Focus 580; True History of the Kelly Gang

In this hour of focus 580 I will be talking with novelist Peter Carey. Peter Carey was born in Australia. He now lives in the United States. He's the author of several novels a number of them are set in Australia. Among his novels Jack Maggs ily whacker bliss. The tax inspector. There are others. He wrote Oscar and Lucinda for which he received the Booker Prize that's Britain's top literary award. He's now traveling around the country talking about his newest novel which is titled The true history of the Kelly Gang. It is a story of Australia's last and perhaps most famous or infamous bushranger. That he is a bandit who were as active along the frontier the Australian frontier in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Ned Kelly was executed in 1880 but he continues I think in many ways for Australians to be very much alive certainly as a favor a figure of great controversy. Some people think that he is indeed

a kind of a folk hero one might almost say an anti colonial freedom fighter. And other people are horrified at that notion they say he was just a criminal and a murderer. Straight out now the book The True History of the Kelly Gang is Ned Kelly's story his telling the story of his own life told in a very unusual style. And I think you might find it interesting it's published by cannot it's not been very long. And we're glad that Peter Carey could be here and talk with us and as we talk of course you can call in people who are listening. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 we also have a toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Mr. Kerry Hello. Hi Dad how you. I'm good thanks and thank you very much for talking with us. I was one of the one of the things that came along with the book was a copy of on an article from an Australian newspaper. There's some interesting things and I guess the thing I wanted to ask you about first there was was

I was a quote here where you said that this was the book that you waited your whole life to write. Yeah. Tell me about that. That's a sort of a scary thing to say. Well it puts a lot of pressure on you in the book I can I can remember the night that I said it I was sitting next to this Bill Buford is the pictured editor at The New Yorker magazine I turn to my fam I stop saying this and then I saw how he was listening and then I became terrified. But terror aside it is I do believe it is true I mean if it's true for a number of reasons. When I came to literature sort of a little late you know most of my friends were reading great books when they were 12 and 13 and 14 and I would really wasn't doing that. And it was not till I was nearly 20 that I really discovered literature and then I started to read well in a weird sort of order. And one of the first books that I. Remember reading which really knighted me was a very short book by William Faulkner called As I Lay Dying and where the story is told from

the point of changing points of view of these poor rural characters. And. The thing that struck me I didn't know the language like this existed in the world I opened this book and this is just amazing language and it's the interior lives or interior imaginings of these poor people and so what Faulkner is doing is saying well here these people who might look like you know people not worthy of your attention. But this is what the inside of their minds is like. And I thought you know the language I just fell in love with and of course I found other people like Joyce and Beckett whose language was also amazing. Soon thereafter. But the thing that I particularly liked was his thing that for Don in a way it's sort of like giving voice to the voiceless. Probably because I was young and you know articulate and no one ever waited for me to finish my sentences I probably couldn't testify for this at a very deep level but and then it wasn't all that long after that that I read a letter that the historic figure

Ned Kelly had written himself a 50 60 page letter he'd written in his own defense. And by then as I said I've been reading Joyce and Beckett and suddenly I come across this other voice not a literary voice like there's an educated voice but full of this great rush of Irish stream of prose not very heavily punctuated. A sort of a cry of pain in one way a protest but also with a lot of human energy in it and I've got grown up a strain and tend to grow up sort of knowing about Ned Kelly and the killers the guy that you know he's a famous bushranger we admire him he was brave. He made weird which is how he's remembered but this voice in this letter. Well I didn't. I mean DNA had just been discovered then so I guess I wasn't thinking about DNA but it really is like the character's DNA speaking from beyond the grave you can really you can construct the man again from this language

and it was years and years and years and years went by and I was living in New York and I saw an X-ray I went to the MIT exhibition of paintings showing that Kelly I'm telling my Manhattan friends the story and one of the great things about living away from home. Well you know in country as it starts to look stranger and stranger. I sort of rediscovered the sort of wonder of the story and thought I would write a novel and then for me there was no question as to how I was going to write it I was going to write it in this sort of voice. Well that's I think something I think that is very unusual and I did want to hear more about how you developed that voice and up and apparently it was indeed inspired by this piece of writing of his so that you did it. You did not invent this out of whole cloth. You were taking off from something that that really was his voice.

