Latest / Regina UNSCRIPTED / A Catholic Novel for a Post-Christian West | 'In Conversation' with Roy Peachey

Transcript

A Catholic Novel for a Post-Christian West | 'In Conversation' with Roy Peachey · Regina UNSCRIPTED

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Hello and welcome to Regina Unscripted.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: We recently went to meet with Roy Peachy, whose book, The Garden of Perfect Clarity, has just been published by Osjusti Press.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_03: He's a wonderful author and has written a number of fantastic books, and I'd encourage you to go and check it out, and you can find a link to this below.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_03: Enjoy the interview.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'm here with Roy Peachy, author of The Garden of Perfect Clarity.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: Tell us a little about it.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: What inspired you, Roy?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think what inspired me was a library, actually, just browsing in the SOAS Library, the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, which is one of the places where I studied, and just stumbling across whole aspects of Chinese history that I knew nothing about.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was probably supposed to be writing an essay about something else and came across all sorts of interesting ideas.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's one great book about Matthew Ritchie, great Jesuit missionary, called The Memory Palace of Matthew Ritchie.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he was talking, and the book was really talking not only about what Ritchie did and the various other Jesuit missionaries did in China, but also just about these phenomenal feats of memory, how he learnt, mastered Chinese so quickly.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the way he did it essentially was by constructing this palace in his mind, this memory palace.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he would populate each separate corner of it with a different Chinese character.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So when he was trying to learn the language, he would go on a stroll through this palace and recall each character.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So he learned the language very quickly.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote books in Chinese pretty quickly.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was really, really fascinated by this meeting of China and the West, especially at that point in history, but actually throughout history.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose that was the original germ for it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then later on, I it was really just a story that grew in the telling.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: And have you spent time in China yourself, or I I have.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean not huge amounts of time.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've I've visited on on numerous occasions.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I studied Chinese studies, I did a master's in Chinese studies at SOAS.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a country I I really love.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a country with a troubled history, um, as well as fascinating history.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so I can't claim to be uh a China expert, but I I know a certain amount.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, tell us a little about the book.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: You've already explained that it's set in China and what inspired you.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: Can you give us an overview of the story without giving away any spoilers?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a bit tricky.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it starts actually in England and it follows the story of one, at first a boy who then grows up.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's taken to China.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um he's then thrown out of the ship on which he's travelling as part of a diplomatic mission in what looks something like the 18th century, and ends up growing up in China, uh, where he experiences all sorts of uh difficulties, triumphs, he gets his education there.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's quite a lot about education in the book, and eventually grows to old age when he, in effect, writes his memoirs.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: But in doing that, I'm writing about China from the 18th century to right through to the 20th century.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the book finishes in what seems like the 20th century, and yet it's the story of this one young man who's grown up through this.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm playing around with time, I'm playing around in a way that you might be familiar with if you've read any Vodolasky, New Gene Vodolasky, and wrote a book called Laurus.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so a book which plays around with history and time, um, and through this story of one life tries to look at both China and the West, the meeting of China and the West, and particularly this really key moment in China's history when the Jesuits who'd almost come very, very close to converting the emperors and then booted out.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so China moves into this really post-Christian stage.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the memory of Christianity, Catholicism, the Jesuit influence is still there.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: The symbols are still there, the buildings, the gardens are still there, but they're neglected, they're forgotten, they're misunderstood.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm playing around with a lot of a lot of symbolism, um, but it's symbolism which many of the characters don't any longer understand, including the main character himself.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: So he is grappling to understand this place in which he's come to live.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: He's grappling to understand um the hall of learning, the house of learning where he he goes to study, and and he's grappling to understand relationships, he's grappling to understand the the world in which he finds himself.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this world in which he finds himself, we said it's China, but actually I never call it China in the book.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in a way, it's a China of the mind.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's a China that is created as much in the imagination as it is through history.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I I it there are lots of um ways in which I play around with the history.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um the history is very important in the book, but it's not a historical novel.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose that's one way of putting it.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned the Jesuits there, uh, the Jesuit missionaries.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um I suppose there was some tension at the time with uh to what extent do they accommodate the practices, the existing practices in India, for example, and then uh later China.