Science Write Now
The Science Write Now (SWN) Podcast is a podcast for people who love science and the arts. If you’re interested in learning more about great books, plays, and films; writing, research or editing; the lives of scientists; and creative insights into contemporary science; then you’ve come to the right place! The SWN Podcast is hosted and produced by the SWN editorial team with funding from the Australia Council for the Arts. www.sciencewritenow.com
Science Write Now
Spinal Tap... but make it Joycean with G. S. Dickson
In this episode, Krystle chats with G. S. Dickson about his debut novel A Minor Fifth, a satire about the death of fictional Australian rock icon, Billy Ordain, recounted, albeit unreliably, by five people who knew him. Krystle and Gareth wax lyrical (and theoretical) about character voice, the influence of Ulysses on the novel’s structure, and the cultural tendency for posthumous mythicism. Inevitably, Proust and The Beatles are mentioned.
About G. S. Dickson:
G. S. Dickson is an Australian author whose work has been published and anthologised in both Australia and the UK. A Minor Fifth, an early draft of which was shortlisted for the prestigious Vogel Literary Award in 2022, is his first novel, and has been described as an ‘incredibly innovative’ work that ‘takes a lot of risks’ (Rohan Wilson, author of 2011 Vogel award-winning The Roving Party).
Find A Minor Fifth:
Find G. S. Dickson:
Hunters Publishers
About Krystle Marie:
Krystle Marie is a mixed, neurodivergent sort-of writer based in Meanjin. She’s thrilled to have interned with SWN as a soon-to-be graduate of UQ’s Master of Writing, Editing and Publishing program. She's currently into Japanese-language immersion. She's always into noise-cancelling headphones.
The Science Write Now (SWN) Podcast is for people who love science and the arts. If you’re interested in learning more about great books, plays, and films; writing, research or editing; the lives of scientists; and creative insights into contemporary science; then you’ve come to the right place!
The SWN Podcast is hosted by Amanda Niehaus and Jessica White and produced by Taylor Mitchell with funding from the Australia Council for the Arts.
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We acknowledge the Jaegara and Turrbal People, Traditional Owners of the land on which this podcast is created, and the unceded cultural lands on which our guests live and continue to make and tell stories.
I recall this mate of mine is a concert pianist and and we did this quiz thing once with him and said,'Can you, like, alter a melody? And he did this thing that sounded bizarre and what he'd actually done was played the Nokia ringtone. Yeah, (mimics mobile ringtone).
Krystle Marie:(laughs)
G. S. Dickson:He transposed the notes to different octaves so that it was a sort of - but played it in time - and nobody could work out what this thing was that sounded familiar.'Yeah, I know what that is!' But it was absolutely unrecognizable-
Krystle Marie:- weirdly uncanny-
G. S. Dickson:...yeah. I r ecognise at some point your mind- the mind that understands that music on that kind of level - can, can listen to the 'R2D2 band' and, and be like, 'Yeah', but I'm not there.
Krystle Marie:No. That's okay. Yeah, that's fine. We can stick with The Beatles for now. That's fine. I understand that -
G. S. Dickson:- I will never grow tired of The Beatles.
Krystle Marie:I'd first like to acknowledge the Jagera and Turrbal people as the Traditional Custodians of Meanjin, from where I record today, as well as the Yugambeh People, the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters of the Gold Coast, from where my guest G. S. Dickson joins me this afternoon. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land. G. S. Dickson is an Australian author whose work has been published and anthologised in both Australia and the UK. 'A Minor Fifth' is his first novel, the early draft of which was shortlisted for the prestigious Vogel Literary Award. Rohan Wilson, author of 'The Roving Party, which won the 2011 Vogel Award, describes 'A Minor Fifth' as 'funny, sad, moving, engaging' and 'incredibly innovative' - an 'incredible book' that 'takes a lot of risks'. So, on that note, welcome to Science Write Now... do I call you 'G. S.'? Or do I call you Gareth?