Well it's it's partly that and of course it's partly that and indeed I did start to write my first draft was a very close to replicating his voice in the end it was not didn't really totally suit my needs and I had to find another way of doing something that was true to it but was also true to me and I had the great advantage a lot didn't feel like such an advantage at the time but in the late 40s and early 50s going to the small rural school in the state of Victoria in Australia there were a lot of number of relatively poor people in that school and kids who would say you know I come into the room and they he would. And there's the side there's a there's a big part of the sort of spirit of this book really that sort of feels like it grows out of quite deep personal soil. And so that when I finally get the voice felt the voice was right I never felt like I was making it up. You know I just I never had to worry about what was right or wrong. Well at some point I want to ask you to read so people will get a sense of it I think also I want to say

as for anybody who might pick up the book and start looking at it that way I guess I also had this experience of the beginning of finding it a little difficult to figure out how to read it. And because of the lack of punctuation and then I think after having read it I don't know 40 50 pages then I I think I discovered you do You can't worry about that. You just have to kind of go with the flow and that if you do that it's. It's ok I think about it the problem is the reader. For me at least as a reader was initially I'm thinking mentally thinking OK I should place punctuation here and I think that's the wrong approach to take to the book. I think the I mean what I have certainly got. Well I was just I was just saying to someone yesterday that many many readers of my novel Oscar and Lucinda got to the end of it and was so angry I didn't end it the way they wanted it to and that they threw the book across the room and I've had many people come to me. I love Oscar and Lucinda are just a wonderful book but I have to tell you when I finished it

I threw it across the room. So I started to think I would mount a dollar for every mile of travel but I didn't want anyone to start this book throwing it across the room. And I you know well aware that you know when commas and commas are very useful things. And when you make a decision to leave out commas and some full stops you've got I think you've got a big obligation as a writer to make it very easy for the reader. You know no one's you know one's readers are not sitting on a desert island with one book you know. Let me many things to do with their lives. What I what I did set out to do and I hope succeeded in doing was I was in the you know you have to end it in a way you want as teaching reader how to read the book. And I really hope that you know it's read a reader friendly. Our guest in this part of focus 580 is novelist Peter Carey. He was born in Australia now lives in New York City. He has written several novels

including a couple of that we mentioned Oscar and Lucinda for example is made into a movie. Maybe some people have seen that he got the Booker Prize which is the top literary prize in Britain for that. His most recent Jack Maggs. And then of course his actual most recent the one here we're talking about the true history of the Kelly Gang is now just out recently published by Knopf. And if you'd like to talk with him you certainly can call us at 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Not to spend too much time on this but. I also was struck by this same newspaper story about the fact that I gather in when the book was published in Australia some people were just fuming about it because they thought that Ned Kelly should not be regarded in any way shape or form as a hero. And they were they were rather unhappy with the portrait that you paint. Well you know you know David I think the interesting thing is that when you saw the newspaper article I

know which one. And and it's one of those things that sort of tends to enter the food chain but I mean actually I think all in all of the press in Australia about my book and let me tell you there was an enormous amount and I'm sorry for sounding boastful but there were there were two pieces that were negative and buzz of them seemed to me to be sort of beat up one of the one of them has that wonderful quote from that from the former police commissioner of New South Wales who just happens to be an Englishman I happen to be an Englishman that said that the Australians obsession with Ned Kelly reflects the black heart of nothingness that lies at the heart of the Australian character. So you know I don't know whether we're dealing with very reasonable people here and I think mostly most Australians do not have a problem of the there's a folksong that. Which I think sums up how most of us feel which says those who blame him but few but still you can imagine that you know if you were