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it was finally decided that that not too much, you know, one shouldn't accommodate too much, such that you lose that that Christian identity and that essence of of Christ.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: What's your view on that?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have a view?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: You've set your novel here in China, and it obviously is a place that fascinates you, and you've spoken about the bri the the the arrival of Christianity and then that retreat.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think I mean the tension was clearly there.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there was there's a big difference between the early Jesuit missions, um which were uh inspiring in in many, many ways, and then the later accommodations of which you spoke, which became really very controversial, and there was a rights controversy in particular, which in the end the Pope stepped in and did what popes are supposed to do, um, which was to make a judgment and say, actually, this has now gone too far.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, interestingly, other religious orders continued to work and serve in in China, and they are much less written about.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So there's also so I don't I don't think we need to narrow down the book specifically to the Jesuits, although that's originally where it took its inspiration from.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think there were a lot of other missionaries working in China, including by this stage, as is hinted at in the book, Chinese um uh priests who had often come to Europe, trained in Europe, and then returned to China.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't directly write about those controversies, um, but there's some of that is is lurking in the background.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it is very much in the background because the main character through whom we go on this journey, through whose eyes we see this story, he's coming at it once a Chinese, once the the Jesuits have gone.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he understands nothing of this, he's not he's not coming from a position of understanding.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So everything is filtered, and as readers, we have to um we're constantly reading between the lines.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it seems a perfect place to open it up to our small audience here this evening who have all read and enjoyed your book.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: So if I invite you to ask questions, you have the author right here in front of you.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_03: Who better to ask?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: Claire, shall we start with you?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_03: The character of Shao May is not Christian.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: Is she able to enter the Garden of Perfect Clarity or only point the way?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: So most of the characters aren't able to enter the Garden of Perfect Clarity.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: The Garden of Perfect Clarity is always just out of sight, out of reach.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it symbolizes clearly a sense of what is what is beyond.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what does what does that mean?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the Chinese characters, the non-Christian characters, may understand that in one way.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps some of the book's readers and some of the characters within the book would understand it in much more explicitly Christian Catholic terms.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the Garden of Perfect Clarity existed.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was a real garden created for the emperors by some of these Jesuit missionaries who worked in the Imperial Court.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was then destroyed later by the British and the French, burnt to the ground.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it is now just a pile of ruins, which I find is in itself a really kind of evocative image.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: These beautiful gardens, which are now just a tumble-down ruin, a bit of a tourist site, but there's there's nothing really there very much anymore.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so my main character is really looking for something.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know what he's looking for.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we have that sense in that he is searching for God, he is searching for for heaven.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so the Garden of Perfect Clarity symbolizes that in some sense.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Xia May specifically becomes a second mother for him, and she is one of the most sympathetic characters in the book.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: She is clearly a very loving woman, she cares for him at a time of great need.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so through that maternal care, she is, in a sense, pushing him or helping him towards this destiny which he yearns for throughout the book.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's a scene right near the start of the book where he leaves his his parents in very trying circumstances.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And just lurking right in the background of the book is Great Expectations.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is my attempt in a way to write Great Expectations in a Chinese setting.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: And if you think about what happens in Great Expectations, Pip leaves his his home, he he travels to London, he goes off the rails, and then eventually he returns.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so his name, Pip, is a palindrome, his surname, Pirrip, is a palindrome.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: The whole book, in a sense, is this kind of circular journey.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't quite do that here.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way, my main character, Hison, goes on this journey and he returns to a home at the end.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying not to give too many spoilers, but it's not the home from which he originally set off.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a different sort of arc, but consciously, and in some ways, probably unconsciously, modelled on great expectations and the arc within that book as well.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: Another question from our audience.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: If you were going to place this book in a bookshop, where would you place it?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: What books would you place it between?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: Are there any others you think would it would be make a suitable home amongst?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, okay, that's a really interesting question.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Wild Swans was mentioned.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I actually read Wild Swans while I was on the Trans-Siberian uh Railway from Moscow to Beijing many years ago.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: I can't say I've read it since, so I'm not sure how deeply that is now embedded within me.