MQtv Talking Point
Discussing the Big Issues

In an article recently published in the LA Times, Richard Schickel, a film critic for The Time Magazine, deemed the blog an inappropriate medium for criticism and reviews.

“Criticism - and its humble cousin, reviewing - is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions,” he writes.

It is not the first time this has been discussed in the public sphere. The blogger has received both criticism and praise.

The blog is said to uphold democratic principles by acting as a check and balance on governments or corporations, generating discussion on public issues and quite often, “breaking news”.

But many critics deem blogs unworthy of attention, distinguishing them from writing, “Blogging is a form of speech, not of writing,” DJ Waldie, writer and contributor for
Los Angeles magazine, said.

As I contemplate on writing my last blog, I recall my initial anxieties on interning with MQtv.

Maybe this was to do with the critique surrounding blogs. But, I think, more so, I was afraid of people reading what I wrote.

If this media degree has taught me anything, it’s that whatever you write, whether it be fiction, non-fiction, blog, review or opinion that piece of writing has revealed a piece of you. Now, put that into blog form and publish it on the internet and you have the possibility of millions of people accessing you.

But, is this necessarily the case? How much access can a person have to me, through my writing?

The answer is in the blogosphere. Websites that facilitate blogging and networking have multiplied in recent years: Facebook, MySpace, BlogSpot and Friendster. These websites all assist in the construction of the online persona.

Choose a photo. General interests? Favourite music? Favourite movies? Heroes? Who would you like to meet? Now blog.

People are categorically creating their online personalities choosing what to reveal and what to contain. Could this be the triumph of the ego or the admiration of mediocrity? Whatever it is, the popularity of such websites reveals that the interest is now you, no matter who you are.

Maybe this is why the blog is so easily criticised. Everyone has an opinion, and that opinion may not be worthy of attention.

“We need to see something other than flash, egotism and self-importance. We need to see their credentials. And they need to prove, not merely assert, their right to an opinion,” Schickel wrote in regards to bloggers. The sheer abundance of blogs on the internet can lead to its outright dismissal.

But, maybe, the abundance of the blog is the reason why it should be read in the first place. People are actively pursuing other people’s opinions.

People are communicating, discussing and arguing, all on the blogosphere. And people are doing this with each other writers of blogs included. So who says your opinion doesn’t matter??

I think, above all else, university is a place of logic and order. People of every age and background thriving in harmony. Complex schedules of lectures, workshops and seminars running with fluid precision, coexisting across a diversity of disciplines. On the surface, everything appears composed.

But underneath this civility lie the seeds of chaos. You might have to look hard and with a critical eye, but they are there. What am I getting at here, you may wonder? Well, even after three years at Macquarie University, I still can’t explain many facets of student behaviour - it seems to travel from the sycophantically polite to the blithely rude, with an overnight stop-over in the land of the bizarre.

Take lecture theatres. What is it with these people who can’t seem to wait to get into a class? The last 10 minutes of any lecture is continually punctuated by people sticking their heads through the door, seeing another class and wordlessly retreating. But for what reason? Maybe to see if they can get in early and grab the best seat for the following lecture I would suspect, as if it were the New Year’s Eve fireworks instead of Biostatistics and Epidemiology.

If so, the concept of the ‘best seat’ is one I find particularly puzzling. I have seen lectures from every variety of angles and I gotta tell you, they’re all pretty much the same. ‘X’ still equals 12 whether you’re at the front or the back, and the Theory of Relativity doesn’t become any easier to understand from seat C37.

Student behaviour reaches new depths of the unexplainable when it comes to car parking - it’s as if society’s shackles have been discarded in favour of primitive survivalism. For one, why are all the directional arrows totally ignored, as if they were suggestions rather than rules? If they were suggestions, wouldn’t each arrow have a question mark after it, much like this sentence?

And patience is further tested by those would-be parkers whose determination to grab your soon-to-be-vacant spot borders on stalking. There are few things more disconcerting than having a car creeping behind you when leaving after a hard day in academia. It always makes me worried that I have accidentally insulted the local mafia chieftain.

Don’t get me wrong though - it isn’t all bad news. I have to say that when it comes to queuing, my fellow students’ ability to wait patiently is praiseworthy. Just as well too, because it is arguably the most valuable skill to take onto any university campus; forget research skills or critical thinking. How else could you survive the four hour wait to buy your annual parking permit?

