FroM » p41 writing – but immediately I would like to amend that with a couple of extra punctuation marks.” It may not be terribly surprising that Haley has been described as meticulous. “If you have a reputation as a pedant, the only way to live that down is by proving it,” he says. So, upon reading Barry Jones’ Dictionary of World Biography and noticing that a software program was responsible for many typographical errors, Haley performed an unsolicited subedit of the book. Jones was impressed enough to commission Haley to sub the book’s second edition. This doggedness was evident to former Age editor Michael Smith, who worked with Haley for 10 years. “There are two aspects to Ken Haley,” Smith says. “He’s got enormous determination and resilience, and he’s really driven when he gets on the scent of a fact or a mistake. He’s got a ferocious tenacity, and with some people that doesn’t work; but it’s an admirable quality that not enough people have.” Haley has been reading Breaking News: The Golden Age of Graham Perkin (Ben Hills’ biography of Graham Perkin), and points out that Perkin would meet his Age mates after work in the paper’s ’60s heyday to bemoan where it had gone wrong. He resists the “old-fogey temptation of saying it is somehow a pale imitation of its former self”. “It’s probably got the broadest view of any paper around … it has become a victim not of insularity, so much as the pressures of cost and the challenges to any business model that puts excellence above all else in an era where having a foreign correspondent is regarded as a luxury,” he says. “Remember, we’re talking about a paper that is of the same vintage as The New York Times. It forgets its own past at its peril. (Former Age editor) Michael Gawenda has pointed out that The Age has neglected its own archives. This, of course, affects the institutional memory of the paper – I’m not saying it should live in the last century, but it should be aware of it.”
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ichael Smith has read Haley’s books and says they’re “really good”: “I think his personality comes through. It’s well put together – maybe a few too many puns, but that’s part of Ken’s character. He’s a good punster.” A book without puns? Haley would have none of it, but he is delighted to reveal that his next destination is Nunavut, eastern Canada, which he intends to reach
via a boat journey from Greenland. Also planned is a chronicle of his most recent trip, from Iceland to Malta. With two books out and another on the way, what is the best anecdote that hasn’t made it into print? For the first time, Haley doesn’t have an answer ready. “I’ve held nothing back from my adoring public,” he quips. “Of course, I kept my interview with President Sarkozy out because he didn’t want the publicity.” Still, there is one story from earlier in the interview that is made up in equal parts of Haley’s keenness and the logistical entanglements that go hand in wheel with his situation. The place was Romania, the year was 2003, and the author had discovered that the 89-year-old sister of the late dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was living in a hut 40 kilometres out of town. Naturally, Haley’s first inclination was to knock on her door. “I thought this was a great interview in the making,” he recollects. “She’s either going to say, ‘My brother was a fantastic guy and his achievements have been trashed’, or that he was a monster at the breakfast table as a child.” Complicating matters, however, was a blizzard that had sprung up with the alacrity of one of Haley’s bons mots – and a driver that wouldn’t have understood them, seeing as how he spoke no English. “We got to this cottage. It was surrounded by a couple of metres of snow. There was an Alsatian in the front garden with fangs the size of a tiger’s, and of course I’m in a wheelchair. I asked the taxi driver if he would be the brave one and go and knock on the door, but he wouldn’t – not even for a considerable sum of money,” Haley says. “So it was badly executed – and she could have been dead inside, which would have made for an even better story – but that was one that got away. Still, you have to know what might be possible, and even telling the story about the interview that got away is better than not having the idea at all.” \ Hari raj hraj@theweeklyreview.com.au » Europe @ 2.4 km/h ($32.95) www.wakefieldpress.com.au or Ken Haley at kjhaley@bigpond.com » For help or information, visit www.beyondblue.org.au, call Suicide Helpline Victoria on 1300 651 251 or Lifeline on 131 114.
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May 2, 2012 \ The weekly review 43