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but that would be an interesting one.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: The other book I read on that journey was a book by Susanna Clark.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and a few readers have mentioned the link between Susanna Clark's more recent book, Piranesi, and this one.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and a Piranese came out after I'd written this book, so there's no direct influence there.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I think they both they're both in the same stable in many ways.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mentioned uh Eugene Vodlaskine, who's this really fascinating uh orthodox Russian Ukrainian novelist who wrote a book called Laurus, and in Lauros it's a book set in the uh 15th century, but the 20th century keeps appearing.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: There are these one character in particular seems to see into the future.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it's set in the 15th century, all sorts of 15th century um things are going on, and then you're hearing about Soviet Russia at the same time.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I really love Vodlaskin's work and the way in which he plays around with time.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that would that would fit in neatly.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I suppose I'm trying to I'm I'm I don't like really to use the word magical realism or the term magical realism, but it's it it's sort of in that that genre.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's more more closely in that genre um than in uh than in the historical novel um genre tradition.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_03: Very interesting.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: Nice question.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: A secret garden you mentioned.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's not going in next to your book.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, there's pl there's a place for children's book.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I love I love children's books.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_03: In the title.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: So the the garden is unmet, is it whilst the boy is not well?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, or becomes freely able to walk and he's a the garden makes him better and then you know it's uh and then the garden is loved because it's used.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, that's really interesting.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the the secret garden I is a fascinating parallel.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I guess the secret garden, the garden in the secret garden is much more of a main character than it is in the garden of perfect clarity.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um in the garden of perfect clarity, the garden is is mentioned a lot, um, and the entrance to the garden is seen, and people um realize the significance of it, but it's always kept just out of the narrative.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really fascinated actually by novels where you are taken beyond the last page of the book, or you have to go beyond the last page of the book.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me that lots of novelists, especially Catholic novelists actually, um, in the 20th century uh in particular, um deliberately don't tie up all the ends.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: They want to take you beyond the beyond the last page.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um is as if the the novel itself can never be enough.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore you have to you have to take further steps beyond the end of it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd I'd like to see myself in in that tradition a little bit.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I've am I allowed to go I'll keep talking.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: Say what you want.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, just keep talking.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I've uh I mean I've just I've just finished a PhD on liturgy and literature in uh uh the 20th and 21st centuries, and the the the writers I was considering there, people like Tolkien, people like um Evelyn War, Ruma Godon, George Mackay Brown, uh great French writer called Sylvie Germain, um Vaud Lasquin, um, all of them I think take you so far and then say, actually, there is another step in this journey which the novelist cannot take you on.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this may be too bold a claim, but I'd like to see myself in that sort of tradition.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's interesting.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's something we all felt we were left with.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: So your work is done in the sense that did am I right in saying that we all felt that we were left in that state with a you know, sort of it can't it can only take us so far and not beyond.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_03: You achieved that is what I'm saying.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_03: So kudos.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, that's it.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well done, Roy.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's great.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um I th I thought at one point about Till We Have Faces.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: CS is that no one else did, I don't think.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I there was something about it.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Did was that also Yeah, I I do really like CSOs, and that was his favourite book of his of his own books.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: That was his favourite one.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it is such a richly densely sort of symbolic book, isn't it?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes that it's even when you know what it's about, which essentially is about deification, um, which in itself is really fascinating, it's very difficult to grasp.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's very difficult book to summarise, I think, till we have faces.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's an awful lot, there's an awful lot more to it than I think many people have really appreciated.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's probably not sold as well as some of others, some other of his books because it's not quite so immediately accessible, because it's dealing with such big ideas.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, similarly beautiful and powerful as as this is, um, which is perhaps why why that came to mind.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: Let's return to you for questions.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: Ben, did you have any?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it seems rather small.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Seems a small thing, but I I can't get it out of my mind.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Why did his mother bite off his little troll?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: I found I was so traumatized by that.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of coloured the whole rest of the reading of the book.