G. S. Dickson:I think, yeah, let's just go with Gareth. Yeah.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. Yep.
G. S. Dickson:(smiling) yes.
Krystle Marie:I don't want to start on a morbid note, but I can't help myself because it feels relevant. So recently, I had a friend of mine inform me that a mutual acquaintance of ours from a very long time ago, may have passed away. Vague details about it. But I couldn't help but notice, my impulse was to explain who this person was via my stories with him. And so it made me think about your book, in that the protagonist is sort of 'made flesh' by these people who knew him - whereas it's almost as if he didn't get a say in reporting what actually happened, in terms of how he died. So I think it's quite interesting that you lead with the death. And the narrative actually follows from that fact.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah. I think, yeah, the leading with the death was, was, I think, something that was was going to be really important for the book, which is all about the absence of the, kind of, central figure and, and a kind of 'negative space' that's, that's, that the character has been 'sketched in' through, which is by all these people who knew him, and their differing perspectives, you know, kind of create this, this kind of fuzzy-edged figure, I think, which is analogous in some way to what death does when it occurs. You know, all we have are your memories and, you know, one's own stories, I suppose. And I've had similar experiences before - and since writing the book - to what you describe where you hear, secondhand, that someone you know, contemporary or not - not even necessarily that, but someone - has died and, and you'd lost touch, and it creates that, that, kind of, indeterminate hole. So I think that's what I was maybe trying to achieve with, with that kind of structure to the book of having a character who's only ever, only ever revealed through other people's words, as it were, who doesn't exist - which of course, on a kind of metafictional level, you know, he doesn't. He is only made up of these layered perspectives.
Krystle Marie:Yeah, I read that this was - I may be using the term incorrectly - it was 'the Rashomon Method'? The 'Rashomon Effect'? which was initially a film - like, a cinematic method? Was it Akira Kurosa-
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Kurosawa and in Anglo American cinema, 'Citizen Kane', famously, you know - you never see, you never get Kane's life through his own perspective of it. And I think that film was was particularly interesting for me in relation to this one in having that central figure be someone who, whose existence to them is very much about image and narrative, and the way they, they appear in the media and in the, sort of, popular imagination. So yeah, 'Citizen Kane' was, was definitely an inspiration for this. But I also tried to find another way of doing the same thing, which -or a complementary thing, I suppose- in layering also the possibilities of the narrative, and having a 'forking path' structure to it. So you know, the character dies in in each of these accounts, but with each account that death is moving backwards in time, while the cha- the narrators - are still staying in the same 'present day' or, well, '2015' moment, and looking back on this, sort of, gradually receding event. And that allowed for a lot of, a lot of different opportunities for me to play with things, especially the Rock 'n Roll legendarium, you know, the sort of rockstar 'burning out' in all these different ways and, and the ways that, that... that kind of gets, gets absorbed into the popular imagination, you know, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, or, you know, at the other end, Bowie in late middle age or, you know, that events to the public, you know, fans, the people who have followed them sort of resonating in different ways in different times of our lives as well. And the, those kinds of ripples were something I found really interesting to explore through through that device, you know, the different things that happened, and depending on how I'offed' the guy.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. I mean, that's such a funny idea, because I thought about how... I should probably explain just quickly that... So, Billy Ordain is dead, Australian rock legend, and he has these various accounts reported about how he died, and the kind of relationship each of these people had with Billy. And they're all very different - very different in 'voice' as well - which I thought was incredible. And that is something that I want to talk about. I think that's such an interesting idea that Billy couldn't come back and set the record straight. He can't correct the details of any of these accounts. And there's this kind of simmering injustice underneath all of that. What I was saying to John, your, your publisher, at the at the book launch, was that one of the things I loved most about 'A Minor Fifth' was that it actually surprised me - and that a book could still do that. That sounds very cynical. But when I started reading this, I thought it to be a very straight, you know, mythical satirical account of an Aussie rock legend. It completely switches up several times throughout the book, which is fantastic. So that makes for a challenging, yet very entertaining, read. I'm still trying to make sense of it. But I like that I'm still thinking about it. I'm still sort of connecting... I think it would be helpful to go through the different characters, give a bit of a an overview of who's involved, just so that people get a sense of how it is structured. So we've got Billy Ordain, who is the quintessential rock 'leading man'.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, sort of reflecting bits and pieces of different legends of rock from, from different times and places. It's, sort of, in a kind of Frankenstein way. Yeah. I'm so pleased that you're still piecing together things - that was an effect I really did want to to happen - so that's very gratifying (laughs)
Krystle Marie:I couldn't help but think of... when I was thinking of Billy Ordain, in my head because it is a very... It is quite a cinematic book because it is very vivid. And the characters are so... they really pop. I can't think of a more sophisticated way to say that. I was thinking someone like 'Angry Anderson', for some reason. Because, like, that is kind of... if I think of Australian rock music, I don't think we necessarily have maybe, like, conventionally suave, handsome... it's more like, sort of, 'no nonsense', Wife Beater-wearing... that's what I was thinking. So in my head, that's what I envisioned.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, I agree. I think we you know, we never kind of churned out that, sort of,'clean cut' kind of feel like the Americans did. They... I like to think of him as, as like a combination. Like, if you could take Cold Chisel, but then take Barnsy's singing and frontman, Mossy's guitar-playing, and Don Walker's songwriting, and put them all in one person. That's what I sort of imagined.
