Included on this page: Biography, Map of Australia and Tasmania, Two Photos of Butlers Gorge, Hydro Tasmania, A Chat With Richard Flanagan, About filming "The Sound of One Hand Clapping"

Biography

Descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemens Land (later renamed Tasmania) during the Great Famine, Richard Flanagan was born in his native island in 1961, the fifth of six children. He spent his childhood in the mining town of Rosebery and left school at sixteen to work as a bush laborer. He later attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. His first novel is the much celebrated DEATH OF A RIVER GUIDE, which won major Australian literary prizes including the 1996 National Fiction Award and was described by the Times Literary Supplement as "one of the most auspicious debuts in Australian writing." His second novel, THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING, was similarly critically acclaimed and has sold over 150,000 copies in Australia, an unprecedented figure there for a literary novel. It won the Australian Booksellers Book of the Year Award and the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction. Flanagan’s first two novels, declared Kirkus Reviews, “rank with the finest fiction out of Australia since the heyday of Patrick White.” GOULD’S BOOK OF FISH, his third novel, won Best Book for the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Prize in the South East Asia & South Pacific Region. In addition to Australia and the USA, his novels are being published in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden, Britain, Germany, Holland, and France. He directed an acclaimed feature film based on THE SOUND OF ONE HAND CLAPPING, which had its world premiere in competition at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Golden Bear for best film. He lives in Tasmania with his wife and three children.

© Copyright 1996-2009, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved. http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-flanagan-richard.asp

Map of Australia and Tasmania (pink)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tasmania_locator-MJC.png

Two Photos of Butlers Gorge

Butler Gorge Winter on Mainstreet

Butler Gorge workers' houses 1950's

www.hydro.com.au/handson/hcv/butlersg.htm

Hydro Tasmania

In 1914, the State Government set up the Hydro-Electric Department (changed to the Hydro-Electric Commission in 1929) to complete the first HEC power station, the Waddamana power stations. The Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company had built the Lake Margaret Power Station prior to the HEC completing Waddamana.

Following the Second World War - in the 1940s and early 1950s, many migrants came to Tasmania to work for the HEC with construction of dams and sub-stations. This was similar to the Snowy Mountains Scheme in New South Wales and similar effects in bringing in a significant number of people into the local community enriching the social fabric and culture of each state. Most constructions in this era were concentrated in the centre of the island..........

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Hydro_Tasmania?t=2.

A Chat With Richard Flanagan About ‘The Sound of One Hand Clapping’

April 4, 2000

(CNN) -- Australian novelist Richard Flanagan writes about characters who are "forgotten by history, irrelevant to history, yet shaped entirely by it." In his second novel, "The Sound of One Hand Clapping," he explores the lives of Slovenian immigrants Bojan and Sonja Buloh, a father and daughter. He reveals two characters caught up in the tragedy and brutality of life, trapped by their own history and bound by love.

Flanagan, winner of the Australian Bookseller's Book of the Year Award, joined a book chat on Tuesday, April 4, 2000, to discuss "The Sound of One Hand Clapping." His previous novel, "Death of a River Guide," also won major Australian literary awards. The author participated by telephone from Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. CNN.com provided a typist. The following is an edited transcript of that chat.

Chat Moderator: Welcome to CNN, Richard Flanagan.

Richard Flanagan: It's nice to venture into cyber-space the day after I see the NASDAQ has plummeted to previously unthought-of depths! I must say, I wasn't prepared for this obsession with the Internet! Everything here is dot-com. It's like a gold rush!

Question from Cleo: Hello, is this book based on a true story?

Richard Flanagan: No. I grew up in a small mining town in a remote part of Tasmania, full of immigrants. And from a very young age, I remember their most extraordinary stories. It never ceased to astonish me how they imprinted upon one's soul in such a remote place. You might have written the great epic movement of history of the last 100 years -- fascism, nationalism, communism, the disappearance of nations, languages-- and all that would exist in one person's own story.

So, the novel, like any other novel, is bits and pieces of several people's stories, and a whole lot of it is made up as well, as a novel must be. But I do have a Slovenian wife, which is why I made the character Slovenian, because that is the migrant world I knew best.

Chat Moderator: What is the significance of the book's title, "The Sound of One Hand Clapping?"

