Ralph Wessman
An interview with Geoffrey
Dean
Famous Reporter: Some years back, I remember
reading an article of yours in The
Australian in which you said you’d given up writing – though you’re
still at it, I see.
Geoff Dean: Oh yeah, I remember when I gave up writing.
(Laughs). It’s like the smoker, you give it up regularly because there’s nothing
in it for you, it just makes you ill in the end. Yet you realise that smoking – or
writing – makes up most of your life anyway so you can’t really give it up.
I’ll probably go on smoking and writing till then end.
FR: Your writing life has been varied….
GD: Yes, I guess I’ve held more than fifty jobs in
my lifetime, I do all kinds of things to support my addiction to writing. For thirteen
years I was a farmer. I’ve been a social worker, a furniture salesman, a ladies shoe
salesman. You know, nobody knows what it’s like to be an assistant shoe salesman in
an emporium: it’s bloody awful! And who writes about someone going from door
to door selling sewing machines. Not many people, do they? I did that for a long time.
FR: What was it like?
GD: Well I was in Vancouver working on a fishing boat at
the time. When the fishing season ran out the owner went into his winter business of
selling sewing machines, and I thought oh well, may as well go along with it, fisherman to
sewing machine salesman, didn’t seem to make a lot of difference, it’s one way
of getting around Canada. We worked up through Queen Charlotte Sound visiting isolated
communities, Indian settlements, power stations, all the way up the coast towards Alaska
representing Jaguar Company Sewing Machines. They were manufactured in Usa – though
not the Usa you’re thinking of, they were made in a small Japanese town called Usa.
Before the war the Japanese used to make crap that’d fall to pieces within a few
weeks, but afterwards they began turning out a product the equivalent of anything being
manufactured in the rest of the world at about half the price. An American business called
Jaguar imported the machines.
We employed gimmicks such as dressing up in white
overalls with the words ‘Sewing Machine Services’ written on the back –
salesmen, in other words – and saying, look we’re from the Jaguar Sewing Machine
Company, we’re here to service your sewing machine. We’d check the machine out
… a bit of a rumble usually meant it’d been running a bit dry so we’d oil
it, but invariably there was nothing really wrong with the machines we serviced. I mean,
the sewing machine is an amazing, mighty instrument, a well kept sewing machine will last
more than a hundred years.
That was what kept us going when the fishing season ran
out. A casual sort of bastard, was our skipper. There was the time we ran through the
Yucatar Strait – don’t ask me how to spell that … you had to get the timing
just right because it was x number of miles through the islands, the boat did x number of
knots, and because of the effects of the turning tide you had x number of hours to get
through. The skipper edged out a hundred yards past the rocks with half an hour to spare,
then began telling me the consequences of not making it through in time. If you’re
caught inside the strait as the tide changes, he said, you’ve got to go back the
other way; at which point the tide rushes through at something like twelve knots and the
boat does eight so you lose all your steering. I mean … nothing much, you know, just
complete disaster.
Another time I remember, we were tied up alongside a
breakwater, in a part lake, part estuary. The weather was bad, we were tossing and rolling
all night, but when I woke next morning it was really calm. I said ahhh, I think
we’re out of the worst of it. But looking outside I found it was calm alright because
the estuary had frozen over, the boat was locked in solid. It didn’t last long
though….
I worked in a Canadian lumber mill for a time too.
Everyone spoke French, you had to learn a rough French if you wanted to eat …
‘passez la potato.’ One time, the victuals were being stolen on a regular basis,
and everyone was suspicious of each other. I woke one night to hear shots being fired and
someone cursing in French. It was bears stealing the food. As I arrived, out the window
came this small bear – a baby, you couldn’t have shot him – and he carved
an exit straight through the lot of us. And never once let go of that pound of butter and
one loaf of bread, what’s more he had it tucked up like this (demonstrates) under his
arm. (Laughs).
FR: Did many of your Canadian experiences find their way
into print?
GD: No, just one.
FR: You’ve written far more about your farming
experiences….
GD: Yes, I was on the land for thirteen years.
