Michael Wilding is emeritus professor at the University of Sydney. He was a founding editor of the UQP’s Asian & Pacific Writing series, of the short story magazine, Tabloid Story, and co-founder of publishers Wild & Woolley, and Paperbark Press. He has also been a milkman, postman, newspaper columnist, apple-picker, Cosmopolitan ‘Bachelor of the Month’, and Chair of the New South Wales Writers’ Centre. He has published over 30 works of fiction, including the Plant private-eye series, is editor of a dozen anthologies of short fiction and books of criticism on Milton, Marcus Clarke and Henry Lawson. He has been translated and published in over twenty countries.
Point Danger is number 10 in the Plant private-eye series – and it could be Plant’s last case, resting on his lantana farm in the Valley of the Weed, bored and happily idle. Until Fullalove comes to stay and sniffs out a string of potential conspiracies: The well-stocked second-hand bookshop that doesn’t list its books online. The online progressive journal of correct opinion, Mad, Bad and Dangerous. The novelist Mandy Mittelnacht. And Shameless Seamus, the dodgy journalist and his no less dodgy editor, Gilbert Osbourne.
Michael Wilding has lived on Scotland Island in Pittwater for the last 35 years.
Michael Wilding - portrait by Scotland Island artist Dimitri Lihachov.
This week, a few insights from the author on this new work and writing.
When and where were you born?
January 1942 in Worcester in the English Midlands.
Where did you grow up and what changes are there between the landscape of that place then and now?
I grew up on the edge of the city with fields back and front, and went to a village infant school and then the local grammar school. I’ve written about it in my memoir Growing Wild and the stories in The Midlands and Leaving Them. Worcester is basically a country town and the changes in the landscape have been few.
You came to Australia in 1963 at age 21 from the UK and stayed – why?
I was appointed to a lectureship in English Literature at the University of Sydney upon graduating from Oxford University, thanks to contacts of my tutor. It was a three year contract and I returned at the end of it, planning to live in Greece on my savings and write fiction. But the generals took over in Greece and established a military dictatorship, so I stayed in the UK, ran out of money, and got an assistant lectureship at the University of Birmingham. But I found the English provinces restrictive and dull and boring after the freedoms of Sydney where I’d enjoyed the climate, the beaches, the old bohemianism of the city, the absence of the British class system, and the literary contacts I’d made, so when offered a senior lectureship back in Sydney I leapt at the opportunity and returned. And stayed.
Michael Wilding, Sydney University, 1972. Photo by Victor Colin Sumner courtesy Fairfax, via Getty
How and when did you commence writing?
The earliest story I can recall writing was written when I was seven, and it was called 'The Old, Old Man.' The old, old man was, as far as I can remember, a snowman who beat up the bad boys who have been tormenting the protagonist. A satisfying though simple narrative line. After that there is a break of seven years. And then there was the Physics class at school. I was gazing out of the window into space and the master seized on my abstraction. 'What are you thinking about?' he asked. 'Nothing, sir,' I replied, the normal reply to such demands. 'Then write me an essay about it,' said the master. And that was the next initiating moment. Making something out of nothing. I launched into the task with delight. Hours of day-dreaming had provided me with lots of practice. I used all the resources of wit, paradox and irony that I could command. Growing up in that small, landlocked country town, creating something out of nothing seemed the only thing to do. And the master appreciated it.
Why did you keep writing?
I always read a lot, as did my father. Unlike him, I was no good at sport, so it was one way of getting his approval. And my English master encouraged me. He ran an after hours group of would be writers, The Adam Lindsay Gordon society, named after the poet who came to Australia and had been briefly at my school. I wrote regularly for that, sold a story to the BBC morning story, and at Oxford I edited the undergraduate magazine, Isis, and continued writing fiction. One of the reasons I took a university job rather than journalism was that I figured the regular vacations would give me the time and opportunity to write fiction as well as the expected literary criticism.
You are a founding editor of the UQP’s Asian & Pacific Writing series, of the short story magazine, Tabloid Story, in 1972 and co-founder of publishers Wild & Woolley in 1974, and Paperbark Press and have also taught writing at the University of Sydney – why is it important to ensure a unique Australian voice is heard in our books and literary works?
