Peter Carey

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand eight.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the writer Peter Carey. He is one of the most highly acclaimed authors in the English language, and is one of only two to have been awarded the Booker Prize twice. He's Australian, but has spent much of his life living abroad, for a short time in Britain, and for many years in America, although his homeland still draws him back and inspires him.

Presenter0:47

His upbringing there was, on the face of it, conventional, but he was always slightly at odds with his family, a bit out of place at school, and totally out of his depth at university. In the end he drifted into a job in advertising, and then one day he declared he was going to become a writer.

Presenter1:04

I just decided it was what I was going to do, and I'm an obsessive fool. Having announced I was going to do it, I was determined to do it. So, Peter Kerry, um, writing then, not a vocation, but a decision. That's very unusual.

Peter Carey1:19

Well

Peter Carey1:20

It was a little more complicated or a little more obvious in the sense that I certainly fell far from university into an advertising agency and found my I fell amongst writers or people who were writing at nights and at weekends and and I began to read, all at the same time. And to discover at that time

Peter Carey1:40

William Faulkner say

Peter Carey1:42

I couldn't have imagined anything like that even existed in the world. And to read this sort of jewel-like language and this man also giving voice to the voiceless, just made me sort of drunk. And I was determined that I would do exactly the same thing. And of course I'm somebody that's read nothing, pretty much. So I was very foolish and very ignorant, but protected by that ignorance, I marched ahead.

Presenter2:08

That's a it was a great little phrase you used there, uh being drunk on on on this writing. I mean, there was a sense in which you were giddy with the opportunity and with the the artistic flowering that was opened up to you. And that would have been in your early twenties.

Peter Carey2:21

Yes. I mean, I remember in those years we used to go to in in Melbourne to stock car ra racing. And they had uh racing fuel that had was a had a very heady smell to it. I think was it methyl benzene or something like that. And so in a funny way you were sort of drunk on that smell. And when you came out you really thought that you could be, you know, uh you know, revving your engine and carrying on like a young idiot.

Peter Carey2:41

Well, reading Faulkner and Joyce was a sort of equivalent sort of thing. You're getting just madly excited at the possibility of what you could do.

Presenter2:50

So by God you did it then, because it was um quite a little while later, nineteen eighty eight that you won the first booker for Oscar and Lucinda. Two thousand one you were nominated again for True History of the Kelly Gang. Um throughout the day of course there's the ceremony in the evening and it's all

Speaker 43:06

Hmm.

Presenter3:06

Terribly grand. But d during the day, what was occurring to you about the possibility of winning it twice?

Presenter3:11

Mm

Peter Carey3:12

Uh

Peter Carey3:14

I remember that when there was a possibility of winning it the first time for Oscar and Lucinda, I was just sick with anxiety. And when Oscar and Lucinda won, I uh felt like I'd been run over by a truck. I was pleased to have won the prize, but I felt uh that there was something wrong wrong in wallowing around in it or sh showing off or something like that. Then the years go on, you know, and you think, Black, I was such a fool. And then I was given this second chance. And when I did win it for uh True History of the Kelly Gang, I really celebrated it. I was really I I was very, very, very happy.

Presenter3:56

Tell me about your first piece of music then.

Peter Carey3:59

This is Miles Davis with John Coltrane and Round Midnight. It's the first piece of jazz I ever, ever heard. And it's a little bit like reading Faulkner for the first time in that I didn't know this existed. And I must have been about 17. I was at Geelong Grammar School in Australia and I was playing hooky with a friend whose father was a teacher there. And we sat on the veranda and we smoked pipes. And I didn't know it had been recorded in New York City, but I imagined a city like New York and all of the future and it's all of its possibilities and magic sort of waiting. It was a very memorable night.

Speaker 44:44

Uh

Peter Carey4:45

Uh

Presenter5:42

Miles Davidson, Round Midnight, and you say at seventeen you listened to that and you thought of the possibilities of a far off place that you didn't yet know was New York, but where you now in fact live. We'll talk a little about that later, but for now I want to talk about the the corner of Australia that you grew up in. Where was it and what was it like?