Krystle Marie:I did think - that was the only other person I thought of - was Jimmy Barnes, so... So, that's Billy Ordain. Violet. Violet worked with Billy- Leighton and Billy - I should say -
G. S. Dickson:yeah, yeah.
Krystle Marie:This was with... their TV show -
G. S. Dickson:Yeah.
Krystle Marie:- she was involved in production. I envisioned her as kind of... maybe this is showing my age a bit - and I don't know that many people will maybe recognise these references - but I was thinking 'Coronation Street' and'EastEnders'?
G. S. Dickson:Yeah. She's, yeah, a Londoner. And, and she's, she's in London, they're in London, and this - working in producing this - awful reality TV show that Billy and, is one judge on, and Leighton is, is the producer and, and other judge - and he's a, sort of, a'toff', and also, you know, thinks quite a lot of himself. Whereas, yeah, Violet, is this more, sort of, down-to-earth kind of character? Who's, who's the narrator of that first part.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. Down-to-earth but very flawed, I suppose. I thought - that was, sort of, the first instance I remember being surprised - when she kind of, you know, almost as if she's 'breaking the fourth wall'. And she goes, 'Okay, let me level with you. And I'll let you know what's really, what's really happening here. And I'm not really the kind of person...' And you, kind of, very literally play with this unreliable narrator, by - she herself is admitting that she is not to be trusted. So, that's a cool - that was a cool twist very early on.
G. S. Dickson:I mean, it's, it was kind of a... meant to be quite fun. And, sort of coming at the outset, also lets you know, something of what you're in for with the rest of the book and the structure - that maybe you don't want to, you don't want to trust any given reality for too long.
Krystle Marie:I mean, as you said, that's a good way to put it. It kind of sets you up for how to 'steel oneself' for the rest of the book. You know,'Don't get too comfortable, because this is my take.' So, next is Steve Murdoch -
G. S. Dickson:Yup.
Krystle Marie:- the drummer of Billy's band - I shouldn't call it 'Billy's band' (laughs) -
G. S. Dickson:(laughs) - he would object, yeah.
Krystle Marie:- yes, 'Hand of Fate' - aka 'Mongrel'
G. S. Dickson:Yep. Yep.
Krystle Marie:Again, I was thinking balding, quite heavy-set gentleman - very shiny and red for some reason - I don't know why.
G. S. Dickson:(laughing) - sort of 'boiled ham' effect.
Krystle Marie:Yeah! Drummers are very - I have a couple of drummer friends - and drummers have more of a say in the band than I think a lot of people give them credit for. But they're still so classically overlooked. So I feel like maybe that... I do think that that plays out a bit in Steve's recount. You can tell that he's a little bit unsure of himself. He's somewhat aware of his fading into obscurity and that'colours' his, his retelling.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's it's funny about that aspect of drummers as a, as a'general rule'. Yeah, I guess that was what's in the back of my mind for one reason - that the drummer is the 'overlooked member', like the 'Ringo' kind of figure, but you know, I always felt like in, you know... Ringo Starr -is just a classic drummer that doesn't do much more than hold down the beat, straightforward, does what he is there to do. But such a, sort of, important figure, nonetheless. Like, I don't know if you saw that - I'm guessing that you did the same thing as me and watched 'Let It Be' from beginning to end, the Peter Jackson...
Krystle Marie:I haven't watched it yet! Which is criminal.
G. S. Dickson:Oh, Krystle.
Krystle Marie:It's usually - what happens is, when it's something like that, I have to give it my full attention - because any less than that is'disrespectful'. So, it's that I want to ensure that I can give it my full, undivided attention. And I can really relish it. And...
G. S. Dickson:Can you just book that room for, like, nine hours now? And we'll just, beginning to end and -
Krystle Marie:(laughing) I should get a - I should try and find a way to put it on a projector or something. And then... Let's have a viewing party!
G. S. Dickson:Yeah! Yeah, maybe do it twice, like, 18 hours. You need that to really soak it out.
Krystle Marie:Sure. Bunker down-
G. S. Dickson:Yeah.
Krystle Marie:- and just... bunker down and 'Beatle out'.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, no - I was just, I was thinking about that- there's this moment in that documentary, where Paul McCartney, like, comes up with the 'Get Back' riff in real time.
Krystle Marie:Yeah.
