Writing and redemption - an interview with Michael Jacobson Michael Jacobson's first novel Windmill Hill is a doozy of a ride through the physical terrain of a Tasmania gradually being decimated by logging and mining, and the equivalent emotional trawl through the life of Blink, a man spending his last months blurred away in the clutches of Alzheimer's. It's also a tale of families and friends, of duty and responsibility, and ultimately of sacrifice. I spoke to Jacobson last week from his home at the Gold Coast, on Australia's north-eastern seaboard, and asked him about the process of writing Windmill Hill "The first draft came together over 3 months of writing, four pages a day down at Burleigh Point. I'd taken paid long-service leave, and it was my chance to sit down and write. I wrote everything long-hand, I'm absolutely computer literate, so it took a long time afterwards to put everything onto the computer, and as I was doing that, I could edit what I'd written. I spent time over Christmas, 2001, refining it, polishing it up and then I sent it to my agent. A few weeks later I found out that Hodder Headline had accepted it and well, here it is." Jacobson, a feature writer of broad experience, freely admits that when he started as a journalist he was a shocking writer. "I was awful. I'd be sent to report on council meetings and sleep through them, once they had me report on the Tasmanian state budget and I couldn't even tell what the story was. So they put me onto writing feature stories, going down every year to interview the old diggers on Anzac Day.* And I'd talk to my grandfather who also fought in World War I and I realised there was a bigger story there I wanted to tell. I wanted to write something that would honor and dignify him and his stories, and that's the basis for the novel."
We chat for a while about how our birth-towns and states shape us, Jacobson commenting that he's been "formed, informed and reformed by Tasmania" but stating he didn't have to live there to recognise it. Also mentioned is the feeling a writer gets at the end of the novel, both of us agreeing it was like being abandoned by something you've lived with for the duration of the writing. Finally we reach the sadness of Windmill Hill, the state of rapid decline that Alzheimer's brings with it. "You know, towards the end, even though he was awfully frail he had this sense of absolute clarity," Jacobson says as we talk about his grandfather and also the character Blink. "It's as if in the final stage everything is briefly totally clear, like the fog has lifted, and sometimes people are shocked when a week later the person is dead, because they've seen them, they've glimpsed him with a clear mind." I ask Jacobson why people should read Windmill Hill considering the
subject matter. He replies, "Although there's a sad subject being
* A digger is the colloquial name for an Australian soldier and Anzac Day is the national holiday that commemorates the death of many soldiers at the invasion of Gallipoli and symbolises one of Australia's key turning points in terms of history and cultural identity. Windmill Hill is available now from Hodder Headline
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Though, like the narrator, Jacobson's
grandfather had Alzheimer's and called
him Angus, the similarities largely end
there. "It's definitely a fictional work.
Though a lot of my descriptions of
Tasmania are of real places, the
characters are my own invention. I used
my grandfather's stories as a jumping
point, a framework I guess, and went off
and researched war records and gardening
books - so many gardening books, and
they are so dull! When I was a kid my
grandfather made it sound so interesting.
We'd go out into his back garden and
he'd roll his ciggies and show me the
flowers, tell me about how to grow roses
and what soil to use. Nothing like the
books."
dealt with, amongst all that is this uplifting
journey of family members traveling together
in life. It's almost like a fable, about the
journey of men or people in general, and asks
us about the importance of dignity and
respect and friendship. It appeals to all
genders and all ages, it's not just a war story
or a sickness story but something bigger."
