Booker Prize winner Franagan: Live longer, longer than the times

(Joel Saget/Image)

"The world is becoming more and more uncertain and disorderly, and since everyone does not know what will happen tomorrow, this story may remind them that in an uncertain world, we still have each other's love, which is probably the only thing we can be sure of in this life."

In 2014, Australian writer Richard Flanagan won the Booker Prize for his novel The Trail Deep North. Based on his father's experience of being captured by the Japanese army in World War II and building the "Death Railway" in Thailand and Burma, the novel tells the life of Australian medic Dorigo Evans: he tries to save his companions from death in a prisoner-of-war camp, and when he is lonely and hopeless, he will constantly recall the only unforgettable love in his life.

In Flannegan's writing, "Dorigo Evans will live long and witness all the changes" - he feels that something is dying, but he will live longer than his own time...

"This is a magnum opus about love and war," the Booker Prize citation states, "and Franagan tells in elegant words a story of the coexistence of evil and heroes, connecting East and West, past and reality." ”

Born in 1961 in Tasmania, southeastern Australia, Franagan has spent generations logging on this deserted island at the end of the world. Neither of his grandparents could read, and his father, the only one in the family, had a basic education. "My father had a strong feeling for the beauty and magic of words, and he lamented to death that people can use these 26 letters to spy on the universe. Reading can enjoy the power of freedom and transcendence, and the magic carpet of literature has taken me from this island to a distant place. ”

In 1994, Franagan published his debut novel "The Death of the River Guide", in which he tells the story of river guide Ariash's experience of capsizing and drowning in the Franklin River in Tasmania in freehand, dreamy, and raw language. "I can write about dirt, smell, heat, and blood, but it's the reader who brings emotion, sympathy, sadness, and pity. The book didn't get much review that year, but it gained readers, which was enough to bring a book to life. ”

In the late summer and early autumn of 2023, Flanagan's new translation of "The Trail Deep North" and the Chinese translation of his new work "The Rising Sea in a Dream" were published in China, and he was interviewed by People Weekly in the Tasmanian capital of Hobart. "Literature opened my eyes to the depth and vastness of each person and the possibilities contained in each of us, both evil and good. When you realize that people can be everything, both murderers and saints, you learn to look at the world with humility and understand that anything that happens is not about you, but a way of being as human beings. ”

The underlying world is more real, and the literary universe points directly to human nature

Southern People Weekly: I heard that before you became a professional writer, you worked as a construction worker, gardener, and considered mining in northern Australia. How have those past work experiences inspired you?

FRANAGAN: Yes, I've done a lot of work, and these experiences have made me realize that most people's lives are so hard, that people struggle to survive to have food and housing, that they don't like their bosses, that their work is very humble and extremely hard, which is actually the daily situation of most people in the world. I have always told myself that if I am lucky enough to be a full-time writer, I will never forget those difficult years and never complain about the difficulties encountered in writing, because the opportunity to do what you love has given you extraordinary privileges.

Past experiences have also made me realize that when you approach the powerful and famous, their world is not real, but when you are at the bottom, people tend to be honest, they tell each other the truth, so you will find a lot of truth. My grandparents were illiterate, I was lucky to be a writer, and I saw the real world when I was with them and their friends, but when I was with people who had achieved so much, I found it much more difficult to know the truth.

Southern People Weekly: In your debut novel "The Death of the River Guide", the protagonist Ariash falls in love with a girl of Chinese descent, Kota He, and you also write about the history of the He family, what is the original material in it? You also came to China in 2018, can you share your impressions?

Franagan: Actually, I have some Chinese cousins, many Chinese came to Australia in the 19th century, they intermarried with locals, so many Australians have Chinese relatives, and I write about China in my novels because I grew up in this environment, and I am no stranger to Chinese. There was a time in Australia's history when racism was on the rise, when many Chinese were forced to leave, but thankfully that has changed.

The last time I visited China, I spoke to the Chinese writer Yu Hua, whose experience was very different from mine, but we shared reflections on reading and writing, and his literary hero was William Faulkner, just like me, and I found that our creative philosophy was very similar. When you become a writer, you may step into the forbidden zone, but you also belong to the literary universe, and this world points directly to human nature. I was deeply touched that you met a friend from afar who wrote books from another distant country, but you had a similar source of inspiration.