Peter Carey6:01

Well, it's a little town with the cutesy name at this distance of Bacchus Marsh. It's thirty-three miles due west of Melbourne in the middle of farming country which was wheat and sheep for the most part. And my father sold cars to farmers by standing in paddocks, risking pneumonia, which he was always prone to. And we had a little business in the middle of this town and my mother worked downstairs in the spare parts department and men would arrive wanting to see the manager. This is 1940, 50, 30, 50s. And she would say, I am the manager. And daily, daily, my mother fought this battle with men who would not really acknowledge that she was in charge. And my father always certainly gave her the credit for being the intelligent one, which was really not quite correct. But that was the the thing that was, you know, whenever I had a book or something, you'd say, or I wrote something, he'd say, oh, that's your mother would understand that. I wouldn't understand that.

Presenter6:59

And he went to a terribly posh school.

Peter Carey7:01

Yeah.

Peter Carey7:02

Yeah, really, really posh.

Peter Carey7:04

I mean, the town itself was predominantly working class or lower middle class. Some of the less privileged boys I went to school with would be held back every year until they turned 14 when they could leave school. And one of the boys would sort of stand up and the teacher would say, Where are you going? and he'd say I'm 14, you can't bloody touch me. And he'd walk out and then they'd get all their teeth pulled out for a quid and go and work in the coal mine and there was a milk factory and things. And then to go from that to Geelong Grammar.

Presenter7:32

And so

Peter Carey7:35

Where everybody addressed each other by their surnames. And many of the people, teachers, particularly who taught the, you know, they could have been in the home counties, you know. Tell me about your next piece of music then.

Peter Carey7:45

Well, it's Elvis Presley. I think, you know, this is about the period when I'm first at Geelongram You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog was out. But I had the problem always of doing my shopping in Bacchus Marsh at the vacation. Now, all the other kids, they're going off to sort of they're going to Melbourne and big cities, and you know, they'd buy a sweater, you know, that would look really cool. And I'd try and buy the same thing in Bacchus Marsh and come back to school and realise it was just totally wrong. And it was like this with the Elvis Presley. I went into, there was a store in Bacchus Marsh, which was part hardware store, part electrician, and it was called RB Supply Company. Robber Bob, we called him. And they had a record. And I'm looking there and I found these 78s.

Peter Carey8:26

which we were still playing then, of Elvis Presley and I.

Peter Carey8:30

took them home and I played them and they were all wrong. They were not the right Elvis ones. And one of course these things that I'd bought were were the very first recordings that Elvis Presley made when he when he went into Sun uh Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee.

Peter Carey8:46

And

Peter Carey8:47

Years later I

Peter Carey8:49

Listened to the Sun Sessions, and I recognized all of these tracks that had so upset me and embarrassed me because they were not real.

Peter Carey8:56

And so this particular the next track, That's Al Right Mama, I s I really love these days.

Speaker 49:02

That's all I know, mama anyway, do Ah jara dee dee dee dee

Speaker 49:12

Dee dee dee dee.

Speaker 49:14

Dee dee dee dee, I need your love and

Speaker 49:18

It's alright.

Speaker 49:21

That's all right, mama, anyway, dude.

Presenter9:32

Elvis Presley and that's all right, Mama. So you left to study science at university? Yes. And didn't understand it?

Peter Carey9:40

No, I didn't at all. I mean

Presenter9:41

What happened between the the boy in in school and the boy at university?

Peter Carey9:46

Well, it was just a different sort of science, I guess. And it was way more mathematical and way more abstract.

Peter Carey9:52

And I said I real I was in I didn't know what I was going to do.

Peter Carey9:56

And I didn't really solve the question of what to do about chemistry'cause I never ever did get to really understand it. But I changed my major. I declared that I was gonna I was gonna become a zoologist because it was all the same subjects. But the zoologists read books and new painters and were generally much more sort of bohemian. And they went to the pub and got drunk and we

Peter Carey10:17

I like them.