G. S. Dickson:And he sort of able to do it, because he's got Ringo there, sort of, interacting with him in this, sort of, moment where it's like Paul's song, but the, sort of, spark of inspiration is collaborative with Ringo. So yeah, I mean, there was - I thought it was kind of a cool thing about drummers that they're, on the one hand, so easily and often overlooked, and on the other, so integral to the whole thing.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. They're kind of, like, pulling strings behind the scenes. They're almost like - they are kind of the 'glue', but people don't really think of it that way. Maybe I'm biased, because I'm defensive of my musician friends, but, totally agree. I've got Martin Ordain...
G. S. Dickson:Yep.
Krystle Marie:Billy's son. I was getting 'Hamlet' vibes from him.
G. S. Dickson:(laughing) Yeah, complicated father-son relationship. Yeah.
Krystle Marie:He's a 'tortured intellectual'.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah.
Krystle Marie:I should, I should explain that each of these, each of these accounts is told very much in the voice of that particular character. And that was tremendous. Martin's, for instance, it's very... it's a very dense chapter in the book, because it's almost as if he is 'allergic' to speaking simply - his use of language and emotional reflection is almost masturbatory - but that's just what made it so enjoyable. Particularly... (laughs) I couldn't help but resonate with Martin a little bit? Just, sort of, at one point in my life, as a youth, feeling like this tortured intellectual that no one understands. And yeah, you know, Martin, still - he's still very much wallowing in that.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, atrophied at that, sort of, 14, 15-year-old, emotional state, but kept ageing physically, but never quite developed out of that.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. Again, I thought, it's almost as if Martin, in a way, in his own way, experienced the same tragic alienation that his father did, socially, but just, sort of, in a different sense. I mean, like, Billy, you know, when you're that famous, people have an'idea' of you. And people tell their own stories about who you are, and what you mean to them. That, in and of itself, is quite alienating, because you don't know if people are really engaging with you. You know, so there's a disconnect there, which meant that Billy, from the outset, probably experienced a lot of alienation, and disconnection. And then Martin, just being so... he's just, it's almost like he's not at the same'pace' as other people. Like, he's kind of like, he can't keep time - if, if we're going to use another music metaphor. It's kind of like everybody else is in on the rhythm, and he just can't quite clap in time. That's kind of how it struck me.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, yeah. He's always that... Yes, somehow out of step with the way of everyone, no matter what the circumstance, no matter which reality he's occupying, he still manages to never quite connect in that fostering sense. Yeah.
Krystle Marie:Did you draw inspiration from any particular characters or personalities?
G. S. Dickson:For Martin specifically?
Krystle Marie:Yeah, yeah.
G. S. Dickson:I, I mean, Joyce was a big influence throughout the book, but I guess Martin, in a way, is sort of the 'Stephen Dedalus' of it, you know, he's... but maybe, kind of, a very 'degraded' Stephen Dedalus, you know - he likes to imagine himself this tortured intellectual... his - I suppose I should say that this part is structured as these 'diary entries' that he's made over the years - or decades, in fact - and he's kept them all, and has this kind of compulsion to transcribe into his new entries the salient bits of the old ones. And so there's a lot of opportunity for irony in that, in that his progressively newer selves kind of undercut his current ones. And so you know, he'll say things like, 'Oh, well, wasn't I such an arrogant little twerp', and then go into this ridiculously long sentence, that's an even more pretentious thing.... just to make fun of... Yeah, he's kind of sort of anti-Stephen. Like, a'burlesque' Stephen Dedalus, in a lot of ways. And there were, you know, a lot of other people that I, sort of, drew on... He's a character that very much comes from the, you know, he's sort of so self conscious about the language that he uses, that he reflects, in a way, those those people who have similarly that deliberate or, you know, stylistic... Important stylists, I think, we're quite important to him. Martin Amis, in the way he sort of, kind of drops registers suddenly, and, and maybe even in, in something of the character, I guess... Perhaps by osmosis, looking to him for for style - or something of that cynicism of his - one of the many things I love about - loved, I should say - about him.
Krystle Marie:I do dwell on Martin, just because the fact that he was journaling so obsessively... It was like he was adamant on recording something in his 'own' voice, which I thought, I read at least, is kind of an interesting contrast to Billy's ultimate fate - that we can't really have ever known Billy, and what happened to him, and who he was- because we only know that through what other people have reported.
