Carey to put his stamp on Australian culture

Carey to put his stamp on Australian culture

PETER Carey, fabulist extraordinaire, is known for his rollicking, picaresque novels bristling with rogues, misfits, exiles and gamblers. Today the multi-award-winning Australian author has another sort of narrative in mind, a far more minimal and mundane affair, an actionless, banal plot that rambles on and on until it fades into absurdist insignificance. It's Carey's preferred prophesy about the British royal family.

''I think the royal family is just going to end up retiring, I don't think we're going to have to do anything. [Prince] William definitely doesn't want to do it, no one wants his father, I think it will just go away,'' he says, speaking from the vantage point of the 35th floor of Melbourne's Sofitel.

Is that what the staunch republican is hoping?

''Well, it's the happiest thought that's occurred to me in a long, long, long time. It'll be Diana's revenge,'' he says, in typically wicked Carey style.

Carey has made a fleeting visit to Melbourne and Australia - the country he left 20 years ago for New York - for an honour that he values as much as his two Booker prizes, two Commonwealth Writers' prizes, and three Miles Franklins. His face will adorn a series of stamps, an exaltation once reserved for ruling monarchs or members of the royal family - which makes the accolade all the more pleasing for Carey.


There will be two images of him - one of the young, geeky Carey with the fluffy hair and huge, owl-like spectacles that were all the rage in the '80s (and are all the rage again), and another of the older, more distinguished writer, in spectacles more restrained and hair a tad less expansive.

''You know, when you are Australian and you spend a lot of time living out of the country, people start to imagine that you might have forgotten your country or that your country doesn't mean anything to you, when in fact of course it is who you are. So those two stamps are really thrilling to me,'' he says.

Carey has been honoured by Australia Post alongside five other celebrated writers: Bryce Courtney, Thomas Keneally, David Malouf, Colleen McCullough and Tim Winton, all of whom will also have younger and older versions of themselves on their stamps.

The living ''Australian Legends'' series of stamps was launched in 1997, with Sir Donald Bradman the first to be honoured, while last year Australian Oscar winners Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman and Geoffrey Rush were chosen.

Carey is delighted that Australian writers have been selected this year.

''The importance of Australian artists is immense,'' he says. ''If we really want to know who we are we're not going to find out by reading about Paris Hilton and we're not going to find out by watching cultural crap and digesting the stuff that comes flooding in from everywhere … we digest as much crap as the British do and the Americans do and it will affect us. We need to be able to learn again what it is to read.''

For that to happen, the teaching of literature in schools must be regarded as ''much, much more important''.

''Which probably means you've got to stop asking teachers to do their work for nothing and give them some dignity and respect, pay them more but then also ask more of them.

''We don't want to get more stupid. The whole world is getting more stupid, and writers are people who might ask us to go in a happier direction.''


And how does Carey feel about being labelled a ''living legend''?

''Well, I'd say Donald Bradman was a legend, King Arthur, definitely a legend. I'm prepared to be a legend in my own lunchtime.''

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