couldn't do that. Do you honestly think you would not have

:12:50. > :12:52.been a writer had you not have that accident? I would have been a writer

:12:53. > :12:56.but I would have been on a slower train. All of my friends were having

:12:57. > :13:05.a good time and I think I wrote three books before I was 24th and

:13:06. > :13:09.got married and had a baby. I was really strangely intensely focused.

:13:10. > :13:13.You had at the age of ten still up in front of your classmates and

:13:14. > :13:19.said, "I want to be a writer." What was their reaction? I think I said I

:13:20. > :13:23.am going to be a writer. The presumption that then seems much

:13:24. > :13:26.more breathtaking now. I had never met a writer until I went to

:13:27. > :13:29.university and I didn't know I would go to university because people like

:13:30. > :13:33.me didn't go to university when I was a kid. I don't know where they

:13:34. > :13:38.came from. I think I wrote a good poem that impressed the student

:13:39. > :13:43.teacher and maybe it was just that shot of adrenaline of approval that

:13:44. > :13:48.someone finally understood what I thought about myself. You don't get

:13:49. > :13:53.many moments in life when someone agrees with you fundamentally. And I

:13:54. > :14:00.got a good enough Mark. But everyone laughed, you know, and they were

:14:01. > :14:03.right to laugh. What a ridiculous thing to say and what a ridiculous

:14:04. > :14:08.thing to try to beat, particularly in Australia in the 60s. To be a

:14:09. > :14:15.writer and make a living, it's all wrong. As I've said before I grew up

:14:16. > :14:20.on the wrong side of the wrong country in the wrong hemisphere,

:14:21. > :14:24.being a literary novelist. My goodness. We talked about your

:14:25. > :14:28.accident at 18 and then you talked about how you wrote feverishly and

:14:29. > :14:32.in many ways those early years are characterised by your desire to

:14:33. > :14:36.write but it was also an economic necessary, wasn't it? You had a

:14:37. > :14:42.young family. And I write you had three desks in your study? Yes. If

:14:43. > :14:46.you got stuck on one project you could wield the chair over to the

:14:47. > :14:53.other one. Explain that. We were young and poor and I was writing

:14:54. > :14:59.almost a book every year, I think I wrote almost ten books in my 20s. I

:15:00. > :15:02.guess because I can but mostly because I had to. So I had this room

:15:03. > :15:09.that was essentially an enclosed veranda. The stumps were gone so the

:15:10. > :15:19.stomach it was sloping down, you know, the chairs of the -- the

:15:20. > :15:23.wheels of the chair rolling forwards. I had three desks on this

:15:24. > :15:28.veranda which was freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer. If

:15:29. > :15:33.I got stuck on something I just couldn't afford to try and figure it

:15:34. > :15:37.out so I would just leave it because I'm a great void of conflict, and I

:15:38. > :15:44.would just go on to do something else. The problem would solve itself

:15:45. > :15:47.in my absence. Yes. And then you had this enormous success with your

:15:48. > :15:53.novel Cloudstreet, which has been described as the great Australian

:15:54. > :15:57.novel. It sold in its hundreds of thousands. Did that take the

:15:58. > :16:04.pressure off quiz like financially, yeah, it saved our bacon. I have a

:16:05. > :16:11.certain affection for that book. Quite literally that Christmas my

:16:12. > :16:15.wife drove down to the city, we had no money in the bank at all. She

:16:16. > :16:24.went and asked if we could have come I think it was 150 bucks, if they

:16:25. > :16:29.could spot us 150 bucks to get us through Christmas, to buy some food,

:16:30. > :16:34.and maybe buy the kids a couple of presents. She had to do this

:16:35. > :16:39.humiliating song and dance at the bank. It was only a few months later

:16:40. > :16:45.that we were getting calls from not just the branch manager but the big

:16:46. > :16:52.executives at the bank asking if we would like to come out to lunch. We

:16:53. > :17:00.politely declined. It was really that close. We were desperate. That

:17:01. > :17:07.made life a little easier for us. In every sense except walking down the

:17:08. > :17:12.street. Suddenly we were visible. We were living in this tiny fishing

:17:13. > :17:17.town and I was the only male in the town that wasn't either a skipper or

:17:18. > :17:21.a deckhand and we had a big veggie garden and I had long hair. Everyone

:17:22. > :17:29.thought I was a drug dealer until I was on television as this writer of

:17:30. > :17:32.Cloudstreet. I was an overnight success after ten books. It has not

:17:33. > :17:37.all been plain sailing because you write in the book, you describe it