And even the simple act of buying some gum at the SAM shop can send me close to the edge of fury. But in this situation I look around and see that I am alone in my emotion. Everyone else stands there as relaxed and as tolerant as the offspring of Mother Theresa and ‘The Dude’ Lebowski. Please, please, tell me your secret.

So what puts me above all these bad manners then? In short, nothing - this is as much a confessional as a critique. However, with a bit of consideration I think we can make the campus a utopian colony of altruism and selflessness. But then again, where’s the fun it that?

The campus atmosphere begins to change in the lead up to exam week. The library study tables fill up faster. The computer lab lines get longer. And it seems like everyone is asking, ‘How are you going with (insert unit name here)?’

People are stressing, procrastinating or talking about how unprepared they are. But, weren’t they the only one, just last week, who could answer the tutorial question after that long awkward pause? So you begin to think … if they’re unprepared, maybe I should read the text book again, just one more time.

I like to call it the exam game. You may be familiar with it - most people learn the rules during their HSC year, when stress is looming and people are vulnerable.

It can be played in the most subtle of ways. Maybe you’ve told someone you aren’t going to make notes, but you already have. Maybe you’ll maintain the façade of calmness, whilst everyone else is pulling their hair out.

But for what purpose is this game of deception? Competition, of course. There is no better way to uplift your game and chances at improved exam performance, than to instigate fear in your opponents.

There are two main positions in the exam game.

The first position is the stressor. This position works well to create needless worry in others.

Shaheen Iqbal is a first year astronomy student who has four exams within two weeks. “I’m really stressed. There’s no stuvac or anything, there’s just assignments and straight after, there’s exams. It’s like there’s no time to study.”

Paula Silvino has exams weighted 60-70%. “It’s a very stressful time because you have to cram all of the stuff you’ve learnt throughout the semester. Even if you do well throughout the whole semester, if you fail the finals, you fail the course.”

But to really make this position work, you must let everyone know, that despite all the stress, you’re still on track.

“I’ve started, I know the stuff, I just haven’t memorised it. I make sure I learn everything throughout the semester, but I don’t have the notes,” Iqbal said.

“I’ve been doing the homework but I haven’t been summarising. I do that usually in the two weeks prior to the exams, which is now,” Silvino said.

The second position, confidence, easily creates fear for those who are unprepared. This only works if you really have studied.

For Donna Oringo, a second year Actuarial Studies/Law student, stress is not a factor. “I had five subjects last semester, so I know, by comparison, that it’s not that bad.” Of course, it also helps that she’s made her exam notes throughout semester.

“I have to memorise heaps of formulas for maths and stat, but stat is pretty easy to memorise,” Jeremiah Flores said. But when it comes to exams and stress, “I just don’t think about it,” he said.

But, maybe there is no game. Maybe people really are stressed or confident and the fear created is just a by-product of everyone’s own insecurity.

The best thing to do? Shy away from all the exam talk and focus on the exam.

As I near the completion of my degree, I am sympathetically reminded of a friend who recently graduated from Macquarie University. Unaware (or unable to accept) he had fulfilled his course requirements, he came back the next year to enroll in some more subjects. When told he didn’t need to, panic set in.

Similar to being diagnosed with a particularly virulent illness, he sought a second opinion, a third, maybe even a forth. And the same bad news was delivered each time: “Son, it’s time to leave and get a job.”

Graduation should be one of the highlights of anyone’s academic life. A conclusion to years of midnight cram-sessions, a subsistence diet, and, I’m sorry to say, mediocre coffee.

Just attending the ceremony itself must be an incentive; it’s not often you get to pull on a gown and mortarboard, and it’s even less often that the university offers free parking. So why this nagging trepidation? Am I alone in feeling it?

“To be honest, while it excites me, the prospect of graduating is also quite overwhelming,” says Alana Wulff, a third year student of Media and German Language. “There are so many things that I could do, but I’m unsure of how to do it all, and I’m not sure which [work] area I should go into. I really thought uni would go on forever.” “I think finding a good job that you like is the really hard part,” agrees Simon Caldwell, who is also expecting to graduate this year. “That’s why I am seriously considering doing honours and maybe even winning Lotto.”It’s outwardly concerning (but secretly quite comforting) to know that others feel the same. However, maybe this unease is, at least partially, unfounded.

The recent Graduate Recruitment Fair showed that soon-to-be graduates are still sought after right across the employment spectrum. The Macquarie Careers Office, tucked away in the Lincoln Building, also offers a wellspring of services which can further help graduates prepare for the transition to the world of nine-to-five.

