Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Thoroughly illuminating about the life of an autodidactic peasant, which he was. The relationship with his grandmother is very touching and shows why Russian peasants of intellect would want to get out and change things. She suffered the usual male stuff – her husband would go to the pub and get pissed and then get upset with his missus about his own shortcomings.
Moving on to Maxim Gorky.
Aah, Maxim Gorky is a wonderful writer, resister, speaker-outer. He speaks out about the various excesses of the Bolshevik uprisings, but later he lost his lustre because of his complicit attitude towards Stalinism. His early works, though, are infallible. Well, not infallible, but thoroughly illuminating about the life of an autodidactic peasant, which he was. The relationship with his grandmother in My Childhood is very touching and shows why Russian peasants of intellect would want to get out and change things. She suffered the usual male stuff – her husband would go to the pub and get pissed and then get upset with his missus about his own shortcomings. He shows the treatment of his grandmother and just the rapidity with which the blows are thrown. I was writing about the peasant revolutionaries who escaped from Russia and came, of all places, to Brisbane Australia and my book involves Russians of Gorky’s sort of background. The Russian bits of my book were all helped along by these writers I’m mentioning.
Have you been to Russia?
I’ve spent quite a bit of time there, but as my protagonist I use someone as dumb as me, someone who enters Russia not knowing the language, rather than spend three years there trying to crack the language code and failing. These books are a delightful aid to my laziness.
Read full interview
An Australian writer best known for his historical novels, Thomas Keneally portrays characters who are gripped by their historical and personal past, and decent individuals often at odds with systems of authority. At age 17, Keneally entered a Roman Catholic seminary, but he left before ordination. His best-known work, Schindler’s Ark, adapted into the film Schindler’s List, tells the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than 1,300 Jews from the Nazis. It won the Booker Prize in 1982. His latest novel, The People’s Train, is partly set in Russia.
