Australian Richard Flanagan is a writer with an extraordinary work ethic. Over the last fifteen years, from his base in the southern island state of Tasmania, Flanagan has published five widely acclaimed novels in addition to newspaper articles, essays and screenplays. His first and second novels, Death of a River Guide (1994) and The Sound of One Hand Clapping (1997), were both nominated for Australia’s prestigious Miles Franklin Award, as was his third, Gould’s Book of Fish (2001), which later won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Award. The film adaptation of The Sound of One Hand Clapping, which was both written and directed by him, was nominated for Best Film at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival, and other screen credits include co-authorship with Baz Luhrman of Luhrman’s cinematic hyper-epic Australia (2008), an enthralling mix of history and romance that divided audiences as surely as it attracted them to the box office.
His recent work as an essayist has been a particular revelation, displaying a synthesis of solid research and incendiary prose that is both surgically focussed and passionate. Flanagan is a committed environmentalist and his controversial 2007 essay for Australia’s ‘The Monthly’ magazine compellingly outlined the political machinations that have allowed forestry giant Gunns Pty Ltd to continue to log the remaining tracts of Tasmania’s ancient forests. Its damnation of Gunns’ intention to establish a pulp mill – with the backing of Federal and state governments - on Tasmania’s north coast profoundly influenced the shape of environmental and political debate in the lead up to the Federal election in October of that year.
Whether working in fiction or the essay form, Flanagan has never sought to isolate his political engagement and moral conviction from his storytelling. His novel The Unknown Terrorist (2006), dedicated to Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee, David Hicks, explores the ramifications of Australia’s anti-terrorism bill and the injustices inherent in the Bush and Howard administrations’ paranoid and draconian responses to 9/11 and the Bali Bombings. Who and what, he asks, are the real targets in the so-called ‘war on terror’ when civil rights and freedoms are more threatened by the efforts of the State ostensibly to protect them than by the nascent risk of terrorism itself? What has the prosecution of a war on terror caused us to become, what kind of monster?
In his latest novel, Wanting (2008), Flanagan weaves a story out of historical fragments with uncanny connections: between the systematic eradication and exile of the Tasmanian Aborigines and the work of their ‘chief protector’, George Augustus Robinson; the adoption and subsequent abandonment of a young Aboriginal girl, Mathinna, by explorer Sir John Franklin and his wife; and Charles Dickens’ forays on the stage in a play inspired by the disappearance of Franklin and his expedition in the icy wastes of the Northwest Passage. Dickens had previously written a series of articles at the request of Franklin’s widow that aimed to dispel persistent rumours that the expedition had succumbed to the temptations of cannibalism. Shortly after his performance as a dying polar explorer, Dickens gave in to his own temptations and left his wife and nine children for his leading lady. For Flanagan, what links these lives and events beyond the peculiar historical facts of their relationship, is that they all carry within them the struggle between desire and its denial, and all point to the ‘wanting’ that drives us more surely than reason.
Threaded through the novel is also a discussion about writing cast as a process that can result in the steady spiritual and emotional depletion of the author, a condition Flanagan insists he does not suffer from. On more than one occasion, Flanagan has referred to himself as a hard working ‘hack’ whose major strength as a writer is an awareness of his own mediocrity. Perhaps Flanagan has confused mediocrity with unflinching honesty and the admission of his own humanity with all its flaws. But if Flanagan errs he errs with us. While his voice is undeniably his own, it is one we instantly recognise, one that speaks to us warts and all, urgently and often without graces but always straight from the heart.
Richard Flanagan was of the most memorable guests of the 2007 Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. He will be the star attraction at the UWRF’s second literary dinner for the year, appearing in conversation with Janet De Neefe, discussing his latest novel Wanting, and his experience as screenwriter for Baz Luhrman’s Australia.
Enjoy a 3 course meal from guest chef Alicia Tivey, formerly of Tetsuya’s in Sydney, featuring some of Tasmania’s finest culinary offerings.
7pm June 6 Indus Restaurant Jalan Sanggingan Ubud Rp350.000
bookings info@ubudwritersfestival.com
ph 0361 780 8932
