Some answers to some questions
1. How long did it take you for your first idea about writing “Boy on a Wire” to have it printed in your hand?
This question is almost impossible to answer. The idea came into my head probably in my twenties, but did not become really serious until after I had written two children’s books. So, the immediate answer is six years.
2. Who’s your favourite character in the book? Why? Were they based on any one?
Jack Muir is, of course. He is based on me in a boarding school. But my other favourite is Brett Jones and he is based on a couple of boys, including one called Brett Jones.
3. What does your son think of the book? Has he read it?
I don’t know and I don’t know.
4. Are the characters in the book based on people in your life?
All the characters are composites. In other words, I have borrowed aspects from a number of people to create each individual.
5. What inspired you to write the book?
It was always a story I was going to tell and having learnt much from the process of writing a book by working with a well established author on the two previous books, I gathered courage and got on with it.
6. What has the press said about it so far?
So far the press has been very good.
Here is an example:
The boarding school memoir or novel is an enduring literary subgenre, from 1950s classics such as The Catcher in the Rye to Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep. Doust’s recognisably Australian contribution to the genre draws on his own experiences in a West Australian boarding school in this clever, polished, detail-rich debut novel. From the opening pages the reader is wholly transported into the head of Jack Muir, a sensitive, sharp-eyed boy from small-town WA who is constantly measured (unfavourably) against his goldenboy brother. The distinctive, masterfully inhabited adolescent narrator recalls the narrator in darkly funny coming-of-age memoir Hoi Polloi (Craig Sherborne)—as does the juxtaposition of stark naivety and carefully mined knowingness. (‘Only those who can find the mean streak in them survive.’) Jack’s heroes include Paul McCartney, Atticus Finch, Jesus, and Tom Brown. He delights in his best friend winning an ice-cream eating competition against a school bully; earns the nickname Coco’ (after the clown) on his first week at school, and makes an enemy of the headmaster with his everready wit. He fiercely adores his mother and yearns for affection from his father—a man cast in the mould of ‘real men’ like John Wayne. This is a funny and moving book by an assured new writer.
7. What does your wife think about it ?
She is reading it now. So far she thinks it is “excellent”. She is an avid reader and not easy to please. Her answer made me cry.
8. How many publishers did you take it to before they accepted it?
I sent it to three other publishers. Two wrote very nice and very positive notes and one completely ignored it.
9. How long did it take to edit it?
About three months.
10. How do you think your family will respond to it? Will they be reminded of there own lives?
My family are small town people. They don’t say much, about anything. To date, only one of them, a Y-Gen, has responded. She smsed me, saying she enjoyed it. And the rest? I have no idea.
11. How many books do you think you will sell?
Millions. I hope. But probably thousands.
12. Is the book a dramatisation of your life?
Yes, in part. The publisher has called it a “dislocated memoir” and I like that description. What I have done is take my life, and the lives of others as I observed them, twisted them, distorted them, re-moulded them, and used them to create a bigger story, a story with underlying messages and meanings.
13. Was boarding school really like that in the 1060s in Western Australia?
Those who have read it so far, those who were there, are saying “yes”.
15. Could you write a bit down about your life so far, your achievements, where you live, other books you have written and any that are coming up ?
My achievements? Easy: I’m still alive; I have a long-term marriage, and are still in love, with the same person; I have a decent, kind and generous son.
Things I have started include: the Laugh Resort Comedy Club, one of the longest running comedy rooms in Australia; the Manjimup Cherry Harmony Festival; one of the founding members of the Wilderness Society in WA.
I am from Bridgetown and I live in Albany.
Books: How to lose an election; Magpie Mischief; Magwheel Madness; Mega Mayhem.
And more to come
Now that Boy on a Wire looks like a book, feels like a book and is, indeed, a book, I feel a need to explore the various issues approached in its pages. And there are a number. In this first entry I will skip briefly through them.
First and foremost, not surprisingly, given Boy is set in a boy’s boarding school, bullying is a major matter. In my day it was rampant and it is hard to imagine a day passing without someone copping a push, a shove, a slap, a towel flick, an insult. On and on it went and every so often one of us broke.
Depression also played a very important role in my years. There were boys who were shy, of course, and others who seemed to get a bit sad from time to time. Were they suffering from depression, or just a mild melancholia? I fell into my first serious episode when I was 12. How many others suffered similarly I have no idea, can only guess, and will probably never know.
There were two other issues that had a major impact on this writer: heavy metal poisoning and loss of faith. I experienced both. As a child I had an illness called pinks disease, a result of mercury poisoning. Its symptoms are somewhat similar to lead poisoning and I probably had that too. Loss of faith seems, looking back, to be the logical outcome for an intensely religious boy who found himself in a church run school where the basic tenants he had learnt seemed to play little or no role in the life of the boarding school community.
Here they are then, the major issues, with a couple of others that have come to mind:
- depression
- bullying
- loss of faith
- heavy metal poisoning
- sibling rivalry
- father and son relationships
Others might find others, but they won’t until the book is out and available. I’ll keep this site posted.
The most frequently asked question about “Boy on a Wire”, so far
Is the boy you?
No. It can’t be me. This is me. I am not trapped in a book of 231 pages.
Did you go to boarding school?
Yes.
Which one?
None of your business.
No, seriously.
A boarding school in Perth, West Australia: Christ Church Grammar School.
Did you enjoy it?
I did, for the first couple of years. It was a great adventure and I was very happy to be away from my home town and my parents.
But then?
It wore me out. And the longer I stayed the more cruelty I saw: boys on boys and masters on boys.
Did the experience scar you?
Yes. But it is now clear to me that the biggest scars it left on me were the scars I saw it leave on others.
Surely you drew on your experiences?
Yes.
So the boy is a lot like you?
He is like me. I was the starting point, the constant reference, but eventually he became himself, Jack Muir. I love Jack. Jack is a lot like me. His journey is a lot like mine. But he is not me. He is the twin brother I never had, the one I would have shared everything with, told everything to.
And now for the back
It’s logical: every front has a back, and here it is.
Can’t read the back page?
Here it is in text:
“In the boarding house it doesn’t matter who hit you first, or if they miss-hit, you have to get them back. It’s kid against kid, dog against dog. We all have rabies. We all have pinks disease. We’re all foaming at the mouth. Tit for tat, the strong rule the weak, the weak cry. Only those who can find the mean streak in them survive. I’m a survivor. Briggsy taught me that. If you’re weak, unspeakable things happen to you. The bastards won’t get me.”
It is the 1960s in Perth, Western Australia. For Thomas Muir, cool and steady, life is a thing that goes on outside him. But for his brother, hot-headed Jack, believer in honesty and justice, life must be wrestled to be understood.
Jack Muir’s years of survival and his coming of age in a boys’ boarding school are sharply revealed in this dislocated memoir. Jack’s story is funny and raw. It will strike a nerve in those who were there and in anyone who has ever asked: how it is that one becomes a man?