The Australian publishing industry is dominated by global conglomerates who make their profits from importing English and American and European books that have done well overseas. In comparison the market for Australian product is small, and not especially profitable. So it is important to provide outlets for Australian work that would otherwise be unlikely to appear. Without it, there would be no record of the way we live and the values we have, no account of our history and development, and few opportunities for local writers.
Point Danger is number 10 in the Plant private-eye series – where did the character of ‘Plant’ come from – and is there much of you in him?
Plant is essentially passive like a plant, the ‘I am a camera’ sort of character, who observes rather than initiates things. And in his first appearance in National Treasure he was a research assistant to a novelist, planted in the novelist’s household to get information. I then developed him into a private-eye. Writing crime fiction gave me a way to write about political issues that didn’t belong so readily in the dozen or so volumes of literary fiction which I had published. I am told that Plant reminds people of me in his suspicions, which recur through the novels, of the developing surveillance systems in our society.
Why do you think this series has been so phenomenally successful and widely read – what threads are in there that resonant so well with readers?
Crime fiction is popular because it has a narrative drive – you want to read through to the end to find out who did what and why. There are many varieties of crime fiction. I avoid the sensational and violent and multiple murders and close-ups of post mortems and other horrors. Indeed, a number of the Plant novels don’t involve anyone being murdered at all. There’s no need to, as the Sherlock Holmes stories prove. And there is a sardonic or comic edge to the narratives, and to the dialogue which Plant and his offsider, the conspiracy theorist Fullalove, engage in. I think the issues engage readers: is the alternative magazine in The Prisoner of Mount Warning really alternative, or sponsored by the state? Are the hippy communes in Little Demon spontaneous alternatives, or are they state sponsored experiments in post-nuclear warfare survival strategies? Are the radical students and academics in The Magic of It really being targeted by modern practitioners of magic?
For our young readers - How do you become a half decent writer – by writing and writing and writing or reading?
It is important to read. The writers whose work I admire and respect have all read widely. You learn how to do things, and how not to do things, from the way other writers write. And it is important to keep on writing, to get down to it every day for a couple of hours. And revise what you have written. I write a first draft in longhand, and then do a second draft on the computer, which ensures that I read through it carefully that second time, physically rewriting each word, and correcting or revising, cutting or expanding, when necessary.
You have been a resident of Scotland Island for decades – what are the best aspects of living on the island?
I’ve been here some 35 years. I love the view across the water to the National Park, and the variety of activity – barges, sailing boats, ferries, tinnies, motor launches, water taxis, none of it excessive, but all alive. And the bird life – eagles, cormorants, seagulls, magpies, parrots, butcher birds, owls, noisy miners, crows, cockatoos. And the variety of residents, all sorts of occupations and nationalities and personalities. The cover art and cover portrait on my last but one Plant novel, Find Me My Enemies, set in part on Scotland Island, were both done by island artists, Gwyn Perkins and Dimitri Lihachov.
Find Me My Enemies - Cover
What are your favourite places in Pittwater and why?
I like all of it, going round the island on the ferry as it stops off at the different wharves, or catching the ferry to the Central Coast past Lion Island, or up Pittwater across the Hawkesbury to Patonga.
What is your ‘motto for life’ or a favourite phrase that your try to live by?
Well, I try to be positive, look on the bright side, and be grateful for the good times that I have had.
Point Danger by Michael Wilding
(Arcadia, $32.95)
Reviews of previous Plant series works:
‘Wilding’s wit enlivens the crime fiction genre, and his acquaintance with other forms of literature, especially satire, constantly adds spice to Plant’s adventures and misadventures in the mean streets.’ – Nicholas Hasluck, Quadrant.
‘Plant’s case may have started out as a simple criminal investigation, but it swiftly, and unforgettably, shines bright lights onto the way we live, and some of the reasons why.’ – Derek Turner, Spectator Australia.
‘Keep Plant coming.’ – David Williamson.