in a certain position in society and you wanted to be taken seriously it's a very dignified person you might not like it that your country's biggest story was about someone who was hanged for killing three policeman any more than you might. You might like it to be have a national song called Matilda which celebrates a hobo. You would say a swagman who steals a sheep and then is caught by the police and then commits suicide rather than go to jail. And so you might be embarrassed if that was a song that all of your friends and neighbors liked and you mightn't want to stand up in an international forum and put your hand of your hot while I was standing there and you might be upset about Ned Kelly but most people I'm not and so the interesting thing is it's not like I invented it Kelly and it's not like I. I selected Ned Kelly from this vast array of interesting people to

write about. That's in a sense how the society is selected. Has selected him. Well interesting story and interesting to me is why would we do that. Who are we. What sort of people are we that we have have this hero. Well I was just going to observe that. I'm certain that your reaction to the book and also to Ned Kelly might indeed be shaped by who you were. It so happens I married to someone who is half queen and half Kelly. So I'm somewhat sensitive to you know the Irish experience and that if indeed you were English or Irish or you know something else and you thought about the experiences of your forebears and who was oppressing whom that might lead you to feel one way or another. Well in my case it's I've got a little bit I mean partly Welsh partly Cockney partly Irish partly English so I'm not really I didn't really go into it in that particular way as a matter of fact to tell

you the truth. When I when I thought that I'm going to write this book and it's interesting story and I realized I was going to have to start reading all of these books about island. I really didn't want to do it. You know so I guess not it's not like that at the beginning that I had any huge sort of you know attraction towards the Irishness of the story allow it is hugely Irish story. But it didn't grow out of my out of my family history and I know I'm sure others hate it when quotes from previous interviews come back to haunt them but I'm just always looking at a story from The New York Times in 1900 too. And at this point you said that after you wrote Oscar and Lucinda you vowed never to do another book set in the past because it took so much research and you'd said I hate being in libraries because I always feel there's something missing well and this book set in the past Jack bag said in the past.

Obviously if you got over that well you know I still feel the same thing I said a bit. See I think one of the one of the things about Australia in Australian history you know and I suppose it's true all national histories is that there are so many lies and so many silences and things that we have not come to terms with and in my country. The rest seem to me that there are all these things that we've got to salute. Go back and get right before we can go on. I mean one of the very big subjects which I certainly haven't grappled with full on is the whole question of you know the land and our relationship with the indigenous people people. This is if you were in Australia today you would find this subject you know like the newspapers feel with it and they have been filled with it for the last you know five years at least the past has to be sorted out some way before we can go on and this whole question about Ned Kelly is a story it's been lying there. We've seen we know my friends. You know when I said I was going to do this I said why would you buy that we know all about

it but it seemed to me an intensely examined story. So for me I have to keep on going back to the 19th century and I'm like the knight in century particularly. I mean I'd rather. And I'd really rather write science fiction. I mean in a way in a way I passed in a sense for me is not unlike science fiction in the sense that no matter what. After all there is such in the end it is all made up. Well this is interesting because in in one of the reviews of the book The reviewer makes the observation that while your novels are set in the past they are in in very real ways modern novels and I think too whenever you look at either historical fiction or science fiction those books are as much about the time in which they are written as they are the time in which they are set. Absolutely. And then having said that I wonder you know in in what way say the true history of the Kelly Gang is really about now is really about 2000 and

not so much about 18 A.D.. Well I. Don't know how to answer really directly except to say it. The thing the wife the way I thought was think about it was the beginning was think who we who are we now that what sort of people are we that we would have this is our biggest story not not not just as a figure in history like Jesse James is in American history but as a single most important story. And so that's something you're not looking at those questions that really has to do with who we are and what sort of national you know character. Does this suggest and I do believe in national character and one of the why isn't you know a friend of mine a young woman from from Melbourne hearing I was writing about Ned Kelly started to curl her lip. I said she couldn't help herself as it were you doing that. And she said well it's all that sort of old white Celtic stuff that you know

