One of Australia's most iconic writers has released his latest work. A collection of non-fiction short essays titled "Swimming To The Moon". This will collection will be Drewe's thirteenth outing as a novelist and fourth non-fiction book.
Perhaps best known internationally as the author of "Our Sunshine" which was the basis of the 2003 movie "Ned Kelly" staring Orlando Bloom and Heath Ledger. In Australia however Drewe's work has long been the source of many adaptations for television including "The Shark Net" and "Bodysurfers".
Drewe's career as a writer started as a cadet journalist and shortly thereafter at the age of twenty one became one of Australia's youngest chiefs at Melbourne's 'The Age' newspaper. In the 1970's Drewe abandoned fulltime journalism to embark on a career of fiction writing with his first book The Savage Crows being released in 1976.
In 1999 Drewe released his first of three memoirs, all of which went on to be best sellers in his native Australia.
Drewe is an instrumental figure in Australian literature circles and we were extremely fortunate to have him take some time from his busy schedule promoting 'Swimming To The Moon' to answer some of our questions.
IBR: Besides geographic settings, is there something unique about Australian literature?
Robert Drewe: I think Australian literature to a great extent mirrors what’s still perceived as the national character, to do with the outback and the Gallipolli tradition, as Richard Flanagan has just proved. His A Narrow Road to the Deep North is a wonderful novel which has just won the Man Booker prize. It taps right into the traditional national ethos, and it shows how valuable and powerful that ethos can still be.
Australian literature is generally less constrained and Oxbridge middle-class than a lot of British writing, and yet more more conservative in form and subject matter than much American and European fiction — with the exception of some local 1980s and 90s forays into Latin American-style magic realism. But then Gabriel Garcia Marquez had this effect elsewhere, too, on British/Indian literature especially.
IBR: Has Australian literature changed a lot over the course of the years; do new Australian authors challenge the preconceived notions of classic Australian Literature?
Robert Drewe: To an extent. But the portals of Aust. Lit. are not easily entered by those who eschew the bush tradition. The writers have changed, but the gatekeepers not so much.
IBR: Has the audience that you are writing for changed much over the years, or does that never enter the equation?
Robert Drewe: I have no idea if it has changed. In any case, I don’t think of a particular audience when I’m writing. The thing I try to do is write the sort of novels and stories that I like to read. Sometimes that works out OK. Much depends on your publisher and the enthusiasm they put into the process, especially in these financially constrained times. And on where the book is published. A London or New York publication of an Australian novel still carries great kudos here, perhaps more for the fact that it's been published overseas than for the book’s merits. Some good local books suffer because their publisher hasn’t put the boat out, as they say. And the cultural cringe still exists -- just look at any newspaper book review section or the guest list at any writers’ festival.
IBR: You’re famous for both novels and short stories, what do you prefer about each of these mediums and which is your favorite?
Robert Drewe: I don’t have a preference really. I love the way the short story can illuminate a simple, single idea. It seems closer to the fireside tale of our ancestors and it has an instant power that tends be dissipated in the novel. You could call it the WOW! factor. But then the novel is a sort of grand thing. An edifice. I published two novels before I wrote a single short story, so I did it the opposite way around to most writers. Publishers certainly prefer you to write a novel rather than a book of stories. But then I wrote a book of stories, The Bodysurfers, which has outsold all my other books, so the novel versus short-story success equation is still a mystery to me.
IBR: Did fiction writing help your journalism or did journalism help your fiction writing?
Robert Drewe: Working in journalism from the age of eighteen to twenty-eight, when I resigned my job as literary editor of The Australian to write fiction, was immensely useful as part of a growing-up process and showing me the "real world”. I’d argue that it was more beneficial than a creative writing course, but then it’s valuable for an embryonic writer to do any job, trade or profession for a period of time. As long as it doesn’t smother the writing.
Any foray of mine back to part-time journalism over the years, whether as a film critic, magazine columnist or literary editor, has been primarily in order to support my family. Literary writers are rarely flush with funds. But luckily I got, and continue to get, something important from working in other interesting contemporary forms. And their influences have been valuable to my serious writing, and to my approach to life generally. There’s been no artistic garret seclusion in my career.
IBR: How do you compartmentalize the two distinct styles?
Robert Drewe: I don’t think too much about it. Horses for courses. The fiction writing obviously requires far more imaginative intensity: to provide insights into character, to encompass everything in a plot framework, to throw up interesting ideas, and to find the mot juste. But then I always try to talk pretty directly to the reader and not obfuscate or gild the lily for literary effect.
IBR: What made you decide to write your memoirs?
Robert Drewe: It had been on my mind for years. Because of the deeply-felt personal and family material — including the large numbers of deaths involved, some of them murders — it took me many decades to bite the bullet and write The Shark Net. And in a way that I hoped would show the humour of the time and place as well as the drama. Then the second memoir, Montebello, followed naturally after that.
IBR: Does it take a certain degree of maturity as a writer to tackle your memoirs, was it the hardest assignment you have ever given yourself or was it easier because you were writing reality as such?
Robert Drewe: I guess so. I couldn’t have done it in my twenties. But when I eventually sat down to write a memoir, it came remarkably easily. The events themselves were so etched in my brain that everything flowed surprisingly quickly, as if they’d happened last week.
IBR: Have you found that as you mature, you have more to say as a writer?
Robert Drewe: Yes, definitely. I find the world and my surroundings increasingly fascinating.
IBR: You are arguably Australia’s most well known writer and yet you have remained extremely accessible to your audience, how does that interaction help you as a storyteller?
Robert Drewe: That’s flattering but I’m not so sure of this question, or the truth of the premise. As I said, of course I try to connect with the reader. And I appreciate every single one. But I don’t particularly want to curry favour with him or her. I don’t want to suck up to them and give them easy-to-read airport novels. If they want to come aboard for the voyage, that’s terrific. And the more the merrier.
IBR: Of all your works, which one still holds dearest for you?
Robert Drewe: They’re all meaningful in different ways, because I remember what I was doing, how and where I was living, when I wrote them. I recall the hard slog with some of them, the time they took, and the encouragement, and otherwise, I received. And of course the differing receptions they got. There was a special thrill though with the publication of my first novel, The Savage Crows. Seeing it stacked in bookshop windows, getting some good reviews. You can’t beat those wonderful feelings as a young writer.
IBR: What are you now working on?
Robert Drewe: I have a new book of light columns, Swimming to the Moon, out this month. Some critics turn up their noses at a novelist turning their hand to light sketches of everyday life, but I enjoy doing it — I’m intrigued by ordinary everyday absurdities as well as grand themes. And at the moment I’m working on a new novel — I guess you could call it a big family saga — that I’m excited about. The first stage of a new novel has that effect on me. It gives me a real charge. Now I’ve just got to finish it.
Publications
Novels
The Savage Crows (1976)
A Cry in the Jungle Bar (1979)
Fortune (1986)
Our Sunshine (1991)
The Drowner (1996)
Grace (2005)
Short Story Collections
The Bodysurfers (1983)
The Bay of Contented Men (1989)
The Rip (2008)
Non-Fiction
Walking Ella (1999)
The Shark Net (2000)
Montebello (2012)
Swimming To The Moon (2014)
Drama
The Bodysurfers: The Play (1989)
South American Barbecue (1991)
As Editor
The Picador Book of the Beach (1993) (later The Penguin Book of the Beach)
The Penguin Book of the City (1997)
Best Australian Stories 2006 (2006)
Best Australian Stories 2007 (2007)
Best Australian Essays 2010 (2010)
Links
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