SARAH BARNETT talks to Miles Franklin award winner TIM WINTON, a man who insists he's just a storyteller…
There are few novelists who can write about faith in a real and evocative way. Depending upon the writer's experiences, depictions of Christian people and their faith tends either towards bitterness or triumphalism. Tim Winton is one exception.
Winton has written nineteen books, many of which include spiritual reflection or musing on matters of faith. In his award winning novel Cloudstreet " voted Australia's top book by the Australian Society of Authors " the devout Lamb family struggle with their beliefs when their much-needed miracle founders. The title story in his recently published collection of stories, The Turning, depicts a beleaguered woman who yearns for the peace she sees exhibited in her Christian friends.
In the hands of a less skilled writer such scenarios may seem trite or cringe worthy however Winton manages to imbue them with credibility.
But even he admits writing about belief doesn't always work.
"Faith will always be a more comfortable fit with poetry," he explains. "The novel creaks a bit and in a post-Enlightenment culture, hostile to notions broader than the narrow materialism we've inherited, it's a bigger challenge still. A culture or subculture has to examine itself enough, to have the critical awareness necessary to shake out everything cringe worthy. To throw it away. So that you're left with what you're confident about, what you're unselfconsciously at home with."
It's these essential elements that hold his attention.
"I'm interested in what transmits " out of all the decayed acculturation of religious language and practice, the inevitability of the corruption and dilution and augmentation over 2,000 years " what final skerricks someone holds onto."
So what of Winton's own faith? Asking a stranger questions about his faith seems somewhat impertinent and there is a sense in which Winton would prefer to talk about his work than open up about his beliefs. Resistant to labels, Winton has described himself as feeling like a Catholic when he's with Protestants and like a Protestant when he's with Catholics. "I'm a Christian," he says. "But you can be sure a lot of Christians wouldn't have a beer with me."
His own introduction to Christianity came when his parents were converted.
He was five when his father was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident. The incident had a profound effect on the entire family. For Winton it was bewildering to see his policeman father incapacitated and housebound. But from this difficult circumstance something remarkable happened. A stranger who had heard of the accident arrived one day to help Winton's mother care for his father. He came every day. Because of his kindness, Winton's parents became interested in Christianity, eventually becoming Christians themselves.
More than 30 years have passed since then and this act of compassion and sacrifice still surprises Tim Winton and those with whom he shares the story.
Australians have an awkward relationship with belief and believers. We are wary of earnestness and dogma and uncomfortable with emotion. Yet in the presence of kindness and sacrifice we are responsive.
Winton offers many explanations for our culture's discomfort with faith.
"A lot has to do with origins of course and the role of the Church of England in the convict era," he explains. "The grimness and disappointment of the settlers' experience. Our anxiety about singing and dancing and emotion. The preponderance of so much bad religion. A kind of hardness and blindness that comes with an invader's ethos. An intolerance of cant. Immaturity. Consumerism. We haven't even warmed up! I despair of it but at the same time I have a grudging admiration for our scepticism, too."
While he has won numerous awards and has written some of Australia's most beloved literature, Winton is circumspect about his success. His laconic attitude and down-to-earth manner seem at odds with his achievements. When I mention the popularity of Cloudstreet he is quick to remind me of the less favourable responses to it. Eschewing more literary titles, he prefers to call himself a storyteller. "Just a storyteller', in fact.