there's nothing to do with me you know. And I remember having this conversation with a talking about how foundation myths just continue to you know keep on. Going through layer after layer. And I don't go away and that's why actually I quite for the fun of the book saying the past is never dead it isn't even past and I think it's true of this. And one of the really interesting tests of one aspect if I'm not rambling too much of this is that the Olympic Games in Sydney the audiences the crowds they're not of the all Australian you know the Second World War Australian which which was you know English and Irish and Scots and so on but a huge you know mall a big multi-cultural crowd and they seemed to me to be exhibiting the values of the society the loves the underdogs and so that when Eric the yield a swimmer from Africa arrives and is nearly drowning trying to swim to the end of the pool that crowd cheered him and

made him sort of a folk hero of Sydney. So this is a thing that comes through from our very very beginnings. You know the respect for not quite worship but the love of the underdog. Nice and I feared I would have got off track I might not so well there. Well let me ask you let me ask you another question because apparently as as I. What little I've read about it Ned Kelly was the last A major bush ranger and he was executed in 1880 and shortly after that time the bush rangers pretty much disappeared and I wonder if whether also part of what the book is about is in a major point at which Australia was changing in some very important ways. Well I guess I mean the fact that he was the last really something that's been made more aware of since since I finished it and certainly at the beginning of the bushrangers were often

ex-convicts or escaped convicts who took to the bush and survived you know sort of you know robbery and and so on. And in this way I think even though he's called a bushranger I think Ned Kelly is a slightly different figure. I mean he was he was a fugitive. You know I was involved in a frack out with the police where a policeman was shot my hand in the hand and I had to flee. So they went after my driver not spend an awful lot of time thinking about why that might be. We're at the midpoint here maybe I should introduce Again our guest We're talking with novelist Peter Carey. He's for the last 10 years has lived in New York. He was born in Australia. He has written a number of novels and a number of them have indeed been set in Australia. He has won every major Australian literary award. He's also won the Booker Prize which is Britain's top literary award he won

that for Oscar and Lucinda which was published in 1988. A previous book really Wacker was also shortlisted for the Booker. His newest novel is true history of the Kelly Gang. It was published in Australia last year just the beginning of this year in the United States published by Knopf and questions welcome three three three. W I L L or 9 4 5. I have toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. I very much like to have you read something so much people can get a sense of what what Ned Kelly sounds like. OK well here's just a little bit later about a minute. And this is from very very early in the book. My first memory is of mother breaking eggs into a ball and crying that Jimmy Quinn my 15 year old uncle were arrested by the traps. I don't know where my daddy would that day nor my oldest sister and I with 3 year old. Well my mother cried I scraped the sweet batter onto a spoon and I ate at the roof were leaking above the camp oven each drop he

sing as it hit. My mother took the cake onto the muslin cloth and knotted it. Your Aunt Maggie where a baby said my mother wrapped. Then she carried by kike and baby out into the rain. I had no choice but to follow up the hill how could I forget them puddles the color of mustard and the rain like needles in my eyes. And the prayer maybe we should explain to people that the premise of the book is that this is his life story. He is that he is writing down. Near the end of his life for a daughter a child that he would he would never meet. So she could have some sense of who her father was what his experiences were and why it is that his life went the way that it did. Yeah and when I talked to one of the things that he's doing I think is is writing towards writing for a to a woods not just to his child at particular but to to a better future. You know he imagines at the very at the very beginning he says God

willing I will live to see you read these woods to witness your astonishment and see your dark eyes widen and your jaw drop when you finally comprehend the injustice we poor Ari suffered in this prison I acquiesced and foreign It must seem to you an old course woods and cruelty which I now relate to far away in ancient time. So you know his position is deeply optimistic about the future. Please. And what's really striking I think at the beginning it is that he's he's a very committed to his family to his mother to trying to make a home. And even though Faith continues to try to push him in particular directions and eventually does push him in a particular direction he seems to be trying pretty hard too. Cobbled together as normal a life as possible and I think a very difficult thing in the circumstances given given the fact that this is like the poor rural Irish equivalent of the projects with the mother selling illegal