Richard Flanagan: To my shame, I must admit that its true significance is that as I came to the end of writing the novel, it had no title, and desperately needed one. It seemed like a good title at the time. Many people have much cleverer interpretations of what the title means than I do, and when they tell me, I of course nod sagely and agree. But the truth is that these characters, as Dante wrote, were not living, nor yet were they dead; and that their lives are utterly bereft until they managed to manifest the love that they have for one another, and redeem themselves through that love. Until that time, each character knows the sound of one hand clapping, which I take to be an infinite nothingness.

Question from NoReality: How did you pick your subject matter?

Richard Flanagan: What a splendid name, NoReality! I wish I had one like that! I suspect the truth is that I don't really choose any subject. It's just that a particular theme assumes an ever-larger portion of my soul and imagination, until I can do no other, than to begin to write it and allow it to spill out of me.

The Serbian writer, Kis, wrote, "What defense have I against nothingness, but this arc in which I pull together everything that was dear to me -- people, birds, plants and animals -- everything that I carry in my eye and in my mind, in my heart and soul."

I feel that this is how I arrive at writing books, that I merely gather all the processes together, and try to make a book that might find some meaning out of them.

Chat Moderator: One book reviewer spoke in terms of people like the Buloh family being shaped by history. Do you think people like the Buloh's also help shape history, especially social history?

Richard Flanagan: There's a line somewhere in the book that talks about how, in the end, people do stand somewhere beyond history, because history cannot take into account the great irrational forces of hate and of love.

At the end of a century, of the greatest horrors committed in the name of historical forces -- nationalism, industrialism, fascism and communism -- I was intrigued as to how two characters might seek to somehow speak of their own humanity in a way that was an act of defiance against these historical forces, against history. It seemed to me that the only way they could do that, and the most profound, subversive and moving way they could do it, would be in the love they would show each other.

Question from Sunny1_CNN: Richard, what kind of competition were you up against for the Australian Bookseller's Book of the Year award?

Richard Flanagan: That's an unusual award, in that it's all books, not just literary books, so it's an unusual award that is highly regarded in the industry. It has to combine virtues of popularity and quality, which is not to say that my book succeeded in either way, but only that those judging thought it did. I don't think prizes should be taken at all seriously, and they're most certainly not the meter of what is good and bad in writing. They are, however, an embarrassment that one must learn to endure. :)

Chat Moderator: You have directed a film based on this book, which has been released in Australia and Germany. Do you plan a wider release for it?

Richard Flanagan: The American film distribution has largely closed itself off to foreign films in the last five years. They weren't interested in my film, because they believed that Americans don't like films that are dark and by their likes, difficult. This is a problem for all film-makers outside of America. Unless you fit a certain formula that distributors claim Americans wish to see, it's almost impossible to get a release in the U.S.A.

Question from JimL: Do people make history? What is the relationship between people and historical forces?

Richard Flanagan: Jim, you've thrown me the big one! I've spent two novels trying to work it out, and I don't have any ready or quick answers to give. It more and more seems to me, though, that what is special in life is seeking to find the universal and the infinite in a single image of a face or a gesture.

Question from Asher: Speaking of nationalism, what is your take on the British Monarchy's response to white Australian’s treatment of the indigenous people?

Richard Flanagan: I missed the Royal visit, because I've been away for a while, so I’m not entirely sure what the response was. I can say that the present Australian government's record on indigenous issues is appalling. It leaves millions of Australians feeling intensely ashamed.

Chat Moderator: Are the members of the Buloh family universal immigrant figures? Is this story an allegory?

Richard Flanagan: Chekov writes to his brother that it is not for the writer to judge his characters or his stories, but merely to report them impartially. Readers make books much more than writers do. It is not for a writer to say whether his work is allegorical or symbolic or universal. If others find those meanings in the work, then I am of course flattered.

I'm not trying to be dissembling here. I don't set out to consciously write something allegorical when I'm working. I think it's dangerous for writers to be too conscious and clear about what they're writing. I think it was Faulkner who said that the moment a writer knew what it was he was writing, he wrote nothing worthwhile.

Question from Cleo: What were your thoughts when you won the Australian Bookseller's Book of the Year Award?

Richard Flanagan: Don't drink too much! :)

Chat Moderator: It has been said that you like to write about those whom history has forgotten. What do you want us to know, understand, and remember about the characters of Bojan and Sonja Buloh?

Richard Flanagan: Simply, that love matters.

Chat Moderator: Do you have any final thoughts for us?

Richard Flanagan: I have none, really. It is a difficult responsibility and an onerous one that a writer has in this day and age, that they're expected to explain aspects of their work about which they understand almost nothing. I have a suspicion that writers are essentially inarticulate, because if they could say things quickly in a few sentences, they wouldn't need to spend thousands of words saying what they understand about this life. :)

Chat Moderator: Thank you for joining us today, Richard Flanagan, to discuss your book, "The Sound of One Hand Clapping."

