“I don’t worry about tomorrow. Today is good enough for me,” says Richard Flanagan in as delicious an understatement as ever made. Today is not just good enough for Richard; it actually comes with the promise of great times – his book “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2014. And he stands, possibly a few hours away from the ultimate glory – the announcement of the final winner shall be made this Tuesday.
Not that he is losing much sleep over it. One of his earlier books, “Gould’s Book of Fish” was such a favourite of the bookies for the prize that they had stopped taking bets over it. The book, unfortunately, never got the coveted prize. Hence, possibly, Richard is underplaying his making the shortlist this time.
There could yet be another reason. “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” is set around the Burma Railway where many years ago his father had spent considerable time as an Australian prisoner of war. Young Richard would doubtlessly have heard many tales of deprivation and humiliation, some of which would have at a subconscious level made it to the novel. Unfortunately, his father passed away the day he wrapped the book.
Does it not make it more poignant for him? It possibly does, but Richard remains unflappable as ever. “It would if I won it.” It is in marked contrast to his reaction at making the shortlist earlier this year when he admitted to being “stunned” to hear the news of his book being in the running for the prize which has now been opened to authors of any nationality.
That we will know shortly, but how does Richard feel when his readers compliment him for penning a novel with intricate tapestries around a central character, Dorrigo Evans, a surgeon, who is both a good man and a bad one?
“A character without contradictions is a caricature. In the end, the central character — Dorrigo Evans — is me. And so too the Japanese commandant, Nakamura, and so too the murderous Korean guard, the Goanna. All are me, because within each of us lives the universe, and the universe is never one thing. Its harmony lives in its oppositions,” says Richard, keen to take a dispassionate look at the work.
The universe may never be one thing, but it is changing, now more ready than before to accommodate Australian writers.
In fact like with India in the none too distant past, there is a tremendous engagement with authors from Down Under. What could possibly have brought about this new attention?
Richard, who has often regarded the job of a writer as “largely a journey into humility”, underlines the role of literature in bringing about a change from the fringes.
“Who knows? But then literature has frequently been the edges speaking their truth to the power of the centre. Literature is celebrated in the great centres, but its home is so very often the street and back alley, the jail yard and the sweat shop, the provinces and backwaters, the slums and the gutters. And in those worlds, alien to many European and American readers, perhaps they discover their own rejected thoughts.”
Richard’s expression of people’s “rejected thoughts” has apparently found many takers across the world with the Press even hailing “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” as “a novel of extraordinary powers” and “a classic in the making”.
Come Tuesday, and the affable Tasmanian shall know if “The Narrow Road…” succeeds where “Gould’s Book of Fish” failed.
Yes today, as Richard says, is good enough.
Tomorrow, more appropriately, next week, could just be much better.
