Due to the size restrictions of the magazine, I wasn't able to post the full interview. But he gives some incredible answers, and the full interview is well worth a read:
Q&A with Martin Flanagan
Australian journalist and author Martin Flanagan is best known for his sports writing in popular newspaper, The Age. During Flanagan’s recent trip to Ballarat, to talk at a Ballarat writer’s conference, he had a chat to Hotch Potch about journalism, books, football and why aspiring writers should ‘just do it’.
Considering you graduated with a degree in Law, how did you get into writing?
It was something I always wanted to do from the time I was seven or eight. And I sort-of never really believed I could do it. When I was at University, I did what you’re doing, I got involved with the University newspaper and I was playing with the University Football club, and I used to write match reviews for them, and noticed a lot of people at the club liked what I wrote, so it sort-of encouraged me. And I had a brother, who was very good to me, and he always collected everything I wrote. That was a great act of respect from him and it caused me to have more respect because although I’ve always wanted to be a writer, I didn’t know anyone, who wrote, that was interested in the sort of writing I was [interested in] and I didn’t know I’d be able to become a writer.
What was your first piece of writing published?
Ah jeeze, it would have to be something I did with the Uni footy club. But I did write a political piece around the time of the dismissal of the Whitlam Government, which happened in my last year of law, and it happened during my final exams. And I remember writing a piece for a supplement they put out but other than that, it would be the footy stuff. But I did write a play that was performed by a group of drunks [laughs], I don’t think it was a very good play, but a few of my mates would put it on.
How did you break into the writing field?
I spent a couple of years roaming the world, and when I came back I was trying to write a novel. I landed a job writing scripts for children’s radio with the ABC, I went for a job as a journalist for the ABC and didn’t get it, I then got offered a job at the Launceston Examiner [Tasmanian Newspaper] and took it, I had no idea whether I’d like it or not. I got into it and loved it, and the great thing about journalism is that it makes you go places you’d never otherwise go and it allows you to meet people you’d never otherwise meet. That’s very good for me. That’s what I love about journalism.
If you could only choose one topic to write about for the rest of your career, what would it be?
I would hate to be put in that position. I’m best known as a sports writer but it’s interesting that in the history of sports writing, most of the well known sports writers have written about sport and something else. The great cricket writer of the early 20th century was Neville Cardus, he wrote on cricket and classical music. Then there was a guy called John Arlott he wrote on cricket and wine, and there’s another great sports writer called CLR James who wrote on politics and cricket so I have vigorously resisted as a journalist, ever being boxed in to one particular pursuit. And in terms of my books, I’m always trying to do something a bit different.
Talking about your books, what was it like writing The Line with your father, Arch Flanagan?
That was pretty enormous. I loved him a lot, I admired him a lot. I knew him, but I didn’t really know him, because I didn’t know about his experiences on the Burma Railway. I knew something about what it meant, but to write a book with him, meant I had to enter that relationship and that reality in a very real way. Dad didn’t really know if he wanted to do it, and when it first came out he was quite shocked, but when they were on the Railway, a lot of blokes were dying and my father would have made a great journalist, he reports very accurately and honestly. There’s no elaboration or exaggeration. Gradually, the widows of the men that had died, and children and grand-children would contact us. I got a letter just the other day, and one sentence in Dad’s book was all they knew about this particular bloke, and that was when it became very powerful. And then the thing that really chuffed me was that my daughter, who was teaching at Ballarat Clarendon College, taught it. So it was three generations, and in fact my daughter knows it better than I do, because once I write a book, I never look at it again. But she can tell you all the chapters, and she’s got insights into it I don’t know, that’s a wonderful thing.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’ve just done a book with Richo [Richmond Football player, Matthew Richardson], that was a joy. He was a joy to work with, and that’s the honest truth. He’s not interested in footy books, he doesn’t read them. He has no interest in the gossip and he doesn’t speak negatively about people, and he didn’t want to say anything that would hurt Richmond [Football club]. So we just wrote a book about the game as we love it and that has just come out. I’ve also had a novel I’ve been working on for about five, six, seven years, so now I’ve gone back to that.
