Carey, Carey, quite contrary
PETER CAREY IS a slight, bespectacled man who looks younger than his 60 years. But despite critical acclaim, healthy book sales and a dry wit, he has a grumpy side.
During a visit to his native Australia to promote his latest novel, My Life As A Fake, Carey complained on more than one occasion about newspaper journalists' coverage of his book.
'When novelists presume to write journalism, they usually fail,' he said. 'And with one or two notable exceptions, it cuts both ways. Yet, when one writes a work of fiction, one talks to journalists about it, and, as often as not, the work is reviewed by journalists. And if one is careless enough to have written a work with roots in the real world, one runs the risk of having the real world reviewed, and not the book.
'This has been happening to me a lot lately.'
Carey regrets the emphasis placed on the facts of the 1943 Ern Malley scandal on which the book is based (in which two Australian poets invented Malley, a working-class genius, and a body of poetry in his name, to show up the literary establishment), over his central idea, about what happens when his version of Malley, phantom poet Bob McCorkle, surprises his inventor, Christopher Chubb, by coming to life.
'I imagined this poor creature being born at the age of 24,' he said. 'How would he feel? Can you imagine, to know that you've been conceived as a joke? This poet, having been brought to life, would have surely been very p***** off.'
Carey cited a recent experience when a London journalist, who he described as 'highly respected' and 'a woman of considerable intelligence', questioned him closely about this aspect of the book.
'But this cannot happen,' she said. 'You cannot just bring someone to life.'
'Well, not if you're a journalist, certainly not,' Carey said. 'You'd lose your job, but I'm a novelist, that's what I do, that's what I've always done.
'This is what I love about literature,' he said. 'Anything is possible for the reader, and the writer, and the writer is respectful of the reader, then it's a relatively simple matter to bring a man to life.
'I had no real interest in the Ern Malley affair,' he added.
'But I was drawn to the story by the magical thinking that what is fiction might actually happen in life, that what we say matters, that what we imagine may come to life. If My Life As A Fake is about anything, it's about the power of the imagination.'
When Australian journalists asked about the book's omission from this year's Man Booker Prize long list, Carey reportedly labelled the award that has done so much for his career 'a crapshoot' and 'by definition, bull****'.
Perhaps the fact that J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello missed the cut when the shortlist was announced this month has made the Australian feel better about it all - South African Coetzee is the only other writer to have won the Booker twice.
Carey won his first, for his tale of a gambling duo, Oscar And Lucinda, in 1988, and second, for True History Of The Kelly Gang, two years ago. The latter, Carey's take on the life of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, collected the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, as did Jack Maggs, in 1998.
His other novels are Bliss (1981), Illywhacker (1985), The Tax Inspector (1991) and The Unusual Life Of Tristan Smith (1994). He has also written a children's book, The Big Bazoohley (1995), and two non-fiction works, A Letter To Our Son (1994), about his relationship with his family, and a travelogue, 30 Days In Sydney (2000).
With a track record like that, it is perhaps not surprising he made no comment last month as to whether advertising copywriters make good novelists. Carey spent about 20 years writing slogans such as 'You make us smile, Dr Lindeman', which encouraged Australian consumers to guzzle Lindeman's wine.
Promotional tagline-writing skills aside, works such as True History Of The Kelly Gang have become national icons in his homeland, despite Carey's decision to move in the 1980s to New York, where he has taught creative writing at New York University and Columbia.
Second wife Alison Summers, from whom Carey is reported to have recently separated, is a theatre director in New York, and their two sons attend school with such literary offspring as the children of Amitav Ghosh.
Like Ghosh's The Glass Palace, Carey's latest novel is largely set in Southeast Asia. It is narrated by the eccentric editor of an English literary journal, Sarah Wode-Douglass, who is retelling the miserable tale of Christopher Chubb which she'd heard while holidaying in Kuala Lumpur years earlier.
Chubb had chased a composite giant of a man called McCorkle all over Southeast Asia in a bid to rescue his adopted daughter from the monster's clutches. We follow the pair from Melbourne to Sydney, then on to Bali, Sumatra and Penang, exploring the region's jungles, palaces and markets along the way.
Carey visited Malaysia on two occasions during the three years it took to research and write the book - 'with breaks for lunch' - as well as calling on the advice of several Malaysian writers and Australian diplomats, as evidenced by vivid descriptions of the landscape and his characters' dialogue with its '-lahs' and 'wahs'.
The Asian setting is a departure for Carey, whose most successful novels were set in Australia. He chose Southeast Asia after remembering seeing a man, wearing a sarong and covered in tropical ulcers, sitting in a shophouse in Malaysia or Indonesia in the 70s. That man became Chubb.
Carey and his first wife had travelled to Malaysia in 1972. Carey fell in love with the sultry climate and multicultural mix, and tried to find work in advertising in Kuala Lumpur.
Without a work permit, it was back to Australia at that time. But perhaps now, with an Asian novel to promote, Carey will come back to Asia for next year's Hong Kong International Literary Festival, or the fledgling Kuala Lumpur equivalent.
The Malaysian festival's organisers are already trying to pin down the elusive writer.
