Mark Rubbo interviews Peter Carey
Readings Managing Director Mark Rubbo chats to Peter Carey about his new novel
Amnesia seems to me to be about Australia’s relations with the US: it begins with the little known Battle of Brisbane in 1942, which saw fighting between Australian and US troops over two days, but the novel also includes a substantial critique by one of the characters of the US role in Gough Whitlam’s dismissal. Is this a correct assessment and how much do the character’s views align with yours?
I wanted to explore the complicated relationship between Australia and the US. Many serious writers (John Pilger in A Secret Country being one of them) have pieced together the circumstances of the Whitlam dismissal in 1975 and concluded that our government was brought down by a complex storm system in which the CIA played an active role.
The right has devoted 40 years to labelling these views as ‘conspiracist’ and ‘phoney’, a view much repeated in certain parts of the media that (for those not old enough to remember) took an active part in the overthrow. These voices continue to insist that it is mad and unimaginable for our powerful ally to interfere in Australia’s internal affairs. Recently, however, the world has had a startling public education.
During the period I wrote Amnesia, the secret workings of American agencies were exposed to various bright white lights. First came Wikileaks, and then, when I was midway through the novel, Edward Snowden showed how the US spies not only on its enemies but also its friends and allies. The argument that the novel engages with seems, in the light of recent revelations, to be more than credible.
For those who are interested, William Blum’s Killing Hope: U.S Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II gives a detailed history of US interference in the affairs of many of its friends, for instance Italy in 1947–1948, also China, Greece, the Philippines, Iran: it’s a long, long list and we don’t get our turn until page 244.
The core of the story is a hacking attack on the US, undertaken by a shadowy group perhaps not dissimilar to Wikileaks. You’ve said that your US publisher approached you about ghost writing Julian Assange’s memoir but you turned him down. Did you decide to fictionalise that instead?
I need to emphasise what I actually said to The Bookseller in the UK. During a conversation with my American publisher about Assange’s historical importance, he said, in an aside: ‘I don’t suppose you want to write the book.’ As this was not in any sense an offer, I could not possibly turn it down. We both knew there were all sorts of reasons that this should be left in the realm of interesting ideas, not least that I am a novelist and don’t have that sort of skill. The conversation lasted, perhaps, two minutes.
My publisher and I had reason to recall those two minutes later because it was during this conversation that I said how significant it was that Assange was Australian. The US media was certainly not thinking how his nationality might affect him. But of course, he could not possibly be a ‘traitor’ as many Americans believe. As an Australian, I could imagine many reasons why an individual with a left wing parent might choose to act against US interests.
The result of these musings led, finally, to Amnesia which is clearly not ‘about’ Julian Assange, but a young woman whose life and motives for her actions are very different, starting in the field of environmental activism. Having said that, I think Assange has changed the history of our time, and so his influence is undeniably there, but not in a literal way.
This is the first of your books for quite a while that is strongly located in Australia, both geographically and intellectually. Even though you now live overseas, is it still important to you to have that Australian sensibility?
It’s not just important. It’s who I am. Not even New York City can wipe my memory and reprogram me. Australia is my place of birth, and where I grew up. I woke up in Australia almost every morning for 47 years. My journey to New York was not a rejection of my own experience, or a repudiation of my most vivid memories. Australia is my lens. I cannot see the world in any other way.
A significant section of the book is set in Carlton, which of course I love, and it reads like a bit of paean to Carlton of the 1970s. The hacker’s godmother is Betty Burstall, the founder of La Mama Theatre, and there are Carlton institutions of that era referenced too, such as King & Godfree and Johnny’s Green Room. Did you want to give Carlton that nod or did it just serve a purpose?
I lived in Parkville and Carlton in the very early 60s and then again, in Carlton, in the 70s. My days there were alive and, if not always blissful, still personally and intellectually rich. It was the perfect place for my characters to begin facing the events and consequences of 1975. Along the way I had a lot of fun, with my left leg in downtown Manhattan, and my right on the bar rail at the Albion.
Amnesia is often a very funny book, due in no small part to two of the central characters: the shambolic left wing journalist, Felix ‘Feels’ Moore, and Wodonga ‘Woody’ Townes, the charming yet ruthless millionaire property developer who bankrolls left wing causes. They seem like caricatures of some prominent Australians. Are they?
They are my creatures. They were born inside my head and they are shaped to live inside the pages of my novel. But how wonderful they could inhabit the streets you know so well. Isn’t this what every novelist dreams of: their inventions getting up and walking off the page?
You have two characters steal some Tolkien books from me at Readings. You must know I hate shoplifters!
Mark, you may not know that this very act of shoplifting you mention is the substance of one of the many charges still facing Gaby Baillieux and Frederic Matovic. Of course they have been on the run for a number of years, and I admit that it seems possible they will never be brought to ‘justice’. There is nothing I wish to do to change this. However, you might fruitfully chat to another character, Felix Moore. Felix has done so well with ‘Barbie and the Deadheads’ he might be nice enough to make good your loss. We’re out of touch now, but I guess he’s still living in Rozelle.