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I why, why?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is such a painful, horrible thing that your mother did that to you as her last gesture.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's yeah, it just puzzled me.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's uh it's a horrible moment, isn't it?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's um it's precisely the moment my dad quizzed me about as well.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm not sure he was too happy about that moment.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um so the I suppose two things are going on there.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: So on the one hand, there is a clearly there's a complex relationship at the start of the book.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: The the father is a is a very harsh father, the mother's um clearly much more caring, but unable to stand up to her husband who who wants uh the little boy out.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's that's in itself deeply traumatic.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there is there is both love and there's pain.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's part of it.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: The other side to it is I guess there's there's this um if you think about the Foundling Museum in London, I don't know if you've ever visited the Foundling Museum in London, one of the things that often happened was that when children were taken to that Foundling Hospital, um they would be left with half of something.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: They'd be left with half a ring or half a coin, so that if ever the parents and the child were eventually reunited, they would bring the other half of the object and the two of them would be able to recognize each other.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so I guess that was probably um buzzing around at the back of my mind as well, somewhere.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so you one way of interpreting that that lost toe is that she would know, even if it was years in the future, that this was definitely her son because of this uh this this terrible um this terrible injury, this this physical mark on his body.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's a pretty extreme way of doing it.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um but that that I think was probably the the thoughts that were going through my mind when I wrote that little passage.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: So, what inspired the puppet masters and the puppets?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the simple answer to that is um a trip to uh to Salzburg and then to Vienna, in fact, our honeymoon, in fact.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we happened to end up in Salzburg during the Salzburg Festival.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: There was an awful lot of puppetry going on, and then we moved to Vienna and there was a lot of puppetry going on there, lots of street theatre.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And these puppets just made a very big impression on me at the time because they were so amazing, they were so lifelike.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they were performing everything.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: We went to a performance of the magic flute performed by puppets, for example.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so some of the the actual descriptions of the puppets in this book, I think, go right back to that journey to Central Europe, um, which seems a very long way from China.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Although, as I mentioned in the afterwards of the book, uh, there are also elements of of Prague and the Pra Spring and the Velvet Revolution and to what happens later on in the book as well.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so there's a there is a bit of Central Europe in the book as well.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Puppets, however, were also a kind of an important part of the Chinese dramatic tradition.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: But as in as in this country as well, really, puppets and puppeteers, travelling performers, were often viewed with a lot of suspicion.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: They were seen as potentially subversive, they weren't really easy to control.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the puppets and the puppeteers in in the Garden of Perfect Clarity are really doing two things.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, they are taking people out of themselves.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: They are performing, they are opening a world of wonder to all sorts of characters.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: When they they come in this in this red boat, everybody drops what they're doing and they go down to the harbour to see them.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: But they're also dangerous figures, they're potentially dangerous figures, figures who could become subversive.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose I'm probably playing around with words as well and thinking about puppet governments as well.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Which again, without trying to give too many spoiler alerts here, that plays out in the plot as well.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we've just had a comment here about juxtaposing the puppets with kite flying.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: The puppets are sinister and the kite flying is joyous.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: So again, the kite flying comes very directly from travels in China, where um it's quite common to see this kite flying going on.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's very much part of the of the culture.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it is joyous.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is amazing.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: These flights, which these these kites which are flying, which are free and yet are tethered at the same time.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um on the one hand, you've got that, and then you've got these puppets.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And by definition, a puppet has to be controlled by someone else.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And these puppeteers, the puppet masters, are shadowy figures.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you don't you don't see them.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I used to I used to go to the theatre, I used to to teach drama, I used to go to the theatre a lot, and and I remember seeing there was a time when lots of puppetry on stage was happening with the puppeteers sort of out of view, sometimes masked.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they were there, but you after a while you just didn't see them anymore.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that was both a glorious theatrical illusion and also quite troubly at the same time.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose, yeah, it's it was a convenient way, a useful way of playing around with with both that sense of wonder and the sense of threat as as Hson is trying to find his way in life.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_03: You've just been asked here, you don't mention any specific names.