G. S. Dickson:Hmm, yeah. I, I think that's, yeah, really interesting. It's... Here he is so painfully self conscious, and so, so extraordinarily introspective, it becomes sort of a hyperbole for that impulse to record yourself to express what one sees, what one has experienced, to try and transcribe one's subjectivity so totally - which, in one way, is a kind of 'myth' of, of the novel, yo u know - that, that kind of 'Proustian' impulse - who was definitely another kind of figure I had in mind as in Martin, and the construction of it - you know, that kind of... Well, the remembrance of things past, as it were. So, the kind of impossibility of that task is, I think, something that Martin can't recognise. And he's, sort of, driven to keep trying to achieve, but by the same token - is that any more'whole' of a human being contained in papers in, any more so than if it were possible to, kind of, eavesdrop in on someone's consciousness - which is the mode of the next part of the book. Or, is that any more trustworthy than, than Steve's possibly hallucinated stories of'doo wop demons' in the desert? Or, or Violet kind of 'ripping the rug out' from under you, narratively, in the first part. So, yeah. Yeah, I think, kind of collectively, they create a contrast. There's all these kinds of modes of narration and modes of expression that speakers of it can't express themselves fully. And yet, here we have this other character who becomes the centre of the book - though he's never heard from himself. Perhaps, you know, he's the one that we've seen - from all these angles, and through all these different possibilities of his life, collectively that - maybe the, the most 'complete', kind of, character that you can be.
Krystle Marie:Yeah, that's an interesting point. You know, the other thing that I felt about Billy was that - I think something that is really easy to do when someone dies, at least initially, is to kind of, is kind of 'glorify' them a little bit, you know, that's protocol - is that you always, you remember someone in the most positive light, and it's almost as if you completely forget some of the, the nasty things that they've said and done. And the way that Billy is painted in the novel is that you can't determine whether he is an 'all good' or 'all bad' person based on what these people have shared, you know, which is actually very realistic because it just, you know, you can be a loving (bleep), there are a lot of them, and... I might have to 'bleep' that(laughs)
G. S. Dickson:(laughs) could you not make it the name of the podcast? 'The Loving (bleep)'
Krystle Marie:(laughing) just, just a heap of asterisks. You know, that's so realistic, in that people are so three-dimensional, but initially, our reaction is to kind of go, 'Oh, they were so generous. Oh, they're so talented.' And then a little further down the line, we actually think, 'Do you remember when he did that?'
G. S. Dickson:I think that's true that... It's true on a personal level, I think it's also true on a kind of social level - somebody who's a celebrity of whatever description, there's a, that same kind of process happens, where that, there's that sort of period of celebration and reverence. And then the reassessment sort of comes somewhat later. I think it's a bit of a cycle too. Like, they, then there's a period of sort of fallow post-reassessment. And then there's the renaissance that gets discovered, you know, 50 years after they've died or whatever.
Krystle Marie:Yeah, that's, kind of, devoid of all of that personal significance. And it just becomes more about what that person's output was.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah. And, kind of, the bits that have, have survived in, in popular imagination and memory, and the highlights or the infamous episodes that, you know, stand as anecdotes or something. Happens on a, on a grand scale and a small scale.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. Well, just to bring it back to, you know, there's Martin's chapter which is quite verbose and dense and... and then, you switch to something very different with Lydia's recount - well, if you could call it that. Lydia was Billy's wife, ex-wife, who struck me as, you know, a very poetic soul, ex-model... probably not quite appreciated due to her beauty, and gave her this very persistent anxiety, I think. That was a real surprise, because it's very... I don't know if the term for it is'stream of consciousness'?
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. That sort of stream of consciousness interior monologue kind of thing is what's happening in that one.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. Was this the... the Joycean influence?
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, for sure. Yeah, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner - big fan of, kind of, modernist writing and literature. So yeah, I love stream of consciousness writing, sort of, old and new. Will Self, I think, does it really well at the moment. Yeah, it was, in one way something I really wanted to work in as a, as a literary medium. But it also provided yet another way of expressing a character that, that, sort of, contributed to that, that kind of study in contrasts that, uh...
Krystle Marie:And was that very deliberately Lydias...? That was deliberately for Lydia?
G. S. Dickson:Yeah. I mean, I think the reason it was, was her, as opposed to to anyone else was... partially the temporal structure that, that's happening in the book meant that in the previous sections - Violet, Steve's and Martin's - when all of the those three characters are, sort of, speaking in or narrating from their 'own' 2015, in which Billy's died, in sort of, you know, 2015, 2005, I think, and in the 90s. And this time, when he's, he's died in the 80s, Lydia is narrating it, but in all those other ones, she, in fact, died in the 80s. And so she'd been this, sort of, other'absence', that had, had been kind of haunting the book, as it were. You know, she's Martin's mother, Steve's kind of always cherished this, sort of, hopeless flame for her. I think Violet at one point, says, you know, something about his'perfect dead wife' or... and so she's sort of being absorbed into the popular consciousness similarly to Billy, when the change sort of occurs, and now she's, she's alive and speaking her own story and own perspective on both her life and Billy's life. You know, I thought that the stream of consciousness was, was really appropriate to that kind of'rebirth' in the narrative and to kind of, to render her presence more, as undeniably as it's possible to do, you know. Stream of consciousness kind of puts the character's mind smack at the, at the front and the processes of mind and recollection, all those sorts of things. And so it sort of emphasises her in terms of the immediacy of the narration, I think. So, that was kind of the reasoning for why she gets that treatment.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. And I did notice my inclination, potentially due to that, that method, to sort of want for hers to be the most 'true' account of Billy, I suppose? And then, then noticed, you know, that's also a trick maybe? Because it's not as if we ever stop creating these narratives, even when we're speaking to ourselves. So...