That was a good time of my life but in the end I had to get out. What farmers don’t
realise is that within the present economic system as it’s so structured, farming is
a no-no. It’s get bigger or get out. The idea of the family farm is a beautiful idea,
it’s what Australia was built on, but economic circumstances won’t allow that
sort of thing any more, it’s gone by the wayside. Hence the National Party is out in
the wilderness, you’ve only got to listen to them to know that. Not that I’m
interested in politics anyway – it disillusions me. Once I’d listen to
everything that was going on, but not any more. There’ve been times when I’ve
become involved at a grass roots level in particular political issues, putting up
different propositions and going along with them only to find them completely ignored when
they reach the top. So what’s the point? My attitude towards politics has reached the
stage where I vote for the individual rather than for the policies.
FR: What sort of reaction have you had to stories of
your experiences on the land?
GD: It depends on who’s read the stories …
whether it’s been a publisher or critic, or your average reader. I’ve had people
who’ve known my work come up to me and say, God, it’s so good to read a decent
story again. But I think there’s this great hiatus between the publisher and the
reading public, publishers have a huge editorial barrier about publishing Australiana
these days.
Something that’s possibly disadvantaged me is that
when I’m writing short stories I try to have as little author intrusion as possible,
so that the characters that emerge during a story are really an identikit of many many
people put together. But writing in this style can be a disadvantage because publishers
seemed fixed on the idea of continuity, of flow. They like to have stories that
interconnect with other stories – the same characters and the rest of it – and
immediately that pushes you into the position where you start writing
semi-autobiographical material. As far as I’m concerned that’s one way to bore
the tits off readers. Too much I I I I I. If I write a story in the first person, the
I’s have no greater connection to me that if I write something in the third person.
The most compelling thing about any writing I think is the characterisation within the
stories themselves.
I’ve had differences with reviewers too. The whole
idea of writing is such an involved, personal thing that any criticism from the outside is
not taken to heart so much, rather you’re thinking ohhh God! What are they
going on about? I sometimes think a lot of reviewers, especially the academically
trained ones, are really talking about themselves and not the bloody thing they’re
reading; not the story. One guy actually started his piece by saying ‘As inadequate
and inappropriate as the short story form is….’ and then went on to review a
book of short stories for Godsake, I mean what can you expect from somebody like that?
It’s an incredibly bad juxtaposition of the reviewer and writer.
FR: How did you write a story like ‘The Homing
Instinct’, from your third short story collection. Was it the result of research or
of personal experience?
GD: I suppose with all my stories there’s a solid
basis of fact around which the fiction is written. That one developed from an intimate
association with pigeons. And it’s true, I actually ate my pigeons. We bred them as
kids, and like guinea pigs they multiplied fast. In this case the pigeons we had out in
the other end of the chook house kept on multiplying until there were about forty-five of
them shitting all over the roof. And flying next door and shitting all over the
neighbour’s roof. So unbeknowns to me, my old man went out and despatched several of
them. And since he’d grown up with a pioneer attitude that said you ate everything
out of the landscape you possibly could – well, parrot pie or pigeon pie, there
wasn’t much difference – the pigeons turned up on the kitchen table. It
wasn’t till I’d eaten the meal that I realized what it was. My bloody
pigeons! And the terrible part was, he’d picked the best pigeons.
It was as a result of breeding pigeons that I worked out
my first schoolboy scam. I used to sell them to classmates for a shilling each.
They’d keep ‘em for weeks, for months sometimes and then the birds would fly
home again. After another while went by and if no-one came to collect the birds, I’d
sell them to someone else. It was a racket picked up very early in life.
I had a real feeling towards pigeons. I still do.
Whenever I see one I think gee now, that’s a blue bar pie, very nice kind … blue
chequer, ah lovely pigeon that.
FR: Could we discuss what’s been happening in local
writing circles in recent months? As you know, there’ll be no Salamanca Writers’
Festival this year. In your Sydney Morning Herald article some months ago you
talked of the difficulties surrounding the festival. What do you see as the problem?
GD: I believe that since the middle eighties, the
Tasmanian Writers’ Union – who’ve traditionally been responsible for
running the festival, though not any longer – has been characterised by a rather
exclusive decision-making process. The argument over Salamanca being claimed by some to be
almost their … province … was simply an expression of whether or not the
Writers’ Union was a democratic organisation. The reason in the end that the general
membership of the writers got really pissed off about it was the fact that they realised
they weren’t able to provide any input, both the Writers’ Union and the festival
were becoming less and less of a benefit to local writers, more and more distant from what
they needed.