Southern People Weekly: You just mentioned your hero, Faulkner. Faulkner believes that for a writer, experience, observation and imagination are three necessary conditions, which is the most important thing in your writing?

Flannegan: I don't think Faulkner is telling the truth here because he doesn't have a lot of experience and I don't have much. I visited Faulkner's former home in Oxford, Mississippi, and he created that world with his imagination, and in a way, his observation of that world.

Writing is a craft that needs to be polished for a long time, just like making furniture, and many times it is just a continuous improvement of ordinary labor, which is what Maupassant said about writing black letters on white paper. But there is also a mystery to the writing, the great jazz musician Duke Ellington once talked about his composition, people said that the piano piece was wonderful, he said, no, it was a dream. I completely agree that all great creations are dreams. When you dream, you will find that it is as if you are in Shanghai at this moment, I am in Tasmania, but we have a connection, talking about Yu Hua who is not present, but also talking about the deceased Faulkner, you find that you are not just one person and one place, you are connected with everyone, even beyond time and space and life and death, all of this, both you and not you, it is important to find this in the imagination, which points to the highest state of creation, and when we get there, we know that we are no longer alone. Writing reminds me to share that just as people can empathize when they appreciate a work of art, I think creators must be brave enough to break into that place, and it's not enough to observe and describe, we need to rely on imagination.

We are constantly corrupted as we move forward, lost in the theater of emotions

Southern People Weekly: "Why is there always light at the beginning of all things?" "The Trail to the North begins with this philosophical question, how did this beginning come about?

Flannegan: Part of this novel touches on the dark side of the world. I think that if your work involves darkness, it has to be balanced with light, and if the reader sees all the dark side, they will not believe it, and there is reason to choose not to believe it, because it is not in line with our knowledge and understanding of ourselves as human beings. If in the end there is only darkness, then there is no real expression of all human nature, the core of the human spirit is to have hope, if there is no hope, we are just the walking dead. So, I chose to balance the whole story with light and hope, so this work is about war, but also about love.

Also, my first memories of light were actually in that church, my grandmother and mother holding me, and I saw a ray of light cast over it, running in the arms of women who loved me. As we get older, we gradually lose our vision and lose our hair... But I think, most regrettably, we have lost that sense of wonder. As a child, you retained this extraordinary and wonderful feeling: as long as you could see the light, you were satisfied. I would like to commemorate this shining memory by placing it at the front of the novel, because it speaks to a truth that we have long forgotten, and that we lose as adults that we lose this sense of wonder and awe and joy, but which we learned as children.

Southern People Weekly: The novel opens with a little boy's fear after a finger injury, being bullied by his peers while playing ball, and these details about the boy's growth have also happened in your life?

FRANAGAN: Actually, these are more from the stories my father told me. Tasmania is not like other places, it's the poorest part of Australia, and people here don't just live in poor areas, but also in much older times, and I try to write that feeling in the story.

As for the story of football, once again, he ran to the light and felt the light. This moment embodies the deep feelings we felt when we were young, but we can never go back. In the West there is a misconception that we are moving forward and getting rid of innocence, and I don't agree with that. We are corrupting as we move forward, and innocence is the treasure we once had, but we are too forgetful and discard many of the most basic things.

Southern People Weekly: "Later, crying became a simple confirmation of emotion... Emotions have become fashionable, emotions have become theater, and people, as actors, have no way of knowing who they really are after they get off the stage. Can you interpret this passage in the book?

FRANAGAN: The world is changing drastically, and people are now expressing more emotions, but sometimes they are not sincere. It's not good to suppress emotions, but I think that sometimes the expression of public space has become over-surging. Whether people agree with it or not, this is one of the biggest changes in the last 100 years. I think a novel can reflect the kind of changes that we talk less about. I wish there was a character who understood these strange changes and documented them. For the protagonist Dorrigo, the change is striking, since he has played a certain role all his life, he is not a hero, but he has to dress up as a hero because this is what other prisoners of war demand of him. After the war, he had to continue to play the role, had to wear this mask, he knew it was a lie, but it had become a necessary life for others, so he agreed, partly because he avoided his emotions.

