Hi Anna. The publisher blurb describes your new novel – hello, world? – as ‘a feminist paean to perversity in the tradition of Pauline Réage’s Story of O and Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus’. Does this chime with you? How do you describe hello, world? to friends (and especially those who may not be familiar with the other authors or literary traditions mentioned here?).
‘I usually describe the novel to friends in terms of the kind of experience I want my readers to have. I hope some people will get caught up in the story and want to keep reading.
‘I really wanted to write a page-turner. I sometimes joke that I wrote a novel that I hope some people will wank to, in the sense that I hope hello, world? will speak to some readers erotic imaginations.
‘As a reader, I often really value novels that invite me to experience momentary freedom from the internal voice that tells me what I can and can’t think or imagine.
‘I hope that for some readers, the novel takes them past some internal boundaries into new territory, even if at the end of the book the reader thinks “what those two people were doing was really weird”.’
What can you tell us about the novel’s major characters, Seasonal and László – what are their defining features and how would you categorise their relationship?
‘Seasonal and László are trying to understand the rise of fascism using their bodies and their erotic imaginations. They met on the internet and agree to a collaboration that will explore how power can be used and misused.
‘Each of them is on their own journey, and they travel in parallel, trying to help each other ask questions or say things that they’ve never been able to say before.
‘László is a bisexual man who left Hungary with his female partner and child as a right-wing government took hold. Seasonal is a heterosexual feminist trying to break free of the fear of men that she feels was embedded in her unconscious by her violent father and growing up in Australia, where gender based violence is normalised.’
What elements of human sexuality were you keenest to explore in the novel – and were there areas/ elements that took you by surprise while you were working on it and sort of insisted you explore them?
‘I have read a lot of contemporary psychoanalysis and queer theory that explores how troublesome sexual desire is for adult humans. It’s so disorganising, unsettling, inconvenient and ungovernable.
‘Desire upends lots of things: especially when we have to admit that we don’t know why we’re attracted to things we’re attracted to.
‘I wanted to explore this fundamental problem through two characters who are finally prepared to admit what they desire to themselves and to a stranger they met online. I wanted to explore the enormous relief and confusion that self acceptance can involve.
‘Seasonal is liberated by this process – they unlearn some important things and become much more sex positive in the process. László’s situation is more complicated, as he tries to find a way to integrate what he discovers about himself into his life, which is organised around a middle-class family existence.
‘Both of them are updating their understanding of who they are, but with very different goals in mind.’
How did your previous non-fiction work prepare the ground for this, your first novel? Are there new skills you had to learn?
‘I’ve written criticism and scholarship for years, which is writing for people’s brains using logic. In my twenties I’d written a few plays that were staged in the indie theatre scene in Melbourne but I abandoned creative writing as a practice to hone my skills as an intellectual writer.
‘With the novel, I wanted to write for people’s bodies and their imaginations, which was much harder than writing for their brains. I had to think in completely new ways about language, about sequences (plot not argument) and about pacing.
‘I do think the non-fiction writing helped me identify the themes I wanted to explore and helped with editing the manuscript in the service of those themes: I could ruthlessly edit sentences and paragraphs I thought were well made when I realised they were getting in the way.’
