Doust leaves Albany and heads east
Jon Doust is heading east to shove and push and generally talk up his new book, Boy on a Wire. It’s a heavy book, yet light, and easy to read.
It’s time to push. Sales are good, but could be better. Lots of folk on the eastern seaboard have not heard about it yet.
Oh yes, the reviews have been great, but how many people read them? Lots, that’s why sales increase with good reviews.
But reviews have to be accompanied by appearances, handshaking, door knocking, and annoying behaviour in order to attract attention.
That’s where Doust steps in.
Here’s his itinerary.
TUESDAY 11 August
Life Matters ABC Radio National
With Richard Aedy
9.30am
TUESDAY 11
Shore Bookclub
7.30pm
WEDNESDAY 12th
Wenona Girls School
WEDNESDAY 12 August
Bowen Library Talk
669 Anzac Parade, Maroubra
7pm to 8pm
THURSDAY 13 August
East meets West
Canberra Writers Centre
6pm
MONDAY 17 August
774 ABC in Melbourne
With Richard Stubbs
2.30pm.
Penguin Novel Selection Evening
5pm
TUESDAY 18 August
Melbourne Athenaeum Library
188 Collins Street,
Melbourne
1pm to 2pm
The second in a series of answers
A good friend of mine, Mary Nixon, has posed a number of questions in response to her reading of Boy on a Wire. She has challenged me to answer them. Mary expects that I will not, when answering, move a foot back. I’ll try not to.
Here is the second.
2. The importance of heroes as distinct from role models (p8) Jesus Christ, Tom Brown’s school days. (pp 61,62) for boys and young men.
Heroes seem to be crucial to boys. Most of my friends had a hero but not many of them looked to Jesus Christ.
My Jesus was not a compliant God-fearing sycophant. He was an action man of peace. When it came to addressing a large crowd on forgiveness, on life everlasting, on peace and goodwill to all humankind, then feeding them with morsels, he was up to it. And when confronting a bunch of greedy traders in a temple, he did not hesitate. Not to forget his championing of the poor, the unfortunate, the disenfranchised, the diseased and the unforgiven.
As he was being knocked out of me by the Church I turned to Tom Brown, the Phantom, James Bond and then graduated to what I would prefer to call guides: Paramahansa Yogananda, Kahlil Gibran and, not quite finally, Carl Jung.
Why such a diverse range of folk? Well, that broad, all encompassing, ever deepening conversation I really wanted to have with my father, the one about everyone and everything, was only available through a range of heroes, people whose voices and attitudes I recognised and understood. Each one offered something a little different at the various stages of my life. And it’s not easy to find a poet who loves footy. Or a dreamy idealist who has a burning need to kill feral, imported wildlife.
I was never going to hang on to one guide, or hero, forever. There are boys and men who find the one they want, and cling onto him or her until the last breath. There must be a need. My needs were and are ever changing. However, there are two books I have re-read most of my adult life: Hermann Hesse’s’ Siddhartha and Albert Ellis’ A New Guide to Rational Living.
The book, Boy on a Wire, is published by Fremantle Press
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.