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agreed it was time to advance a political process. In many ways | :00:11. | :00:17. | |
Australians have never had it so good. This economy is booming but | :00:17. | :00:23. | |
is it a country at ease with itself? Well, not according to my | :00:24. | :00:35. | |
guest today, the Australian novelist Cristos Chalkes. His book | :00:35. | :00:46. | |
The Slab depicts a suburban Australia - he is ashamed at the | :00:46. | :01:04. | |
direction modern Australia has Welcome. A pleasure thank you. | :01:04. | :01:09. | |
Australia was once dubbed the lucky country but in your fiction it | :01:09. | :01:19. | |
seems like the unhappy country. Is that fair? I'm hesitating because | :01:19. | :01:26. | |
for me it is a bizarre place, Australia. You know, we are doing | :01:26. | :01:30. | |
this interview still in the middle of the global financial crisis when | :01:30. | :01:36. | |
I was in Europe last year I was in Greece so I saw the real effects of | :01:36. | :01:41. | |
what that crisis means, the insecurity and anxiety that comes | :01:41. | :01:46. | |
from that. So you look at a country like Australia which has been | :01:46. | :01:52. | |
sheltered from that crisis because of a whole entry kit history of | :01:52. | :01:56. | |
politics to do with our relationship with Asia so we are | :01:56. | :02:01. | |
the wealthiest we have service ever been. Australians have never had it | :02:01. | :02:06. | |
so good the early? When I started to write The Shraipt was trying to | :02:06. | :02:11. | |
make sense of to things happening. One I come from a particular | :02:11. | :02:15. | |
background which I'm really proud of but in writing in being educated | :02:15. | :02:22. | |
I just feel like I'm no longer - I can no longer claim a right to a | :02:22. | :02:27. | |
working class background that my parents come from. Because they | :02:27. | :02:30. | |
were working class immigrants from Greece? Yes, part of that massive | :02:30. | :02:37. | |
immigration that came to Australia Post-World War II from southern and | :02:37. | :02:42. | |
eastern Europe. So I'm very conscious of that heritage and how | :02:42. | :02:48. | |
my fortune is the dependent on the personal history of my parents but | :02:48. | :02:52. | |
I was aware that impart of the middle-class, you know. I had not | :02:52. | :02:57. | |
really in my previous work dealt with what that meant. Because that | :02:57. | :03:00. | |
is what I picked up from the book and from some of the other writings | :03:00. | :03:07. | |
that I have seen of yours. You seem to be uncomfortable with the | :03:07. | :03:11. | |
middle-class you have entered. One phrase that stuck in my mind from | :03:11. | :03:18. | |
you, you talk about the crevicees and the dark spaces of the | :03:18. | :03:26. | |
Australian suburban landscape. Australians tell ourselves we are | :03:26. | :03:31. | |
larrikins that she will be right mate that we are accepting and over | :03:31. | :03:36. | |
the '90s and the early part of the 21st century I thought we were the | :03:36. | :03:45. | |
most selfish that I have ever seen. We are the most grasping and greedy | :03:45. | :03:52. | |
and xenophobic and unkind that we have ever been. I think it is very | :03:52. | :03:58. | |
true. These are the people you life among. I resist the idea of that | :03:58. | :04:03. | |
being part of a people, many part af nation is that you cannot see | :04:04. | :04:10. | |
yourself clearly. Growing up in a migrant household there was also | :04:10. | :04:15. | |
the romance of a place called Greece and a place called Europe | :04:15. | :04:22. | |
you are a part of and I could escape to that. It put two or three | :04:22. | :04:28. | |
years of a visit to Europe to put that at rest. I wanted to really | :04:29. | :04:33. | |
have a look at who we are, what we have been doing, what we have | :04:33. | :04:39. | |
become and that is where The Slap emerged from, that is what I wanted | :04:40. | :04:45. | |
to write. I think it the is a harsh thing to say but not untrue. I love | :04:45. | :04:48. | |
reading contemporary fiction and I read a lot of it, but I do not | :04:48. | :04:55. | |
think I have ever come across a book where so many of the voices | :04:55. | :05:03. | |
through whom the story is developed and told are so utterly unlikeible, | :05:03. | :05:05. | |
