Gideon Haigh
February 2013
A quiet sense of continuity allows one of Australia’s most prolific and versatile authors to flourish.
In 1978 when Gideon Haigh was just 12 years old, he was introduced to Mr Michael Keary, an extraordinary teacher who taught Latin at Geelong College. For Haigh, it was a time where he discovered his own sense of curiosity for the world, and while he forgot most of the intricacies of Latin, he remembered there was something both “wonderfully spontaneous and wonderfully experienced about Mr Keary’s lessons”.
Today, Haigh is recognised as one of the world’s most respected cricket writers. He has been a journalist for almost 30 years and has written 27 books and edited seven. His articles, essays and commentary have been published in more than 100 newspapers and magazines. He is known for his formidable intellect, for his flair for language and storytelling, and he is also known for his passion for cricket. Indeed, the fact that he was chosen to deliver the tenth Bradman Oration in October 2012 reflects his standing in the Australian and international cricket community.
Last year, Haigh also released three books: The Office, The Deserted Newsroom, and the highly anticipated, On Warne. It’s typical Haigh: lots of issues and subjects. One day it’s cricket, the next, it’s the future of journalism, or the strange cult of the CEO. And like Mr Keary before him, Haigh’s enthusiasm is contagious. “The main way I have developed as a writer is by reading,” he says.
Haigh is speaking from his recently renovated terrace in Melbourne’s inner east. He is relaxed, a little distracted but very welcoming. Throughout the conversation, he is attentive and often self-deprecating, his lean body – dressed in neck-to-toe black – comfortably positioned in a wooden kitchen chair. The terrace he shares with his wife, Charlotte, daughter Cecilia, and cat Trumper (named after the great Australian batsman, Victor Trumper), is unusually bright thanks to an abnormally humid, overcast Melbourne day.
“I’m a believer,” Haigh says moments later. He is sipping tea and listening to the whirr of the dishwasher. “I’m a true believer, and I don’t just talk about it – I try to do it too.” Haigh is referring to cricket – the game, the institution, the state of mind that has ‘contoured his life’ and informed much of its content. Indeed, there are cricket bats in several rooms of his home, and it is cricket, he admits – two training sessions and one game each week for his beloved South Yarra Cricket Club – that staves off inactivity and isolation, while offering a sense of continuity to a life that one senses has been a rather solitary, and cerebral one.
“I’m a cricketer,” he said, on the occasion of last year’s Bradman Oration, which he delivered with profound insight and care. “The game is the longest continuous extra-familial thread in my life, and I’m attached to it as tightly as ever.” Indeed, he has written 18 books on the subject, including his most recent, On Warne, an incisive and strangely compelling read that is both entertaining and remarkable in its depth of analysis and psychological intrigue. Haigh has also edited two editions of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack Australia (1999-2000, 2000-2001) – it’s every cricket lover’s Bible, and is published annually in the United Kingdom. Haigh was even asked to become its editor in 2000, but he was happy with his life in Melbourne, and to be honest he adds, “I stayed here because of my cricket club. I felt I’d miss them too much.”
Haigh, who recently turned 47, says he finds himself less and less interesting as he grows older – he does interesting things, he says, but he’s not an interesting person. He adds, “I’m a journalist and I’ve always thought that a journalist should be chiefly interested in other people’s stories and should find everything more interesting than they find themselves.”
Yet to many, Haigh is an intriguing individual. He challenges convention, and he sometimes crosses lines, speaking out when others probably would not – “I give straight answers to straight questions,” he says. In 2010, he wrote the rather incisive critique, Feeding the Hand that Bites: The Demise of Australian Literary Reviewing for the independent literary journal, Kill Your Darlings. It elicited a far-reaching response.
“The odd thing about that piece was that so many people took it personally,” he says, “as somehow an act of hostility to the reviewing community; it was actually the opposite, trying to draw attention to what an important and neglected function reviewers perform. Then again, reviewing is hardly the only trade in which it’s thought better to carry on smiling through gritted teeth rather than to admit anything’s wrong.”
If you’re wondering if Haigh’s position has changed, he says quite disarmingly, “reviewing is still, with some honourable exceptions, bumping along the bottom.”
Haigh, who has had an unconventional career, completed his three-year cadetship at The Age in the mid 1980s. After a short stint in the UK as a stringer for the business sections of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, he returned to Australia and worked for various publications (including The Independent Monthly and The Australian) before going freelance at the age of 30. As a respected journalist and with several books already published – including The Battle for BHP, and The Cricket War: The Inside Story of Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket – Haigh easily made the transition to independent writer.
Asked if the uncertainty of his sector is affecting him today, Haigh simply states that he has never changed his approach. Having worked from home for 18 years, he says he is amazingly productive – he doesn’t have to think about the upheavals and the feuds, the egos and the mistakes that occur in most office environments. He believes his is a “supremely self-indulgent career” in that he has always worked on what has pleased him, indulging his curiosity in the way that a journalist always should.
Haigh talks about the pleasures of being a father, and of the comforts of family life. He seems profoundly happy. He also alludes to his lingering sense of disappointment about everything he’s written. To clarify, he adds: “The disappointment has never been discouraging, it’s always been motivating.”
As opening batsman for the Yarras, he scored 92 runs in the last round of the last season of 2012. It is his highest score to date. Listening to Haigh recount that hot day on the pitch, of being brilliantly caught at extra cover by a guy “who looked like he couldn’t catch a cold all day”, is to hear a person truly passionate about the game – the challenges and frustrations, the excitement, and the seduction. First in, last out – Haigh seems quietly proud. “Every so often you get a glimpse of the possible,” he says, “and that’s very exciting.”
Also exciting is Haigh’s library, located on the topmost floor. Walk in and it is the aroma of books – that soft “smell like nutmeg” as Ray Bradbury so wonderfully observed in Fahrenheit 451 – that greets you. Visually, there are the spines of thousands of books meticulously arranged upon floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covering three walls. To the right it is non-fiction and biography; to the left, a wall for fiction and a wall for sport (mostly cricket). It’s a beautifully peaceful room.
Haigh pauses in front of ‘fiction’. He talks about the importance of seeing his books every day, of the visual cues they offer, the thoughts that transpire. He also discusses various authors (including Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and Richard Yates), his recent favourite (Sonya Hartnett), and David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King – quoted quite extensively in The Office – Haigh especially liked the way Wallace described the “physicality of boredom”.
Downstairs once more, Haigh talks about the future, of not wanting anything to change. “I’d like to respond to the whim of the moment,” he says, “and to follow my curiosity and enthusiasm through a subject.” To write about what interests him, with a willingness to experiment and fail: it’s just part of what Haigh appreciates and identifies with. He’d also like to keep playing cricket, of course, and get a glimpse of what’s possible.
Gideon Haigh’s On Warne is published by Penguin Books.
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