NSW: Our history through the eyes of Thomas Keneally

AAP General News (Australia)
08-27-2009
NSW: Our history through the eyes of Thomas Keneally

By Judy Skatssoon

SYDNEY, Aug 27 AAP - The history of Thomas Keneally is vividly documented at his home
on Sydney's northern beaches which he shares with Judy, his wife of 45 years.

In the modest, light-filled apartment indigenous art works adorn the walls along with
framed letters and greeting cards.

One, signed by film director Steven Spielberg, thanks Keneally for his work for the
Jewish community.

Another wishes the couple a happy festive season - it's signed Bill and Hillary Clinton.

A grandfather clock stands in a corner. Family photos, including one of Keneally's
four grandchildren, grace a cabinet.

One bookcase is filled entirely with books written by Keneally, the only exception
a copy of Ulysses by James Joyce.

The famous author is on the phone in his office. Eventually, a small round man wearing
track suit pants and a rather grubby jumper emerges.

He greets me and runs his hand over his chin.

"Should I shave?" he asks.

"No, just wash your face," his wife suggests.

Keneally is one of Australia's best known and most successful authors. He published
his first book in 1964 after leaving a Sydney seminary where he was studying for the priesthood.

Since then he's written more than 40 books including The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
and Schindler's Ark, which won the 1982 Booker prize and was adapted as Spielberg's Oscar-award
winning 1993 film called Schindler's List.

Just over a month shy of his 74th birthday, he has two new books out.

The first, published this month, is The People's Train, about Russians who escaped
Tsarist Russia and lived in Brisbane before returning home for the Revolution.

The second is the first volume of an ambitious three-volume history of Australia titled
Australians: Origins to Eureka, which was launched by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at Parliament
House on Thursday.

A specialist in historical novels, Keneally says he is fascinated by the "universality
of human experience when you encounter it in the past".

He admits he wore the hats of novelist and historian when writing Origins. It's put
together with a historian's eye for facts and a novelist's eye for character and personal
journeys.

"What I've done, or tried to do, is deal with Australians who are obscure but whose
lives illustrate a major aspect of Australian history," he says.

"I've tried to choose either Australians that an intelligent general reader has never
heard of, or show aspects of famous Australians' lives which we don't know about.

"Anyone who's wearing a funny naval hat and a funny naval costume and britches and
poncey stockings, I've tried to look at the man beyond that."

Keneally, the Sydney-born descendant of Irish immigrants, says one aspect of Australian
history that fascinates him is that not only were convicts sent to Australia, but also
"economic refugees and the unsatisfactory children of the gentry".

"Being sort of working class trailer trash myself I love to celebrate rather than decry
the fact that Australia has been used as a dumping ground for so long," he says.

"Australia's Adam and Eve didn't begin pure and then fall from grace - they were already
condemned when they arrived here ... so there's a certain perversity in this book."

In terms of perversity, he describes his own life as "a bit like Australian history",
including his decision to turn his back on a life in the priesthood.

"I learnt a lot about good and evil in (the seminary) and the cosmic struggle between
good and evil.

"On the other hand I learnt a lot about legalism instead of broadness of spirit.

"It was more important to go to mass and communion than to be a sinful rescuer like
Oskar Schindler (the subject of Schindler's Ark)."

He was also disillusioned with the response of the Church to child abuse accusations,
saying it went for lawyers before compassion.

He hints at something else that might have been at play, saying "sexuality is always
a great underground river in people's lives, particularly seminarians' lives, and it almost
certainly had something to do with my leaving."

His decision to quit before being ordained gave the literary world Thomas Keneally,
but it also had other benefits.

"After I left I started trying to meet girls," he says.

"One of the reasons I wrote my (first) novel ... was so that I could sashay into bars
and instead of telling girls that I was a ruined monk - not a good pickup line - I could
say `I'm a novelist'.

"I felt when I had my first book published I felt I was back to being a member of society."

As for the future, the staunch republican and former chairman of the Australian Republican
Movement predicts Australia will continue to "grope towards" both a republic and reconciliation.

And he doesn't discount a future penal colony in space.

"Ask yourself what would happen if you put 15,000 guards and prisoners in space orbit,
which we will one day," he says.

Keneally - a self-confessed rugby league tragic and Manly's number one ticket-holder
- is also a Living National Treasure.

Apart from some sniping that he was a Nazi apologist for writing Schindler's Ark, it's
hard to find a bad word about him.

He is however, prepared to confess to some vices.

"One is impetuosity, which is both a strength and a weakness," he says.

"I rush into things far too quickly including the subjects of novels. For example when
I was .. asked me write this (history), I almost immediately said yes.

"I didn't immediately think, `come on Tom, you're over 70. What if you don't get to volume 3?"

And while he says he's generally patient, he is more than capable of "doing his lolly".

"I'm very patient according to everyone, but when I do my lolly I do it too much, and
then I apologise too much.

"I apologise until instead of my wanting to hit a bloke he wants to hit me.

"I only learnt late in life that the way to survive is instead of wishing that things
were different, to accept them as they are, instead of wishing that everyone agreed with
you.

"And why should they? Because I'm only a silly old bugger."

AAP jjs/ht

KEYWORD: KENEALLY (FEATURE WITH PIX AND VIDEO)

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