For this episode I wanted to share a story that I’ve revisited recently after a question that Jane Arthur asked me at a recent event at Good Books.
Jane asked:
Even before reading Audition, I’d clocked that your inspiration for it was basically ‘prison abolition’ and you’ve talked openly about this in interviews and in the book’s acknowledgements.
I am so freaking interested in this, personally, as it is increasingly hard for me to separate out work and values and living and politics and creative work as I go about things.
Correct me if I’m wrong (please!!), but it seems to me that you haven’t been quite so blatant about your own values in your work before, or at least in the framing of your work. What has changed? Are you simply braver now? Why is (your) art political (mwahaha)?
This question sent me back to this story ‘Zero Hours’ which was published in Overland in 2015. I thought of this story mainly because it signals a shift in my writing toward the didactic.
For years I had been interested in ambiguity. In leaving space for politics to sit there but not overtly. I was obsessed with the idea that fiction was a mirror and if I made my fiction as accuarte as possible people would see society in a new way and it would prompt change. I remember being incredibly angry at the time I wrote this story. John Key’s government had been elected, overwhelmingly, a year before and I remember the morning after the election walking down my street and not really recognising the city I lived in. The election had been so decisive that I was in a very small majority.
I owe a lot to Giovanni Tiso and Jolisa Gracewood who were editing a New Zealand issue of Overland and had asked me to submist a story. I am also incredibly grateful to Overland journal which provides a space for radical literature.
These things all came together, my anger and the opportunity to write some for a journal that celabrated the radical and I remember thinking, The time for ambiguity is over. And I remember one very clear question replacing this, How didactic can I get and still be be writing fiction?
It's starnge reading the story now. It's so pre-Trump. Pre-COVID. Roseanne Barr appears as a largely uncomplicated character. I thought about re-writing the story to take her out but I kind of like how hindsight re-writes this part of the story without me doing anything.
What's not funny is how little has changed. Workers are still fucked over. There are still political parties calling for self responsibility.
It’s slightly heart-wrenching revisiting this story, written during a right-wing government, a few days after the desolution of the left wing party with one of the largest majorities of my lifetime and waking up to the fact none of the promise of transformational change thatg majority held was realised.
It’s a good reminder that politics is what we do in our communities away from law and government but also that its a privilege to say, Government doesn’t matter, when it matters most to the most vulnerable.
So yeah, I offer this story because I was thinking about it and thanks largely to Jane Arthur.
Ep 101: Elements 15 - Point. Emma Hislop talks to Pip Adam about Daisy Johnson's short story 'The Hunt'.
Ep 100: Elements 14 – Point. Cassandra Barnett talks to Pip Adam about a Wooden Croaking Frog Percussion Instrument.
Ep 99: Elements 13 – Plot. Ash Davida Jane talks to Pip Adam about ‘Kiss of the Sun’ by Mary Ruefle and ‘pool party’ by Ash Davida Jane.
Ep 98: Elements 12 - Place. Richard Larsen talks to Pip Adam about the first Glass Vaults' album 'Glass'
Ep 97: Elements 11 - Plot. Doug Dillaman talks to Pip Adam about Formula 1: Drive To Survive S3E9
Ep 96: Elements 10 - Plot. Laura Vincent talks to Pip Adam about her poems 'ACTIVITIES' and 'Anecdotal happiness'
Ep 95: Elements 9 - Plot M. Darusha Wehm talks to Pip Adam (Special Live-streamed Episode for Wellington Rape Crisis Annual Appeal Week)
Ep 94: Elements 8 - Plot. Dan Kois talks to Pip Adam about a sound mixing board.
Ep 93: Elements 7 - Plot. Ingrid Horrocks talks to Pip Adam about water and her work Where We Swim.
Ep 92: Elements 6 – Place. Ann Shelton talks to Pip Adam about her work The Witch, Pennyroyal (Mentha sp.), 2020
Ep 91: Elements 5 - Place. Kerry Donovan Brown talks to Pip Adam about Beatrix Potter's 'The Tale of Samuel Whiskers' or 'The Roly-Poly Pudding'.
Ep 90: Elements 4 – Place. Charlie Pearson, Helen Lehndorf and Marolyn Krasner talk to Pip Adam about the postcodes 4410 to 4412.
Ep 89: Elements 3 – Place. Rose Lu talks to Pip Adam about a cleaver.
Ep 88: Elements 2 – Place. Victor Rodger talks to Pip Adam about Club Paradiso.
Ep 87: Elements 1 – Place. Michaela Keeble talks to Pip Adam about a set of juvenile pāua shell from the beach where she lives.
Announcing the Elements Series
Ep 86: Dan Kois talks to Pip Adam about 'Train Dreams' by Denis Johnson
Ep 85: Caitlin Smith talks to Pip Adam about ‘Shoulder Charge’ by Jesca Hoop and ‘Another Goodbye’ by Caitlin Smith
Ep 84: Renter Writes - Eamonn Marra and Murdoch Stephens talk to Dr Elinor Chisholm at Unity Books Wellington
Ep 83: Brannavan Gnanalingam and Pip Adam talk to Kirsten McDougall at Unity Books Wellington
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