alcohol and you know a lot of you know stealing and being a vaguely criminal costal or anything quite a difficult thing quite a difficult thing to do. I think the other thing the thing that you mention about family and model I mean one of the things that I mean this is a novel but I really was interested in when away history was known to acknowledge that and where there were tendencies one could see in the history that had never been brought out to emphasize them and one of the things seem to me to be very clear looking at this story when you look at what drives this man is something that a strain and never thought about too much and I know the mothers this amazing woman a very wild strong Wolf. But. This is seem to me the more I read to be a story about a son and a mother this is the oldest boy whose father dies when he is 12 and the mother fullness you know economic survival unit if you like. And then and so you can imagine how closely they they would bond and then of course in the mother. I live in this little hot tiny tiny

room you know with just curtains hung across for a little bit of privacy and the mothers got lovers and husbands and babies are born and you can imagine how the you know when we imagine a hero and he is a hero to most of us we don't allow for the fact that they hear about be jealous of his mother and mothers boyfriends but if you think about a boy you can imagine that this might have quite an impact on him. And so the more I thought about him and especially and read the things that he's writing at the end of his life you know when he's writing these letters he's saying you know I am a widow's son outlawed and must be paid. He's big drive was to get his mother out of prison so that same day one of the things that I believe to be historically true. That I discovered in this novel this man up thing is that you know this relationship between that killing and his mother as a motivating force in the story. We have a caller someone on a cell phone so when we talk with him this is our line number four. Hello good morning.

Yes I'd like to hear you talk a little bit about how being an expatriate what you're writing. Oh I read. You're writing about Australia. And also about the stress of being in America which you know another world. Yeah. Former British place just to talk a little bit about that I know the error rate of our wealth. Thank you very much for the go. Well you know if I'm not being an expatriate I might never have written this book. The thing one of the wonderful things that comes from living away from your own country is that your own country's gets its look very very strange. And as you explain yourself to your friends or if you if you listen to the words of all sing Matilda will you as I did about four years ago go to the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan to see an exhibition of a very famous in Australia paintings of Ned Kelly by Sidney Nolan and I go with my friends and I explain the story in the story which I love these paintings but explaining them and explaining this narrative to my friends made me really see

the strangeness and beauty of it and the power of it and and also because I was you know if I was living in Australia you know I would know that there was probably a Ned Kelly discount muffler still and a Ned Kelly hamburger and a Ned Kelly this and other words of lot of kitsch rubbish around this story and being a wife from being a why filters all that stuff out and one is just left with the one the wonder of the story. I think that's one of the gifts that you get for living away I mean you get a lot of things that are not gifts like a lot of particular because I'm so still very interested in exploring what my country is and so on. You get a sort of an anxiety from being away from it that you somehow you know the river has changed its course and you know and so on. Being you know you know everybody says it's and it's a cliche you know that New York is not the United States and I know it's not the United States as New

York that I I know that's very I mean I now have two American children. And it's odd for me too. I mean I love them and I'm sadly happy that they're happy. But when I can remember that the the one turning point in my life was when my oldest son said we bombed Iraq. And I said yeah. And he said no. We did. So you know there are certain discomforts. I mean I'm not I mean I'm used to taking a critical stance to towards Lach imperial power. I'm not I'm not interested. I'm not used to being implicated in these actions. Going back just to talk a little bit about more about the relationship between Ned and his mother. One of the things that happen in the life of the real Ned Kelly that in that one point the police

show up to arrest one of his brothers he was a guest cattle rustling and a fight broke out and the policeman was wounded and the boys fled his mother was put in jail in the story and the true history of the Kelly yang. There is one point where they put together enough money so that they could leave and there's this idea that they could leave Australia and go to America and Ned won't go because his mother is in jail. Is that at all a reflection of what actually happened or is that again something that you imagine that certainly would have been in keeping with probably with the way I felt about him. It's not it's not I made it up. I mean not that particular thing. But when you know the things that we know is that the night the notion of flying flame to America was not out of the question. You know that they discussed that you know that the notion of fleeing and getting a boat from certain places is something that was talked about. So we know I'm not and you know I know I'm not inventing that as a notion the

