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BIO
Matthew
Kneale lives in Oxford, England. ENGLISH PASSENGERS is his American
debut.
PAST INTERVIEW
March 24, 2000
Bookreporter.com Writer Ann Bruns had a chance to delve into the mind of historical novelist Matthew Kneale, author of ENGLISH PASSENGERS. A riveting tale filled with many vivid characters, ENGLISH PASSENGERS makes for a fascinating historical and literary lesson. Find out about his Tasmanian research, his love of serious yet humorous writers, a vague preview of his next novel, and much more.
BRC: ENGLISH PASSENGERS presents two fascinating storylines --- the colonization of Tasmania and the expedition to Tasmania aboard the Sincerity 30 years later. Did you begin writing your novel with the intention of alternating between two individual stories, eventually bringing the characters of each together? Or were these two completely separate story ideas that you ultimately merged into one book?
MK: From the very start there were two elements I wanted to include. Firstly the horror of what the British did to the aboriginals in Tasmania. Secondly how, adding insult to injury, they began stealing their skulls, regarding these as supposed "evidence" for the new and sinister racial theories that began to appear from 1850. So I ended up with two strands of story. Peevay, the Tasmanian aboriginal, recounting the struggle of his people to survive the British invasion. And, a generation later, an English expedition to study Tasmania, including a nasty racial theorist. I also wanted something unexpected to add to the equation, so the expedition became a religious one, led by an ambitious vicar determined to find the Garden of Eden in Tasmania. And the ship they charter has its own complications. Their original vessel has been confiscated for use by the military to take supplies to India as the Indian Mutiny has just broken out, and the only vessel the English Passengers are able to find is --- unknown to themselves --- a smuggling vessel crewed by secretive Celts from the Isle of Man: another angle on empire.
BRC: The staging for your novel encompasses some in-depth exploration into a variety of fields including world history, geology, theology, sociology and nautical history. Can you tell us something of your background? Were your previous books historical fiction as well?
MK: Ever since I can remember I've loved history, and that was my subject at Oxford University. My last novel was also set in the mid-nineteenth century, though in London. My other passion is travel, and I've journeyed in more than eighty countries. Among these is New Guinea, where I met people only lately emerged from the Stone Age. My surprise was not how different they seemed, but how familiar, and in some way I think this got me started on the aboriginals of Tasmania (who, I have since read, may have been close relatives of the Papuans).
BRC: What all was involved in researching such a complex novel? Was this a project that evolved over a long period of time?
MK: I ended up researching for about a year and a half, though that was never my intention. I spent a while in Tasmania and the Isle of Man, reading and walking in the mountains, which I love doing. After that, there was the problem of working out how to transform all this information into a story, and that ended up taking as long the research.
BRC: "The sun never sets on the British Empire" is a familiar boast from the latter part of the 19th century, when European countries dominated the world through colonialism. With all the geographic locations to choose from, why Tasmania?
MK: I suppose it was because Tasmania was an example of all that was worst about the empire. The convict system was horrific in every way. Most of all, Tasmania was the only place where the British invasion caused the destruction of an entire culture, a whole people (though a new culture survived: the descendants of aboriginals and white seal hunters).
BRC: While this is a work of fiction, you acknowledge that many of the characters are based on actual individuals, and many events actually took place. Is most of the recorded history of Tasmania from English sources, or were you able to find quite a bit of material gathered from the aboriginal perspective too?
MK: The invasion of Tasmania was so rapid --- largely over within thirty years --- that, sadly, it was all but impossible for aboriginals to develop their own written history, so everything comes from English sources. But some of these are very revealing, notably a man called George Augustus Robinson (on whom I based my character Robson) who trekked through the whole wilderness of Tasmania --- a feat never repeated since --- just in the company of aboriginals, as he tried to make contact with those in the bush, and end the struggle between them and the whites. Robinson was a complex character, part savior and part monster, and his views of the aboriginals vary from the sympathetic to patronizing, but he kept thousands of pages of notes, all written at the time, and these are an invaluable --- if flawed --- source of information on this vanished culture.
BRC: One of the intriguing aspects of ENGLISH PASSENGERS was the variety of dialects and the numerous voices employed to narrate the story. How did you go about acquainting yourself with the nearly extinct Anglo-Manx dialect? (By the way, thanks for including a glossary of terms)
MK: The Isle of Man may be a small island in the Irish sea but it is a place of great record-keeping. When I was there I came across a marvelous book called, VOCABULARY OF THE ANGLO-MANX DIALECT. One of the things I wanted to do with this book was look at the astonishingly different ways English can be used, a variety that in itself shows the limitations of any kind of monolithic empire: before you know it people are inventing their version of the language imposed upon them, and making it their own. During the 19th century the Manx began to abandon using their own Gaelic language, and spoke English instead, but it was a strange rich English, peppered with Gaelic phrases and ideas, and even grammar, so Manxmen would not say "he has a new house" but "there's a new house at him."