I’ve been critical in the past of the Writers’
Festival not having all that much Tasmanian input, but basically I don’t even agree
with festivals at all. Especially when you consider how much money and effort’s put
into them. One of my main problems with festivals is that they’re usually
academically inclined, the majority of people are discussing literature rather than
actually creating it or presenting it first hand as it were.
FR: Is this your view of most literary festivals?
GD: Yes. All of them. Talkfests. Everybody goes there to
chat and talk round in circles, and in the end I say yeah, so what! As a mate remarked,
don’t ask me I’m just a storyteller. But the storytellers are becoming – as
Graham Greene once said – the artisans of the professionals. They who discuss
literature and those who create it, and never the twain shall meet. I suppose what
we’re talking about here is the division between writing and talking about it.
I’d rather write it than talk about it.
FR: For years, you’ve been a proponent of the
establishment of a Tasmanian publishing venture akin to the Fremantle Arts Centre Press
…
GD: Yes. Because of its isolation, I think Tasmania
needs a local publishing house … the strait is not much different from a desert in
many ways, it’s equally as isolating. The thing that would have helped me most
throughout my career would have been a local publishing outlet through which I might have
had my books and stories published possibly ten years earlier.
I don’t envisage a Tasmanian publishing house being
a major mainstream publisher, but a small regional publisher interested not only in
fiction but in many other forms of writing. There's a lot of writing that could be
published in a commercial way by a properly run small publishing house with a fair input
of voluntary labour – which would probably have to happen. And when you think of what
Peter Carey did for UQP, and Albert Facey for Fremantle Arts Centre Press – if you
hit one book that was really popular you’d be well away.
When you think for instance how much money is handed out
to a magazine like Island every year – with that amount of money, you could
almost have had a publishing industry here anyway. And the money that’s put into
Salamanca Writers’ Festival each year … if the same amount of money and effort
had been put into a local press I think it would have been of far far greater benefit to
Tasmanian literature. There’s a huge proliferation of people seriously writing, there
are a lot of books waiting in the wings, and I feel now is the time. It’s not the
same as back in the early sixties when there were less people wriring, when living in
Tasmania was even more isolating, when you dropped your stories in a post office box and
it was like dropping them in a great big black hole, never to be seen or heard of again in
a lot of case.
FR: The early sixties. More than thirty years ago …
GD: Yes. I’m getting old.
FR: Does that worry you?
GD: No, but one of the things you notice as you get
older is that your body takes longer to heal. My leg gives me hell. I think when it
reaches the stage you can’t turn off from the physical and tune in to the mental that
you’re in for a very rough time in old age.
FR: Has religion played any part in your life?
GD: Oh yes indeed. I had a grandmother who was a very
very strict Methodist. Everything was sinful to her, even table legs. Yes, table legs. If
they had shape to them they had to be covered in case they were mistaken for human legs.
Buildings had to be a particular configuration of curves and soft features rather than
stark outlines and modernism. I remember driving along the road with her and she’d
suddenly stop and exclaim, ohhh!! What’s the matter grandmother? I’d ask. Look
at that building there, look at those corners on it.
I always had problems wondering what the problems were
with corners on buildings.
And in the background was my father who always said that
religion was a lot of rot. Yet whenever he’d fill in a form he’d always write
that he was Church of England. Hang on a minute, I’d say, why write that when you
reckon religion’s a lot of rot? Because they’re the best of a bad bunch,
he’d say.
I’m not an atheist, by any means, but as far as
I’m concerned Christianity is ninety per cent bullshit and ten per cent reality.
It’s the ten per cent I’m hanging in there for, the ten per cent dealing with
spiritualism. The whole idea of a mechanistic world is very dull and boring as far as
I’m concerned, I like to think there’s something in what Shakespeare wrote,
‘there are many things in heaven and earth Horatio that are beyond our
understanding’, or words to that effect. But I’m not a Christian. When it comes
to filling in forms, I write ‘undecided’.
I suppose this is the crunch, that you’ve got to
discover your own way – and if it comes to the crunch then I guess the idea of
undecided is as good a way to go as any. I suppose, to be a bit pompous about it,
it’s following an individual path rather than any particular path.
FR: Thank you.