possibility of that sort of. We know that. What else do we know we know that the. One side bet robbed the bank they had money. We know that he was totally obsessed with this question of my getting his mother out of jail. We know that he's even though he can he can lead the police on a merry chase and in the end he can never be pardoned and never be free. It would just seem to me to make sense. But I've made it up. It's a novel. Well in more than one review of your books I have seen reviewers draw comparisons between you and Charles Dickens and certainly the jack Meg invites that kind of comparison but I wonder more generally. How you feel about being compared to Dickens. So I guess this is the time. This is the time for true confessions right.

You never read it right. Well you know when when I remember when I mean to be compared to Dickens I take to be a great complement. And it was when my novel which was published in 1995 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and at that time people started to compare me to Dickens and that was very wonderful to recognise when I was being complimented at the same time embarrassing to have to confess want to not read Dickens. And that doesn't necessarily make a literary writer sort of look all that great I guess. But I've had a lot of trouble with reading Dickens and every time I was you know somebody like Nabokov got a wonderfully persuasive lecture about Bleak House which I started to read and then I found the second little girl I couldn't bear and so I put the book down. But so I hadn't read Dickens and then I was reading a book by Edward Saeed called culture and imperialism and this he's writing about Magwitch in Great Expectations and in any showing an

enormous amount of it. Insight into the astroid and colonial experience and he writes about Magwitch the convict in Great Expectations as somebody who can only be an Englishman as long as he's banished. And the minute he gets back to England he'll be hanged. And I suddenly I know why he's been interested in our convict roots and I still am an ex-con the convict experience and could never think of a way in which to write about it. And it suddenly occurred to me that this might be a vehicle a way in which I could deal with all sorts of questions to do with self-hatred self-knowledge and things which were to do with the story of my country. And so then I went to great expectations and read it and I found to my great delight a great novel a perfect novel. And then and then because I got into the notion of Dickens as a character as well or a character like Dickens. You know I read you know I read his earlier novels and and read quite a lot about his life and so it all becomes part of the business but that's my own self obsession it really isn't to do with.

A great passion for Dickens. Well certainly one thing that it seems that you share is an interest in marginalised people that it seems to me that your many of your characters are marginalised they're outcast or misfits or people that just really don't quite fit in. What can I say. You know I wouldn't be a novelist if I was normal. I mean there's some observation I never quite know what to do about it you know one one kids one could say you know it's it's a sort of a political position it's an act of sympathy or empathy. One could say it's it's the self-expression of somebody who has always been a bit of an outsider but I don't know I mean I don't feel you know if we if we go to a restaurant have a meal together I don't think I'm going to feel terribly outside you know.

Well as you said sometimes there are things you know about how you write and what you do which in the end you know if you said to me why do you walk like that. That's just the way I walk. So sometimes I think there are just things that one dies and I don't know why I do them. Well I suppose the explanation might be to something simple as simple as that may be normal people who are entirely normal and very interesting it doesn't give you very much to you know who it was of that is that all the happy families are alike and the unhappy ones are all unhappy in their own ways. Scott Fitzgerald I think it was someone who was Russian. Right. Well anyway that shows how poor my education was. Let me again here I haunt you with a quote from a previous interview. And I'm it I guess I'm interested this particular because I have had read have read Jack Maggs and there was this 92 piece in which he said every book is in some way a reaction to the one before it. So I wonder you know in for example in in what way is this book the Kelly Gang a reaction to Jack Maggs and then maybe you might talk a

