Which author would you love to have dinner with?
If I could have dinner with an author, I would choose Tim Winton.
But not in a restaurant. I imagine fish and chips somewhere on the Western Australian coast, sitting outside with the ocean stretching away in front of us. And there would be one condition: we wouldn’t talk about books.
I wouldn’t ask him how he writes, where his characters come from, or what he meant in a particular novel. I’d rather talk about the things underneath the writing: family, ageing, masculinity, faith, regret, belonging, and the places that shape us.
I’d especially want to talk about the Australian landscape. Winton has always written with a deep attentiveness to the natural world, particularly the coast and ocean, and his commitment to environmental causes extends well beyond his writing. I’d want to ask what happens when we really learn to love a place. Does loving it make us responsible for it? Does paying attention eventually demand action?
But eventually I think the conversation would come back to one question: Where do you see grace?
Not abstractly, but in ordinary life. In damaged people. In complicated families. In ageing. In places that have been wounded. In communities trying to care for what they have inherited.
Perhaps that is why damaged people are often more interesting than successful ones. Success can create the illusion that we are self-sufficient. Brokenness reminds us that we need one another.
And perhaps the same is true of landscapes. Damage matters. Loss is real. Grace does not mean pretending otherwise. But damage does not necessarily get the final word.
Something can still grow. Someone can still care. Relationships can be repaired. A threatened place can still be defended. Beauty can still be noticed. People can decide that what they have inherited is worth protecting for those who come after them.
I suspect that is partly what attracts me to Winton in the first place. Beneath all the stories is an attentiveness to people and places that are imperfect, vulnerable and worth loving.
So I’d eat my fish and chips, look out across the ocean, and mostly listen.
And somewhere before the sun went down, I’d ask: “Tim, where do you see grace?”
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