Open Page with Gregory Day

Why do you write? Because I get enjoyment out of it, and so do other people. Are you a vivid dreamer? Could be. I’m still waiting for the dancing brolgas in my novel The Grand Hotel (2010) to materialise on the riverflat near my house. Where are you happiest? There’s an unmarked bush track near home that we privately call ‘The Poulenc’, after the composer of Trois Mouvements Perpétuels. I can be as pretentious as I like out there. What is your favourite film? I gave up films years ago. And your favourite book? Are you kidding? Name the three people with whom you would most like to dine. I’d like to sup on abalone, glasswort, and boobialla currants with some Wadawurrung locals sometime around the middle of the eighteenth century. They could tell me a few things I desperately want to know. Which word do you most dislike, and which would you like to see back in public usage? Just one disliked word? Let’s start with ‘cheers’, ‘weird’, ‘like’, and ‘stuff’. And if I hear someone say ‘extraordinary’ again I think I may never come back from ‘The Poulenc’. Otherwise I’d recommend reanimating your local landscape by getting to know your local Aboriginal lan-guage. The kids at our local primary school are doing it, and it sure beats Harry Potter. Who is your favourite author? An amalgam of Herman Melville and Joseph Furphy would be something. Speaking of which, my dream social occasion involves an inter-lineal reading of Moby-Dick and Such Is Life. The Bullock/Whale Reading Group. Any takers? And your favourite literary hero and heroine? Bartlebooth from Georges Perec’s Life: A user’s manual (1978) is a tragic yet meticulous wonder. The thought of him and his manservant wandering around Geelong in the early 1950s is positively iridescent. Also, Theodora Goodman from Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story (1948) remains one of fiction’s deepest companions. Which quality do you most admire in a writer? Eutrepelia. The golden mean between boorishness and frivolity. Name an early literary idol or influence whom you no longer admire – or vice versa. The French Algerian Albert Camus was my first literary idol as a teenager. That’s apt in a brutal yet beautiful colony such as ours, and he only seems more important with each passing year. What, if anything, impedes your writing? Looking at the bestseller lists it seems Australia’s reading tastes – barefoot investors who wear shoes – might be a problem. How do you regard publishers? I think the best publishers are often writers themselves. Italo Calvino and Roberto Calasso come to mind. And in Australia, Hilary McPhee, Michael Heyward, and my current editor at large, Geordie Williamson. What do you think of the state of criticism? I love long-form, heuristic, creative criticism. Susan Howe is a must. And writers’ festivals? Outdoors is best. Mind you, finding yourself on a minibus full of other writers is always an infantilising experience. Are artists valued in our society? It sure seems like it. Probably too much. Enough habitual whingeing. What are you working on now? A sand archive. Gregory Day is a winner of the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and the ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize. His forthcoming novel A Sand Archive will be published by Picador in 2018. He lives in south-west Victoria.

Why do you write?

Are you a vivid dreamer?

Where are you happiest?

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