little bit about what you're working on at the moment. I think I think one of the things that. When I realized in writing Jack Maggs which is you know set in Victorian England and there was a way that I wanted the sentence structures while their sentences were actually modern although they were very pared back in a way that say something like Dickens isn't. But still I really want to do it by the laws of sort of Victorian grammar in the way that punctuated and certain choices of woods give this sort of feeling to it and it was for me as a writer has always done whatever he damn well pleased it was a little bit like wearing a corset you know you had to sort of you know I felt constrained and I was pleased to be constrained but when it was all over the notion of writing like Ned Kelly in this you know cheated passionate relatively unpunctuated prose seemed like an enormous relief. And of course there's a set of tricks one plays in oneself because in the end in fact the discipline of writing like this is enormous. It's far more difficult to write like this that it is

to follow the you know the more conventional rules of grammar if you want people to read you. So in that way and I think in the y2 in which it was you know Jack Maggs is ultimately about a strategy on the Australian experience as a comic only and so on. It's set in London and this book was set in a straight and not actually written a book for. Two books the two previous books had not been set in a strike I said it was a huge huge pleasure to return to my own soil in that way. It certainly won one seems drawn to compare the Australian experience and the American experience and and wonder. To what extent that helps form the character of these two countries and whether there is a like as they seem to be. I think you know this is Everett this question is everything and I and I think then then and really only very superficially alike. And there's

also it's you know you can just start with these two you know the two different first Fleet's you have my flatiron the one on the one hand whether it's you know religious refugees and you have these you know those convict ships with people chained together and on the day you know so this is a totally different experience we're here because we want to be here on the one hand we don't want to be here a tool on the other the. And then you have just the whole nature of the landscape and you know these two Strayer in the United States are roughly the same size. You know the strain in landscape is incredibly and sin against an El Nino landscape. You have floods and drought and so on and it also has a huge amount of it is just desert. So the experience of colonizing or invading or whatever you want to call it in a strato you know we generally went west. You know you guys you know if you going West you

know people died of course and there was heartache and tragedy but the general drift of the thing is you go we go west to wealth and success and so on. Well we tend to go west and get lost and die in the. And maybe there's a lot of that in the Irish aspect of character in this. Not a majority but a strong minority means that we maybe started not trusting success and treasuring failure anyway. But all of us all of our stories are about faith. I mean yeah you know that you know it is Burke and Wills explorers get lost and die and they die of starvation by the way. Within within yards of Aboriginal people happily going about their normal life because they don't eat what they're eating. And and you know glibly you know where our young man died for no good reason and this foolish battle and everything we trust is lost and that Kelly is one of those.

We are at the point we have maybe about six or seven or eight minutes left with Peter Carey. He's a novelist. His books are all in print and all except the newest one are available in paperback so you might want to take a look at them and the newest is published by canard. It's just been out here I guess a couple of months in the United States. True History of the Kelly Gang. He's traveling around talking about it. Should I mention Sorry Dave is no no go ahead. Should I mention that I'm I'm actually I'm doing a reading tonight in Chicago. Yes and yes you do library the Newberry Library on 60 West Walton Street. There you go. So it's at 6:30. So people who are if you're in Chicago you could stop by and I looked at the your tour schedule. This is grueling. Your it was but 17 cities that you're going to be doing it's not continuous but it's a lot. You're just at the beginning I'm glad I'm talking to you at the beginning and then at the end. Well you know it's been a lot of money ahead of me. The there I don't know if I expected Australia probably

there are movies maybe they're not movies made about that Kelly there's one that apparently is not all that highly thought of starring Mick Jagger you didn't have to cite. Asked by way of saying you know it seems that this is the kind of thing that might people in Hollywood might be interested in making a movie about it. Is there some talk about possibly another movie about Ned Kelly based on your book. Yes and actually this is it's better than Hollywood in a sense because it's Neil Jordan the Irish film director the man who made the crying game. Yes. So he's optioned the book. And and for me this is I mean not only is he a director and a writer. I had my immensely but the notion of an Irish director and writer going to a strange year with some Irish actors and using Australian actors and working within that landscape is very moving to me because one of the things is these books