What’s that one about?
That’s a very hard question to answer. I’d need a lot of time, and probably a lot more tape then you’ve got.
What do you think is the appeal of your writing? Although you are predominantly a sports writer, your writing is enjoyed by many people including non-sports fans.
The biggest compliment I’ve had about the Richo book was from a woman who wasn’t interested in sport and she found it interesting. To me, sport is a common language. When I was younger, I hitch-hiked through other countries, and I couldn’t speak a second language but if you can speak the language of sport it’s just amazing. Sport is my second language, to me sport is like dance, it’s a language of the body, and if you can speak it, it connects you to people from all different backgrounds, all different walks of life, all different literacy levels. To me sport is a very basic way of writing about people, and if I were to walk into Ballarat as a journalist and walk up to people and ask them to tell me a story, they’d be ‘who are you?’, ‘why should I tell you?’, but with footy, it’s just this vast community and once you’re in it, things just happen. I spent a year with the Melbourne Footy club observing Jim Stynes and his battle with cancer, and Liam Jurrah, a traditional Aboriginal player. You’d have to go back to something like the Aboriginal cricket team that toured in England in 1867 to find a story like Liam Jurrah’s.
I just enjoy talking to people, I love stories, I love people who can tell stories, I love listening to them and everyone has a story, the only question is whether or not they want to tell it. People’s stories are a sacred thing, but with Richo he was great, he didn’t care what I wrote about him, but he cared about the other people around him, and so that was the arrangement we had about how we’d do it. My people are Irish, and in traditional Irish culture the story teller was a really important role. That person went round, carried the stories for the group. Years ago an Aboriginal actor said to me that the difference between white culture and Aboriginal culture was that in white culture the artist existed in opposition to the group, but in Aboriginal culture the artist is the spokesman for the group, and the story teller’s a bit like that. I get a real kick out of doing a story on someone; it’s a bit like a pencil sketch. And I get a real kick when I know I’ve got the likeness right. I just love it. But sometimes it isn’t always what the newspaper wants, so I have to work with them.
You don’t actually follow a football team, do you find that helps?
I spent 1993 with the Western Bulldogs and I wrote a book on them, and in the course of that year, I went from taking footy for granted to seeing it as culturally fragile. I love its ‘Australianess’, I think it’s a great athletic invention, and I barrack for footy. I love the game; I love the places it takes me. I just love it. That’s how me and Richo came together, that’s how we feel.
In terms of your career, is there anything you regret?
Not really, I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve been lucky, Newspapers are a dying form, and I got to experience twenty-five years of them. I got offered a job from The Guardian in London and I didn’t take it, but I don’t regret that because I wasn’t as interested in England as I am in Australia. Journalism is a battle, it could be easier than it is sometimes, but in saying all that, I’ve had a good run.
Does the idea of ‘death of print journalism’ worry you?
Yeah, it does, it worries me a lot. The internet strikes me as being millions and millions of highly individualistic perspectives, whereas newspapers imply community, and I believe in community. And you can’t have a long career in newspapers if you can’t speak the common language.
Do you have any advice for young writers trying to break into the field?
Read. Whatever your particular interest is, whether it be sport or a particular whatever, read the best writers in that field. For me, and journalism itself, the greatest writer is George Orwell. And if nothing else, read his essay A Hanging, a great piece of non-fiction writing. Even though there a seemingly endless amount of bad journalism, there’s also an endless amount of what they call good journalism, so educate yourself in the best, be passionate about it and take whatever opportunities come your way, just start. At the end of the day, I have no better advice than the Nike ad- ‘Just do it’.
Flanagan’s book, Richo, will be available in book stores in the coming month. Until then you can read Flanagan’s work in The Age.
Hotch Potch would like to thank Martin for sitting down with us and answering all our questions.
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