And that dream job we all seek? Well, maybe like all good things are supposed to, it comes to those who wait. After all, what successful person doesn’t have a story about the worst job they’ve ever done?

As for my friend, the reluctant graduate, I would love to be able to regale you with stories of his fame and fortune, or at least one of the two, since leaving university. It would lend a nice upbeat conclusion. Truth is, he’s not there yet. But with a whole world out there, including some very fine cups of coffee, there’s no harm in taking one’s time.

By the time I graduate university, I would’ve spent approximately $20,000 on HECS fees alone, five years of my life dedicated to studying and a significant proportion of my time waiting for that unreliable bus. And for what? My name on a piece of paper with the Macquarie University logo and the Vice-Chancellor’s signature. The investment seems almost worthless, at first appearance.

But statistics show that the probability of having a job after receiving a Bachelor degree is 85.3%, as compared to 63.6% for those with no post-school qualifications. University graduates are also more likely to earn a higher wage in their first full time job because of the opportunity to enter professional employment. So, is it really all about the career and, as Donald Trump says, money, money, money?

“I know I need a degree to lead a life and its something I really need to do to prove that I can do it and later on have my career,” Libby Ricketts, an International Studies student, interested in a career in languages, said. “It’s kind of a known fact that you’ll get a better job if you have a good university degree and if you have knowledge behind you. It’s pretty hard these days to get by without it.”

But, let’s step back for a moment and think about the dominant alternative to university - work. Yes, it is a scary thought. Unfortunately, for many, deciding what industry to work in straight after high school is a daunting experience. For Libby, the choice of university degrees available was hard enough, “I decided that I wanted to go travelling instead because I wasn’t ready to decide what I wanted to do at uni yet.”

The driving force for many students choosing to attend university lies in the belief in improved career prospects. But Timothy Hacinas, a student set on following his goal to become a chartered accountant with abundant travel opportunities, believes there’s more to university than career aspirations. “Education is pretty much a privilege to, you know, to become a better person, and I have the opportunity and ability to do it.”

And of course, there are also those memorable social opportunities that the university environment encourages. “I’m looking forward to meeting more friends here and joining different clubs,” Libby said, “I like the experience of university, but it will probably kick in more in second year when it will be easier to make friends.”

The university experience could be the only time in your life where you are free to learn, socialise, work, and question our society in a supportive environment. At the risk of sounding cliché, isn’t university as much about finding yourself as it is fulfilling career aspirations? Some people call this, stalling – putting your life on hold, before you have to face any real responsibilities. That may be so. But, I don’t think I’m ready for 9-to-5 just quite yet.

Sitting back and watching television when I should be studying isn’t the academic crime that I thought it was - in fact, you could even say that I am studying. No, I’m not writing a thesis on the effects of laziness on the human intellect (although I might if I ever get round to it). But rather, television is one of many mediums of popular culture, and although I can’t believe my luck, many forms of pop culture are now recognised as having cultural, social and historical significance in a wide range of disciplines.

How could this be so, and what does it mean? Will 21st century scholars be studying Homer Simpson instead of Homer’s Iliad? To find out a little more, I spoke with Dr Michelle Arrow, who co-convenes the Department of Modern History’s unit ‘From Hula Hoops to Heroin Chic.’ Arrow explained the origins of studying popular culture, detailing how it can offer insights into the lives of people often omitted from the traditional historical narratives.

“It started from the 1940s with the Annales School in France, who were interested in histories of everyday life, folklore and customs” Arrow says. “Then British Marxists came soon after that. They were particularly interested in the working class. One of the things about trying to write working class history is that it doesn’t have vast archives or repositories.” This is where artifacts of pop culture can provide useful primary evidence.

However, as Arrow points out, not all Marxist movements have considered pop culture from this positive viewpoint. “Some Marxists have said that pop culture is a tool of capitalist oppression, used to keep the masses in their place, much like a drug.”

This bleak view still has many supporters today, particularly critics of such reviled media products as, for example, reality television, preened boy-bands, or Dan Brown novels. However, whilst much of modern pop culture is undoubtedly banal, other parts are quite complex and challenging.

“There’s a great book called Everything Bad is Good for You, which makes the argument that much popular culture is actually quite sophisticated these days,” says Arrow. “For example, television drama used to be more straightforward, now, when you’re watching shows like Six Feet Under or The Sopranos, you’re juggling five or six plots, going forward and back in time and absorbing different storytelling techniques that require a very attentive and sophisticated audience.”