What I'm interested in is that when a person becomes a leader or a celebrity, we often think that they created this identity, but in fact we "created" them, we decide to make them celebrities or heroes, sometimes these roles are a kind of imprisonment for people, celebrities and fame, a certain appearance of misunderstanding and trouble, and behind this is very lonely, the truth is that the more famous you are, the lonelier you are, this is not a paradox, but the truth.

"Life in the world, walking on the roof of hell, gazing at the flowers"

Southern People Weekly: The title and first quotation of "The Path Deep North" are both quoted from Matsuo Basho's haiku, and the last four parts of the novel begin with Kobayashi Kazucha's haiku.

Franagan: This book was hard for me to write, and at first I thought I couldn't do it. I didn't want to offend my father and write something that he felt was out of place with his experience, as if he had betrayed him. It took me 12 years to write this work, and it took so long to find the most appropriate way to express it. In the end, I finished this writing with love.

I don't want to judge anyone, I just want to show what humans do to each other. I wanted to organize the book in a form I learned from Japanese literature, and I could present the worst atrocities of the same society with the most beautiful things in Japanese culture, so that writing it could be a way for me to liberate myself.

The book is structured a bit like Rashomon, looking at crimes from multiple angles, presenting different perspectives on the same crime, interspersed with Japanese poetry. I long to tear off all external ornaments, in fact, the more you peel off, the more you can make the reader discover the true meaning. When I write, I try to keep taking things out, cutting and cutting, and the rest is something that the reader can find meaning and purpose, not for me to tell him what it is.

Southern People Weekly: The haiku of Kazucha Kobayashi you quoted has two capitals that refer to the "world of dew", how do you understand the "world of dew"? And what do you think of Eastern Zen thought?

Franagan: Japanese militarism is deeply influenced by Zen thought (note: Zen theory is one of the ideological weapons of Japanese militarist war mobilization, see "Japanese Zen and Militarism", "The Misunderstanding of Modern Japanese Zen and Its Transcendence" and other papers), the latter has a strange ecstasy, but the same idea, when they advocate Japanese militarism, can also manifest as evil. At the end of the book, I quote a poem: "Life on earth / Walking on the roof of hell / Gaze at the flowers", which for me is the haiku that sums up the book.

In 2014, Australian writer Richard Franagan (right) won the Booker Prize for his novel "The Trail Deep North" (Visual China/Photo)

Southern People Weekly: In the novel, you insert the "circle" that you waved with a brush into the text, tell us about your understanding and conception of this pattern?

Franagan: This is the famous death poem of the 18th-century haiku poet Nosui, one of the traditions of Japanese literature, before dying, Shuizu grabbed a brush and "drawn" the poem, and it was discovered that he just used the brush to draw a circle on the paper.

For me, the void, mystery, and reincarnation contained in this circle fit the theme of the story, and also fit the structure of the novel's loop, echoing from beginning to end, "The magnificent wheel, the eternal return: the opposite of the circle line", and at the end of the book, we do not know whether Dorrigo is dead or alive, he never left the prisoner of war camp, and some ghosts trapped him forever in a special place: there is love and hell.

In Tasmania, we have a different concept of time: we often feel like time is cyclical and no longer moving forward. I think it's a broader concept of time, and we often go this year to next year, and then the year after that, and what happened 10 years ago is a thing of the past, but the indigenous people here think that what happened a thousand years ago is happening today and will happen tomorrow, and I think it's a truer reflection of our self-perception, and the idea that what happened in the past is actually an illusion that everything has never passed.

When people have dementia, we say they lose consciousness, but they just lose their memory, and once you have amnesia, you can't control the present life, because people use memories to understand everything. So, this Aboriginal Australian concept of time plays a role in my work, and my novels are often presented in a cyclical structure, rather than a linear narrative in a single-dimensional space, as is the case with most English novels.

"For the past, you can forgive, but you can't forget"

Southern People Weekly: From "The Death of the River Guide" to "The Trail Deep North," your writings explore the secrets of memory, and you have mentioned, "I have witnessed how people who have lost their memory fall into a panic." ”

FRANAGAN: I'm fascinated by the way people reminisce about the past. We usually think of memory as a testimony, and I tell you what really happened 50 years ago, as if I had a camera. But in fact, memory is more likely to be a creative act, which can be made into lies and can also construct truth.