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: You're quite sparing on the detail, and there's a lot of implication, but nothing specific.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_03: Is there is there a reason that you didn't specify?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I talk a lot about the city, I talk about the hall of learning, I talk about the country.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that's partly to try and give it that mythic um symbolic resonance, partly because, as I said at the start, it's not a historical novel.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't want to pin it down to one particular historical era, one particular geographical place.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, partly because as soon as you say, Oh, this is Beijing or this is Nanjing or wherever, then um anybody who knows those places will say, wait a minute, it doesn't that that doesn't necessarily quite tie up.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted this to be a China of the mind, um, a place that could represent all sorts of cities, um, all sorts of of people.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And because the there is this this narrative arc that takes us from the 18th century or something like the 18th century, so that the the the journey uh right at the start of the book is very much modelled on Lord McCartney's diplomatic mission to China in 1793.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very precise, dateable um mission.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I use one or two of the names from that from that journey, but I don't specifically mention um you know the King of England or um or the Emperor of the Time, for example, because we soon move into this world, which is a world of illusion, of story, of uh of myth, and uh time doesn't move in a straightforward linear fashion either.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: So as soon as you start to pin down the the cities, the places to particular names, all of that gets lost.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's it's it's veering between history and fairy story in some ways, between myth and um and realism.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: But on the other hand, I don't want to go, I don't want to go to the other extreme and just make it fairy story because it has to be anchored in in some sort of hard reality, and there's some you know, pretty tough things happen in the book as well.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it wanted it to have that hard-nosed edge as well.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: So we have the statue of uh this woman and the child, and is this meant to symbolise Our Lady and the Christ child?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, so those there are in the Hall of Learning, there are these four great statues, and these four statues are really significant.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So they are right at the heart of Matthew Richie's Memory Palace.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: These are four characters that he placed in a fairly significant way in his book, and so it seemed to me quite natural to place them in the entrance hall of the Hall of Learning.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why did Ritchie choose these particular uh statues?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was because they represented particular and particularly important Chinese characters, and the the statue of the woman and the child represents the Chinese word hao, which means good.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so goodness in Chinese uh is made up of a character meaning uh a woman and a character meaning a child or a son specifically.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it seems to me very significant that the Chinese word for good is a woman and a son, and I'm sure that must have struck Richie with even greater force.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, in a way, I think absolutely this is a statue of um uh of our lady and the baby Jesus, but of course, that's not identified in the book because the symbolism in the post-Christian era, if if that's what we can call it, has been lost, it's been forgotten, it's not any longer understood.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: But when terrible things happen, it's perhaps not insignificant, it's perhaps not unimportant that this statue becomes one of the first targets because it clearly represents everything that the revolutionaries hate.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's also important within the narrative of the book that this um statue of the lady and the child, our lady and and Jesus, appears again at a key moment towards the end of the book as well, and that actually is the passage I've chosen to read.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you see this same image, this same statue, albeit on a much smaller scale, in a very different context there.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's when it becomes much more obvious what is actually going on.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Although, even at that point, the narrator, the chief character, doesn't fully understand what he sees.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: When you uh bring up his name at the beginning, and he says something to the effect that a ache, alluding to the idea of pain, it should be a life of pain, hence the ache and the name.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: I went and looked up the etymology of that name and found it to be the son of Adam.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And um I also was wondering whether you whether you intended it to be pronounced H Ache whether there was that hand in your intentions.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a kind of etymological cluster of things there.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know quite how to express it, but I think uh I'm driving.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how much was that conscious in your choosing that name and and its pronunciation?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And did you know about its connection in at its roots in the idea that it's the son of Adam and therefore it's his son's inherited pain and so on?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really interesting question.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um so where do names of characters come from is is often really difficult, even for the author, to know or to remember, because they they often come very, very early.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I'm not a hundred percent certain why I chose that name.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: There are, I think, three possible reasons, and possibly each of those three is true and important.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: So one of them is that I simply found this name as one of the passengers on this ship to from from uh England to to China in 1793.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so it may be that that's where I'd first come across the name and thought, okay, this this works well with the time period in which the book is being set, because clearly it's not a contemporary name that anybody would use.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, to have a name that is spelt Ake Sun is very handy because it has that resonance without being too overtly um uh sort of dogmatic, I guess you could say.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I I love Dickens names.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Dickens has the most wonderful names for his characters, but I didn't want to go as far as chokeham child, or you know, some of these other glorious names that he has.