Tony's stunning, frankly honest and massively funny book with keep you laughing for hours:
INVISIBLE
has been released by
Big Sky Publishing
AVAILABLE FROM YOUR FAVOURITE
BOOK RETAILERS
Booktopia; Dymocks; QBD Books;
Readings, your local bookstore
or Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com.au/Invisible-Essential-Guide-Aliens-Stranded/dp/192289642X
______
BACK-COVER DESCRIPTION
Have you ever wondered why you can’t wait to get away from the party, go home and put your feet up alone?
As a boy, and right through his entire life, Tony Matthews has craved anonymity and invisibility — a state of being that is not only well beyond the laws of physics as we know them but also one largely at odds with his chosen profession of novelist, historian and poet.
In this brightly humorous autobiographical account of his strange life, Tony Matthews takes us on a mystical journey through the highly unusual world of ‘Invisible Man’ — living as gently, quietly and unobtrusively as possible in a brash, noisy and sometimes overly disruptive world.
Reflecting his own young confusion, he questions why he appears to be a round doughnut irrevocably stranded in a square biscuit-tin. His quest for understanding takes him on a roller-coaster ride until he realises finally that he is about as comfortable on Earth as a crocodile in a handbag factory.
In this funny and, at times, exquisitely insightful book, Tony Matthews tells us how the world is viewed through the eyes of an intensely introverted and overly self-conscious writer, film-maker, recluse and ethical vegan.
This is a true and extraordinary story that, at times, is emotionally touching and at other times touchingly comic.
AN ONLINE INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR
QUESTION 1.
Was it difficult for you, as a reclusive introvert, to tell the story about your own private life and the inherent reclusiveness and introversion that have been part of your persona since childhood?
When I was a kid, about as tall as a gopher in a golf-hole, I’d regularly hide in a cupboard under the stairs and pretend that I was the sole survivor left on Earth after a zombie apocalypse. I couldn’t help it. I just liked to be alone. I was drawn to seclusion like a mouse is drawn to cheese-sticks. It’s always been a part of who I am. I wanted to write about that in a frank and honest way but also humorously because I knew that there were loads of introverts and recluses out there who still feel that they are a bit strange because they are so different. Not only did I want to use my words to try to broaden our understanding of what it’s like to live as an introvert in a world that likes to ‘party’ excessively, but I also wanted to let all the introverts know that there is absolutely nothing wrong with wearing odd socks all your life or madly running to the left while everyone else is running to the right. It’s okay to be different. I was a little apprehensive about writing of my private life but realised that if I wanted to ‘connect’ with people on my own level I’d have to expose my inner self to the world.
QUESTION 2.
Your book deals with some heavy subjects - veganism, animal rights, ethics, climate change, introversion and seclusion, but you treat them all lightly. Was that a structural and deliberate literary approach?
Actually I didn’t have any kind of ‘structure’ in mind when I began the book. I should add that the book had its genesis while I was seated in a shopping mall trying to remain camouflaged against a backdrop of potted plants while waiting for my wife. I saw a few peculiar things that day, especially at the butcher’s counter, and being a lifelong student of human nature I jotted them down on a few scraps of paper.
A few days later I opened my laptop and, using these notes as a base, had soon written almost half a chapter, and as the scenes I’d witness had been funny, it naturally followed that the chapter would also be humorous. I found that I was able to use satirical humour to lighten the mood when presenting some fairly serious stuff, and thought that would be far more effective than trying to get my message and story across in a more sombre and fact-filled way. I believe that if you can make people smile or laugh, you’ve also made a friend, and I like to think of all my readers as friends.
QUESTION 3.
Can you give us an example of one of your more unusual experiences as a vegan reclusive writer?
Well, there are loads in the book, of course, but perhaps one of the more unusual, although this is not in the book, was the time I was asked to become a spy for the African National Congress in South Africa during the Apartheid years. I was in Cape Town at the time and they wanted someone like me who could infiltrate a government department and quietly and unobtrusively blend into the background. I was very much against Apartheid, which is why they asked me in the first place, but I’d also recently spent a brief time working in conjunction with the South African police. During that time I’d had a really profound firsthand experience on how the police dealt with activists and dissenters and therefore I wasn’t too keen on being banged up in some Robben Island prison cell like Nelson Mandela hanging upside-down by my unmentionables.