My father gradually lost his memories of the violence and pain he suffered, but in the end, he left thoughts about love, and although he did not experience love, the memories he eventually had were something of value that he himself discovered. I think a lot about this, trying to capture what people think through memory. People think that memory represents some kind of statement of justice, and it may or may not be. There is a paradox here: when people experience great trauma and you and your fellow citizens suffer greatly, the first thing people want to do is forget, and I think that human beings survive by the ability to forget; But at the same time, in order to liberate yourself, you must retreat into your memories and face those shadows in order to understand what is really happening and release your soul.

We have been taught many lies about the evil and heroes, and when something terrible happens, it not only affects the individual, a terrible war or social unrest, the trauma will also affect my family and friends, and eventually it will slowly poison the surrounding community, and even the whole society. Because war is a black hole of terror, and the great trauma is difficult to speak and transmit, those who witness it sometimes erase part of their memory, and the responsibility falls to novelists, who try to piece together the past to better understand what happened.

Southern People Weekly: Your father once said, "You can forgive the past, but you can't forget it." "You also mentioned freeing your soul just now.

Flannegan: I just said that people live by forgetting, but they have to remember something, people live because hate is a strong emotion, but in the end, you can't move forward in hate, you have to put it aside and find another way out.

My father experienced a very moving event during his lifetime. About twenty years ago, three middle-aged Japanese women appeared at my house. They were very brave and devoted their lives to documenting Japan's war crimes. One of them wrote a book about Unit 731, a horrific crime committed by the Japanese in your country, and she suffered a lot in Japan for writing this book. She herself was actually a survivor of the bombing of Tokyo, a horrific crime committed by the Allies against Japan that killed more than 100,000 innocent civilians. But she came to my house with two other ladies who wanted to apologize to my father, they did not represent the government or the Japanese people, and I was very surprised, I never thought that people from another country would come to my house to apologize to us, which means a lot to our whole family and a relief for all of us. The feat of these three women taught me that there is a way out, it is not to divide people into opposites, we can transcend it all and live a better ending.

A tribute to an open and free world

Southern People Weekly: You often mention your father, can you tell us about your mother and siblings? I know you're fifth out of six kids, have they all read your work? Any feedback?

Flannegan: You did your homework! Our brothers and sisters were close and everyone was surprised that I became a writer, and no one expected Tasmania to be a writer. They read my books and loved my novels. It's an honor to be an author and win the Booker Prize, but in any family, you are ultimately a son or daughter, a brother or a sister, and the family means to each other is what matters most.

My mother was a lovely woman with a belly full of stories. Tasmania was once the golden bag of the British Empire and a huge prison, where the British exiled those felons, political prisoners, slave owners and slaves for centuries... All kinds of people come here. My ancestors were Irish, and there were many Catholics in Ireland, who gathered, intermarried, settled here, formed a unique culture, and Ireland was rich in stories and writers. I talk about my father because of "The Road to the North", but I am very close to my mother, I grew up listening to her tell those stories that have been passed down through generations, and a lot of my writing comes from my mother, like the women of her time, life is limited, unlike contemporary women who have all kinds of opportunities, but she is an amazing woman, and I love her very much.

Southern People Weekly: How has Irish literature influenced you? Are there any Irish writers you particularly admire?

FRANAGAN: I admire a lot of Irish writers, but the ones that really influenced me were South American writers like Borges, Neruda, Márquez, Cortázar, because their world is more like the Tasmanian world. There are people here who act in comedy, trying to find their own experience, their own reality and escape the colonial influence of the British, while they have to break free from the Spanish colonial influence in South America. Faulkner's charm is that he is both an American writer and not, he came from the South and was never really accepted into the United States, but he had an important influence on French and South American literature, and in my opinion, he really was at the heart of the breakthrough of 20th-century fiction writing.

Southern People Weekly: Aliash in "The Death of the River Guide" was not born in Tasmania, but in Trieste, why did he choose this small European city as his birthplace? Joyce lived in Trieste, which has something to do with the fact that he wrote Ulysses there?