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want it to be quite that obvious.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there's there's a sense in which he aches in more than one way.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: He aches because he is injured, he has this this foot injury, um, but he's also aching because he's lost his family.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: He's also aching, there's this ache that runs through his whole life, this sense of yearning towards something that he does not understand, someone that he doesn't yet know, but someone and something that we can perhaps hope he eventually find.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third aspect to it, as you you rightly say, is his etymology, son of um Adam, which is just perfect, isn't it?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: It just fits in so beautifully, and I honestly can't remember if I knew that when I chose the name.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I I think I'll boldly claim it, but whether that's actually true, I I don't know.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: For Aiterson, the main character, is very much swept along by events.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: Was that intentional that he didn't really wasn't the author of of how things happened to him?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: He just got caught up in them.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I think it was intentional in in one sense.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: So he's a he's a boy.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: At the start of the book, he's a boy.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's a boy who has been forcibly um thrown out of a boat.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's ended up in a foreign country, country about which he knows nothing, he's lost his family, he is alone, he is he is vulnerable.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, of course, events happen to him, he is swept away by um uh by by the events, by the people he meets, by forces completely outside his control.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, would I have done anything differently in in his play if I had been in his place?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I he certainly is a flawed character, he's certainly not a heroic character throughout the book.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And in many ways, he is um a victim for a long time.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I think crucially, when he gets a very long way on in the book, towards the end of the book, after some pretty terrible things happen, he does change and he does begin to show much more a sense of agency.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he's helped along by others, he's not doing this on his own.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the the people who are around him um sometimes brutalize him, sometimes actually teach him the significance of love and family and care and so on.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I think you have to look at the whole book, and I think towards the end he he undergoes some sort of redemption.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that redemption is not final, is not complete by the very end of the book, or maybe it is, but we are not told that um as readers, so we have to we have to buy the book.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, buy the book.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um would I have done anything differently myself?
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Would I have behaved any differently?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I I do often, when I think about some of the terrible things that happened in, say, 20th century history, um, which I'm really interested in, you know, there's terrible things have happened in those situations.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: You think if I had been caught up in you know Nazi Germany, for example, or Soviet Russia, how would I have responded in those situations?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think until you're caught up in those situations, you simply don't know.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I suppose maybe on one level I was trying to explore that through the through the this particular character.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I don't think he's entirely a victim.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's got he's got some you know he's got some gumption.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's I think he is a survivor, despite the odds, um, but he only really comes into his own towards the end.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: Roy, would you consider that the book is a warning to the West about what might happen as we lose our Christian identity?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's a really interesting question.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think on one level, I would say in writing the book, I just wanted to tell a story.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I was writing it with a particular pedagogical intent, if you like.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Having said that, clearly there is some sort of parallel between the world in which Hison finds himself, which is a world which is moving towards post-Christianity or is post-Christian, in which the symbols, the experiences, the rights of Christianity have been almost completely, but not totally, forgotten.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: That all of that very closely parallels the situation in which I think we find ourselves now.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um we are in a world which is, and in a country which is both Christian and yet very much not Christian, it's very much post-Christian.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a we're in a culture where the basic symbols of Christianity, the basic um the liturgy, the the rites, the sacraments, are either completely unknown or or very widely misunderstood.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: So in that sense, there is a there is a parallel.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not so much, I think, a warning about what might happen, because I think we're already there.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose what I was trying to do in one way in the book was to write both for Christians, for Catholics specifically, but but more widely for Christians who would understand many of these references and who would therefore read the book in one way, but also to write the book in such a way that it could be read by people who are coming from outside the church, and they would in the same in the same way that Aidson goes on the journey, they might potentially be caught up in this journey towards this garden of perfect clarity, um, whatever that might they might think that to be.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, there is I think any novelist is always trying to steer a kind of slightly torturous path between writing something that is significant, that matters, and not simply preaching through a story.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think the story has got to work in its own right, it's got to work as story, but on the other hand, any significant literature has got to be doing something more than that as well, is more than just simply entertaining.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_03: So you start with the story, not the message.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 38:20