to do with these guys lost memory and the you know what's forgotten by immigrants was denied by immigrants. And there's a whole lot of stuff in this book which interests him. So he's he's going to be able to do something at it not a whole extra layer. I mean he went by the book of course it's going to make a film. But I think what he can bring to this is going to be it's just so exciting to contemplate going back again to that newspaper article there's a photograph here of Ned Kelly's death mask and I guess the thing that I'm struck by looking at it is how much your mind's me of Phil Collins thinking you know maybe Phil would like to. Feels kind of a short guy I guess said Ned Kelly who is kind of a big guy he was a big fan. What are you working on something something now can you talk a bit about well I should be doing. I normally would have been more advanced on my next book. But the thing that I did when I finished this I've just finished another Sperry small book Bloomsbury English publisher

have commissioned commissioned literary writers to write about world cities and France and say Edmund White to write about Paris which he's just finished doing and they said to me would I like to write about Sydney and do another travel guide could be anything I like I could invent it whatever it was 50s. So it came in this wonderful excuse when the minute I finished Ned Kelly do it say to my wife well this is a very good thing I need to go to Australia for a month. And indeed I went I went to Sydney for a whole month stayed with very good friends and. Had And because of the book really basically is about my friends and their lives. I had great fun researching it and some just finished just finishing that just finished it now and then I'm going to get on to a novel and you have a plan for this novel or you know but I'm being a little coy about it because I haven't done enough work on it so if you're sorry I'll be a little secretive then well that's all right.

We'll look forward to it. We're sort of coming down to the to the end point and I don't I didn't want to you know I don't want to give the book away particular I don't want to people tell people too much I want to tell them enough so that they might be interested in looking at it and yet not so much that that they feel like all right I've heard the story of this book and I don't and I don't. It would be redundant to actually go and read it. But I just the quality of the prose is so sort of unusual that I again I was wondering if you just might just read a little bit more. Sure of course. Excuse me while I just. This is a little bit from. He's about 12 years old and they're living on a little farm which they ranting. They're very very hungry and they're and they're a pole. Here we go.

They were now d'Amour spring upon our property each day I took the cows to water them at Hughes creek. In a good year it would have made a pretty picture but in the drought that creek were no more than a China Sandy waterholes over across this dry river bed that Mr Merry's half a calf come calling out my name I was very hungry when I heard her and knew what I must do. I'd never kill nothing bigger than a rooster but when I saw the long line of the heavens crop above the black breeze I knew I could not be afraid of nothing. There I were a little wild but she were a pole Hereford very sleek. I later heard that Mr. Murray had made a great investment on her and parted her with corn and hay which must be true for they would not feed in any of his paddocks and allowing five hundred acres his stock was out grazing on the roadside finding what nourishment they could. I did not care I've been led down the creek into a thick stand of wattles with a clearing in the center. She did not like to rather read a nick she fought and bucked and would have done himself a damage had I not bound her hind legs and tied them to a wattle truck. She began to bellow

terribly. Soon she were trussed up like a Christmas chook but I had not pity nor did I have a knife. I ran up through the scrub to fetch one from the hot inside my mother were occupied trying to plug the spaces between the slabs with clay and straw. So I took the carving knife from beneath a very nice she never even though just said she is one of Mari's beasts go down by the creek. You must be mistaken. Now I can hear it bellowing from here. I said I would attend to it and let him. Within the year I would have learned to kill a base very smart and clean and have a tide often drying in the sun before you could say Jack Robinson. But on this first occasion I failed to find the battery. I'm sure you know I have spilled human blood when the when I was a choice at that time I was guilty then a soldier in a war. But if there was a law against the murder of a beast I would plead guilty and you would be correct to put the blackcap on your haid for I killed my little half a badly and I'm sorry for it still. By the time she fell the

neck was a sea of laceration. I will never forget the terror in her eyes. Well there we must leave it there some beautiful writing in the book I think it's very good and I would recommend it to folks and I certainly appreciate you taking some time and talking with us about it. Thank you David. Our guest Peter Carey The book is true history of the Kelly Gang published by canards. All of his other books are in print as well so if you like his writing you can seek him out and the best of luck on the on the long haul. Thank you David thanks so much.