Williamstown local, Shaun Micallef, is a master of many forms. His forays into the written word include 11 books, the latest of which, De’Ath Takes a Holiday, is a wildly inventive gothic satire about a disillusioned vampire.
Program Co-Director of the Williamstown Literary Festival, Rita Horányi, chats to Micallef about literary blood-suckers and the process of writing novels, ahead of his appearance at Willy Lit Fest next month.
You’ve written work in many forms – sketch comedy, plays, essays, television series, novellas, a memoir – but a gothic novel about vampires is quite a departure from the rest of your oeuvre. What drew you to vampires?
Precisely because it is a departure. I am at heart a sketch comedian and my stock in trade is a bit of impersonation or a bit of impression or creating a world with a few deft strokes, rather than actually immersing myself in it as an actor. So this is just a version of that, where I got to write in a different style, a different voice to what I was doing on television.
There are some wildly imaginative scenes in De’Ath Takes a Holiday, such as Comte De’Ath’s therapy session with Sigmund Freud, or Bertrand Russell’s cameo in a court case that digresses into a debate about the existence of the human soul. Where do you find the inspiration for your ideas and sense of humour?
I suppose my sense of humour is always going to be my sense of humour, so it’s only going to be as shallow or as deep as it is. There’s nothing I can do about that, and I think that’s true of all of us, but I can improve the scope of it. I am reasonably widely read now, after a few years of concerted effort and just general curiousness. There’s a lot of things that I’m interested in apart from what I am able to churn through on television, things that don’t really fit.
If I was to write a piece on, you know, Authority and the Individual by Bertrand Russell, I don’t need to write anything serious about that because he’s already done it. But what I can do is take the way he expresses himself and the things he might even address, and put them in a bit of a comic envelope. And that’s the trick I try and pull whenever I write anything.
What do you find rewarding about writing a novel compared to writing for television or theatre?
It’s the same sort of muscle; I just get to exercise it differently. Television is a bit of a sprint, because I make shows that generally are over and done with within a week. So [a novel] feels like it’s going to last a little bit longer, simply because it takes longer for people to know that it’s there, and to buy it and read it, and maybe come back to it later. I can craft it for a bit longer, and it has more scrutiny and that probably invites a bit more care. And I can deal with topics and themes in a way that the audience wouldn’t have much patience for if they were watching a sketch program.
You’re appearing at Williamstown Literary Festival next month. What do you enjoy most about writers’ festivals?
It’s nice to meet people. Usually people come along who’ve seen the TV shows, so we get to say hello and they say what they like about [the shows]. So it’s usually quite nice and positive and warm and, very flatteringly, a lot of people want me to sign a book and they’ve read half of it already, and we can talk about that. It’s a good chance for me to get some feedback that’s a little more nuanced than maybe a mass of people having a laugh.
What are you reading at the moment?
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. I’ve got another book coming out at the end of the year and, because it’s a history book, part of it is written in the styles of different historians, and for a while Tom Wolfe was [a social historian], although he’s a journalist, I suppose, a novelist. So I was reading a bit of [Wolfe’s] work, and finding the key to his style. I’m re-reading The Bonfire of the Vanities now in my sixties, and I probably originally read it in my twenties. That’s the joy of reading – the [books] that are good, you can revisit, and it’s almost a different book.
Shaun Micallef is appearing at Williamstown Literary Festival in
conversation with Marieke Hardy on Sat 13 June at 6.30pm.
Tickets to this event and to the rest of the Willy Lit Fest program can be purchased at willylitfest.org.au.
This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