BRC: The Reverend Wilson's "Theory of Divine Refrigeration" to explain the discrepancy between the scientific and biblical versions of Earth's age was hilarious. Was this really a serious proposal by some theologian of that era?
MK: I did manage to track down a religious pamphlet of the 1850s called "A Proof Against the Atheism's of Geology" though I suspect I added the theory of divine refrigeration. Likewise it had no mention of the Garden of Eden being in Tasmania, though there were all sorts of theories at that time as to where Eden might lie, from Arabia to the Seychelles Islands.
BRC: Another of the more humorous moments in ENGLISH PASSENGERS occurred when a wombat got loose in the interior of the ship. Was the secret hull designed for the Sincerity something that actually existed on contraband ships in those days?
MK: There's nothing so strange as truth. I came across an Irish smuggling vessel called the "Badajoz" which was built exactly in this way. It was stopped by the English customs who checked it laboriously and could find nothing. Nor did any of the crew give the game away. Eventually they took it into port and found, with great difficulty, that the ship had two hulls, and that hidden between them was a whole layer of brandy and tobacco.
BRC: There's a certain irony to the fact that many of England's colonies were settled by the undesirables of her society. Why wasn't Tasmania designated a penal colony like many of her neighboring islands?
MK: It was! And as bad as any of them.
BRC: The character of Dr.Thomas Potter is a reflection of the particularly vile attitude and behavior of the English toward the aborigines during this era. In your epilogue you state that the irrational belief that different races are actually different species is still having an impact today. Given the continuing ethnic battles that have been waged for generations in all parts of the world, is it feasible to think we'll ever eradicate prejudice?
MK: I do hope so. I'm an optimist, and I'm still hopeful that things can get better, and are getting better in many parts of the world. And science may prove a great helper. In biological terms we're a very recent species, and the more we know about our own genetic makeup the more it seems clear that the differences between us are, in genetic terms, all but immeasurable. We just have to catch up with our own knowledge.
BRC: Peevay, the featured character among the aborigine, is a tragic figure on so many levels: his rejection by his mother, his obsession to find his father, a childhood scarred by the colonial wars, the genocide of his people. Yet, he eventually finds hope in the discovery of a family of half-breed relations. But what is the ultimate message --- that a new generation will mold a peaceful existence? Or will avenge those generations that have gone before?
MK: Perhaps a bit of both. I couldn't devise a simple "happy ending" for Peevay --- though he certainly deserved one --- but I wanted to show that a new people had formed from the destruction of the aboriginals. As, in fact, is the case. There are presently some 6,000 descendants of Tasmanian aboriginals and white sealers. I didn't feel it was up to me to say how they should feel about their own past. I felt my job stopped when I had recounted how they had reached this point.
BRC: Despite the inherent evils, would you view colonialism as an integral and inevitable part of the era of exploration and the growth of civilization?
MK: I accept that empires have had some useful side-effects at times, though the idea of them remains loathsome to me. England has been colonized twice, by the Romans and the Normans, and is a much more interesting and culturally sophisticated place as a result, from French-style cathedrals to Latin words filling the language. But I think now we're grown-up enough to mix our cultures in better ways.
BRC: ENGLISH PASSENGERS isn't your first novel, but it is the first to be marketed in the United States. Will we be seeing more Matthew Kneale novels in American book stores?
MK: I hope so. I'll certainly be passing my previous novels to my editor, Nan Talese.
BRC: Do you have an idea already germinating for your next novel? Will it be historical fiction as well?
MK: I'm always a little superstitious about talking about a novel before it's safely written, but I can say that I hope to be working on something a little more recent. It's another world of crazy, Victorian-inspired ideas, which we have been suffering in our own time. An invented Marxist State.
BRC: Who are the writers who have inspired you along the way?
MK: I particularly value writers who can say something serious using humor. Among my favorites are Dickens, Ian McEwan, Evelyn Waugh, Timothy Mo, John Updike, VS Naipaul. It's always a little hard to say who I've been inspired by, but I guess more than any would be JG Farrell, who wrote three outstanding novels about the British Empire in the 1970s, all funny, unexpected and fiercely alive, as well as being very true to the periods they were set in. And perhaps Joseph Conrad and also CS Forrester --- who I read as a child --- gave me an interest in the sea.
BRC: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
MK: Just write. Don't worry about seeming clever. If you can find a subject that means something to you, and you can make it mean something to the rest of the world, you're made. But be sure enough happens.
BRC: What have you been reading recently?
MK: Ian McEwan's ENDURING LOVE, Hilary Mantel's A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY, Jim Crace's QUARANTINE. All excellent.
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