Christos Tsiolkas says that he cannot remember the moment he realised he wanted to be a writer, although apparently his mother does.
"Mum told me about this a few years ago, after Loaded came out. I was 10 and we'd been visiting cousins in Northcote. We were waiting at the tram stop to get the tram back into the city when I apparently said to her 'Mum, I want to be a writer, that's what I want to do'. She says she crossed herself."
Family memories such as this cast a long shadow in Dead Europe, Tsiolkas' latest novel. "I think that exploring family history is always going to be a permanent part of the way I write and explore the world. Not in a family values kind of way; you could never say that about my work," Tsiolkas says wryly, "and in saying that I'm interested in notions of the family, don't get me wrong: I'm also interested in notions of where the family can be really destructive, too." (...)
"One of the things I really loved about growing up the way I did was the notion of the extended family, and that it didn't necessarily mean blood. It becomes perverted when it only means blood. When it only means blood then you get racism. Then you get exclusions. Then you get those horrors of 'We're not going to introduce this person to the family because he's black or she's Jewish or he's gay'." (...)
Having visited Greece twice while writing the novel, Tsiolkas explains that he became aware of an older Greek culture, one concerned with the enjoyment of life and extended notions of community rather than consumption and excess, that was slowly disappearing as a result of Greece becoming increasingly Westernised. In part Dead Europe is a threnody for this loss. (theage.com.au)
- Who are your favourite writers?
- Too hard, too hard. Like playing desert island discs the list changes from hour to hour, day to day.
The great Russian novelists, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, continue to inspire me and I think there is something about their fatalism that connects to my Orthodox Christian heritage. I love Kazantzakis for the same reason.
Post World War II USA writers were and also continue to be a great influence. Carson McCullers, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, James Agee. The generation that was Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Phillip Roth – the first writers that made sense of my being a “wog” (I suspect because many of them were children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants and refugees). The film criticism of Pauline Kael, the strange worlds of Stanislav Lem, the moral passion of George Orwell and Robert Fisk.
Most recently I have been seduced by the fiction of Cormac McCarthy, Richard Ford and Carlos Fuentes.
I am in awe and envious of the writers involved in this stunning fertile period of US television: The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Mad Men. There is nothing in English language cinema or the novel that currently approaches the depth and power of this work; nothing so compelling, nothing so audacious. (bookcouncil.org.nz)
"Mum told me about this a few years ago, after Loaded came out. I was 10 and we'd been visiting cousins in Northcote. We were waiting at the tram stop to get the tram back into the city when I apparently said to her 'Mum, I want to be a writer, that's what I want to do'. She says she crossed herself."
Family memories such as this cast a long shadow in Dead Europe, Tsiolkas' latest novel. "I think that exploring family history is always going to be a permanent part of the way I write and explore the world. Not in a family values kind of way; you could never say that about my work," Tsiolkas says wryly, "and in saying that I'm interested in notions of the family, don't get me wrong: I'm also interested in notions of where the family can be really destructive, too." (...)
"One of the things I really loved about growing up the way I did was the notion of the extended family, and that it didn't necessarily mean blood. It becomes perverted when it only means blood. When it only means blood then you get racism. Then you get exclusions. Then you get those horrors of 'We're not going to introduce this person to the family because he's black or she's Jewish or he's gay'." (...)
Having visited Greece twice while writing the novel, Tsiolkas explains that he became aware of an older Greek culture, one concerned with the enjoyment of life and extended notions of community rather than consumption and excess, that was slowly disappearing as a result of Greece becoming increasingly Westernised. In part Dead Europe is a threnody for this loss. (theage.com.au)
- Who are your favourite writers?
- Too hard, too hard. Like playing desert island discs the list changes from hour to hour, day to day.
The great Russian novelists, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, continue to inspire me and I think there is something about their fatalism that connects to my Orthodox Christian heritage. I love Kazantzakis for the same reason.
Post World War II USA writers were and also continue to be a great influence. Carson McCullers, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, James Agee. The generation that was Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Phillip Roth – the first writers that made sense of my being a “wog” (I suspect because many of them were children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants and refugees). The film criticism of Pauline Kael, the strange worlds of Stanislav Lem, the moral passion of George Orwell and Robert Fisk.
Most recently I have been seduced by the fiction of Cormac McCarthy, Richard Ford and Carlos Fuentes.
I am in awe and envious of the writers involved in this stunning fertile period of US television: The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Mad Men. There is nothing in English language cinema or the novel that currently approaches the depth and power of this work; nothing so compelling, nothing so audacious. (bookcouncil.org.nz)
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου