Squealing bats in suburbia, Shakespeare’s Iago talking firkins and vespiaries, Australian writer Dorothy Hewett stuck in a railway car toilet, and a sermonette in which a Jehovah’s Witness has froth at the corners of his lips “white light humming” … Mark O’Flynn’s first short story collection explores the spectrum of human experience.
“Bats squeal in the trees, hanging there like great drips of bitumen.”— This description in “Beneath the Figs” is so redolent to me of Sydney and a number of the 16 stories in White Light are set in Australian suburbia. What makes it such fertile ground for fiction?
I grew up in suburbia; however a lot of my stories, particularly early on, are set in a rural landscape — strange for a city boy. So when an idea crops up that has an urban locale then I am quick to seize it. Suburbia for me, as I guess for many kids, is a powerful metaphor and microcosm for the rest of our lives and writers tend to revisit their childhoods as often as anyone.
Renowned Australian poet Dorothy Hewett gets stuck in the railway car toilet during a journey across the Nullarbor to Western Australia. Where did this bizarre idea for the story “Red Shoes” originate?
I knew Dorothy in her later years. A member of the family related the incident to me, so, aside from embellishing, Red Shoes is a true story (as far as I’ve been told). This incident had a deleterious effect on her health and of course her morale took a battering. I’m glad you use the word poignant because, although the situation is slightly bizarre, I still find it moving. I was also trying to remain true to their voices, their integrity. The day of her funeral was a scorcher, where so many of us watched Dorothy’s daughters throw the red shoes into the grave.
“A Lovely Outing” is such a beautifully paced and compassionate story and it confounds reader expectations so delightfully. It’s a moral story but doesn’t preach. How did you strike this fine balance?
Again, with a lot of my stories there is an element of truth at the core. One of my students was involved in the Restorative Justice program and he told me the story pretty much as I have related it; namely, how she forgave her attacker and used to keep in contact with him. I tried to imagine the situation from her (the victim’s) point of view, with the aim of trying to raise her above that state.
Spaces, dislocation and estrangement are threaded through this collection. Is this a comment on Australian society? Does it accord with your own experience? Is there something in particular you’re aiming to illuminate through this?
It’s probably more indicative of my relationship with myself, rather than Australian society. I don’t think I’m necessarily trying to illuminate anything by this. I’m simply trying to remain true to a character’s inner voice (acknowledging my biased way of perceiving what that is) and also trying to find a fresh way to describe familiar things, including our inability to communicate effectively. It doesn’t always work.
Plymouth Brethren feature in “Beneath the Figs” and Jehovah’s Witnesses in the collection’s title story “White Light”. You handle this religious material deftly. What research did you need to do to ensure these stories employed credible detail and fine-tuned humour?
Yes, credibility is the key. I only do enough research to appear as if the characters know what they’re talking about. I’m not the sort of writer who researches pathologically then refines it all back. Sometimes I’ll reach a point, a stumbling block, where I realise I have to go and find the answer to a question. There’s a lot to be said for a well-placed quirky detail.
“Stealth” is set in the Megalong Valley of the Blue Mountains and concerns a Hollywood blockbuster’s pyrotechnics; “certainly bigger than the last cracker night we had down in the valley before they were banned”. The Forgotten World, your third novel published last year, also takes the Blue Mountains (of the late 1800s) as its backdrop. What’s so distinctive and fictionally compelling about this place?
Ah, the Mountains is a magical place. There is an inherent drama in the landscape which lends itself to storytelling. There is a rich tradition of Mountains writing, not that I set out to join that club, but it reflects how compelling this particular environment is (in contrast to the suburbia of my childhood) as a setting for a story.
In Lorrie Moore’s latest short story collection Bark, she loosely adopts the plot of Henry James’ “The Wings of the Dove” in her story “Wings” and she says this act involved “the brazenness of personalising a response to a famous story”. What made you decide to “personalise a response” to Shakespeare’s Iago from Othello? How brazen did it feel?
Not brazen at all. I suppose I have had an inkling of that idea since high school where I asked of the play, well what did he say next? Then I read a very short story by Margaret Atwood telling Horatio’s version of Hamlet and my old idea came back. It also gave me an excuse to have fun with the Elizabethan language.
What crucible formed you, your love of words and your desire for expression?
I guess it was a passionate teacher in my formative years who allowed me to think, wouldn’t it be cool to do that! I have never really had that thought about any other career path even though it probably took decades to crystallise the notion.
Who or what has had most influence on your short story writing style?
It seems to me that I spent many years trying to ape the style of writers I admired. And I think that is a necessary part of a writer’s development. Beckett was a favourite in my younger days. These days I try to keep things as plain and spare as possible, then I discover all this florid, mellifluous writing that I have to cut out. I don’t know how that happens but out of it emerges something like a voice. I often think that doesn’t even sound like what I wanted to say or how I wanted to say it. Sometimes I ask why can’t I write like someone else but then I realise, hang on, I’m writing like me. And, as Anthony Burgess said, that will have to do.
You’ve said previously that a fleeting image, an anecdote or something you’ve read can spark an idea for a story. Can you share a recent example and explain its potential?
A recent story came from an anecdote I heard where two convicted criminals wanted to contest an attempt to extradite them to America. They paid an enormous amount of money to hire a good lawyer and, on the day of the hearing, the lawyer went and played golf. Apparently this sort of behaviour is not seen as scandalous, in fact it was rather lauded, which amazed me. This idea allowed me to unleash my inner Rumpole, although I tell it from the golfing instructor’s point of view.
What do you find most pleasurable in crafting a good short story?
There is a certain raw pleasure in the initial draft, which is barely a draft. A trembling excitement in anticipating what a formative idea might bring. The pleasure becomes more refined, draft by draft, as you come to clarify and develop themes, ideas, images; planting clues and resolving them. Finding how it all coheres. That’s the fun part.
You are a short story writer, poet, playwright, memoirist and novelist. How difficult is it to make these transitions when you’re working — shuffling from form to form?
I differentiate only according to the merits of the idea. All of these forms deal with words and that is what I focus on. Ideas seem to find their own form, although it often takes me several attempts (and sometimes several years) to realise what that is. The idea for a poem might work better as a story (or a novel, or an essay, or both) and vice versa. It’s just something more to think about, whether the language of a story might sound too poetic or a poem might be too prosaic but, then, it’s all words. I hope it adds something to the general texture.
American fiction writer Lorrie Moore recently said Canadian author, Alice Monro, had helped “spark a renaissance in the [short story] form”. She also noted Jhumpa Lahiri’s success; her first book of stories won the Pulitzer Prize and her second book went immediately to No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Where do you stand on the “Is the short story dead?” question?
Robert Drewe’s The Bodysurfers has sold more than any of his other books. So, no, I don’t think the short story is dead. Not even close. I would suggest it’s tidal. Readers come and go from stories, like they do from novels or non-fiction. Readers aren’t always purists. Short fiction is less commercial, so perhaps the readership is more discerning.
Dean, Shona and Troy appear in several stories. You recommend that the stories in White Light be “read independently of each other, rather than as an interlinked sequence. The links are a bonus.” Knowing linked short stories like Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Olive Kitteridge and Tim Winton’s The Turning sell well, were you ever tempted to create more links and stress them more forcefully? Are there any more Dean and Shona or Troy stories to come?
Yes, there are several already out there but what the links are unclear to me. I don’t see them as a fluent narrative, maybe more a discontinuous, or as Jack Hibberd says, a dis-ongoing narrative. Where the situation of the story was vaguely similar — for example, there is a casual domesticity to the Shona and Dean stories — I thought it would help to have some continuity of character. However I didn’t want to force the issue by making the same characters appear in all the stories, some of which were written many years apart. Perhaps one day I could put them all together and see if there is a more smoothly fluent dis-ongoing narrative. I do have a novel which employs this interlinked form with the same characters appearing, and there is a kind of loose narrative, but I keep wanting to find more and more fluid links between the stories, rather than letting each one have its own air.
Mavis Gallant, one of the world’s greatest short story writers, died in February. She said that “one of the hardest things in the world is to describe what happened next.” When you encounter this difficulty in your own short story writing, how do you keep going; how do you find the trail that will lead you to the best words to describe what happens next?
Trusting the character. Trusting that they will find a way. Chandler said when he hit a stumbling block he always had a stranger burst through the door with a gun. I tried that once and it worked. I guess it’s about throwing something unexpected into the mix and see how the character deals with it. In a practical sense, leaving the story to one side, to walk away from it for a while, often shakes up new possibilities.
Some people say short stories are more popular now because you can read one in a single sitting — which is good for time poor people. Others say everyday life is so fractured that such single sittings are rarely possible and so short stories are now less popular? What do you think?
I like the single sitting theory. There is still a level of commitment, even if the story only takes ten minutes to read. That’s a far cry from the 1.5 seconds attention span of the average television shot. If life’s so fractured, slow down.
Lorin Stein says, “Short stories bring you up short. They demand a wakeful attention; a good one keeps you thinking when it’s over.” What are two short stories you’ve read in the last six months that have had this sort of effect? What’s their secret?
An old story, but one which I read only recently, is “The Air Disaster” by J. G. Ballard; a strange account of the first reporter attending the scene of a plane crash in some remote mountains. What makes it work is how the macabre is twisted on itself, so that the story becomes not about the crash but the poor villagers who live nearby. A big picture story.
I also liked the child’s voice in Cate Kennedy’s “Seventy-Two Derwents”, quite a long story, both simple and sinister, where the reader knows more than the character.
What are three tips you can share with people who want to write short stories?
Seize the day: If you have the idea, do it now, do it fast.
The particular is usually more interesting than the universal.
Read read read.
Many of the stories in White Light were published first in Meanjin, Island, Heat, Overland, the Review of Australian Fiction and other Australian journals and magazines. What is the market like these days for Australian short story writers?
I guess a shrinking but a diehard one. New magazines crop up now and then and online journals are offering some space to short story writers; however there is always competition for that space. Nevertheless literary magazines are vital for finding a readership, vital for the health of the culture.
The independent press has been significant to Australian literary culture. Spineless Wonders is a small publishing house committed to publishing quality short stories and collections like yours. How important is this commitment in safeguarding the future of the short story in Australia?
Equally vital. Especially for writers whose next stage is to put together a collection and see how individual stories function as a whole, how they bounce off each other. I feel lucky to have been given that opportunity. Thank goodness some people are passionate about short fiction.
You live in the beautiful Blue Mountains west of the city of Sydney. The place where you write is …?
I have a study where I do much of the re-writing and drafting. Why? Because I very often have an idea away from the desk. So I have become adept at writing on my feet as it were. In coffee shops, the car, anywhere. This initial stage is usually just bare bones, a few notes, a line or two, or a page or two. And I then work this up in a more conducive, writerly setting.
What are you working on now? Are there more short stories in the pipeline? Can you give ABBW readers a taste of a few lines?
Without giving too much away, a long story about dental tourism. I’m a bit superstitious about sharing stuff I’m still working on, so, sorry. However I have two new stories appearing in overseas magazines; I hope I am learning to broaden my range.
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