Andy’s biography: the long and boring version
With a 1920s Underwood typewriter he bought at a school fete, Australian children’s writer Andy Griffiths wrote his first published story when he was in year eight at school. Called ‘Lost in Time’, the story appeared in Pursuit magazine. Despite this early success, Griffiths was more interested in rock music and spent most of his creative talents in school writing rock songs. After high school, when several of the punk rock bands he had formed disbanded, he decided to return to school and earned a degree in education. He then became an English high school teacher and has also worked as an editor and publisher of educational books focusing on English and writing.
The urge to write stories never left Griffiths, and he returned to writing short stories when he became a stay-at-home dad in the early 1990s. When he tried to get a book of short stories published, eight publishers rejected it until one finally suggested turning it into a textbook with writing exercises. The result was Swinging on the Clothesline, which Griffiths followed with Rubbish Bins in Space. Both collections feature stories and writing exercises focusing on different genres, styles, and subject matter, all designed to inspire and stimulate students to write.
The books, which became widely used in schools throughout Australia, also incorporate large doses of humor, fun, and play, such as suggestions for annoying parents, instructions on riding spiders without getting bitten, and the real story behind the demise of dinosaurs. In these books Griffiths focuses on eliminating routine, which he sees as the ‘greatest enemy’ in the classroom. He writes in the introduction to Rubbish Bins in Space: ‘The teacher must be very vigilant for ways to shock that routine, to rediscover the freshness of the moment, to uncover the raw wonder lurking underneath the surface of the ordinary, and to unleash the potential energy in the most predictable of response.’ Griffiths told Christopher Bantick of the Sunday Tasmanian, “Before I began to write, I was an English teacher, and I noticed there was a total lack of funny books for kids... My aim was to update book humor and I didn’t see why it had to be any less entertaining than a video game or a movie.”
Griffiths is also the author of the JUST! series of books, all illustrated by Terry Denton. These books contain short stories about the young Andy, billed as the world’s greatest, craziest, most annoying, and most stupid practical joker. In Just Tricking!, Andy’s adventures — which usually involve his best friend Danny — include playing dead so he can get out of school, convincing a friend that he is invisible, and getting stuck in a gorilla suit and nearly winding up in a zoo. In Just Annoying! Andy continues to annoy friends and family to the point that his parents dump him from their car and drive away. Writing in Magpie, Margaret Phillips noted: “I suspect Terry Denton and Andy Griffiths had a great time dreaming them [the stories] up and I suspect numerous readers are going to have a great time poring over them.” In Just Stupid! Andy does ‘just stupid’ things, like cramming twenty marshmallows into his mouth. Commenting on Griffiths’ ‘effective’ use of the first person, present tense to tell the stories, Russ Merrin noted in Magpies that the style ‘lends immediacy to the author’s conversational anecdotes. As the reader, you rather get the feeling that Andy’s prank has only just happened a few minutes ago, and you have just stumbled into its aftermath.’ In a Magpies review of Just Crazy!, Neville Barnard commented on the basis of the success of the JUST! series of books: ‘The content of the stories is only a minor detail. It is the extravagant humour and imagery that Griffiths creates that ensnares the reader.’ As Griffiths noted of Just Disgusting! in an interview with The West Australian, ‘kids always seem to love the disgusting stories... so I thought it would be a good thing to do a book with nothing but disgusting stories in it.’
Griffiths got the idea for the JUST! series while watching the television show Seinfeld. ‘I loved the conceit that he was in his own sitcom,’ Griffiths explained to Kathy Evans of The Sunday Age. ‘And I thought, if he can be his own character in the TV show, I can be my own character in the book.’ Getting the JUST! books published was not that easy; after Just Tricking! was rejected more than twelve times, Griffiths decided to publish it himself and get feedback from his readers. Eventually, a publisher discovered the book and published it, uniting Griffiths’ text with Terry Denton’s illustrations. Tess Marsh-Neubecker, Zara Pranskunas and Cherie de Clerck reported in Books Alive! Education Age that the stories included in the JUST! series ‘are exaggerated versions of his [Griffiths’s] childhood stories. A lot of the stories are just the experiences that Andy would have loved to have had, but never had the courage to do. He also never had the stupidity to perform them.’