Much of pop culture today also requires conversance with other, earlier forms. Imagine watching The Simpson’s, Entourage, or the Scream films without having chalked up serious hours in front of the television screen - it just wouldn’t be the same.

Pop culture’s critics should also remember that the line between high and low culture is never stable. “One of the interesting things is watching how things change over time and how categories shift, with the regard to the line between high and low culture” says Arrow.

The Pussycat Dolls or Dancing with the Stars as art? Even I’m shuddering.

No more than six people were sitting inside the tiny lecture room as I entered. They turn their heads to look at me. Was I in the right place? I sat next to a girl meticulously writing notes. “What’s happening here?” I asked. “It’s an anime screening,” she answered. “I’m actually not a member of the club, is it okay to stay?” The rest of them turn to me, approvingly, “It’s okay. Screenings are for free.” A person abruptly enters the room, laptop in hand. He heads to the lecturer’s podium, setting up the computer.

Clubs and societies are an integral part of the university community. They attract like-minded individuals to a social setting. Macquarie University hosts myriad clubs from the Pyromaniacs and FILMSOC to course-specific societies such as the Actuarial Student Society and academic based societies such as the Golden Key. Then there’s AnimeMQ. This provides screenings of recent anime releases, a loans library and outings to movie screenings or conventions. The lights are dimmed and the screen lights up. AnimeMQ is written in bold red and is surrounded by cartoon faces. “We have weekly screenings of recent anime releases,” Ray Elinon said. The anime, Mushishi, is screened every Monday. An acoustic song begins to play in the background as images of a mountainous village are displayed – the screening has begun.

Anime initially referred to animation originating in Japan. Today, anime is distinguished by its style of animation and the expressive, large eyes of many of its characters. “Anime is different to ordinary cartoons because there’s a wider range of genres and themes and it presents a very fascinating culture,” Ray said.

For Riu Su, anime is “an over-exaggeration of everyday life. Some of them are stupid, I must say … but you’ll find that a lot of the others are wise”. In deciphering between good and bad anime “it’s a game of percentages. If there are a lot more available, it is more likely you’ll be able to find the good stuff,” Ray said.

The lecture room was transformed into a cosy movie theatre. Except, here, no-one could stop you from putting your feet up. Slowly, more students entered. People crept in holding burgers and hot chips. “Anime is very relaxing. It’s good to watch after just finishing assignments or an exam,” Riu said. I watched intently, amused by the mystical storylines of magical butterflies and memory-eating shadows. Maybe, anime, is not for everyone?

“Most people here originally like anime and manga,” Riu said, “People are really nice and it tends to be a really social club.” For those uninformed about anime Ray suggests: “Come along to a screening, see if you like it … because it is so wide-ranging and diverse, that quite often there will be something you will like.”

Well, it’s true that AnimeMQ caters for a niche in the student population, but, hey, – not everyone may like throwing fire around or talking endlessly about philosophy. The beauty of Macquarie University clubs and societies is the ability to cater for the diverse interests of students.

Tony and Maureen Wheeler, creators of the Lonely Planet travel guides, stand centre stage, awkwardly waiting. “Aren’t computers slow?” Maureen jokes. The Hills Centre is filled with Macquarie University students. Late-comers are still shuffling down aisles. Finally, the famous Lonely Planet logo appears – the presentation can begin. I am at the Distinguished Speaker Series, an initiative by the Macquarie University Global Leadership Program (GLP) to bring industry professionals and university students together in a networking extravaganza.

The GLP began in 2005, aiming to attract 50 students. Two years on, the undergraduate program has exceeded initial expectations, with about 15,000 active members. Involvement in the GLP requires students to complete 200 points of extra-curricular activity, attend the distinguished speaker series held every semester as well as 10 colloquium seminars. Bec Forrester, the GLP advisor, is instrumental in organising events such as these. “At the core we look to plan events that have a cross-cultural and international component.”

Who better to address a group of budding global leaders than Tony and Maureen Wheeler? Their first book, Across Asia on the Cheap, opened up unchartered territory in travel guide books. Today they can successfully claim to be the only guidebooks on sale in every continent, including Antarctica. Tony’s most recent book, Axis of Evil, explore the badlands of the current political climate, visiting countries such as Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan, as a tourist. And their story all began with that trip. What trip? Yes, the world trip many university students wait for until they finish their degree.