Presenter10:18

So your university career was brought to an abrupt end. You had a very bad car craft?

Peter Carey10:24

Uh

Peter Carey10:26

I was driving.

Peter Carey10:27

a car that my parents had given me which they themselves had owned.

Peter Carey10:31

And I was just a young idiot. You know, there w there was stuff that was wrong with the steering and it got stiff and then one day part of the front suspension just fell out. Lost all control of the car, hit a huge lamppost and brought it to the ground and scalped myself. And uh

Peter Carey10:48

I remember waking up and all I could think was, thank God I've got an excuse to fail my exams and I really, literally thought it at that moment. And what what a stroke of good luck I thought. And of course then then the bastards gave me supplementary examinations and I failed all those, so I didn't really escape.

Presenter11:07

Tell me about your next piece of music then.

Peter Carey11:09

Well, this is this is I'm I'm stuck in my childhood, aren't I? This is a Bacchus Marsh geelongrap. It's the other side really of the Elvis Presley story, where to be in Bacchus Marsh it would be impossible to imagine

Peter Carey11:23

Handel's Messiah. The sheer sense of you know, Jalan Grammar had what I thought was a hugely grand chapel. In fact, it was rather austere, but it did have a glorious root screen and a fantastic organ, and it was very, very high and narrow. And every year, as I recall, they'd do something like The Messiah. And it was thrilling for me as a child from Bacchus Marsh to go into the chapel with all of these beautiful voices of these boys.

Peter Carey11:59

To listen to the Yallalulia Chorus now is like it's some enormous musical mona lisa cliche and yet if one tries really hard to get beyond that, I I certainly still feel the just the sheer sort of soaring glory of it and uh so we just have to think this is not a television commercial.

Speaker 412:28

Oh no, did you

Speaker 412:47

Oh no, no, God, deep onto.

Speaker 412:54

And each have made a better

Presenter13:10

The hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah, sung by the choir of Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford, was the Academy of Ancient Music conducted by Christopher Hogwood. So you ended up in advertising and you made this decision to become a writer. I mean, so often one will speak to writers and they'll say, Well, you know, I've been writing since I was seven and and really it was almost a need more than anything to write. You set yourself the task.

Peter Carey13:33

Well, it was even worse than that, really because there I am, what, seventeen or eighteen. Everybody I know is at university and we all go to the same parties. I would never go to a party if someone from advertising, you know. And uh people say, What are you doing? I say, I'm working in an advertising agency and they start to curl their lips, you see.

Peter Carey13:50

And so part of this I think was sort of an act of redemption.

Peter Carey13:54

And then of course they'd they'd sneer at that, of course someone in advertising going to write a novel. And so I made a lot of friends, you know, in the sort of violent arguments that then followed with these people who sn who dared to sneer at me when I said I was going to be a writer.

Presenter14:06

You're unlike many authors in so far as you write and find out about and explore the possibilities and the voice and the psyche of another character. You don't seem to use your writing to do that about yourself.

Peter Carey14:20

I'm very bored by the notion of of

Peter Carey14:23

I mean, I don't know quite what this means, but I think there's a huge difference between sort of art and self-expression. And I'm not really very interested in writing about myself or exploring myself. I'm interested in making something new and I hope beautiful that never existed in the world before. And I'm interested in moving so far beyond what I know. And that's why it's thrilling to me. You know, that you get to write a book and it'd say it takes you three years, and you have a book like Oscar and Lucinda, and you start with an idea, which in the case of Oscar and Lucinda is a box full of Christian stories floating through a landscape filled with Aboriginal stories, like some sort of cartoon or diagram. And you end up three years later with these sort of people.

Peter Carey15:07

And what a miracle I mean, for the writer, I mean, what a pleasure to have that that journey.

Peter Carey15:14

And it it is amazing how far you can move from yourself and how you can imagine what it is to be other, because after all, I think that's the job description. That's the game.

Presenter15:27

If you have intellectual aspirations, artistic aspirations.