:17:38. > :17:44.as having a nervous breakdown, when writing another novel called Dirt

:17:45. > :17:50.Music and this is not you at the beginning of your career, this was

:17:51. > :17:53.20 years in. I'd been writing this book for seven years and I thought

:17:54. > :17:57.I'd finished my last draft and I told my publishers it was all good

:17:58. > :18:02.to go and they announced it to the world that there was this book

:18:03. > :18:11.coming from me. It had a slot, it was all real, and then there was

:18:12. > :18:17.this day when it was finished, my wife left to go to work and I'm

:18:18. > :18:20.wrapping it up to send this dirty great thing off, she got home at the

:18:21. > :18:26.end of the day and I were still there wrapping it up, unwrapping it,

:18:27. > :18:31.looking through. I had this sick feeling that it wasn't fair. I

:18:32. > :18:36.wanted to just burn it and run away and never speak of it again. It felt

:18:37. > :18:41.like people's jobs were on the line and I made this commitment to

:18:42. > :18:44.people. As part of my family upbringing I just couldn't let them

:18:45. > :18:49.down, because they would be so disappointed in me. I got up in the

:18:50. > :18:53.middle of the night one night and just thought, stuff it, I got on my

:18:54. > :19:02.bike and I wrote down to the office in the dark and I got a ream of

:19:03. > :19:05.green photocopy paper, sharp and 20 pencils, and started again from the

:19:06. > :19:13.beginning and rewrote the entire novel in pencil in 55 days and

:19:14. > :19:18.nights. I think the first night that I wrote I went for so long that I

:19:19. > :19:22.stopped and it was dark and I think was the second day or night after

:19:23. > :19:30.the second day and I just kept going in this kind of red-hot fury. I

:19:31. > :19:35.finished the book and sent it off and it got published. I would never

:19:36. > :19:39.do that again. Some of the endings of your books some readers find

:19:40. > :19:48.rather vexatious. I'm thinking in particular of your novel The Riders

:19:49. > :19:53.and you talk in this book that you are a novelist who resists the full

:19:54. > :19:57.shape of closure. I wonder why you do leave the door ajar. I think it

:19:58. > :20:04.reflects the openness of life. I think closure is a construct.

:20:05. > :20:08.Closure as a therapeutic idea has merit, there is no question. But for

:20:09. > :20:16.most of our lives we don't have resolution because it's not

:20:17. > :20:19.available. In many instances it's not possible. So many of us die

:20:20. > :20:24.without getting to the end of the sentence. But the idea that you

:20:25. > :20:29.would wrap everything up at the end of the book seems cheap to me. A

:20:30. > :20:31.thought about your relationship with the natural landscape, because I

:20:32. > :20:39.don't think anybody can read a Tim Winton novel without smelling the

:20:40. > :20:42.salt, feeling the sea on their skin. I did wonder, is landscape

:20:43. > :20:53.ultimately more important to you than plot? Yes. Landscape's where I

:20:54. > :20:59.begin, it's the first character. It dictates the logic of what's going

:21:00. > :21:02.to happen in the story. It dictates who the characters will be, what

:21:03. > :21:09.kind of people they will be, what sort of lives they will lead. And,

:21:10. > :21:16.of course, in Australia landscape is really significant. You know, in the

:21:17. > :21:21.shaping of character. You are a great surfer... I don't know if I'm

:21:22. > :21:26.a great surfer, I'm a recidivist surfer, I've been doing it since I

:21:27. > :21:32.was five years old and I'm keener than I was when I was a teenager.

:21:33. > :21:38.You still surf? Yeah, I love to surf, it is liberating. It is a bit

:21:39. > :21:42.like a writing for me. Writing, and light reading, when it's going well

:21:43. > :21:46.as a reader it's the same as when you are a writer, you are in the

:21:47. > :21:50.eternal present tense, you are taken up with riding the momentum of the

:21:51. > :21:55.wave. As a novelist and that is kind of what I do as well, I go up to the

:21:56. > :22:01.desk every morning, I wait, I bobbed around, and I'm waiting for

:22:02. > :22:05.something to show up. It is some event from across the horizon, some

:22:06. > :22:10.energy that I turn around and try to match its speed and ride it to the

:22:11. > :22:10.beat and the feeling is divine when it works.

:22:11. > :22:26.LAUGHTER Thank you.

:22:27. > :22:56.Tim, it's been great, thank you so much. Tim Winton.

:22:57. > :22:57.Hello. We are seeing a big leap up in