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Nick Earls, author of Zigzag Street, Bachelor Kisses and Perfect Skin, has branched out into the crime field with his latest novel, The True Story of Butterfish. He was recently interviewed for The Age by Linda Morris. |
Earls's prolific oeuvre of 12 novels and two short-story collections has steadily built him an international reputation as a contemporary writer who makes comic yardage - from subtle irony to groan-out-loud gags - out of the emotional entanglements of decent men during episodes of self-evaluation and transformation: ''I knew these men in the world, people who thought a lot and sometimes talked a lot, thinkers to the point of overthinkers who sometimes underestimated their competence and often didn't realise their strengths and I had not seen them much in fiction.''
Joshua Lang, Earls's lead character, is an internet blogger trading in pop-culture trivia to pay the bills, and an occasional spin doctor willing to turn a blind eye to a tawdry secret or two, his ambitions of living the gonzo life long behind him.
Dogged by self-recriminations following a disastrous relationship, Lang is not so much mean as dispirited, morose with the choices he's made in life.
''I had a narrator who was a thinker and who could, in his own way, crack wise even if a lot of it stays inside, and I was aiming for a certain directness with the narration,'' Earls says. ''Maybe that puts Josh not a million miles from Philip Marlowe.''