Presenter15:32

At that time then, did you feel that you would almost have to go away to do it properly? I mean, I'm thinking now of people like Jermaine Greer and Clive James, who who came to Britain, because that was culturally a much more significant or indeed worthwhile place to be. Well, they had to do it.

Peter Carey15:43

Yeah.

Peter Carey15:46

They were older, they were better educated than I was. So, yes, they had no choice, they had to do that. By the time it was my turn, I didn't have to do that. I did come to this country, but it wasn't really to flee anywhere, it was just an Australian thing to want to experience the rest of the world, which was so unimaginable that when I got to Greece and saw they had tomatoes and cucumbers, I was astonished.

Peter Carey16:08

I was surprised they had the same vegetables.

Presenter16:11

Uh So this was in your for your mid-twenties, you were traveling?

Peter Carey16:13

Yeah, twenty-four.

Presenter16:15

Did it feel good to be away?

Peter Carey16:15

This

Peter Carey16:18

It felt really good to come to this country.

Peter Carey16:21

The uh immigration guy looked at me and said, You look more English than the English. I felt really pleased. Everything about coming here really did feel like sort of coming home. I had long hair, which made me which made me at that time in Australia a possible uh victim of a beating at any at any moment. And suddenly it felt really safe.

Peter Carey16:41

To be here and to live in Notting Hill.

Peter Carey16:44

And uh I felt really deeply, deeply at home.

Presenter16:49

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Peter Carey16:51

Huh? Well,

Peter Carey16:53

All during that period that I was living in Notting Hill,

Peter Carey16:57

I used to begin each day's work listening to Bob Dylan. As I get older and listen to him more and more, and I go through periods of huge doubt about him, I must say, one realises his enormous skill, not just as a performer, which I think he has made himself into this glorious old man that he always wanted to be, but the way in which the lyrics fight with each other, contradict each other. I just think he's a truly great artist. It's called Thunder on the Mountain.

Speaker 417:27

Thunder on the mountain and as far as on the moon The rugged Sendy Alley and the summer nears you Today's the day you're gonna grab my trumbo

Speaker 417:39

Well it's hot stuff here, and it's everywhere I go.

Speaker 417:45

I was thinking badly

Speaker 417:48

Couldn't keep him crying but she was owning him the skitchin' I was living down the line I'm wondering where in the world his keys could be

Presenter17:56

Bob Dylan and Thunder on the Mountain. So you did return then, Peter Carey, to Australia. And you did you live in a sort of hippie commune?

Peter Carey18:04

Yeah, later, later. Always do things at the wrong time. And it was really wonderful. It's the only place I ever lived on earth where no one said, What do you do? And it was very beautiful and a beautiful river, a fantastic forest. And we'd work in the morning, I'd write every morning, and in the afternoon you'd go to the beach, and lovely, gorgeous, empty beaches. And apart from the fact that it really was, quite without being hysterical, a corrupt police state, which Queensland was, and the police paid continual.

Peter Carey18:38

attention to the hippies. In fact, my first experience there was removing some white ant affected material from the back of the hut and he suddenly finding these two cops standing beside me and they say, So uh what's your name? and I said it's Peter Carey. All right, Peter, uh what's your date of birth? And I got all sort of high voiced and anxious and sad.

Peter Carey19:02

I don't have to tell you that. And they said, Listen, Peter, this is Queensland.

Peter Carey19:07

We don't need a warrant to search this place, and we'll find something. Don't worry. Now, what's your date of birth?

Presenter19:14

And that's what it was like. You had found it initially a bit tricky to find a publisher, but but when things came together, they came together in quite a burst. You suddenly found yourself being recognised and being recognised as a writer and being told that what you were writing was very worthwhile and significant.

Peter Carey19:30

Yes. Returning from London to Australia I started to write short stories. And all my novels had sort of been failures in one sense or another, huge structures that had things wrong with them that I realized at the end I'd invested all this time in something that couldn't work.

Peter Carey19:44

And so, in a way, not being prepared to risk so much, I just thought, Well, I don't have to be building palaces, I can build these little sheds, these little huts, and if they fall over, well, I don't care, and I'll take a lot of risks, and and I'd learn from writing the these appalling novels. And the short stories started to work, and I wrote one one week, and then I wrote another one the next week, and I wrote another one the week after that.