Photos of the Wheeler’s journey allowed the audience to relive their travel experience as they hitch-hiked across Asia as suspected hippies in transit and suffered shocking sea sickness only to end up on Sydney’s shores with 27c in their pocket. If the Wheeler’s presentation was effective in anything other than to sell a few extra books, it was to actively spread the travel bug. Luckily, Macquarie University travel grants and programs such as the GLP make going abroad easy. With the wealth of exchange, volunteer and internship opportunities on offer, travelling whilst at university has become commonplace. And the average student can only benefit.

“Research and popular opinion have indicated that international experience is beneficial for recent graduates. Members of the GLP show employers that graduates have done that little bit extra. It sets them apart because it shows that students have gone above and beyond,” Forrester said. However, programs such as these not only attract people interested in successful career opportunities. “The students who join the GLP have differing motivations. You can’t just stereotype them. A decent proportion of students do want to use the program to enhance their marketability, but there are also those who have a keen interest in travel or the humanitarian aspects of the program.”

“Personally, it doesn’t matter if my involvement in the GLP is on my transcript or not. The GLP has really inspired me to do more things that I wouldn’t usually have done. If it wasn’t for my involvement, I wouldn’t be doing all the volunteering I’m currently doing, I wouldn’t have known of all the things that are going on at uni,” Jessica Wong, a member of the GLP said. “University shouldn’t only be about study and handing in assignments.”

It has happened again - a Muslim cleric in Australia has hit the headlines with an outrageous comment about women and sexual violence. Last time it was Sydney’s Sheik Faiz Mohamad, who in 2005 (see here) was recorded lecturing in these words: “”A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world …

Strapless, backless, sleeveless, nothing but satanic skirts…all this to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature.” Sheik Faiz likened uncovered women to sheep, put in the way of hungry wolves. This time, women were likened to “uncovered meat”, put in the way of hungry cats.

Sheik Taj al-Din al-Hilali made the comments in a Ramadan speech in September. He was elaborating upon an observation by Islamic scholar al-Rafihi, on who is to blame for any “rape crime”:”If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem.

… If the woman is in her boudoir, in her house and if she’s wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don’t happen.

…The woman was behind Satan playing a role when she disobeyed God and went out all dolled up and unveiled and made of herself palatable food that rakes and perverts would race for. She was the reason behind this sin taking place.” (Read more of the transcript here) Of course, like many others, I find these comments appalling.As a feminist, especially, I want to speak up against these ideas. As an anti-racist, however, I do not want to contribute to any backlash in Australia against ordinary Muslims. Should I keep silent? For a number of reasons I have come to the decision that it is not a good idea to keep silent, in Australia, on the question of Islamist culture and harm to women. For one, the right is making mischief of the issue (see Miranda Devine, Pamela Bone, Paul Sheehan).

For another, I do not believe that there is no reality behind the media beat-up. For another still, we could do with more analysis and intervention. It is a very bad idea to leave all public discussion in the hands of our shock jocks, extreme nationalists and current political leaders.

Peter Manning has made a significant contribution to the public discussion, with a careful defence of the Australian newspaper’s coverage of the Sheik al-Hilali affair (here). The intercession is unorthodox, for the left, and very welcome. I take issue, however, with his framing of the Sheik’s discourse: “The difference for Hilali is that he’s out of time and out of place. This is Australia in 2006, not Egypt in the 1970s.” Manning’s perception, that the ideology comes from some superseded, pre-modern or pre-feminist age of customary prejudice, is a widely held one. We see it in the Australian’s editorial of 28 October 2006: the Sheik’s “retrograde attitudes” are “out of step with modernity”, “primitive”, “stuck in the 10th century.” I think this is mistaken. It is not some hangover of tradition, or ignorance, slowly but surely being eclipsed with our enlightenment. It is not the stubborn remnant of a patriarchal past. There is an Islamist radicalising of the old value of “modesty” in women that is entirely emergent and contemporary.
It finds its double in North America, in the efforts of fundamentalist Christians - and Modesty Zone’s Wendy Shalit - to rework the requirement of modesty in women, for a post-9/11, Christian-West investment in “moral values.”

Shalit’s target is raunch culture. Her new book, to be released in 2007, is titled Girls Gone Mild. Girls Gone Wild, of course, is the outfit that Ariel Levy (in Female Chauvinist Pigs) says is leading the mainstreaming of pornography in the U.S.A. Its capitalising on the new exposure of women’s bodies is defended in the name of “feminism,” and “freedom” - the freedom that George Bush wants to bring to the world via Afghanistan and Iraq.