Richard Flanagan: Thanks, very much! :)

FLANAGAN, RICHARD : Sound of One Hand Clapping

THE SOUND OF ONE MAN FILMING
His first film may be his last, a disillusioned Richard Flanagan tells ANDREW L. URBAN; yet this debut work was invited to the Berlin Film Festival.

"I’ve aged a lot," says 36 year old Richard Flanagan, using his waiting time at Sydney airport for one of the last interviews before his first – and perhaps last – feature film opens around Australia. The politics of filmmaking have taken their toll: "I doubt if I’ll ever make another film. It’s a savage and brutal industry, labouring under the obligations of money."

The novelist, whose down to earth Australian accent seems at odds with his eloquence and sensibilities, was an admired author (for his novel, Death of a River Guide) before he turned to films, and he wants to go back to writing books. At the airport, he is waiting to catch a plane back to his home in Tasmania.

"Film is closer to abstract forms of art like music than to literature,"

"I got the film I wanted in the end, but at great personal cost." Flanagan is discreet about the details, but suffice to say, relationships with certain filmmaking colleagues have collapsed. "I love the process but not the politics. I had it in my favour that I was only interested in making this particular film. First time directors tend to cop it sweet so they can go on to make subsequent films. I was lucky I didn’t want necessarily to have a filmmaking career."

What Flanagan says he was fighting for was his own way of making the film, not necessarily the commonly accepted way. Motivated by his view of filmmaking, Flanagan wanted to do what felt right. "Film is closer to abstract forms of art like music than to literature," he believes.

"I wanted to make the music a character in its own right"

It was this notion that prompted Flanagan to start talking about the film’s music with composer Melbourne based Cezary Skubiszewski, contrary to general practice, in which the composer is brought in once the film has been shot and assembled.

"I got him before pre-production started, because I wanted to make the music a character in its own right. I told him I wanted him to compose music for a new country," a brief which Skubiszewski fulfils admirably, creating complex, haunting music that often combines European motifs with elements that are new – as in the ethereal piece, The Bath of Chamomile Flowers. Similarly in the achingly beautiful, melancholic Leaving of Maria.

"It was the most emotional reaction I’ve had to a script." producer Rolf de Heer

The film begins during the winter of 1954, in a remote Tasmanian construction camp of migrant workers. Sonja Buloh’s mother walks out of their hut, leaving her three year old girl alone on the bed. Her distraught father perseveres with the dream of a new life in a new country, but he is soon crushed into an alcoholic despair. By the time Sonja turns 16, she is driven to leave him. Nearly 20 years later, single and pregnant, she returns to Tasmania’s highlands and her father, in an attempt to put the pieces of her life into some coherent framework. Initial awkwardness and pain notwithstanding, she slowly unravels her family’s history, especially a secret she never knew about her vanished mother. She also learns about love – not the romantic kind, but the bonding love of humanity.

Flanagan first showed the screenplay to filmmaker Rolf de Heer, hoping to interest de Heer in directing it. De Heer turned him down: "I told Richard he was the best person to direct it, not me. It’s such a strong, individual vision." This was not a cop out, for de Heer undertook to stay with the project to see it got made, and took on the producer’s role. The script had got to him: the first time he read the script, de Heer broke into sobs: "I was a mess for four days," he recalls. "It was the most emotional reaction I’ve had to a script. It triggered something deep in me. It speaks of the best and worst in human beings, of what can be avoided and what can’t."

"I like enigmatic, evocative titles,"

Flanagan grew up in a mining town on the West Coast of Tasmania and spent time at the hydro-electricity power plant construction camp, where some of his story is set. He married a Slovanian, "and a large part of my life has been spent in that cultural environment. In fact, much of Australian culture has been dealing with this experience," he says, referring to the large number of migrants who were enticed to Australian in the postwar years.

"I like enigmatic, evocative titles," says Flanagan; he first read it in an essay about feminist influence on the early English co-operative movement, of all things. "I’ve since discovered it’s a Buddhist saying."

The Sound of One Hand Clapping was invited to the Berlin Film Festival in the main competitive section, along with another Australian film, The Boys. Following its release in Australia (through Palace Film, April 23, 1998) it will be launched on the international market at Cannes, through Southern Star Sales.

http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=1018&s=Interviews