G. S. Dickson:I'm glad that that sort of struck you at that point. That yeah, definitely was something I was sort of hoping to, to ask, you know - or to still be wondering if people would still be wondering by that point in the book - like, is there, is one of these going to be true? Or whether you'd start saying, 'Well, hang on. I'm reading fiction. None of it's true.' Yeah.
Krystle Marie:And it was a good contrast between Martin and Lydia, because Martin, as you said, is so conscious of his language. And, by extension, conscious of what he's recording, you know, physically writing down. Whereas Lydia's account comes entirely, we assume, from her, from her own mind.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah.
Krystle Marie:So...
G. S. Dickson:Mmm, yeah, totally unfiltered. She can't - and unstructured - she can't steer where her mind's gonna take her. And yeah, she, she's waking up in a in hospital after an accident. And so her consciousness is, sort of, fragmented and she's drifting in and out of different levels of pain and pain medication, and, sort of, just disorientation and... And so that provided a great means of letting me dip into the deep past, and, as well as, for what to buy them become quite a long period between Billy being alive and the sort of period since, so yeah... it was it's quite a supple medium, I think.
Krystle Marie:And then next, we've got Janet, who is Billy's'girl on the side', and who I thought perhaps most... well, most consciously tried to convince us of her ownership of the authenticity over Billy's... the 'true Billy' - how it really happened. Yeah, almost using her position as, what I perceived as maybe 'working class' - not weaponizing, but kind of using that as like, 'Oh, well, I'll tell you what really happened.' Everybody probably has some underlying agenda in the way that they've described Billy and their relationships with Billy. So with Janet, because she, she sort of comes at the the end of the book - was that on purpose? Or did you already know where she might fit into the novel's structure?
G. S. Dickson:Oh, I definitely knew that, that was, the fifth part was going to be hers. I hadn't quite come to the full vision of what that part ended up being. But yeah, the last word was always kind of reserved for her. There was, was kind of a parallel, or meant to be a bit of symmetry to it, in that the first and last people were people who were somewhat tangentially connected to Billy, whereas the sort of central three, were the really close people in his life. So you know, for Janet, you know, it was significant. It was this sort of, in her mind, at least this great romance, that she's had 40 odd years since of, of her own life, where she's, sort of, built up this business of the, the bar that she, she runs. But at the same time, sort of dined out on the stories of the time for for all those years. So she's kind of conflicted in a way, that on the one hand - yes, she does have, kind of, want to project this authority, and at the same time, sort of objectivity - but by that very impulse she could, she's sort of trying to set herrself up as a kind of 'keeper of the stories' or keeper of this, the truth of this guy, which is, sort of, in that part, undermined by pretty much everything else that happens, you know. From this kind of radio interview that's overheard where Steve says the opposite of what she's just told someone the interview - she's trying to do this interview for a music magazine with this guy, and, and, and in this attempt to tell the story, is kind of beset by interruptions and obstacles, physical and social and, and literary - because it keeps drifting off into these vignettes of the patrons of the bar.
Krystle Marie:So disruptive.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, yeah. So as much as she's kind of interrupted, so the the parts is interrupted by these narrative gravities, I suppose that wanted to then give their own story of how Billy has or hasn't affected their lives.
Krystle Marie:Yeah, and I feel like, too, how fragmented that was, and then sort of how increasingly distracted it gets towards the end - the way that Billy is mentioned, towards the end more in terms of people'consuming' him, in a way, they're using, using his music, you know, in all of these very sort of inconsequential moments- but I felt like, at least how I read it, was this coming to terms with Billy dissolving into time, dissolving into memory?