QUESTION 4.
As a child you’d spend some of your summer holidays living in a cave in the wilds which, tens of thousands of years ago, had been the home of Neolithic people. Why did you do that?
It was a special place for me. I’d discovered the fossil of a pterodactyl there. I’d had to crawl through a narrow tunnel to find it and the whole experience had been completely mind-boggling because I was fairly sure that I was the first person to see that pterodactyl since Raquel Welch had been there one million years B.C. — dressed in her iconic doe-skin bikini, of course. It was pretty irresistible — the pterodactyl I mean, not Rachel’s bikini although I have to admit that was pretty interesting too!
QUESTION 5.
Did people think that you were a little strange or in any way different when you were a child?
Probably, although I can’t say for sure because I didn’t have a lot to do with people generally. If I wasn’t hiding in an old disused cinema with the ghosts of Errol Flynn or Fatty Arbuckle, I’d be roaming alone at an old lighthouse on a rocky outcrop called Mumbles Head and hoping that the tide wouldn’t come in too quickly, leaving me stranded. There would be nothing worse than being perched like a puffin on a rock-ledge all night, especially in winter, because it would have been colder than a brass toilet in the Kremlin.
QUESTION 6.
You’ve been vegan for more than forty-two years, do you miss eating meat and what makes you take on that kind of commitment?
Firstly, I never actually liked eating meat. I put my very first gravy dinner on my head when I was still in a baby-chair and that’s what made my hair impossibly curly — at least that’s what my Mum said. Secondly, ethical veganism isn’t a commitment, it’s a natural way of ‘being’ for anyone who understands even the most basic elements of ethics. I was once told that I’d grow out of being a vegan, but that statement was made by a bling-wearing chap who had once told me rather smugly that he’d taken an I.Q. test and the results had been negative. I’m only joking, of course. He didn’t actually know what an I.Q. test was.
As a boy I’d surreptitiously feed the cat or dog with my portions of meat. Sadly the dog died of a coronary or something equally as ghastly and I felt quite awful for a while.
QUESTION 7.
I understand that as a teen you were a Beatles lookalike?
Well, I was a young teenager and it was 1963. Every boy in the U.K. was attempting to emulate John, Paul, George and … well not so much Ringo. It was a complete disaster, of course. Everyone kept tripping over my grotesquely long winkle-pickers and sadly not a single girl had, even for a moment, contemplated throwing her knickers at me, so I hung up my Beatles suit, kicked off the pickers, and went to hide in a cave which was reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of dead miners.
QUESTION 8.
In your book you present the theory that being alone, spending a lot of your time in deep thought, might be responsible for some of the startlingly accurate predictions you’ve made in the past. How does that work?
Actually some of the predictions I’ve made have completely astonished me when they came true. I question all this in the book, of course, and believe that it may be associated with being alone a lot of the time, deep in thought. Quite recently I had a sudden and powerful flash of the face of Anna Karen, the actor who played ‘Olive’ in the TV series On the Buses. It was so strong it stopped me in my tracks. She died that night and we read about it in the news the following day. I also dreamed of the death of John F. Kennedy’s son and his wife in a flying accident about a week or so before it happened. I’ve had loads of predictions like that, and no, I can’t give you the winning lottery ticket numbers for next week.
QUESTION 9.
What advice can you give to people who, like you, lead reclusive, introverted lives?
Well, people who are naturally introverted, and especially those who are reclusive, like me, have probably been on the receiving end of ‘advice’ all their lives and I expect they don’t need any more from me. My book, however, outlines how I have dealt with being an introverted reclusive vegan and animal rights campaigner, and I hope that in discussing my experiences so openly, I’ll be giving others the confidence and strength to continue their own introverted and reclusive lifestyles without having to feel guilt or remorse or any other kind of negative emotion. It’s just okay to be ‘you’ and draw strength from your own individuality and commitment.
QUESTION 10.
I understand that you have always wanted to be virtually invisible — that’s even the title of your book — and as a result you’ve become something of an expert in fading into the background? Tell me about that.