FRANAGAN: That's right! As you can imagine, "The Death of the River Guide" is my debut novel, and I wish my first "child" was born in Trieste. Trieste is different from many places in the world, it is a hybrid, it is freer and more open, it is not really Italy, it is not real Slovenia, it is not really Germany, but it is both, where ideas and cultures meet. What intrigued me was that Joyce wrote that great novel, not in Paris or Dublin, but in this dilapidated, falling apart old port at the time. His writing was influenced by all these nationalities, and he was deeply inspired by Zeno's Consciousness, but the author Italo Svevo used only a pseudonym, he was an Italian Jew whose real name was Ettore Schmitz.

Another reason why Alyaš was born in Trieste is that my wife is from Slovenia, and when I wrote "The Death of the River Guide", Slovenia had just been born after the collapse of Yugoslavia. I am interested in multi-ethnic countries, where different ethnic groups live together, often with friction and conflict, but sometimes with creativity. You just asked me which writers I was influenced by, and I talked about South American writers, but I was also influenced by Central European writers. Before World War II, especially before the 1940s, those great (Central European) writers, they did not represent their own countries, they represented the greater ideas of the time, but after ethnic cleansing, many places became small enclaves. Australia, which was a very racist country for most of the 20th century, now opens its doors and welcomes everyone in, and because of cultural and spiritual tolerance, it has also become a richer place. Central Europe at the beginning of the 20th century opened my eyes to a world full of hope, and I asked Trieste, where my protagonist was born, to pay homage to that open and free world.

"Homesickness": I have never left home, but I vaguely feel separated from my homeland and feel deeply lost

Southern People Weekly: Regarding the new work "The Sea Surging in a Dream" published in 2020, you mentioned that this work is related to the artistic conception of the new word "solastalgia".

Frannagan: This is a new term proposed by an Australian philosopher: when people's environment is destroyed, their hearts are lost, they faintly feel that they are separated from their homeland, they have never left home, but they feel the pain of homesickness in a foreign land. After the terrible bushfires in Australia, the term began to be used in large numbers. After experiencing some heavy trauma in their hometown, people will feel this way when they realize that the good old days are gone. I believe that much of the precious thing has been taken away in the name of development and progress, which benefits only a few and deprives everyone else, and that this trauma affects us in very real ways and is devastating to our bodies and minds.

On March 17, 2018, One Direction Space, Beijing, Chinese writer Yu Hua (right) talks to Australian writer Richard Franagan (Visual China/Photo)

Southern People Weekly: In "The Sea Surging in a Dream", faced with disaster, the heroine Anna keeps checking the news updates on her mobile phone, but the fear and anxiety only increase. From the loss of a ring finger, various parts of her body gradually disappeared, but she was painless and unconscious, how did this idea come about?

Franagan: We live in strange times, and a lot of things happen to us, but we choose not to look at them. At the beginning of the novel, I quote the English romantic poet John Claire's "In Remembrance": "The sharp axe of vandalism and lust cuts down the prey; / I will never see the water lotus road and the round oak narrow street here again / And the hollow trees like the church pulpit :/ The enclosure movement was like Napoleon, eradicating everything..."

The enclosure movement of the 19th century was a very tragic and terrible thing in European history, but I think that now there is a new kind of enclosure in the world that is taking away from us what is spiritually anchored to us. People began to lose limbs, eyes, knees ... No one notices, at the same time, we are increasingly checking our phones every day, rather than focusing on everything that happens in the real world. With the rise of social software, many people's souls have been occupied. Everyone has a public life and a private life, and they have their own secret life, and great literature shapes characters in conflict, they do one thing and think the opposite, and there is a third side, they do not understand why they are so contradictory, this is us human beings.

Today, these technologies allow us to openly reveal our private lives, interpret our lives, and turn them into benefits to please others. Wherever we are, this poses a threat to us, and for most people, I think, in the end, they exist not to help us, but to exploit us.

Southern People Weekly: Do you consider yourself a pessimist or an optimist?

FRANAGAN: Neither. In "The Sea Surging in a Dream", Anna's mother said on her deathbed that the world is so beautiful, but few people see it. I think the world is beautiful when I find those lovely people, but we often choose to turn a blind eye. The more we allow ourselves to see, the greater our hope. So I'm not pessimistic, I try to discover the simple beauty in people every day, and I believe that this little bit of joy will nourish you and keep you alive.

Southern People Weekly reporter Li Naiqing

Responsible editor: Zhou Jianping