Author: Whispering Gums

Monday musings on Australian literature: Nettie Palmer on Australian novels

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Nettie Palmer has appeared a few times before on this blog, and is likely to appear again, because she was such an active member of Australia’s early to mid-twentieth century literary community, and she was a keen supporter and promoter of Australian writing and writers. Three years ago, I wrote about an article she’d written in 1930 in which she discussed pleasing “advances” in the Australian novel. This post draws on an article she wrote for the Illustrated Tasmanian Mail, a couple of years earlier, on 15 August 1928.

The article seems to have been inspired by the novel competition the Bulletin ran that year. There were, according to Palmer, some 536 entries, which she suggests is “a matter for national astonishment”, given the effort it takes to write a novel.

While only few can win, she says, “the lift in the status of the Australian novel will be considerable”. She goes on to talk about the challenge the judges face, and suggests that, with all that reading to do, their minds are likely to be ‘attracted by what was “striking” rather than what was merely solid’. She says that Australia’s chief literary prize-winner to date had been “that rather esoteric writer, Katharine Susannah Prichard”, and identifies some of the prizes she had won – for The pioneers (1915, my review), a short story, and a play. Will she win again, Palmer wonders. She wouldn’t be surprised if she did, Palmer continues, because Prichard “has always added something fresh and original to our literary store”. As it turns out, Prichard did win this prize, for Coonardoo, but jointly with The house is built by the collaborative novelists known as M. Barnard Eldershaw.

However, I have digressed a little, as my point here is to share Palmer’s thoughts on the Australian novel. Her life’s work seems to have been, at least partly, to define the Australian novel. Anyhow, she comments that she had been “examining a great many Australian stories in magazines, journals, books and manuscripts” and one of the things that has struck her was “the immense variety of geographical angles from which Australia can be regarded”. She takes, as an example, the idea of “the north-west”. For a Victorian, this means “the Mallee country, with its acres cleared for wheat, running up to the irrigated country with Mildura and its fruits and close settlement of semi-urban, rather ‘American’ homes”, while in South Australia it means “the interior, near the transcontinental line, given up to sheep”. In Western Australia, on the other hand, it’s “the country used by H. E. Riemann in his book of short stories, Nor’-West o’ West, set in Broome and its hinterland”. And so on … This, she says, “is just to name one half-point of the compass”. She discusses this a little more, but then says the thing that I really wanted to share:

The point is … that the life and problems of various parts of Australia show immense contrasts, from pearling at Broome to legislating at Canberra. Our writers have the task of gradually revealing it all to us.

This is it, it seems to me, in a nutshell. At some fundamental level, an Australian novel – or any nationality’s novel for that matter – is one which reveals who we are, in all our richness and diversity. It is what, I think, Miles Franklin intended by endowing an award for a novel that conveys “Australian life in any of its phases”. For Palmer, and I suspect Franklin, there was an awareness of the role the arts can play in nation-building, which is understandable given their times. The thing is, we are still nation-building – maybe always will be – and so today, we have First Nations writers and migrant-background writers trying hard to reveal to us their view of Australia. For as long as society keeps changing, there is a role for writers to “reveal it all to us” – even while they also explore the universal – don’t you think?

PS: On Wednesday, Mr Gums and I start a 14-day outback Queensland tour. I may not manage to write Monday Musings on the next two Mondays, but we’ll see. Apologies in advance for this potential hiatus! Monday Musings will not be lost forever.

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (#BookReview)

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While my reading group’s main reading fare has, from the start, been contemporary fiction, we also mix it up a bit. We do non-fiction, for example, and most years we try to do a classic. Over the years we’ve done Jane Austen, Elizabeth von Arnim, Anton Chekhov, EM Forster, and Randolph Stow, to name a few. This year we turned to Kurt Vonnegut, and, because we couldn’t decide which book to do, we narrowed it to two – Cat’s cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five – and let members decide. You can tell from the post title which one I chose. This was because I have read Cat’s cradle, albeit decades ago. Most of the group, however, read Cat’s cradle, because they’d read Slaughterhouse-Five before.

So, Slaughterhouse-Five it is then – and I’m confronted by the old challenge of what to say about a classic, and a cult classic at that. This book has been analysed ad infinitum, and been found, as the decades have trundled by, to retain its relevance to new generations. However, before I say more, let me give a very brief synopsis, just in case there’s someone out there who doesn’t know the story.