It’s impossible to be invisible but we can be as invisible as possible. I automatically use a whole range of methods to blend into the background — usually very successfully, including my method of keeping meetings as short as possible so that the average introvert can get out of there as quickly as possible and even how to remain virtually invisible, even when you’re the centre of attention. I do it all the time. It just comes naturally. I’ve even been mistaken for a shop-dummy, which can be a little disconcerting when they’re having an underwear sale, for example.
I explain my crazy methods in my book and they are all effective — some even prevent accidents happening at the most inopportune moment such as having one’s bottom sucked into one of those terrifying aircraft vacuum loos at 30,000 feet which, in addition to being a little irritating, would also be somewhat awkward when the captain suddenly announces that seat-belts should now been fastened because there’s turbulence ahead.
Was it difficult for you, as a reclusive introvert, to tell the story about your own private life and the inherent reclusiveness and introversion that have been part of your persona since childhood?
When I was a kid, about as tall as a gopher in a golf-hole, I’d regularly hide in a cupboard under the stairs and pretend that I was the sole survivor left on Earth after a zombie apocalypse. I couldn’t help it. I just liked to be alone. I was drawn to seclusion like a mouse is drawn to cheese-sticks. It’s always been a part of who I am. I wanted to write about that in a frank and honest way but also humorously because I knew that there were loads of introverts and recluses out there who still feel that they are a bit strange because they are so different. Not only did I want to use my words to try to broaden our understanding of what it’s like to live as an introvert in a world that likes to ‘party’ excessively, but I also wanted to let all the introverts know that there is absolutely nothing wrong with wearing odd socks all your life or madly running to the left while everyone else is running to the right. It’s okay to be different. I was a little apprehensive about writing of my private life but realised that if I wanted to ‘connect’ with people on my own level I’d have to expose my inner self to the world.
QUESTION 2.
Your book deals with some heavy subjects - veganism, animal rights, ethics, climate change, introversion and seclusion, but you treat them all lightly. Was that a structural and deliberate literary approach?
Actually I didn’t have any kind of ‘structure’ in mind when I began the book. I should add that the book had its genesis while I was seated in a shopping mall trying to remain camouflaged against a backdrop of potted plants while waiting for my wife. I saw a few peculiar things that day, especially at the butcher’s counter, and being a lifelong student of human nature I jotted them down on a few scraps of paper.
A few days later I opened my laptop and, using these notes as a base, had soon written almost half a chapter, and as the scenes I’d witness had been funny, it naturally followed that the chapter would also be humorous. I found that I was able to use satirical humour to lighten the mood when presenting some fairly serious stuff, and thought that would be far more effective than trying to get my message and story across in a more sombre and fact-filled way. I believe that if you can make people smile or laugh, you’ve also made a friend, and I like to think of all my readers as friends.
QUESTION 3.
Can you give us an example of one of your more unusual experiences as a vegan reclusive writer?
Well, there are loads in the book, of course, but perhaps one of the more unusual, although this is not in the book, was the time I was asked to become a spy for the African National Congress in South Africa during the Apartheid years. I was in Cape Town at the time and they wanted someone like me who could infiltrate a government department and quietly and unobtrusively blend into the background. I was very much against Apartheid, which is why they asked me in the first place, but I’d also recently spent a brief time working in conjunction with the South African police. During that time I’d had a really profound firsthand experience on how the police dealt with activists and dissenters and therefore I wasn’t too keen on being banged up in some Robben Island prison cell like Nelson Mandela hanging upside-down by my unmentionables.
QUESTION 4.
As a child you’d spend some of your summer holidays living in a cave in the wilds which, tens of thousands of years ago, had been the home of Neolithic people. Why did you do that?
It was a special place for me. I’d discovered the fossil of a pterodactyl there. I’d had to crawl through a narrow tunnel to find it and the whole experience had been completely mind-boggling because I was fairly sure that I was the first person to see that pterodactyl since Raquel Welch had been there one million years B.C. — dressed in her iconic doe-skin bikini, of course. It was pretty irresistible — the pterodactyl I mean, not Rachel’s bikini although I have to admit that was pretty interesting too!
QUESTION 5.
