That Eye, The Sky: In Conversation with Tim Winton
The iconic Australian author talks to us about what inspired his best-selling novel all those years ago.
That Eye, The Sky feels like one of your most personal and autobiographical works. Can you talk to us about what inspired it?
I wrote it so long ago … I don’t even know how necessarily autobiographical it is. But I think the most personal element of the story is the child’s realisation that his parents aren’t perfect. That his parents are fragile, that’s a pretty fundamental moment in any child’s life. And some of us only begin to understand that as adults … that our parents are flawed, or fragile or vulnerable in ways that we’ve not understood before.
You get to my age and your parents become physically frail … but a lot of young people, especially children, realise that their parents are psychologically frail or just … flaky, you know? And can undermine your world a bit if you’re young. You have this idea as a kid that your parents will always be there because they’re strong, they’re robust, they’re dependable and reliable. Ort just has that dragged out from under him the moment his father’s hurt. And he somehow has to negotiate that uncertainty the best he can … and watching his mother do the same. You know, one piece of the family falls down and the whole structure begins to crumble.
Fran Lebowitz once said “Randomness scares people. Religion explains randomness,” which seems to relate really well to That Eye, The Sky and the ideas surrounding faith and belief that are central to the text. How do you see faith and belief in Australia? How is that explored throughout That Eye, The Sky?
It’s an enduring question … and it’s an enduringly awkward question in Australia because we’re historically not the most religious culture.
Modern Australia isn’t at least.
I think we’re quite irreligious and I can’t tell if that’s due to the complexities of our convict origins or if it’s due to the fact that we’re one of those rare cultures that was born after the industrial revolution. Modernity came along quite fast and we didn’t have too long to create our own traditions, of course this has all concreted over the oldest tradition in history that are still alive all over Australia through our First Nations people. It’s complex
But in terms of Ort, he –like a lot of people- has an instinctive capacity for what some people might call ‘mysticism’, which is an academic sounding word for a capacity for receptivity for what the world’s doing, and saying and sounding and singing. He doesn’t have a codified language for it, he’s too young for that … too impatient anyway. But there is that impulse to find meaning, to feel it. And, really, it comes down to the fact that Ort is convinced that the world is alive and he just happens to be part of a culture that sees the natural world as dead matter.
The story is that we see humans in the foreground and the natural world as the wallpaper, as the backdrop to us. That’s how we’ve relegated the natural world. Ort, perhaps because of his character and because all the certainties of his family life have been stripped away, sees the world as foreground. Somehow he doesn’t have the luxury anymore of having that backdrop … the world is alive and it speaks to him. The natural world feels and reaches for him now.
And look, I think there are a lot of cultures where people have always felt that but as modernity has come along, we’ve given up being able to read the world in that way.
The instinct to reach for something bigger, to feel like you’re a part of something bigger … whether that’s just recognising that we’re all just stardust. It’s interesting … we’re just random aggregations of ancient carbon from dead stars and when we peg it, we just go back to that. And some people find that quite horrifying and deadening and meaningless, while others of us find it holy.
Why do you think people have connected with That Eye, The Sky?
I wrote it at a time when the baby-boomers were in the ascendant and there was a hostility to any talk of faith or family … family was really on the nose. I expected the book to get a kicking … but it touched a nerve that surprised all of us, especially me. I didn’t expect Richard Roxburgh and Justin Monjo to adapt it for theatre. I didn’t expect the novel to get that kind of warm reception. But I’m looking forward to seeing it hit the stage again.
That Eye, The Sky opens at The Dunstan Playhouse on August 24. Tickets are available here.