“jumbled and jangled”

Ha, did I say brief synopsis? Easier said than done, but I’ll give it a try. Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, from his early years, through his time as an American soldier during World War II including being in Dresden when it was bombed, to the post-war years. During his life, Billy is also abducted by flying saucer and taken to the planet of Tralfamadore, where he is displayed in a zoo. The critical issue underpinning all this is that Billy was damaged by his wartime experiences, something we now recognise as PTSD. Vonnegut conveys – and represents – Billy’s discombobulation, his trauma, through a complex non-linear, non-chronological narrative, in which Billy, who “has come unstuck in time”, travels not only back and forth through time, but also back and forth between Earth and Tralfamadore. 

Slaughterhouse-Five is, as a result, a challenging, sometimes mystifying read, but it is also an exhilarating one, because Vonnegut tells his story through satire and absurdity, both of which I love. In the first chapter, the narrator, who is Vonnegut, tells us about writing the book we are now reading. As he hands his finished book to the publisher, he says

It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.

Alongside the occasional appearance of this first-person narrator, we have the unsuccessful science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, who can also be read as a version – caricature – of Vonnegut. His “unpopularity was deserved”, the narrator tells us. “His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good”. But, Billy loves him. We first meet Trout when Billy is introduced to him by Rosewater, another patient in the hospital to which Billy had committed himself when he feels he is “going crazy”:

Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old fireman, mistaking him for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes.

If you’ve read the novel, you will know that “so it goes” is its over-riding refrain. Used over 100 times, at moments of murder, death, and other disasters, it functions as a motif, one that both underlines and undermines the horror, by drawing attention to it, then passing it off. The constant opposition, in the novel, of the serious with the offhand keeps the reader unsettled, which is part of the point.

The occasional self-conscious appearance of the author/Vonnegut and the references to Kilgore Trout, along with its story-within-a-story framework, its wild playing with time and place, its fragmentary approach to storytelling, and its unapologetic undermining of “reality”, make this book a postmodern work, if that interests you. By this I mean what sort of work it is doesn’t matter, really. It’s what the work says or makes you feel that really counts. However, it’s these features and techniques which enable Vonnegut to convey what he wants to say in such a powerful way. The how of it is inseparable from the meaning of it.

Slaughterhouse-Five is said to be about many things, including war and pacifism, fate and free will, our experience of time. I could discuss each of these in turn, but the academics already have. I’ll simply say that my primary takeaway is that it’s about the absurdity and incomprehensibility of life and, by example, about how our everyman Billy Pilgrim copes (or doesn’t) with such life.

Slaughterhouse-Five was published at the height of the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement. It was, it seems, the right novel at the right time. Although Vonnegut had had some success before, this was the novel that apparently established him. I can see why. With wars just keeping on coming – and being just as horrific and absurd as the ones that came before them, I can also see why this novel continues to speak to new generations of readers. I mean, how can you not laugh at Billy on display in Tralfamadore:

Then he did exercises he had learned in the Army—straddle jumps, deep knee bends, sit-ups and push-ups. Most Tralfamadorians had no way of knowing Billy’s body and face were not beautiful. They supposed that he was a splendid specimen. This had a pleasant effect on Billy, who began to enjoy his body for the first time.

And, you know what? I’m going to leave you right here, because if this doesn’t convey why this book is such a complex, funny, humane read, I don’t know what will.

Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The children’s crusade
Horizon Ridge Publishing, 2024 (Orig. pub. 1969)
199pp.
ASIN: ‎ B0D9SKLL68

Monday musings on Australian literature: Best Australian books, 21st century (to date)

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I do think it’s jumping the gun, rather, to be listing best books of a century when that century is barely a quarter through! However, it seems that critics and reviewers around the world are giving it a go, including the esteemed New York Times, so who am I to quibble? Certainly Readings Bookshop and The Conversation, motivated by the non-inclusion of even one Australian book in NYT’s list, decided they wouldn’t. And, after all, what reader doesn’t love a list?

That said, listmakers rarely agree with each other, neither in their actual lists, nor in their approach to making their list. Some take it deadly seriously, and do their best to produce something authoritative (however you define that) whilst others see, perhaps, that authoritative lists in artistic/creative endeavours are not possible so take a looser approach. So it seems to be here. Readings, for example, asked members of the Australian literary community to nominate their best Australian books of the 21st century, and created a ranked top 30. The Conversation, on the other hand, asked 50 Australian literary experts for their top pick, and they listed all 50, starting with the books that had the most “top pick” nominations. Their experts were allowed to identify two honourable mentions. These “mentions” are not included in the list, but they are in the pickers’ comments. (Check out the lists, including NYT’s, at the end of the post.)

