Road-writing with Writing and Cultural Studies lecturer, Delia Falconer
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Delia on the cover of
SMH's Drive section.
Photo by Marco del Grande
Delia Falconer, having finished editing The Penguin Book of the Road, could have easily filled another anthology with Australian road stories.
"The Penguin Book of the Road is an anthology of some of our best fiction and non-fiction about the road, stretching from the journals of the explorer Sir Thomas Mitchell to stories by Tim Winton and Helen Garner," Falconer said.
Falconer believes "road-writing" is an under appreciated sub-genre of Australian writing and hopes to bring its value to reader's attention. "As soon as you start to think about it you realise a huge amount of our writing takes place on the road - places where our postcolonial anxieties come to the surface, especially in regard to terra nullius. There is a very pervasive sense, albeit often unconscious, in Australian road stories, of the landscape as an already-occupied space and of the road's involvement as a technology of violence in the process of nation-building. It's interesting that many of our road stories are also horror stories."
"Road stories offer a unique perspective on life in this country; they're often quite haunted stories, which emphasise uncertainty and conflict. They're a bit of an antidote to our more triumphalist nation-building stories," Falconer said.
Nevertheless, Falconer chose the pieces to be included in the book based on their literary quality. "I was lucky in the sense that I wasn't soliciting new stories for the collection but selecting from already-published work. So I largely put the collection together from memory, from works that I already liked and knew."
The idea for the anthology came from a friend who works at Penguin. "My aim was not to put together a definitive historical collection that would cover every aspect of Australian history, but to capture a certain feeling about the road - its mystery and danger and tendency to dreamy retrospection."
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