''There are some writers who write with an angel's quill,'' Bryce Courtenay told his audience at the ANU yesterday, ''but I'm a pick-and-shovel writer.''
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
''Mr Tap Tap'', as the top-selling author and Canberra resident calls himself, has done pretty well with his pick and shovel.
Under the glass in a cabinet at the ANU Library, an open copy of a 1989 first-edition of The Power of One tells the story: beneath his flamboyant signature, Courtenay's recent inscription reads, ''12,000,000 copies in 28 languages later''.
The book is part of a donation of a large, signed and inscribed first-edition collection of major Australian authors, including the complete works of Courtenay, to the ANU by former university librarian Colin Steele. The donation also includes the complete works, or substantial collections, of Canberra author Marion Halligan, Morris West, Thomas Keneally, Colleen McCullough, David Foster and Helen Garner, adding to the ANU's R. F. Brissenden collection, a signed book collection established in memory of the late ANU academic and poet Bob Brissenden.
Mr Steele, who was ANU librarian for 22 years and is a long-time Canberra Times book reviewer, began collecting signed books nearly 30 years ago and has continued since through his role as convenor of ANU literary events.
Courtenay, 78, was in full flight at the ANU Library as he spoke passionately and poignantly of his life and his writing. The master storyteller told how, growing up in an orphanage in South Africa, he relied on his ability to tell stories to save himself from beatings and bullying - events described in his first novel, the semi-autobiographical The Power of One.
The book, he said, was written at the hospital bedside of his son Damon, a haemophiliac who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion and died aged 24 - and throughout, he said, there was a Canberra connection. ''The hospital was cold and I would wear this,'' Courtenay said, holding up a well-worn, grey Canberra Times sweater, ''and I've worn it for every single one of my books - if I didn't have this on, [I believed] something terrible would happen.''
Damon had begged his reluctant father to write a book about AIDs and its cause - a virus, not, as some claimed, a punishment from God - even going so far as to permitting his father to sing Summertime, something Courtenay had always threatened his children with if they misbehaved. Courtenay recalled that as he held the dying Damon, he sang George Gershwin's haunting Summertime - and yesterday, he sang it again, in full, for the gathering at the ANU. His book about Damon, April Fool's Day, was the hardest book he had ever written, he said, but in response to it he had received 33,000 letters. ''I realised I was not alone,'' he said. ''That is my job, that is my story, that is why I tell stories.''
■ An exhibition of literary works and memorabilia collected by Colin Steele will be on display at the R. G. Menzies Building of the ANU Library until April 30.