Mario Pilla, otherwise known as the Achilles of Speakeasy, needed someone to interview, and wanted someone who had matched his own accomplishments or, even better, exceeded them. When his Internet adventures led him to the following description (taken from the Flinders University website), he gave up on his parameters and settled for David Sornig.
‘David Sornig's debut novel Spiel was published by UWAP in 2009. His short fiction, non-fiction and reviews have been published in Griffith Review, The Age, New Matilda and The Adelaide Review, among others. In 2008 he was the Charles Pick Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in the UK.
Before coming to Flinders in 2009 he taught in creative writing and literature programs at Deakin, Monash and Victoria Universities.’
When the two organised a time to meet, it was agreed that the interview would be a casual affair, perhaps over drinks. However, when the time came to talk, Mario Pilla found himself on the wrong side of David Sornig’s office, where the line between teacher and student manifested itself as a long and formidable wooden desk.
Q: What is the importance of literature?
A: The importance of literature is basically – says he, basically! It’s important because what it does is it lets us see possibility. I was just talking to a group of students about the difference between what-we-call literature and what-we-call genre. And literature, it struck me, is what happens when the author turns their attention to something they think is important. So we think it’s important that this particular individual author is concerned with these particular questions. It’s not following a roadmap. And genre – to a degree – is following a roadmap. Where it’s interesting is where the two… meet.
Literature is about that exploration of what is possible through story.
Q: There’s enough literature in the world that writers could stop writing, and the readers would still have something to read. Do you think it’s essential for us to continue dispensing literature?
Absolutely! Perhaps that’s why we’re seeing a proliferation of writing courses and writing degrees. People want to become writers. People are more interested in telling stories in a way that – yes, they want recognition for, but seeking out those roots of recognition are important to people. And that’s why there’s so much writing. I don’t think we have any more stories, I just think that more people are writing them.
Q: Do you – David Sornig – perpetually go around in writer-mode?
Yes. I think I’m always one step away. Except when I’m in parent-mode. But then again, even when I’m in parent-mode I’m always… at least in critical-mode. Thinking-mode. Well, I’m always in a fictional world. We’ll put it that way. I’m always in fictional words, to some degree.
Q: What books are you currently reading?
- 'The Street Sweeper' By Elliot Perlman
- ‘House of Sticks’ By Peggy Frew
- ‘All That I Am’ by Anna Funder.
Q: In your reader do you prefer to keep up to date or do you prefer to read the classics?
I was into classics for a while, but there are a lot of books out there. You can’t keep up. So you have to make a choice, at some time, between classics and what’s out there now. And I prefer what’s out there now. At the moment. I go through phases. Perhaps ten year phases. I don’t know. Sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll catch up on an author I may have picked up a book by. Ian McEwan, for example, and José Saramago. I’ll pick up on an author and then go back through the catalogue.
Q: Favourite writers? And writers who have most influenced you?
W. G. Sebald. Gosh! There are a million of them. I think every book I’ve read has influenced me. From Virgina Woolf to James Joyce, Ian Fleming, Homer... those are the standouts.
Oh, I’ll tell you who – James Lovelock, the scientist. He’s incredibly important to me as well because of the Gaia theory. So not just writers who are writing fiction but writers who are writing other things too.
Q: Do you ever develop any ‘author crushes’?
Oh yeah. I thought I was going to have a crush on Scarlett Thomas, but I never quite got the crush. I might yet still – who knows. McEwan for a while, but I think I’ve dropped him. Saramago, definitely. And Sebald. And Anna Funder. I don’t know if it’s always a crush, but I take them seriously.
Q: What encouraged you to get into teaching?
I definitely learn while I’m teaching. It’s something to do with having a group that’s engaged and that has a good dynamic. I articulate things to them in a way that I might not have articulated it to myself. It’s because they are discussing things as well. They’re challenging me to articulate things I already think. I think a lot of these things already, but they’re just thoughts. What teaching does is it forces you to turn them into a sort of narrative, or at least an argument.
Q: If you could’ve been a writer in any other era, which era would it be?
I think we live in particularly interesting times. I don’t know that it would be comfortable to live in any other era. There’s something about Europe in the 20s. Berlin in the 20s. But whether it would’ve been comfortable... I probably would’ve been impoverished and died early or something. The Reformation would’ve been an interesting time to live through as well. Any period of great historic upheaval. Of course we only see it as a period of great historic upheaval afterwards. But I’d like to live in those time with that knowledge.
I tell you when I’d like to live, in the year 2320. For no other reason than it’s in the future.
So you can see how all this crap unfolded?
Yeah! I’d like to see how this crap unfolded. I’d love a time machine. That’s my secret wish. That reminds me! H.G. Wells was an important novelist as well.
We respond to our times. Why literature is important is because we have an individual consciousness and we regard an author’s consciousness and an author’s attentions to his/her time. That’s where originality comes from. We’ve never lived through this time before. Every age, every moment is different.
It’s important we keep telling stories to ourselves. Do we tell truths or not? I don’t know. I like to think we do, through fiction.
Q: As much as I’d love to end the interview on that wonderful point of circularity, I’d like to know what’s on the horizon for David Sornig.
There’s a novel in the works. I’ve written a barebones draft and I’m taking next year off to work on it. And it’ll be... ace. [Laughs.] It’s about the uncertainty of the times. I think we have to be careful during times of change. We need to alert ourselves to the dangers of change. I believe change is always necessary, but there is danger in it. We won’t really know what we’re going through until after it’s happened. It’s fairly obvious that change is happening, but I’m interested in exploring what the nature of that change is.
That’s the plan, anyway. But we’ll see what happens. The future’s radically uncertain.
However uncertain Sornig’s future may be, his presence is gone from the halls of Flinders University for now as he takes time off teaching to finish his next novel.
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