G. S. Dickson:Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You know, in all the ways that, that happens - which I think is probably a, you know, in a way, that, that sort of figure of the rock star has been- it's something that the book looks at a lot. And when it sort of comes to that moment, it's about, yeah, the, the way, it's... it's that what's left of the, the artists, you know, the performer is... what's left behind gets broken up and diffused, and, and used, consumed - and, you know, for purposes, good and bad, you know, or, you know, some more venal than others. There's people who have memories that come from, from listening to music, you know, connections that it reminds them of, there's people who who respond to the message of the ad that it's playing underneath. Yeah, it's sort of spreads out, I guess, in a kind of ripple through time.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. I was so impressed by how you articulated these characters so clearly, because they're all so diverse. And I just, I'm curious as to how you went about curating these voices. So... so clearly, so vividly.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, I mean, I think partly, the contrast element helps to do that, when they're side by side - a stream of consciousness, as to a series of journal entries, as to a character narrating the world as they see it - or perhaps as they didn't, like the early ones. Also, I think, developing characters through language, through idiolect, I think is, is something I'm really interested in. I'm interested in, you know, how we both construct and come to understand ourselves through the language that we use. The way the words and idioms that we, we select, tell, tell other people something about us and maybe reaffirm things about us. I'm also interested in the way language can kind of undercut us? Irony is a very big part of this book, obviously, the dramatic irony in that we kind of know what's what's going to keep happening, as we go through the book is... comes into play a lot. But it also comes into play in the way that the characters reveal deeper truths about themselves, sort of unconsciously, and in spite of their, their words - which I think is interesting. And I think it's something we, I think we all do, but the different ways we do it, I think, tend to be quite suggestive of something about ourselves, particularly in psychologies...
Krystle Marie:Yeah. Something that I raised to Grace Chan in the podcast before this one - we touched on the value of authenticity, the fact that humans seem to, at least, proclaim that we value authenticity - and that doesn't necessarily reflect always in our, our choices and our action. But I think, you know, similar could be said for the way that these people are telling their version of things, is that there is kind of this underlying insistence that 'I'm an authentic person, and this is the authentic version.' And, you know, as you said, how can you be sure if any of these - if any one of them are - the, the true version of events? And that's a fascinating, that's a fascinating thought.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it goes to the maybe the nature of writing fiction itself. You... when, when someone puts, you know, 'this is a true story' on something, you know, people go,'Oh, it's a true story!' And I'm sure that, you know, more than half the time it, there's nothing, in no way, reflects any reality that actually transpired. But, but I think there's different kinds of authenticity. You know, there's what may have occurred, that there's also people's perspectives of what they thought occurred. And there's no kind of sense in which that objective reality is in any way accessible except through subjectivity. You know, that, that's kind of interesting in itself. But, but I think in terms of fiction, there's another level of remove there, and that we're making this stuff up. That there is no underlying truth to, to this book any more than, than there is to 'Great Expectations' or 'The Hobbit', you know, it's - and yet neither of those books, I think, could be described as 'inauthentic'. Writing, or writing fiction, at least is, is kind of this process of mashing up reality and truth and reassembling it in different ways. And this sort of little light that we can, sort of, dangle of claims to truth, to verisimilitude, or, or whatever - I think we probably, more often than not, that - that's more of a tactic. Then, then any, you know, I'm sceptical of any claim that reality can be represented through, least of all writing words on a on a page, you know? Get a video camera, man! That's if you want to say 'this is reality, this is true', you know. I think that's, that's kind of what's interesting about it is that you still do try to represent something that feels truthful, that in some way, reflective of reality and experience but, but in this highly artificial, extremely old-fashioned means, you know, the, the one that that's been bettered so many times as a reflector of reality - but that's, that's what's good about it. That's what's interesting about it, I think, is the way it insists on, or forces you to, to depict reality in... through different lenses, through different filters. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's constructed of language, which is also the way we have to express ourselves in our day to day lives. You know, there's a... it's at once so strange and so familiar, I guess.
Krystle Marie:Yeah... I was actually curious - who knows whether this will, sort of, make it into the final cut - but I was curious if you were listening to any music while you were writing this? Because it is a very, sort of, music centred book - or at least music culture.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah. Do you mean like, like, literally listening to music? While -
Krystle Marie:Yeah.