One might think that the last thing a Christian-Right Presidency would want, for American women, is a hypersexualising, self-promoting display of their claim to licence. On the contrary. A Western-style “freedom for women” is a key emblem of its campaign in Afghanistan and Iraq. Women don’t have to wear the veil, in America. Women don’t have to appear modest, in America. And besides, a Christian Party can have its Babes, and its conservative moral values too. Levy finds it all a bizarre contradiction, but as Chaudhry says: “make no mistake, raunch is Republican.”

In its C21st context, it is a dangerous game that is being played on the bodies of women. Modesty, its saving grace and its paradox, has been with us for centuries: “the woman is constructed as seduction - to be forever punished for it.” (Tseëlon, 1995: 5) But this is something new, coming not from the past, but from the present - from the far off, ungrasped present. The scale is different. It has taken on the proportions of an imagined “clash of civilizations” where the lone woman on the street –in a miniskirt, or in a burqa - can seem to represent, for some, the legitimate target of cultural righteousness and revenge.

I submit that the “punishment” of rape and other sexual assault on women in Australia will only escalate, in current conditions, if we continue to misrecognise the discourse that legitimates it. It is not a relic of the past that will die out with the spread of feminism. Feminism, as “raunch,” is being used to draw women further into identification with the Bush-led “West.” There is only more crisis and confrontation in the future of Empire capitalism and its “others”.

Dr Judy Lattas,
Director of the Macquarie University Institute for Women’s Studies

I invite respectful comment on the opinions offered in this column.

Image: Punch and Judy illustration by George Cruikshank, 1827 

Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing this year’s Miles Franklin literary award winner Roger McDonald for MQtv. The video is now in production and will be loaded up for viewing soon.

Roger, one of Australia’s most prolific and best-selling authors, was visiting the university to present a guest lecture about his award-winning novel, The Ballad of Desmond Kale, at a function organised by the Department of English.

The novel, Roger’s seventh, is set in the Australia of the early 1800s and at its heart is a story of fierce rivalry over the possession of sheep that produce the best and finest wool.

Roger is the first to concede that people’s eyes might glaze over at the talk of sheep and wool, but then they would be missing something – what he calls wool’s special alchemy.

“If you look at a staple of wool through a magnifying glass it’s like the clouds, like gold, like mist, it’s like the shapes of faces, all sorts of things come up in it,” he says. And in the early days of Australia’s colonial history, wool was the focus for much rivalry and ambition.

He recalls that the Australian historian and “sheep breeder par excellence” – Charlie Massey - referred to the early sheep breeders as “the Michelangelos of the bush”.
“I saw somehow for the first time really that the breeding of a sheep for wool was a cultural statement in this country like music or poetry or painting.”

All of this is a gift, he says, “in terms of characterisation, dramatisation and finding those things that count in novel writing which are always surprises to the author”.
Roger, whose previous novel Mr Darwin’s Shooter won numerous awards including the National Fiction Award, did a lot of reading and “a lot of living” as background to The Ballad of Desmond Kale.

“I was a shearer’s cook in the wool industry. I’ve had sheep on a small farm. I know the sites and smells and difficulties and trials of the industry; [they] have been part of my life,” he says.

He has stopped using the word “research” for his preparations for writing because it has an academic context that does not apply to creating a novel. “I tend to prefer to call it picturing - to get this panorama [and] diorama of imagery and place it onto a convincing screen.

“I got some excellent books and put them up on a shelf in front of me to do some background reading – this one took about a year of preparation. Then as I start writing, if I need something I just reach up onto that bookshelf and bring it down. It’s immediately available. I don’t want to stop writing and head off to the library during the writing process. I want to keep it flowing.”

The past, he says, is a rich source for the novelist. “We can get letters and diaries, we can look at diverse points of view, we can find out the real outcome of events thanks to the hard work of historians [compared with whom] novelists have the easiest job. “I often say that a lifetime’s work of a historian can be the afternoon plaything of a novelist.”

Having acknowledged his debt to the past, he says much of the novel comes out of his experience. One thing he feels very strongly about is the struggles facing people in rural Australia.

“People - and it’s happened in my family –they start off in the rural life with a lot of hope and almost invariably in Australia you’re hammered into the ground. Because of drought, markets that sort of thing … to be able to hope and fail at the same time seems to me to say something important about Australia.”
Stay tuned to MQtv and we’ll bring you the full video interview with Roger McDonald soon.

* The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald (Random House Australia, ISBN 1741661145 $32.95)

By David Myton
Editor, MQtv