Lily Brett chats with Jessica Au about her new novel,

Lola Bensky

I think that one way or another we all write from our own experience. No-one else is creating the characters or the stories. Whether the facts or the storylines match our real lives is irrelevant. I think it is important to write about what you know. What you care about. What matters.

I try to be as honest as I can when I write. I try not to flinch or to disguise or shy away from something that might feel very painful to me. I want people to know who they are reading about, whether the character is a rock journalist or a private detective.

Lola shares several contemplative moments with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and co. – music icons that you also interviewed over the years. There’s a charisma and vulnerability to each of these characters as we see them through Lola’s eyes. How do you approach writing these real-life personalities in fiction?

When I write about real-life personalities in fiction, I want to make those portraits as accurate as I can. I want to portray the people I am writing about as real people, which they are. I did this in my novel, Too Many Men, with Rudolph Hoess, the commandant of the death camp Auschwitz. I wanted to show Rudolph Hoess as a real person – a husband, a father, a hard worker, someone we could all identify with, not as someone you could easily dismiss as just a monster.

I thought about Lola Bensky and that period of time in the mid to late 1960s for many years before I wrote the book. I made a lot of notes. When I did start writing it was very intense. I worked seven days a week for 11 months. I barely went outside. I was certain that I must be suffering from a vitamin D deficiency because of the lack of sunlight.

I love the feeling of being immersed in a novel. Being so steeped in another world that that world becomes your reality. For the entire time I was writing Lola Bensky I was in 1967. The fact that it was 2011 barely registered. One of the surprising things about writing is that if you are still enough, memories and feelings that have been buried for decades can emerge with great clarity.

My mother, who was imprisoned in Nazi death camps, used to say to me that I would never ever know what people were capable of. That thought frightened me. And I knew that she really did know.

I think that from the time I was very young I wanted to know who people really were. Who they were underneath their carefully or artfully coiffed hair, underneath the lipstick or the deodorant. Underneath their skin. And that’s what I set out to portray about Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, Janis Joplin, Cher and a clutch of other rock stars.

While the novel contains its own veins of trauma and turbulence, there’s also a sharp sense of deprecating humour to Lola’s world-view. What in your mind is the trick to adding these inflections of comedy?

I think that having a sense of humour in my writing and in my life has saved me. I have always seen my sense of humour as my saving grace. Things can look pretty grim and I can suddenly see the very funny aspect of what’s bothering me. Or, more accurately, I see what’s funny or weird about my own behaviour. I’ve always been able to laugh at myself. And I am very grateful for that ability.

When I write something funny, it’s usually because I need a break from writing about something that is decidedly not funny. When people laugh at something I’ve written it gives me so much pleasure.

Is music still a part of your writing-life – in terms of poetry, process or otherwise?

I rarely listen to music. I need silence. Silence when I am thinking or writing or cooking or walking. I like silence. Loud music hurts my ears. In the days when I went to a lot of rock concerts, I used to put my fingers in my ears and hope, as I was usually sitting in the front couple of rows, that no-one noticed.

I envy people who get great pleasure from music. I wish I could.

When I write, I do feel the rhythm in the phrase or the sentence or the paragraph. And that rhythm is very important to me. I’ll re-write a sentence ten or twenty times to get the right rhythm.

Finally, tell us about the writers or novels that you’ve loved in the past.

I didn’t read much at all when I was a child. There were not a lot of books in the house. When both of your parents are refugees and work long shifts in factories there’s not a lot of space for literature. I really only started reading seriously in my twenties. I discovered Readings and ordered boxes and boxes of books. A wonderful woman, Robyn Ralton, who worked there ended up choosing books for me. It was an exhilarating time.

Once I started reading I didn’t stop. A writer I return to over and over again is the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. I’ve had a copy of her Selected Poems, translated by Elaine Feinstein, by my bedside for years. Tsvetaeva’s poems instantly connect me with what really matters. On those days when all the ordinary irritations and annoyances of everyday life can feel overwhelming, Tsvetaeva’s lines can just pierce all that flotsam and jetsam.

Another poet I have more recently discovered and love is the Israeli poet Dahlia Ravikovitch. Her poem ‘Clockwork Doll’ has so much power in so few words. I am currently reading Ravikovitch’s collected poems, Hovering At A Low Altitude. I so admire the way she strips all the non-essentials and gets to the heart of every syllable and consonant.

About twenty years ago, Helen Garner sent me a poem. It came in an ordinary envelope, neatly folded and posted to me in New York. The poem was ‘Those Who Carry’ by the Polish poet Anna Kamienska. There was nothing ordinary about the poem. It is a deceptively simple, breathtaking piece. A poem that makes me cry every time I read it. I kept the poem in my wallet for over 16 years and was only parted from it when both my wallet and the poem were stolen.

Lola Bensky

A book by Booki.sh