  unknown: Yeah.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you so much, Roy, for joining us this evening to share a little about your book.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm sure everyone watching will recognise from your answers the depth, the richness, the power, the suffering, the beauty.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: There's so much there that really the only answer is to go away to get the book and to read it yourself.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I'd like to invite you to do a short reading for us to finish this event this evening.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Great, thank you very much, Catherine.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought I'd read um a very short chapter from the end of the book or near the end of the book.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it gives too much away of the of the plot.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's a moment when um Hson, the central character, stumbles across something that he doesn't fully understand um and is transfixed by it.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: This particular passage is inspired by uh an event in the life of David Jones, the great um Anglo-Welsh poet and artist um who had a similar sort of experience during World War I.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where the idea comes from.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh chapter 46 on page 315, and it goes like this.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was during those dark days that I stumbled upon a low dark hut that opened into an unknown realm.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: That is how I would describe it now, though I was simply looking for a crust of bread when I found it.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was a curious, lopsided hut, distant from the other farm buildings where we spent the night.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: I guessed it to be a storehouse and an abandoned one at that, but even abandoned storehouses may contain scraps a hungry exile can value.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, leaving my companions behind, I limped across the muddy field and searched for the door, which, oddly, was on the far side of the hut, facing away from the farm and towards the woods.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: I never reached it.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Something or someone stopped me before I got there.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Standing there in the dusk's half light, I knew, though I did not know how I knew, that there was nothing worth scavenging inside that hut.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Slowly I inched closer to the lopsided wall, and finding a broken knothole, put my eye to it.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: What I saw inside was a curious memory of a time I had thought long gone.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: A man was standing alone, or maybe he was not alone, before a low block of stone.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: A single piece of cloth was draped across the stone, and on the cloth there stood a silver plate and a silver goblet.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Writing it down I have created clarity where none existed at the time, for the little light that shone on the scene came from two guttering candles on either side of the stone slab.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: I could see little, but what I saw was enough, enough for me almost to cry out loud, for I thought the man was Jacobus, who had befriended me all those many years ago before I was pitched off the boat and cast into this strange land.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't Jacobus, I soon realized.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: This man, though dressed as Jacobus had dressed, was taller, broader, and clumsier.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: When I first put my eye to the hole in the wall, I saw that the man was on one knee.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: When he pulled himself up he stumbled, and I thought he would fall, but somehow, though he placed no steadying hand on the stone, he did not.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: With his eyes still fixed on what lay on that stone, he continued to mutter to himself in the way Jacobus once did, in the language Jacobus once used.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should have left then, but something about that scene compelled me to remain.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've said that it was a memory of a time long gone, but I'm no longer sure that it is true.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think it would be closer to the truth to say it was a memory that brought time into the present.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: They stranded outside, I was also present inside that dark, dirty hut, and through ever, through whatever was happening there, I was also present in some other place I knew I had never been before.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: When the man fell down on one knee again, I did too.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: When my eye found the hole once more, I noticed something I had missed before, an image at once wholly familiar and strangely new.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: On the shelf, on the wall, above the stone, on the far side of the hut, there was a statue, a tiny statue, barely lit by the pitiful candle's dim glow.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was a statue of a peasant woman cradling a baby in her arms.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not any peasant woman, but the one I had seen and admired in the great hall of the House of Learning.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: There the woman had been huge and noble in her simplicity.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Here she was almost anonymous, but her power remained.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: I watched as the man continued his work before finally turning to the statue.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: He raised his eyes and began to sing.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was a slow, insistent song, a song I neither understood nor have since been able to forget.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: I waited until he had finished, and then I turned away and walked back to the barn where the others were sleeping.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: I sat in a corner and watched over them, knowing that I would not be able to sleep well that night, and maybe not for many nights to come.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_03: It was lovely to have you read to us there.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I wonder, would you be doing an audio version of your book?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_03: Is that in the planning?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um it has been mentioned, but I haven't really done anything about it.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, think about it.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think audiobooks are increasingly popular, aren't they?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_03: So that was so beautifully read.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: And uh as I said, take a look, go and find this uh from Oz Justi Press, The Garden of Perfect Clarity by our very own Roy Petrie.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.