Book Reviews
Hold the front page! This is what the papers say. If you’ve come across anything else, please let us know. Apologies for the lack of radio interview sound bytes – coming soon!
CEN magazine
November 2005
Speaking the Unspeakable
Edward Seeker and Michael Elias talk to Eleanor Brown at The Spitz about their new book of transcribed conversations between each other which spills the beans on their hilariously shocking journeys into manhood.
I said to Edward on his way over to my house – can you pick up a Dictaphone because I think we are going to talk a book.
Michael: There were no men that we respected or liked or wanted to be like. What was important for both of us was that neither of us was up for killing ourselves – not literally suicide – even though suicide is the number one cause of male death under the age of 35 – neither of us were up for compromising on what we believed or the way we conducted ourselves in the world. We had no where to go.
All the books out there tell you what to do and how to do it. None of the books we were reading say, ‘This is how I fucked up, or this is why I am embarrassed, or this is why I am in pain.’ They are mainly Mummy’s boy books that are written in the feminine. Therapy this, therapy that. Where is the man bit? Where is the bit that I want to relate to?
Edward: I read an article about homophobic bullying at school and it strikes me that what we are writing about is so topical; bullying, sexuality, suicide.
But the one thing that the article didn’t touch on that we have talked about a lot is how the ones that are name-calling at school, calling each other queer – are the ones who are wanking each other off. And no one knows. It’s like a secret. I was reading the article thinking, ‘when are they going to talk about it’?!
Eleanor: Chicks have these sorts of conversations all the time. Was speaking this book the first time in your lives that you have had conversations like these?
Michael: Yes. I think that this is quite a difference between girls and boys. Men only tend to have that type of conversation when they are pissed or stoned or they are so desperate that it is unstoppable. Very often it is easier to commit suicide, or abuse someone or self-abuse or get into some addiction than to deal with it.
Eleanor: How have your friends and family reacted to this book?
Michael: I thought when we had written it that that was the end, I am going to be the laughing stock for the rest of my life, hated, rejected. There is a lot of embarrassing stuff in there. Stuff that you just do not speak about in public.
I had no idea that I would become a babe magnet. Unbelievable! And blokes totally respect me.
(Ed has put his email in the back of the book in case the right lady wishes to contact him).
Edward: Really key relationships have changed. The way my parents treat me, the way I treat them. For me being a parent, I have seen a huge difference as well.
Michael: Before we transcribed the tapes neither of us had any idea about what the book was about and I was praying to God that it was a parenting book. By no means telling people what to do and what not to do, but saying, ‘this is what happened to me, this was our childhoods and this is the result. So if you want kids like us, you know what not to do!”
Edward: But I think also for me as a father. It has made me address issues that I didn’t really know how to deal with, just by touching on the fact that they exist. This book has kind of blown everything apart and things have fallen back into place little by little.