even despicable. A lot of people have said that about the characters | :05:05. | :05:12. | |
in the book. I do not think that. I certainly do not think that about | :05:12. | :05:19. | |
the old man in the book. Yeah, he... He is the Greek father of one of | :05:19. | :05:23. | |
the main characters. He himself appears quite a lot but it is | :05:23. | :05:29. | |
really his son who is the central person. Yes, in the book. But he | :05:29. | :05:35. | |
has, yes, incredibly sexist attitudes. Most of the men in the | :05:35. | :05:42. | |
book are mosogonist? I would say one of the things about being a man | :05:42. | :05:54. | |
in the culture is being aware of the your slide into mosogony, of - | :05:55. | :06:01. | |
it is not only on a level of making sexist comments or assumptions, it | :06:01. | :06:05. | |
is actually fear or hatreds of women. Having to be conscious of | :06:05. | :06:11. | |
that. The violence in the book and a lot of the sex is written as some | :06:11. | :06:16. | |
critics have said in quite a pornographic way. Was that | :06:16. | :06:22. | |
deliberate? Yeah. I was really surprised by the poverty of a lot | :06:22. | :06:26. | |
of that criticism. I was really surprised they would not | :06:26. | :06:38. | |
acknowledge that porn ago if I is one of the ways -- porn - I can not | :06:38. | :06:42. | |
avoid porn, it is on the internet, on the screens, it has infected - I | :06:42. | :06:47. | |
use that word - the way I look at sex. The Slap is not isolated from | :06:47. | :06:51. | |
my other work I said from the beginning and maybe that has to do | :06:51. | :06:55. | |
with with being homosexual and growing p in a culture like this. | :06:55. | :07:03. | |
So on the one hand a very traditional Greek culture where it | :07:03. | :07:11. | |
felt, it just felt impossible to be a faggo t to be really blunt. | :07:11. | :07:15. | |
you are honest that is the way your own father and family would have | :07:15. | :07:21. | |
viewed a homosexual, as a fag not? Yes. I remember coming -- faggot. | :07:21. | :07:27. | |
Yes, I remember coming out to Mum on the cusp of my 20s, and I had | :07:27. | :07:31. | |
been living away if home for a while an she just was trying to | :07:31. | :07:37. | |
understand why I had cult myself off from the family -- cut. And I | :07:37. | :07:42. | |
had to turn to her and say "Look, I'm gay" but I did not know the | :07:42. | :07:46. | |
Greek word for gay and she did not know what the word gay meant back | :07:46. | :07:52. | |
there so I had to say I was a fag. That was the only language hi for | :07:52. | :07:57. | |
it. In saying that I do not - you know, I think my parents have made | :07:57. | :08:03. | |
remarkable journey as I V I think there is great dignity an courage | :08:03. | :08:08. | |
in their unrelenting support for me, but there was no way - I did not | :08:08. | :08:12. | |
understand how to be a man and be gay. It just didn't make sense to | :08:12. | :08:17. | |
me. That was a long struggle. Did you think it is because you are a | :08:17. | :08:23. | |
gay Australian that you are able to take a particular maybe a more | :08:23. | :08:29. | |
detached view of what is going on with the majority of Australian | :08:29. | :08:35. | |
hetrosexual man hood? Because of my sexuality and I'm talking 25 years | :08:35. | :08:39. | |
ago, because of my sexuality and because of being, you know, to be | :08:39. | :08:48. | |
blunt a wag in this culture, an outsider in this culture. That gave | :08:48. | :08:54. | |
me an outsider perspective an insider-outsider perspective and I | :08:54. | :09:01. | |
think that is extremely valuable for a writer. You said to me I am | :09:01. | :09:10. | |
wo g. What on earth do you mean by that? That was the derogatory term. | :09:10. | :09:15. | |
Even though they were olive-skinned immigrants from the Mediterranean? | :09:15. | :09:18. | |
Yes. You have to understand that there is for a long time in this | :09:18. | :09:23. | |
country - and I was born at a time when it had not gone away - there | :09:23. | :09:28. | |
was a white Australia policy. Australia was going to one, we were | :09:28. | :09:36. | |
going to deny a racial history built on the history of the | :09:36. | :09:39. | |
Indigenous people here. That is one of the things why race politics | :09:40. | :09:45. | |
