Talking balls
- Source: Global Times
- [20:48 March 06 2011]
- Comments
Book cover of Schindler's List.
By Jiang Yuxia
For veteran Australian writer Thomas Keneally, writing is like juggling: the more skillful you are at catching the "balls" ideas, plots and characters, the more successful you are at writing. At 75, Keneally is as agile a juggler as he was in his late 20s, turning out a book every 12 to 18 months just as he did before.
Since he first started writing, the passionate author of Schindler's Ark (later made into the Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List) has published a prodigious literary output of 43 books, including fiction, non-fiction, dramas and screenplays; he has also acted in a number of movies. However, it is as a novelist that he defines himself more than anything else, and writing is his "ticket into the world."
Gropig in the dark
When writing about history, "you have more knowledge about where the story is going. But you have got to feel out the story," said the articulate and airy writer, to whom I was told to act "bossy" during our 30-minute talk, in order to keep sure of the time. Keneally was in Beijing last week attending the Capital Literary Festival 2011 hosted by Capital M restaurant.
"When you come into a room, you wonder what's in there." Keneally then rose from his seat, turned off the lights and started groping for the things on a desk next to him.
"This is probably an office. Someone might be working here. Then I collide with them. When you start to write a novel, you've got shadowy people, you find out more about them and the light becomes brighter, the more work you do, " he said, explaining his overwhelming interest in storytelling.
Born in Sydney in 1935 and growing up in Kempsey, New South Wales, Keneally owes his gift in storytelling to his father, a beloved local storyteller.
With a Christian Brothers education, and after a six-year stint at a seminary, his first novel The Place at Whitton was published in 1964.
Over the following years, his writing career begun to take off, and by the time Steven Spielberg made Schindler's Ark into a film in 1993, he had become an internationally known author with a body of popular works. He also has a number of distinctions, including the Booker Prize for Schindler's Ark (1982), the Miles Franklin Award twice with Bring Larks and Heroes (1967) and Three Cheers for the Paraclete (1968).
Partly thanks to his faith-based education, Kenneally also has a strong sense of social justice and is a leading figure in the Australian Republican Movement.