Peter Carey20:05

So they just started happening. And I got reviewed and praised enormously. And not all that much longer, I mean, I was then living up in Queensland and I wrote some more short stories. And all of them, the sort of best of, was published by Faber here in Random House in the US. And I got, I couldn't believe it. You know, the Times wanted to interview me and have lunch at Langham's. I thought, oh my God.

Presenter20:33

Were you aware yourself that you had turned a very significant corner? Because of course sometimes when we're in the moment we're so busy doing it that we don't realize it's a moment of significance. Did you think I've found my voice?

Peter Carey20:44

No. It it didn't really, really occur to me at all. No, I don't think so.

Peter Carey20:49

And also you've got to also remember that, you know, the whole if if one is going to write and write that length of time, one is continually grandiose too, you know, so the sense of having written something wonderful was not new to me. Although that's what I felt about all those terrible novels.

Presenter21:04

Tell me about your next piece of music then.

Peter Carey21:08

I admire David Byrne as an artist so, so much and I think his work is continually original. He's a person of incredible personal integrity. He still gets around New York on his bicycle and he goes and listens to music. The equivalent sort of people, they're not going out to clubs to listen to new music and know what's going on. But David is always there in the back. No one really recognises him. Or if they do, they don't say anything. He's a good guy. And life during wartime, I love very much.

Speaker 421:37

He's ready to roll.

Speaker 421:40

I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nighttime.

Speaker 421:44

I'm not gonna look at home.

Speaker 421:47

This ain't nobody. This ain't no discord.

Speaker 421:51

Ain't no fool.

Speaker 421:56

Uh

Speaker 421:57

My CBG

Speaker 421:59

I ain't got some more than no

Presenter22:05

Talking Heads and Life During Wartime. Let's spool forward a little, Peter, to the time when you were married for the second time. It was the 1980s. You and your wife, Alison Summers, had two sons, Sam and Charlie. And I'm wondering.

Peter Carey22:12

It was the ninth.

Peter Carey22:17

Yeah.

Presenter22:19

It's not easy when you have a family being out of kilter with life. You can't sort of live on the sidelines and live on the edge. You've got to sort of plunge into it wholeheartedly. How did you enjoy did you enjoy the early years of family life?

Peter Carey22:32

Oh, of course. I mean, the thing of a child being born is the sort of the most miraculous thing one of the great miracles of my life. No, and I I love love my two boys incredibly and uh and all of this time later, you know, I'm incredibly close to them and um I responded

Peter Carey22:55

to being a parent very well, I think.

Presenter22:59

And so the boy from Bacchus March took his young children, his wife, his family to New York to live.

Peter Carey23:05

Well, m my former w wife.

Peter Carey23:09

Passionately wanted to go to New York. So I was happy to go. And it was a new place. I mean, New York York is an extraordinary place. And I lo I mean, I didn't start off loving the city. I was rather frightened of the city in a rather pathetic way, although, you know, it was a little while ago, so it was a little tougher. And also, you know, the entanglements of life are such that I now I now have, you know.

Presenter23:10

Right.

Presenter23:24

Yeah.

Peter Carey23:32

a seventeen year old and a twenty one year old, for which New York is their home.

Peter Carey23:37

And how did you feel?

Presenter23:38

How did you feel about them being I mean, presumably, of course they speak with American accents, don't they?

Peter Carey23:41

They do. But I we don't we talk about this sometimes. We don't hear each other's accents. And I think that's when you when you're very close to somebody you really don't don't notice. I'm also in love with and living with, and have been for five years, a wonderful Englishwoman called Frances Cody. And she runs a publishing house in in New York City, so I'm not going to run away from her. Having I mean, I didn't know I met her first in 85, you know, so long ago, and uh and then when my marriage ended and I was rather depressed and sorry for myself, we met again, and it was just I've been happy ever since.

Presenter24:16

More of your happiness in a moment, but for now tell me about your next piece of music.

