The Novelist
Pick up Jack’s crudely named debut novel, Pissants, and you could be forgiven for making some unflattering assumptions about the novel and its author. Especially considering the first sentence of the novel contains the phrase “sh*tting it” and subsequent chapters feature depraved acts of debauchery, cruelty and malfeasance from deep within the trenches of toxic masculinity and perverse male misogyny. Yet, when I connected with Jack over Zoom, I was not met with my imagined gruff, unshaven hulk but with a laid-back, contemplative man who made it clear that, while the novel may be based on real footballers, Jack is far from those characters.
“I've changed careers, I've changed degrees. Maybe I just get bored doing something, very quickly, and I need to always be doing something else, and I think that probably filters through,” he says.
Change defines not only Jack’s life but Pissants' as well. Between the psychotic activities and inhumane rituals of club members Fangs, Stick, Squidman, Shaggers, Gatesy and the rest of the equally absurdly named cast of characters are small sections of reprieve with the character Elliot, whose journey in Europe away from the club, in Jack’s own words, “function[s] as the shower you need after a Pissants chapter”. The tone of the Elliot chapters is so different from the rest of Pissants that upon first reading them, I thought I had picked up a different book. This is by design. The diversity of Jack’s life experiences has led to a unique writing style that accentuates different narrative voices as an element of the writing itself.
“If I tried to sustain one voice, I would get really bored of it. It just wasn't engaging enough to last. So almost out of necessity, I needed to have multiple voices, but it was an exciting thing first and foremost, where I was like, ‘Oh sh*t, it's really nice to have a different voice coming out each day.’"
To facilitate the varying tones of these voices, Pissant’s chapters bounce between different writing styles from email chains, to social media comments sections and even internal and external dialogues.
When the many voices of Pissants aren’t swinging around profanity or drinking themselves to blackout during the annual “Pissants Open” there is nuance in their words and actions, and while Jack initially avoided speaking publicly about the book's themes, he told Blitz that controlling the narrative around his novel’s release was imperative to ensure it reached his target audience.
“I knew when it would come out that a lot of journalists would ask, ‘Was this a message on toxic masculinity?’"
“And I know if I say yes to that, then the headline becomes something about that, and then the audience I want to appeal to, the male readership who don't read books, will probably immediately be against things like that.”
“If they see that, they just go, ‘No,’ like, ‘Why the f**k would I read this?’ So I was very deliberate in being like, ‘No, no, no, it's just characters, and whatever happens, it's your interpretation.’ But yeah, the theme is obviously about young men who cannot find a way to relate to each other in the way that we wish or maybe they wish they could.”
At some level, the characters of Jack’s novel don’t have the emotional ability to connect to one another, and as such, their rituals and behaviours, which may seem alien to the average reader, are the only way they are able to form relationships. The writing about such rituals - such as kidnapping a teammate's dog - is so potent because it is based on Jack’s own experiences as an AFL player.
“This book is a fictionalisation of my early 20's,” admitted Jack.
And that's how I would bond with my teammates, it was just drinking sessions and playing games and ripping on each other and banter in the WhatsApp groups. But I f**king enjoyed it, for a lot of it. Cause it made me feel like I was a part of something.”