G. S. Dickson:I did have a kind of go at that with the Lydia parts, particularly, you know, that, that one was a, probably the most challenging to come at, you know, the consciousness that's, you know, being expressed in, in language, obviously, but also that it's a character who's certainly much further from me, then well, then Martin, who, you know, arguably, was the closest. So I was, was kind of putting a lot of jazz on, on the headphones. Like, while I was writing it, just as an experiment, I guess, considering the sort of analogue of improvisation having to come from this sort of stream together of consciousness, together with this effective of trying to get language to follow the, or create a simulacrum of consciousness. I don't know whether there's any truth in it or not, or whether it would have been the same either way, but um-
Krystle Marie:- it's an interesting experiment.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, yeah. It just felt like that sort of... listening to improvisation, like, sort of modern jazz Coltrane kind of stuff. Improvisation, I'm sure you know, from it isn't just expression, you know, it's it's, it's structured. It's based on principles and how they're applied. And I felt like maybe it's meant to feel like it or sold as if, you know, Coltrane's started on stage and just just tapped into his mind and those, which is not the case at all. And in a way, spending consciousness reading I thought, didn't was the same thing. It's like it's meant to create effective consciousness. His rambling on and to create it, maybe you do want to let your imagination imitating consciousness ramble on him in some ways. And, and so yeah, I thought like, jazz kind of was a good way to tap into that, that sort of way of thinking.
Krystle Marie:Yeah, definitely. You know, as you said, you know, as jazz, you're still... you still must have this strong knowledge of, of the the artform and the instrument before you can pass off, as completely out of the ether, this'improvisation' and, you know, the funny thing with the stream of consciousness writing is you still have to use words to articulate those thoughts. And then... something happens, then, between the thought occurring and applying language to it. So...
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I'd probably even go further and say, the stream of consciousness, sort of, using it as a technique, requires you to draw MORE upon understanding of narrative, and narrative structure, and, well, principles, you know - the kind of 'music theory' of writing - in a way that something, probably even like Violet, you're sort of excluding that, those kinds of metafictional excursions of hers, you know - that's quite a straightforward manner of, of imitating, uh, consciousness, narrating a story- you have to have a much clearer and more complex sort of framework in place to create the, the effect of a stream of consciousness... and have it go somewhere.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. Otherwise, it's just a cat walking on a piano.
G. S. Dickson:(laughing) exactly, yeah. Yeah. I've been to a few gigs like that.
Krystle Marie:(laughing) Okay. Well, I think to finish, I just want to plug your book, because you're not on Instagram, as far as I understand?
G. S. Dickson:I'm, yeah, absent from social media.
Krystle Marie:I admire that about you. I think that's, that's really cool. A lot of hipsters would be very jealous of you for, for that, but -
G. S. Dickson:I'm quite genuinely... it's not a wrench, I can -
Krystle Marie:It's not a ploy. You genuinely just don't want to be there.
G. S. Dickson:This is true. Yeah.
Krystle Marie:You know, as with most good books, if you can buy local, buy local. If your local bookstore doesn't have it, you can request 'A Minor Fifth'. Although, I think in Brisbane, you could pretty easily get your hands on a copy. You had - I'm struggling for the name now - the St Lucia bookshop that was selling from -
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, Books at -
Krystle Marie:- what was it, sorry?
G. S. Dickson:'Books at Stones' at Stones -
Krystle Marie:- at Stones. So, Books at Stones. They were were selling copies at your launch. So,on if you're in that area, if you're on that side of town, Stones Corner is just an interesting place to be, I think, so if you're on that side of town, go do some exploring and pick up the book. The usual haunts - Avid Reader. Riverbend. You were at Dymocks?
G. S. Dickson:Yeah.
Krystle Marie:QBD. Yeah. So, it's really out there.
G. S. Dickson:If you're if you're flying - good for a long-haul plane trip, I'm sure.
Krystle Marie:Yeah! I think this would be really cool to do as an audio book, actually. I've been listening to a lot of audio books lately. And some of them get a whole cast of actors in - I didn't realise that was a thing. But this would be really interesting to do as an audio book. If you could get different people to voice - I don't know how that works, and I don't know how much that costs, but something to consider. But yes,'A Minor Fifth'. G. S. Dickson. It's a FUN read. I have ADHD - so I don't say that lightly. It kept my attention. It will challenge you and it will make you laugh out loud, quite legitimately. So, thank you, Gareth, for chatting with me. Thank you for understanding my limitations in audio engineering. I'll hopefully see you in the flesh soon.
G. S. Dickson:Yeah.
Krystle Marie:Until then, enjoy London!
G. S. Dickson:Thanks. Yeah. Should be good. Yeah, yeah.
Krystle Marie:Safe travels.
G. S. Dickson:Thank you. Yeah. Oh, I've got the Writers Festival thing before...
Krystle Marie:Oh, that's right! Actually, I will say, Brisbane Writers Festival. So...
G. S. Dickson:Yeah, it's a session on the, on the Friday, called 'Pitch Perfect'. Yeah, Noel Mengel will be chairing the panel, which will be cool.
Krystle Marie:Excellent. Yeah - such a good book!
G. S. Dickson:Oh cheers, thank you.
Krystle Marie:Yeah. I'm not just saying that, really. It made me properly laugh.
