‘A form of creative death’: Writer Michelle de Kretser’s fear of becoming stale

Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Michelle de Kretser. The Sri-Lankan-born novelist, 64, emigrated to Australia at age 14. She has won the Miles Franklin twice, for Questions of Travel and The Life to Come, and her new novel, Scary Monsters, is on the award’s 2022 shortlist.

“I was lucky to come to Australia at a time when tertiary education was free. I know what it is to not be middle-class.” Credit: Joy M Lai

DEATH

You once wrote a short, moving essay about the death of your pet dog. Tell me about your dogs and why they’re so important to you. They just help enliven our lives. They introduce an element of chaos and unpredictability. And I think it’s quite nice to live with another species. It reminds us of our own animal nature.

There doesn’t seem to be much discussion about the death of pets – or if there is, perhaps it’s trivialising. There’s that feeling from some people – well, you can just get another dog to replace the one you’ve lost, whereas you can’t replace your mother or your partner. Or maybe you can replace your partner – I’m sure many do! [Laughs] But animals are as individual as humans are. So when they go, they take their irreducible personality with them. They are simply irreplaceable – as much as you or me.

Your latest novel, Scary Monsters, plays with form. You can start the book from one cover or flip it over and start the story from the other. Does your book announce the death of the traditional novel, or is it resuscitating it? People have been talking about the death of the novel for almost as long as there have been novels so no, I don’t think the novel is about to die. It was a way of giving new life to my own artistic practice rather than the novel, which I think will be fine with me or without me. But I had written five novels before this one and been a published writer for 20 years. There’s always a danger that you will get stale. That has always seemed to me a form of creative death, when artists just start to repeat themselves. In art, as in life, we need to look to renewal.

BODIES

We’re talking bodies. How do you feel about yours? Oh, I’m pretty grateful to it. I wish I didn’t have a scoliotic spine. If I didn’t, I’d be at least an inch taller.

Working as a writer demands that you sit for long periods. So how do your career and your scoliotic spine square up? Ah well, I have learnt to just use a timer. After 25 minutes, I get up and move around. I also have a very good chair, a saddle chair. Another thing that helps is the Alexander Technique.

What is that? It was invented by a Tasmanian and there are teachers of it all around the world now. It’s a way of using your body while placing the least amount of stress on it. It’s non-conventional medicine, but it helps with the management of chronic pain.

To what extent would you say that you are living in – and working through – pain? Not any longer. I have a slipped disc, so I have been in extreme pain – pain where I have passed out and ended up in emergency departments. I’ve been sent home from hospitals with large supplies of Endone and told, “Well, you have to live your life, there’s nothing we can do about it.” But the moment I have even twinges now, I’ll see my Alexander teacher or a Bowen therapist. [Bowen Therapy is a gentle form of physical manipulation.]

What’s something you can do with your body that makes you think, “Thank God”? Walk.

What can’t you do with your body that you really wish you could? I often think, I’ll never again run down a flight of stairs. Never. And I wonder when the last time was that I did that and didn’t realise it was the last time.

MONEY

You arrived in Australia as a teenager, moving from a middle-class life to a modest one in a flat, with no objects from your childhood around you. How did that transition affect you? When you’re 14, it all just seems part of an adventure in living differently. I look back on it now and I’m very grateful for those years. When I was at school, at university and for quite a long time afterwards, I knew what it was like to have very little money. There were times as a student when I couldn’t afford to buy shampoo. But I had my education, and that is a great thing. I was lucky to come to Australia at a time when tertiary education was free. I know what it is to not be middle-class. Now I’m a middle-class person with very middle-class friends and some very wealthy friends. I’m sitting in a room full of books. And I think how lucky I am.

You are one of the few writers to have won the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice. It comes with a $60,000 prize. What did you do with the money? Well, there’s something called a mortgage. Very boring. Also, it’s $60,000 for four years’ work or something like that. So let’s divide it and you see a more accurate figure. It mostly went on just living, basically. Writers are very good at eking out money. But also, I did save some and I did give some away.

So in a word, it sounds like you used it sensibly. I think I’m a boring person generally and, therefore, quite a good manager of money!

Besides the money, what does winning the Miles Franklin twice mean to you? Incredible good luck. For someone not born in this country, I feel pleased to be on that roster of writers who’ve won what’s still the most prestigious literary award in Australia. I was the first Asian-Australian to win that prize. That’s nice, isn’t it? I hope it encourages many more Asian-Australians to write fiction.

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