continues to be so difficult and confronting for Australia, as we | :09:45. | :09:49. | |
still have not resolved that in any meaningful way. I look across to | :09:49. | :09:55. | |
New Zealand u I'm not trying to be romantic about it but they have a | :09:55. | :09:58. | |
better relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous. | :09:58. | :10:03. | |
Kevin Rudd's government issued the formal apology, you talk to young | :10:03. | :10:09. | |
Australians on the streets and they will say that it feels different | :10:09. | :10:14. | |
now. This government has recommitted itself to a specific | :10:15. | :10:19. | |
multicultural strategy for this country. It has. Just now after a | :10:19. | :10:25. | |
long period of making the word "Multicultural" a very, very dirty | :10:26. | :10:31. | |
word by parties, by the Liberal and the Labor parties in Australia had | :10:31. | :10:36. | |
straight away. I just want to be clear - are you suggesting, and it | :10:36. | :10:39. | |
feeds into my original question about your view of Australia, | :10:39. | :10:43. | |
whether it is an angry and unhappy country? Are you saying that | :10:43. | :10:48. | |
Australia today is still dogged by racism? Think Australia is still | :10:48. | :10:54. | |
dogged by fear of the other and racism, yes. I think your country | :10:54. | :11:02. | |
is, Stan. I know Greece is. I mean, you know, what was the major thing | :11:02. | :11:08. | |
I heard from Greeks when I was over there? The fear of the immigrant. | :11:08. | :11:14. | |
The difference is that Greece obviously is an ancient culture | :11:14. | :11:17. | |
with an ancient tradition. Britain is a pretty old established culture | :11:18. | :11:23. | |
too. This is a country built by immigrants. In a way it is more of | :11:23. | :11:28. | |
a paradox for an outsider, a stranger for you to sit before me | :11:28. | :11:34. | |
in Sydney saying "This country is dogged by racism when it is full of | :11:34. | :11:38. | |
immigrants". Everybody has come from somewhere except when it is | :11:38. | :11:42. | |
the Aboriginal community. I - think it is a contradiction because | :11:42. | :11:46. | |
it is real. I will be more harsh about Australia because I live | :11:46. | :11:54. | |
there and it is a place I will die so I want to stake my claim in this | :11:54. | :12:00. | |
country. As a man living here, um, I have my own observations to make | :12:00. | :12:11. | |
about other places in the world. Um, but I do fear that racism is a side, | :12:11. | :12:17. | |
as I said before, that we have not felt properly in this country. | :12:17. | :12:22. | |
it is a tough place to be inside your own country and because you | :12:22. | :12:26. | |
have said because of your sexuality and your ethnicity to be an | :12:26. | :12:34. | |
outsider from the very get-go and then to be so public in your | :12:34. | :12:38. | |
critique of the way society works? It makes you very lonely, isolated? | :12:38. | :12:45. | |
I do not feel like that at all. I feel I'm more part of my life, I | :12:45. | :12:49. | |
have such a solid relationship, such a solid family, such a solid | :12:49. | :12:53. | |
network of friends. So I think maybe that gives you a certain | :12:53. | :13:01. | |
freedom to express things. I think it is important to keep demanding | :13:01. | :13:08. | |
of Australians that we get better and get better at dealing with our | :13:08. | :13:15. | |
racial and immigrant history. One, because, yes, you talk the people | :13:15. | :13:20. | |
on the streets and you say that we are better at dealing with | :13:21. | :13:23. | |
Aboriginal people and Aboriginal history. Yes, Kevin Rudd made the | :13:23. | :13:30. | |
apology and I was at the Aboriginal Advancement League in Melbourne | :13:30. | :13:34. | |
when that apology was made and I will never forget that day and how | :13:34. | :13:39. | |
important and moving it was. But the reality is on the ground | :13:40. | :13:45. | |
Aboriginal people are dying much younger than we white Australians | :13:46. | :13:50. | |
are dying. They are still living in unbelievible squalor and poverty. | :13:50. | :13:55. | |
Those things have not changed. I was just coming to the sense of | :13:55. | :14:02. | |
view I was reading that over half - they were doing a poll and over | :14:02. | :14:08. | |
half of the population of Sydney express racism against Muslims and | :14:08. | :14:12. | |