Did people think that you were a little strange or in any way different when you were a child?
Probably, although I can’t say for sure because I didn’t have a lot to do with people generally. If I wasn’t hiding in an old disused cinema with the ghosts of Errol Flynn or Fatty Arbuckle, I’d be roaming alone at an old lighthouse on a rocky outcrop called Mumbles Head and hoping that the tide wouldn’t come in too quickly, leaving me stranded. There would be nothing worse than being perched like a puffin on a rock-ledge all night, especially in winter, because it would have been colder than a brass toilet in the Kremlin.
QUESTION 6.
You’ve been vegan for more than forty-two years, do you miss eating meat and what makes you take on that kind of commitment?
Firstly, I never actually liked eating meat. I put my very first gravy dinner on my head when I was still in a baby-chair and that’s what made my hair impossibly curly — at least that’s what my Mum said. Secondly, ethical veganism isn’t a commitment, it’s a natural way of ‘being’ for anyone who understands even the most basic elements of ethics. I was once told that I’d grow out of being a vegan, but that statement was made by a bling-wearing chap who had once told me rather smugly that he’d taken an I.Q. test and the results had been negative. I’m only joking, of course. He didn’t actually know what an I.Q. test was.
As a boy I’d surreptitiously feed the cat or dog with my portions of meat. Sadly the dog died of a coronary or something equally as ghastly and I felt quite awful for a while.
QUESTION 7.
I understand that as a teen you were a Beatles lookalike?
Well, I was a young teenager and it was 1963. Every boy in the U.K. was attempting to emulate John, Paul, George and … well not so much Ringo. It was a complete disaster, of course. Everyone kept tripping over my grotesquely long winkle-pickers and sadly not a single girl had, even for a moment, contemplated throwing her knickers at me, so I hung up my Beatles suit, kicked off the pickers, and went to hide in a cave which was reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of dead miners.
QUESTION 8.
In your book you present the theory that being alone, spending a lot of your time in deep thought, might be responsible for some of the startlingly accurate predictions you’ve made in the past. How does that work?
Actually some of the predictions I’ve made have completely astonished me when they came true. I question all this in the book, of course, and believe that it may be associated with being alone a lot of the time, deep in thought. Quite recently I had a sudden and powerful flash of the face of Anna Karen, the actor who played ‘Olive’ in the TV series On the Buses. It was so strong it stopped me in my tracks. She died that night and we read about it in the news the following day. I also dreamed of the death of John F. Kennedy’s son and his wife in a flying accident about a week or so before it happened. I’ve had loads of predictions like that, and no, I can’t give you the winning lottery ticket numbers for next week.
QUESTION 9.
What advice can you give to people who, like you, lead reclusive, introverted lives?
Well, people who are naturally introverted, and especially those who are reclusive, like me, have probably been on the receiving end of ‘advice’ all their lives and I expect they don’t need any more from me. My book, however, outlines how I have dealt with being an introverted reclusive vegan and animal rights campaigner, and I hope that in discussing my experiences so openly, I’ll be giving others the confidence and strength to continue their own introverted and reclusive lifestyles without having to feel guilt or remorse or any other kind of negative emotion. It’s just okay to be ‘you’ and draw strength from your own individuality and commitment.
QUESTION 10.
I understand that you have always wanted to be virtually invisible — that’s even the title of your book — and as a result you’ve become something of an expert in fading into the background? Tell me about that.
It’s impossible to be invisible but we can be as invisible as possible. I automatically use a whole range of methods to blend into the background — usually very successfully, including my method of keeping meetings as short as possible so that the average introvert can get out of there as quickly as possible and even how to remain virtually invisible, even when you’re the centre of attention. I do it all the time. It just comes naturally. I’ve even been mistaken for a shop-dummy, which can be a little disconcerting when they’re having an underwear sale, for example.
I explain my crazy methods in my book and they are all effective — some even prevent accidents happening at the most inopportune moment such as having one’s bottom sucked into one of those terrifying aircraft vacuum loos at 30,000 feet which, in addition to being a little irritating, would also be somewhat awkward when the captain suddenly announces that seat-belts should now been fastened because there’s turbulence ahead.