Richard Flanagan

I woke up at midnight, thinking it was morning, and couldn't go back to sleep.

To borrow a phrase from Joan Didion, "what it feels like to be me" includes middles of nights like these: waking up, turning a phrase or a worry or an idea over and over, then getting up and driving to get a drink from my favorite window man who always gives me the large size free (along with a handhold and the word "sweetheart"), listening to NPR.

This trip I struck gold in an interview on BBC with Richard Flanagan on the World Book Club: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003jhsk/episodes/guide

When I hear a writer speak so eloquently about his book, the feeling I get is almost identical to falling in love.  Oh wow! I think to myself as I hear the way he puts words together, the way he pauses to reflect, the way he delivers revelations!

In this case, Flanagan talks about his book, Narrow Road to the Deep North, then answers questions from callers. When asked why he didn't portray the Japanese (who tortured men like his own father) as monsters, he talks about how long before the first bomb is dropped in any war, the lead up to that action has long been set in motion by the idea that certain people are less than human, or regarded as inferior.  His "job" as a novelist is not to create victims and villains but to reflect the larger picture.

When I hear truth spoken so eloquently--that's when I fall into loving!  I never have to meet the object of my affections in person, but I also never forget the encounter, just the two of us, me driving down Austin Highway, he in Britain.  I'll never be the same; I'm changed by the brief affair of the the mind.

While I felt vaguely lonely when I stumbled onto this particular voice now I feel connected, enlivened by the promise of knowing more of his vibrant mind and ways of seeing the world.

And to think--there's an archive of hour-long talks about great books and I'm only just now discovering them!

Flanagan is an Australian writer from Tasmania, born in 1961.