Peter Carey24:22

Ah, well, I've listened to Idiot Wind by Bob Dylan forever. I went through at a certain time what became an incredibly public divorce, which was very painful. Divorces are just hell for everybody. And then for them to become public and people sticking their noses in your business is unendurable. And so at that particular time, and you know, and there's a lot of rage and unhappiness and so on. At that particular time, I got enormous comfort out of Dylan's Idiot Wind because I suddenly understood what he was writing about. Yeah, it begins. Someone's got it in for me. They're planting stories in the press. I wish they'd cut it out, but whether or not they will, I can only guess. They say I shot a man called Gray and took his wife to Italy. When she died, I inherited a million bucks. I can't help it, if I'm lucky. This mad, raging song was a source of great comfort to me.

Speaker 425:19

Someone's got it in for me, they're pledging stories and their prayers.

Speaker 425:28

Whoever it is, I wish they cut it out quick, but when they will, I can only guess.

Speaker 425:37

They say I shot a man named Gray, And took his wife to Italy. She inherited a billion bucks, And when she died, it came to me.

Presenter25:49

Bob Dylan and Idiot Wind and memories there, Peter Kerryov. Have you s as you say, you're uncomfortably public and acrimonious divorce. But you have now found a new partner, the British publisher. You've been with her for five years. Frances Cody, you live in New York. Is it a is it going to be a permanent home for you?

Peter Carey26:06

Well, it's permanent for us, and I think what we we both think as far as we can see we're there. But we're also old enough and have done enough things to know that we could end up somewhere else. We don't know where that is. We're very, very happy living there.

Presenter26:21

And living in the city that is, of course, full of people who are not from the city. Indeed, much like London, you know, it is it is a city chocked full of immigrants, and of course that gives New York its unique, slightly raw, optimistic character. Does that suit you?

Peter Carey26:25

It's like London, you know, it is

Peter Carey26:29

Of course.

Peter Carey26:34

Does that

Peter Carey26:35

Oh, it suits me a lot. And the notion that so many people that one meets and talks to have another home in their heart, too. And we share that. And to talk about it and discuss it with all sorts of people about where they come from, what they feel about it, when they go back, all of those things join us. The fact that we've got a second home and our heart is in another place as well. That's who we are.

Presenter27:00

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Peter Carey27:02

Both my sons enrich my life in all sorts of ways. And this is one from the that is a gift from the youngest one, Charlie. And he's a very serious young man, and he certainly, you know, we think children are not political, but he's very, very political and very, very concerned about the future. And I think he would declare himself to be an anarchist of a particular sort. So he listens to a lot of music that's very political. We have punk music that's very political. And I'm not here to pass any critical judgments at all on this. But Charlie played this for me, and it just makes me smile and laugh and be happy in a way. And I think one of the underlying things of it is probably.

Peter Carey27:44

is that you're listening to this guy singing in this very particular way, and he ha he does have a relationship with his father, you see. And and and I think it's the relationship with the father that r I not only laugh because of the song, but I'm touched also by the relationship with the father.

Peter Carey28:03

And it's called Of Cowboys, Pirates and Lawyers.

Speaker 328:09

Well I wish I was a cowboy. I'd ride out on the range. I'd wander round the country, free from all constraint. Told my old band my plans, but my popsy disagreed. My father says he's gonna make another lawyer out of me.

Presenter28:28

Go around.

Presenter28:39

Tom Frampton of cowboys, pirates, and lawyers. Um we're going to cast you away, then, on this desert island of ours, Peter. You don't strike me as

Speaker 428:40

Yes, you've got to laugh.

Presenter28:49

Not a particularly sentimental person. Do you think you would cope on your own?

Peter Carey28:55

Oh, I'd probably go mad in a minute. I have no one to talk to. I don't know.

Peter Carey28:59

Uh I think solitude'd be v I am not suited to solitude. Really? So uh

Presenter29:03

Really?

Presenter29:04

I mean, you've written a lot of characters that are pitted against you know, the forces of nature that have to deal with very extreme conditions, so presumably you must have thought your way into what it's like to live like that.

