Garner Garnered: An Interview after a Fashion By Andrea Sherwood. 'Art doesn't justify cruelty, but I would do it again, I don't know why' (Helen Garner).Helen and I don't really know each other that well but as this was a professional job and not real writing, I decided to do what I thought to be the right thing. We'd discussed ethics and journalism previously, and come up with nothing. I said I'd take on the interview. I wanted to know for a fact if Helen was honest, fictional, or simply a made-up fact (she knows what I'm talking about). It was with some trepidation that I knocked on the door of her flat. It was much as I had expected. Helen Garner sat weeping in front of a fire that drew too rapidly, sending all its heat up the chimney. She was skeletal, broken-hearted, broken. A large ring of keys hung on to the hook of her gaunt hip bone. I sat down beside her but her gaze did not lift toward mine. I felt for her; my toes were numb, my shoes sodden by the lengthy walk through overgrown and weed-choked vegetation. It was Melbourne Cup Day when we met. Neither of us felt like gambling, there was too much at stake. I knew that Helen Garner thought of me as a Goddess and I did not want to watch her become a victime [sic] when circumstances belied themselves. A clean yellow-checked apron hung over the window, drying in the pale sun that filtered through the naked kitchen. She had even kept notes on the fridge, to remind herself of what was inside. We discussed the limits of journalistic enquiry. Helen was adamant: 'My antagonism for Jenna Mead motivated The First Stone.' Chiefly, I agreed, noting how desperately neat Helen was, as though if she could not control the items on her fridge, what could she control? Again, I agreed. Then she made a very astute comment: 'I can't make up a meal that makes sense.' We had been discussing ethics and the concept of food as reading a meaning, or finding a pattern, into Evil. I, too, could not stomach her dreadful cooking and suggested she leave it to those who could, as opposed to those who had no morality. In her own words, Garner is good at non-fiction. It was then I felt the heat of the horror defrosting my feet. I looked at the puddle underneath the table then back to the table, the gleaming knife that lay quietly beside the fried egg. Hadn't Garner already chopped up Jenna Mead, into 'several different persons', as she put it? I didn't want to be the next 'victim'. It was then that I saw a thicket of dead and deadening prose. I panicked. What could I do? Say? the keys jangled ominously, I thought of Bluebeard, all those dead women, and I remembered, too late, Garner's 'bullgods', and, of course, her constant dark references to the 'foibles' of women. Luckily, I recalled an article she'd written a few weeks back where she'd described women as 'feeble' and 'stupid.' I had to trick her into thinking I was agreeing with everything she said. I was nodding vigorously, stupidly, I hoped, while inside my uterus contracted and I doubled over, just in time to see the sweep of the knife just centimetres from the top of my head. I lunged at her legs and she fell backwards, the chair cracking toward the dead fireplace. I now had the knife in my hand. I stood up, careless with authority. I turned and strode toward the door, a free woman. A Goddess. I was a professional writer, I had done it, and done it with Integrity, and, most importantly, without cruelty. I read this piece back to her after she had tidied it up a bit. She liked it. And here's a piece of advice she told me to remember when writing a piece of journalism: 'Write what you like.' That's Helen, she does. This Interview was based on the interview by Margaret Sims in the Australian Magazine 5-6 August 2000. Chiefly, all events recorded in this piece are almost exclusively due to 'classy' writing and the avoidance of 'boring prose.' I can only dream, if I want to, of following in this great writer's footsteps. Though I might add here that I have a dreadful cold after fighting my way through Helen's garden. Andrea Sherwood is editor for the feminist (annual) issue, Australian Short Stories, and author of One Siren Or Another (University of Queensland Press) and An Autobiography of My Own.