After seven years of work on his novel, Dirt Music, Tim Winton had a 1200 page manuscript and a book that he ‘hated’.
It was due at the publishers and in twenty years of writing he had never missed a deadline. He missed this one. After a day of unwrapping and rewrapping the epic work he decided to rewrite it. It took him fifty-five days.
Dirt Music is peopled by the walking wounded, the scarred and the angry. It depicts characters who have had hard lives, made bad decisions and are searching for answers.
On the cusp of her 40th birthday Georgie Jutland is reassessing her life. A former nurse, she’s never spent too much time with one man, drifting in and out of relationships. For the past few years she’s lived in the redneck fishing town of White Point on the west coast of Australia. A former shantytown, White Point has grown into an unsightly seaside village.
She lives with local fisherman, Jim Buckridge. Jim’s family has legendary status in White Point. A successful fisherman, it is to him that people defer. Still grieving over his wife’s death some years before, he’s a burly, quiet sort of a bloke with an unspoken rage. Theirs is a relationship of convenience.
Spending her days drinking and her nights trawling the internet, Georgie’s in need of an escape. It presents itself in the form of Lu Fox.
Lu’s a shattered soul. He’s endured a treacherous amount of suffering and finds in Georgie unexpected refreshment. But their sudden affair sends them both on a collision course with Jim Buckridge.
Dirt Music is composed with Winton’s characteristic laconic style. While some will be alienated by the use of profanity and the slippery morality, this is undoubtedly a cracking read. It appears laid back, as if the story and the environs unfold naturally with each turn of the page. However there’s deliberateness, a quiet governance that underlies the narrative.
Winton chooses his names carefully. Lu Fox is named after Martin Luther. His father was a Catholic turned Protestant and Lu believes that if he’d been born a few years later he would have been named Calvin. While his first suggests gravitas, Lu’s last name reveals the poacher in him.
In the same way, Winton’s fictional town of White Point is unattractive in both its architecture and its population. The true appeal of the residents is realised by the description of them as ‘White Pointers’.
When it comes to Winton’s moral universe, he has more compassion for the flawed but kind-hearted than the upright and respectable.
His novels deal with the raw edge of humanity. His heroes are broken, gritty sorts of men and women.
Yet there’s a fascination with the divine and the devout that underpins his tales. In Dirt Music it’s the idea of forgiveness. What happens to the bad things we do? Do they dissolve into the ether or are they locked away in some earthy memory bank, the punishment poised for delivery just when we think we’re safe?
Like his favoured writer, Cormac McCarthy, Winton introduces spiritual ideas into his novels with unaffected ease. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another seven years for his next one.