Peter Carey29:06

Is that how

Peter Carey29:11

Condition

Peter Carey29:15

Oh yes, what is uh what is the logic of the situation? What do you have to do? I mean, I'm the one of the thing I'm just working on right now. I had to think about these characters on Dartmoor in seventeen ninety eight with with nothing and how they were going to survive and eat and how very, very difficult that was going to be.

Presenter29:33

Could you survive, do you think? I mean, I mean this seriously, on your own. Do you think you could hack it?

Peter Carey29:38

Well, I think I would have to, yes. I mean, I think that's you know, I wouldn't uh it isn't something that I would choose. It would be a sort of but I think it is my nature to find a way through and uh and and to survive. So, yes, I think I would.

Presenter29:53

You said looking at your list when we were chatting before we sat down that you said this is a list with a lot of humor, rage and religion. We're going to hear a little more of the religion shortly, actually. But th those three things, do you think that's what would see you through?

Speaker 430:04

Yeah.

Peter Carey30:04

She but

Peter Carey30:08

I don't know whether rage is very is a very useful tool uh on a desert island, frankly. I think pretty very, very destructive. It can be quite quite useful to energize you through modern ur urban environment, uh, but uh not at all useful on a desert island. Uh the religion is useless to me because I've pretty much given given all of that up and uh well I guess I would just have to uh I would be doing a lot of laughing, I guess.

Presenter30:39

Tell me then, before we leave you on this island, about your final choice.

Peter Carey30:44

Well, when I I was just thinking about about the Tom Frampton song and how certain songs are gifts.

Peter Carey30:50

Charlie really g gave this gift to Francis and I, you know, and and we share it continually. He often plays it to us and we all laugh and and that's a very serious, substantial gift. Well, Frances also gave me a gift. When we first met, she played me a track of Gavin Bryars, English composer, Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet. I mean it's an old, lonely, I guess lonely, solitary man, homeless, and he's he's singing this song. And Gavin Bryars gets this song and brings layers and layers of an orchestra to accompany this man. And it is so moving that the person who's sort of lost and solitary should be joined and celebrated by this art. And so it's like he builds a sort of a cathedral around this man. And it goes right back to what I wanted to do at the very, very beginning of my writing life when I read Faulkner. And it is the thing of giving voice to the voiceless. It's making art from the dispossessed and the person who you think has no art and nothing much to celebrate. It's a monumental work and very, very moving.

Speaker 432:16

Never found me just

Speaker 432:23

They're about

Speaker 432:27

His garden face on the road for a die.

Presenter32:36

Gavin Bryars and an unnamed homeless man with Jesus' blood never failed me yet. And so I will give you, Peter, the Bible, the complete works of Shakspeare, and you're allowed to take one other book. What's it going to be?

Peter Carey32:49

I just changed my mind.

Presenter32:50

Okay.

Peter Carey32:51

Austerlitz by W. G. Siebel

Presenter32:54

Why?

Peter Carey32:54

Because it is so extraordinarily beautiful, complicated that one reads and reads. I've read it three times, and I'm still finding

Peter Carey33:03

fundamental structural things about it. I'm understanding it better every time I read it, and there's still more to understand. I think it I think it's a you know, you can read it fifty times, I'm sure, and not and be finding more things.

Presenter33:16

And you may also have a luxury to make life a little more bearable.

Peter Carey33:22

I don't know, I've always I've always been rather taken there's an uh the Australian children's story called The Magic Pudding, and it's r written during the Depression. There's a character called The Magic Pudding and and and it's uh steak and kidney uh w and if you turn around twice it becomes plumbed off and and never runs out.

Presenter33:37

I'll give you a magic pudding then. And um if you had to choose just one of these records, which one would you choose?

Peter Carey33:44

Well, if I can have the entire Messiah.

Peter Carey33:48

I'd take that.

Presenter33:50

That's what you may have. Thank you. Peter Kerry, thank you very much for letting us use your Desert Island discs.

Presenter34:03

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.