Author Martin Flanagan on writing about footy legend Michael Long

Martin Flanagan is Australia’s greatest sports writer. He is also a novelist, poet, playwright and biographer. He has a regular column in The Age and often writes stories that reflect the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. In his latest book The Short Long Book: the man who changed the Australian game  we not only learn about the legend that is Michael Long, but we also get to know the author and his commitment to get the story right!

Today it is my great pleasure to welcome Martin to my blog to answer a few questions about researching and writing the book.

With everyone you write about, you ask ‘where do you come from?’ and so it seems only right that you are asked the same question. So Martin, where do you come from?

I come from a place – Tasmania – that had no memory of the people I came from, the Irish convicts, and no memory of the people who were there before them, the island’s Aboriginal people. That silence was deadening and gave me a whole set of questions. I also had a father who had survived a war crime (the Burma Railway) but didn’t speak about it. As a man, he was different and I liked him a lot but I didn’t know why he was the man he was. That was another silence I grew up with that gave me a whole set of questions. My writing life has really been about exploring those silences.

The process of gathering together the big picture of Michael Long wasn’t easy. You’ve joked that you could’ve almost titled the project “Biography: An Heroic Failure” and that you nearly gave up writing the book twelve times. What motivated you to keep going?

My belief that he’s one of the most important people in the history of Australian sport. I think he’s a bigger figure than people realise. He changed the culture of Australian football when he made his stand against racial abuse in 1995. The ripples from that flowed through the whole of Australian sport and out into Australian society. I believe so much of what is happening in Australian society now with issues tackling like homophobia and creating racial and religious tolerance owes something to the radical change of attitude that Michael engendered.

You believe that ‘hope is an engine for change’. With that in mind, what change do you hope to make by telling Michael Long’s story?

Here’s a man who led a society, a group, a culture, through a necessary but difficult change. There’s so much to be learnt from his example.

Michael Long has a story he loves to tell about your Magpie Geese hunting adventure that earned you the title ‘Great White Hunter’. What does that name mean to you beyond the humour of it?

You could write a book in answer to that question. All I will say is that I love the story because I love the spirit in which he tells it. It’s a joke at my expense but it’s not a joke which excludes me, it’s a joke which includes me. It also a brilliant joke in that it works at so many levels.

What would be the ultimate story to write i.e. if you could write the biography of anyone – dead or alive – who would it be?

Every human being has a story worth telling and worth listening to. The only question is whether they want to tell it.

You can read my review of the book here and find links to booksellers where you can purchase a copy!