they do not want Muslims to come into the country. So things have | :14:12. | :14:16. | |
changed. Things always do change. I think there was a slide backwards F | :14:16. | :14:22. | |
you had spoken to me in the early '90s I would have been much more | :14:22. | :14:28. | |
buoyant about this country called Australia. I come back from Europe. | :14:28. | :14:35. | |
Thank God I'm here. At that time Europe to me was a nothing in lots | :14:35. | :14:38. | |
of ways it still is obsessed with class in a way we do not have it | :14:38. | :14:42. | |
here. That is probably one of the things I do really like about this | :14:42. | :14:47. | |
country. But I thought that yes, we were multicultural, I thought we | :14:47. | :14:51. | |
were an immigrant nation that was proud of that heritage. Then in 15 | :14:51. | :14:56. | |
years that all evaporated or that is what it seemed like to me and | :14:56. | :15:01. | |
that its what I wanted to write about. It is a way where your book | :15:01. | :15:04. | |
overlaps with current reality because what we see in the | :15:04. | :15:08. | |
Australian political debate is that race has become absolutely the most | :15:09. | :15:13. | |
heated, divisive issue the plate call agenda and on the right wing | :15:13. | :15:17. | |
of Australian politics we have shadow Cabinet ministers railing | :15:18. | :15:21. | |
against government tax dollars being used to pay for the funerals | :15:21. | :15:26. | |
of those people killed in the Christmas Island boat smash. We | :15:26. | :15:32. | |
have other figures in. The Opposition Coalition saying Islam | :15:32. | :15:38. | |
is a totalitarian ideology. Do you worry about what you are hearing | :15:38. | :15:43. | |
right now in the political debate? Just the other week when there were | :15:43. | :15:55. | |
the images of the refugees burying their dead and then I heard, you | :15:55. | :16:03. | |
know, a Liberal politician saying that we should not be paying to fly | :16:03. | :16:09. | |
those people to the funeral. And you know what, I felt such a | :16:09. | :16:12. | |
disgust and hatreds for a moment for this country. I just wanted to | :16:12. | :16:18. | |
be out of here. Maybe growing up in the shadow of racism means that I'm | :16:18. | :16:24. | |
just - maybe I'm overly aware of it. Maybe I'm too quick to see it. That | :16:24. | :16:31. | |
is possible. It think that is possible, -- I think that is | :16:31. | :16:36. | |
possible. But I really will the fight that moment of hatreds. I | :16:36. | :16:41. | |
really had to fight saying I am disgusted with my country. I don't | :16:41. | :16:45. | |
want to live in that feeling because that is the only place I | :16:45. | :16:49. | |
have. I cannot go back the geese or Europe. What about reception for | :16:49. | :16:54. | |
the book which has been termed by the ABC the main broadcaster, state | :16:54. | :17:00. | |
broadcaster in Australia, has been turned into an eight-part | :17:00. | :17:06. | |
television fiction, sold enormously well. What kind of reaction has it | :17:06. | :17:12. | |
prompted in this country? One of the things I'm really conscious of | :17:12. | :17:20. | |
is a sense of relief that someone is describing an urban Australia | :17:20. | :17:26. | |
that actually looks and sounds like Australia, the Australia we live in, | :17:26. | :17:34. | |
not some kind of fantasy of London or New York or Paris, that is | :17:34. | :17:39. | |
Australian, that you know, Australians are people like me. Um, | :17:39. | :17:47. | |
I think that partly explains, not completely, but partly explains | :17:47. | :17:54. | |
some of the success of the book. I think there is a relief. The book | :17:54. | :17:58. | |
describes a new middle-class that is as much Greek as it is Scottish, | :17:58. | :18:05. | |
that is as much Lebanese as it is English, that is as much Chinese as | :18:05. | :18:12. | |
Welsh. I think that is the reality of the world I do move in. | :18:12. | :18:17. | |
Melbourne almost feels like a country in itself sometimes. Like I | :18:17. | :18:22. | |
feel quite comfortable in Melbourne. And maybe I think there are spaces | :18:22. | :18:27. | |
in Australia which are that old Australia. And I think some of the | :18:27. | :18:33. | |
resentment that has been expressed about the book, about some of the | :18:33. | :18:38. | |
