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HERITAGE RESTORED |
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The
summer of 1995, Melbourne, Australia: a record heatwave bakes the
countryside. American expatriate publisher, Monique O'Shannesey has
suffered a setback of disastrous proportions when a promising young
writer, Frank Morgan refuses to show up to meet a producer who is going
to make a movie out of his book. Little does she know in the midst of
her anger and bitterness that the seeds of regrowth are slowly
germinating. Thus Heritage Restored was born, althogh written in 1997, it was based in 1995, around about the time the Internet was taking the country by storm although by '97 it had taken firm hold. Monique is without a doubt the strongest character in my mind, it was to Monique I wrote the short stories under the pen name of Barry. Born on the Bayou, I have never tried to find her home town, perhaps I'll leave that to the reader's imagination! Her father was a combat photographer and journalist during the Vietnam war. The war was without a doubt one of the defining events of American and Australian history. Her father was like many of the men I knew who came back from the war, burned out and trying to fit into society. Monique grew up with her drunken father and a mother who suffered constant beatings at the hands of her once loving husband. Some of the victim mentality of her mother comes through in Monique's personality. She seems at times to take on too much and try to weather the storm, but there is a touch of her father's fighting spirit combined with his search for truth. Since emigrating to Australia she has taken over the reins of a publishing company given her by her ex husband as part of a divorce settlement. At first he owned 51 % shares but with John's advice and help she was able to work her way out of liquidation and buy him out. Since then she has gone from strength to strength although her personal life has seen her retreat. It is her personal life that would perhaps be her Achille's heel. She feels cut off and isolated by her wealth and the fact she is a boss, temper this with the subtle anti-American attitides in Australia and you have a woman crying out for love and attention whilst maintaining a public persona that masks her emotions. Barry's attempts to reach her are the beginning of her journey into the truth, the opening of a flower as his healing words reach deep inside to the bedroom of her heart. It seems we all have a bedroom of our heart, the secret part of our being where we retreat when the world closes in around us. John McIvor is the perennial larrikin and for those who do not know the meaning of that old Aussie term, a larrikin is a good ol' boy, a renegade who has a heart of gold and yet can hold his own with the best of the boys in the bar. He represents the Australia I knew the best, staunch men who opened doors for women and yet could hold their own, they didn't play by the rules. Aussies have a habit of looking at the rules and deciding which rules are worth keeping and which should be tossed out. It's a lifestyle I tend to adhere to, intense practicality and a determination to see the job through to the end no matter how many late nights it takes. He sees Monique as being fair dinkum and once again I have to explain that unique Aussie term. In Australia titles are generally earned unlike Britain where titles are a birthright. You earn the title and once you earn it you keep earning it. Once you reach that plateau for want of a better word you are known as fair dinkum, the Aussie equivelent of royalty. But his private life is a mess, his recent divorce is due partly to his lack of communication, something he has to come to terms with, like many men he has mistaken intimacy for that thing we do between the sheets, but with Monique he finds true intimacy and in the process experiences a life changing moment when he faces up to his mistakes and owns them whole heartedly instead of wriggling out of them with smartarse remarks and practical jokes. Barry has been left until last because he represents the battler who has been beaten down too many times. Australia is a land of fatalists, being descended from Irish and Scottish immigrants. Success is fleeting and it always has a sting in its tail. He was in a sense the first character I devised, being the writer of the short stories that I believed no one in their right mind would ever read. He is the doubting Thomas who doubts his own abilities. While John may have doubted him, Barry really did a number on himself and sits in prison for his crime. He is the inner child screaming to be released from his prison and in that sense I think he appeals to most of us, we all have our own self imposed prisons and we have built the walls and put the bars into place all by ourselves but unfortunately we seem to have lost the keys to our dungeons and sit in eternal hope that someone will find the keys and release us from prison. Barry's flights of fancy that took form in the stories mirror my own journey from self imposed isolation to some sort of public acclaim. In that sense the work is almost autobiographical in a way, John and Barry being dual parts of my upbringing and history, although I've never been in jail but I have many friends who spent time in Pentridge. But prison is something we live with day in day out, whether it be a marriage, job or the situation which we find ourselves. I think in summary Heritage is very much a cathartic experience for me, I have been able to exorcise the demons and admit that yes, I can write and most of the time I actually like the stuff I write, just as Barry finally came to admit that he had talent. Alastair Rosie
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