Griffiths created a new character for the first novel of his ‘Bum’ trilogy, The Day My Bum Went Psycho. The storyline centers on Zack Freeman, whose crazy ‘runaway bum’ tries to unite all bums to conquer the world. Writing in The Sunday Age, Michelle Griffin described the book as a ‘carefully plotted comedy thriller, one part Lara Croft adventure and two parts Monty Python daftness.’ The Day My Bum Went Psycho also includes a glossary of ‘bum’ terms, including ‘bum-plug,’ which is ‘used to cork bums for the purpose of harnessing their gas power,’ and ‘runaway bum,’ which is ‘a bum that has sprouted arms and legs, detached itself from its owner’s body and run away.’ And, in case his readers are worried about the intentions of their own bums, Griffiths includes a test to determine whether their bums are ‘psycho,’ with questions like ‘Has your bum ever embarrassed you in public?’ Evans, in an interview with Griffiths for The Sunday Age, noted that the author claims The Day My Bum Went Psycho is based on a true story: ‘He got the idea after suffering an itchy bottom, which, he says, drove him psycho.’ Griffiths told her, ‘It’s a very common question from the kids: “Is this true? Did it really happen?” As a teacher, the kids would ask me a question and I’d say something completely ridiculous with a straight face, and they’d say, “Really?” and I’d say, “Yeah, it’s true.” When you don’t know if something is true or not, it seems fantastic and it drives you batty trying to work it out, and I think that’s really good, because it’s how your imagination grows.’
Although The Day My Bum Went Psycho has delighted young readers — it was chosen as a children’s choice book in several Australian states — it also gained attention from a more adult contingent and, as a result, made headline news throughout Australia and the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) World Service. The book’s cover photo featuring buttocks was used on a poster promoting Australia’s National Literacy Week. Thinking it might be offensive to some people, the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs decided to remove the poster from the campaign. As a result, Griffiths and his publisher decided to withdraw the book entirely from the campaign. The education minister eventually denied authorising the ban and had the poster reinstated. ‘I always dreamed of being banned,’ Griffiths told Griffin. ‘I just didn’t think it would be this easy.’ Griffiths went on to say: ‘It always annoyed me that children’s literature has been so polite. The world of literature should be really wild and free like rock ’n’ roll. That’s where I take a lot of my inspiration. That’s where I came from.’
The Day My Bum Went Psycho was published in the United States as The Day My Butt Went Psycho and was met with similar popularity. With readers clamouring for more adventures of Zack Freeman and his bum, Griffiths produced Zombie Bums from Uranus, the second volume of the projected ‘Bum’ trilogy. (The third volume, Bumageddon: The Final Pongflict, concludes the series.) In Zombie Bums from Uranus Zack and his bum team back up with the bumfighters in order to save the planet from an invasion of zombie bums. Much worse than a bum rebellion, an invasion from Uranus means facing off against the smelliest bums in the universe. A reviewer for The Age was convinced that kids will find the book both funny and fun, due to ‘plenty of loopy action’ in the story. Evans, in her interview for The Sunday Age, reported ‘Griffiths was delighted to discover that nine rings of methane gas cover the seventh planet from the sun, which was terrific fuel for his creativity.’
Griffiths’ aim with each subsequent book now is to continue expanding his readership by making stories which aren’t necessarily exclusive of any particular age group. ‘I want to make them universal enough — and well crafted enough — to bring enjoyment to both adults and children.’ The Bad Book, with one foot planted in the 19th Century cautionary verse tradition and the other foot planted firmly in nonsense, is a book designed to be read aloud and enjoyed by a whole family.
For many years Griffiths supported his writing by spending up to nine months a year fulfilling speaking engagements at schools throughout Australia. To make his presentations funnier, he attended a stand-up comedy school. As a contributor to Cairns Post noted, ‘Griffiths might not be mobbed on the street, but put him in a half full room of school children and it’s obvious he’s a superstar.’ He now writes full time, but credits the many years of stage presentations as a crucial element in the development of his fiction as material that has to be able to quickly captivate and hold the attention of a live audience.
‘Why did I write...?’ Griffiths ruminates. ‘Because it came easily, I guess, because it was a way of expressing myself, to entertain my friends, to shock, because it was a way of having fun.’ He adds that he continues to write for the same reasons plus a few more. ‘It’s a way of making a living out of something I would do even if nobody was paying me and because I’ve discovered it’s a way of staying awake — of keeping a small part of my mind detached and observing experience — it’s a way of finding value in the most mundane and boring places and experiences — a way to recapture that childlike sense of wonder that can so easily get sidelined in the day-to-day grind of being a practical goal-oriented grownup.’ As for his subject matter, Griffiths adds: ‘I sometimes wonder if that’s the writer’s job — to have the courage to come out and say the things that other people only think.’