anger expressed about that book has to do with the fact that old | :18:38. | :18:43. | |
Australia does not recognise itself enough. I make no apologise for | :18:43. | :18:47. | |
that. Do you want to reach out to that old Australia? Do you want to | :18:47. | :18:53. | |
reach out to them, to find a way of communicating in with them? | :18:53. | :18:57. | |
would be an amazing hubris really to think that I can do that. What | :18:57. | :19:01. | |
gives me pleasure is writing so that's what I'm going to dofplt and | :19:01. | :19:04. | |
if I have any effect it come only come through the writing. I mean a | :19:04. | :19:09. | |
lot of people read The Slap and think it is really vulgar. I mean | :19:09. | :19:16. | |
I'm not interested in these people. And what I'm hoping is that there | :19:16. | :19:22. | |
will be some audience out there that will respond to the honesty in | :19:22. | :19:28. | |
the book. It strikes me that the two characters who are most decent, | :19:28. | :19:34. | |
who offer the most hope in your book, are the to youngest main | :19:34. | :19:39. | |
characters, the teenagers, Connie and Richie. Is that because you | :19:39. | :19:44. | |
invest for this country itself, a huge amount of hope in the coming | :19:44. | :19:49. | |
generation? Is that where you see Australia's best hope? In the main | :19:49. | :19:54. | |
I see - I do get hope from seeing how young kids interrelate with one | :19:54. | :20:00. | |
another, that they take a multicultural, multi-ethnic life | :20:00. | :20:06. | |
for granted and they live it on a street level, on a home level, on a | :20:06. | :20:09. | |
friendship level, on a love level in a way that I think was not | :20:09. | :20:14. | |
possible for me in my generation. That in short is the Australia you | :20:14. | :20:23. | |
want to believe in? Right. They all have a my generation self respect | :20:23. | :20:27. | |
that is something I respect about the a generation younger than | :20:27. | :20:31. | |
myself. Are you writing new fiction about contemporary Australia? | :20:31. | :20:42. | |
in the middle of a novel. Touch wood, her you talk about - I would | :20:42. | :20:52. | |
be an idiot to - I would be an idiot to complain about the success. | :20:52. | :21:01. | |
It is that little dream that I have had for so long. I thought you were | :21:01. | :21:06. | |
going to say something negative about success? Just that you can | :21:06. | :21:10. | |
get quite busy! I mean, I have been writing for a long time now and I | :21:10. | :21:15. | |
really did not sit down to write a best seller. That was not what I | :21:15. | :21:18. | |
wanted to do. It took me a long time to start this next novel | :21:18. | :21:28. | |
because I was scared. I was scared about what were my - what were my | :21:28. | :21:32. | |
motives, you know? Was this a book I wanted to write because I wanted | :21:32. | :21:37. | |
to write this book or was it because I wanted to follow The | :21:37. | :21:42. | |
Slap? Suddenly I had a blueprint for a best seller. To put it | :21:42. | :21:46. | |
bluntly, your first book haves not sold terribly well. Some people | :21:46. | :21:51. | |
have loved them but they have not sold very well. Suddenly you have a | :21:51. | :21:56. | |
best seller that goes international. And I wonder if there is a part of | :21:56. | :22:00. | |
you that says "I have to repeat that I have to get the sales even | :22:00. | :22:08. | |
higher, I could become a major international literary figure"? | :22:08. | :22:14. | |
must have heard this. There are moments when row sit at the desk | :22:14. | :22:19. | |
writing and you think "My God, I'm genius, I'm up there. No one is | :22:19. | :22:24. | |
writing like this!" and then just as often you think "I'm going to be | :22:24. | :22:29. | |
revealed for the fraud I am any moment now". The next book is about | :22:29. | :22:33. | |
a swimmer who fails in his Olympic dream and part of that is because I | :22:33. | :22:38. | |
want to deal with those questions of failure and success. Is there a | :22:38. | :22:46. | |
fear that you might be the writer who strives, has some success, then | :22:46. | :22:50. | |
fails? Yes, of course there is. Of course there is. That will go away. | :22:50. | :22:54. | |
I doubt it ever goes away for anyone no matter how successful | :22:54. | :23:00. |