Michel de Kretser’s new novel boldly plays with literary forms

“I will not be ‘famous’, ‘great,’” Virginia Woolf wrote in her 1933 diary; “I will continue to seek adventure, change, open my mind and eyes, refusing to be cliched and stereotyped. The point is to free yourself: to allow it to find its dimensions, and not to interfere with it.”

These words could have been written above the desk of writer Michelle de Kretser, who has rewritten and revised eight novels since her novel debut, two of which won the Miles Franklin Award. Rose producer in 1999.

They are also the mantra of the narrator of her latest novel. Theory and practiceabout a young woman in mid-1980s Melbourne who begins writing her master’s thesis on Woolf. She hopes to become a writer and “write a novel that doesn’t read like a novel.” A very Woolfian feeling and a very De Kretzerian feeling.

“I’m not a storyteller, but I put some of my ideas and ambitions into her mouth,” admits De Kretser, who did write a novel that reads like a novel only in parts, and who also did postgraduate research in the 1980s, while French poststructuralist theory, with its deconstruction of texts and questioning of cultural assumptions, dominated the discourse.

We’re talking via Zoom, De Kretser from an office filled with books and files. It turns out not her, but her partner, poet and translator Chris Andrews. “It gets too sunny for me during the day,” she explains. Rooms of one’s own are another of Woolf’s themes, particularly their importance in empowering women to take themselves seriously.

Woolf is familiar with De Kretser’s work; The English modernist writer and essayist is significant both as a designer of the structure for her latest novel and as a model of how to write and, in some remarkable cases, how not to think.

Form Theory and practice, explains De Kretser, based on Woolf’s original plan for her 1937 novel. Years. It was originally conceived as a work combining fiction with essays on contemporary social issues. But Woolf got cold feet and abandoned the idea, instead writing a simple novel that became a bestseller, outpacing her more experimental fiction, including To the lighthouse And Waves.

De Kretser retained Woolf’s original experimental idea; Theory and practice filled with excerpts from memoirs and essays, it begins with one fictional narrative and then boldly moves on to an entirely different one.

Has she ever chickened out? “Not at all!”

Quite the contrary, she says; she knew she was up to something exciting and fresh. “With this I felt encouraged. I’ve never felt so happy to finish a book,” she says, before describing her enthusiasm: “I don’t know if ‘happy’ is the right word.” I just felt like I did something different, and I’d like the reader to feel, “I’ve never read anything like this before.”

She’s also excited about the novel’s change of publisher. This is her third publishing house; her first two novels, Rose producer And Hamilton casewere published by Random House, but she moved to Allen & Unwin along with the publisher’s then-editor, Jane Palfreeman.

For Theory and practice she signed with Melbourne firm Text Publishing, a change she says was due to a clash of values ​​with Palfreeman. She doesn’t want to say anything other than that she wanted to collaborate with an independent Australian publisher. “I’ve known him for a long time,” she says of Text publisher Michael Hayward. “I enjoy talking to him about books and he is very relaxed to work with.”

Feminist Woolf was a representative of De Kretser’s generation and a storyteller Theory and practice keeps a poster of the writer on the wall of his St Kilda apartment. But at one moment it falls. Does her fall or failure interest De Kretser as much as her inspirational role?

“The canonization of Woolf happened in the 1970s and 80s, and that was while I was at university. There’s nothing negative to say about her at all, nothing about casual racism, anti-Semitism, her snobbery,” she says.

She famously called her husband Leonard Woolf a “Jew” and called non-Europeans in harsh terms. In an excerpt from her diary from 1917, she describes meeting lawyer E. W. Perera, a hero of Sri Lanka’s anti-colonial struggle, as “a poor little mahogany-colored wretch.”

De Kretser, who arrived with her family from Sri Lanka at the age of 14 in 1972, has written extensively about the experiences of men and women whose lives were shaped by colonial forces and attitudes, whose complex and unique identities lack the nuance of other, more dominant voices.

Although her passions can be very hot when it comes to human rights violations and injustice in the world, her writing voice is always cool and level-headed. And when it comes to Virginia Woolf and her racism, she advocates balance.

She really wanted to draw attention to Woolf’s racism in the Perera passage, she says, but “not wanting to be in the position of, ‘Oh, I’m canceling Virginia Woolf,’ because I’m not interested in that. She is also an inspiration, she is the one who discovered the possibility of writing in a certain way.”

She emphasizes that there are many other themes and influences in the novel besides Woolf. One of them is a film My life without SteveGillian Leahy, released in 1986, when the main narrative begins. It reflects the obsessive thoughts of a woman who has been abandoned by her lover and depicts Theory and practice.

“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting to do fiction about jealousy and how it relates to theory and practice?’ In particular, feminist ideals and how difficult they are in practice. The narrator rushes between them.”

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The reader may also hesitate at times, but that is his intention. Allusiveness and unexpected comparisons abound.

At one point in our conversation, she mentions American writer Ursula Le Guin’s theory of fiction, which argues that the hunter-gatherer analogy can be applied to writing. Men’s stories of “hunters” feature quests and heroes, while the gatherers who provide most of the livelihood are primarily women.

According to De Kretser, forager fiction is a disparate collection of objects collected and put together in a bag. Along with roots and edible leaves, she says, “there can be flowers for fun. And just being in this carrier bag, they get confused. It seemed to me that this could also apply to forms, that you could have memoirs, fiction, essays, and all of this could fit into the space of a novel.”

Theory and practice It’s a space that allows the reader to lift weights, she says. “It’s very liberating,” she says. “The space creates a call and response. At its core, this is a book about reading and writing.”

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