In The Conversation’s list, five of the 50 books were nominated by more than one expert, and they are listed first, but this is not a ranking they say – and perhaps that’s a fair point given their survey was very small. So, their list is indicative rather than thorough in any way, but indicative is still interesting:

  • Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy (3, Bill’s second post)
  • Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (3, my review)
  • Helen Garner’s How to end a story (2) (on my TBR)
  • Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of travel (2, my review)
  • Kim Scott’s That deadman dance (2, my review)

Three books by First Nations authors, and four by women writers. Interesting. Some authors appear more than once in the list, including, obviously Alexis Wright, whose The swan book is also in the list, but also Kim Scott and Fiona McFarlane. Theirs is a diverse list reflecting the diverse experts, and that makes it a “good” list to me, because it will speak to different readers.

For me, the most significant book published anywhere this century is Carpentaria (2006). Wright’s larger-than-life, all-too-human characters enact their dreams across a vast tract of earth, water, sky and the “alltimes”. The writing crackles. In this story of Country, ancestral voices offer wisdom and hope. (Nicholas Jose)

Readings’ list on the other hand was drawn from 600 “votes” from members of the Australian literary community – writers, publishers, and Readings’ own booksellers. They were asked “to nominate their favourite Australian books, published since 2000”. I don’t know whether 600 people nominated one book each or whether some nominated one and others more. Whatever method Readings used, they came up with a ranking, presumably based on the number of times each book was nominated. Their top 5 is:

Christos Tsiolkas, The slap

A more popular list, dare I say, than The Conversations’, which is not surprising given its genesis in a bookseller. I have read all of these. Indeed, it’s not until no. 15 on their list – the Garner that also appears in The Conversation’s list – that I hit a book I’ve not read.

Conclusion

Jason Steger wrote about these three lists in his most recent weekly email. He explained that NYT’s aim was to “take a first swing at determining the most important, influential books of the era”. Which of those will still be there in 75 years time? Care to take a guess? You may as well go out on a limb as I’m assuming most people reading this post will not be here on 1 January 2100 to say “I told you so”, or not, as the case may be!

Links to the Lists

Donna M. Cameron, The rewilding (#BookReview)

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Quite coincidentally, earlier this month, I read and posted on Willa Cather’s short story “The bookkeeper’s wife” which commences with a young man, Percy Bixby, sitting in his office deciding to do something in order to keep his flashy fiancée Stella. That was published in 1916. I have now just finished Donna M. Cameron’s novel, The rewilding, which was published in 2024. It commences with another young man, Jagger Eckerman, is sitting in his office deciding to do something that will lose him his flashy fiancée Lola. Both young men are caught up in fraud, Percy of his own making, Jagger unwittingly, though that doesn’t make him entirely blameless. From here the stories part company, so we will leave Percy, whose story I’ve already told, and look at 27-year-old Jagger.

Jagger has been living the high life. Caught up in his own privileged lifestyle, he’s been carelessly signing documents he shouldn’t, until finally the penny drops and he wakes “up to the fact that every aspect of his life is a farce”. So, he clicks Send on his whistle-blowing email and scarpers. The problem is that the only place he can think to scarper to is a cave in a national park south of Sydney, and when he gets there he finds someone else already holed up in the same spot, the 24-year-old “feral” eco-warrior, Nia Moretti. As the accompanying publicity sheet says, it is hatred at first sight, but they soon realise they need each other, whether they like it or not.

The rewilding starts with a bang and barely lets up for the length of its 300 pages. It’s a genre-bending work of eco-literature that combines thriller, road story and romance. The central thriller-driven plot is not my favourite type of story – I’m not much interested in watching or reading about chases, violence and suspense – but Cameron handles her material confidently, creating a book that I enjoyed reading despite myself. I just hurried through the bits that were less interesting to me. Why I was happy to read it is what I want to focus on here.

First, there’s the genre-bending aspect. Cameron balances the thriller components with more reflective and tender sections, with moments of interpersonal tension, with touches of humour, gorgeous natural descriptions, and serious themes. Second, the story is well-paced, and the writing fresh but accessible. It is primarily told third person through Jagger’s perspective, but this is occasionally interspersed with short chapters in Nia’s voice, in which she speaks to a mysterious “you”. These provide additional insights into Nia that Jagger can’t know, while also increasing the mystery. Who is this “you”? What has happened to Nia? Third, the two main characters are nicely developed. Jagger is on the run, scared and uncertain about what his future holds. Still grieving his mother’s death and the mistakes he’s made, he is fundamentally decent and an optimist. Nia, on the other hand, is an uncompromising idealist, and pessimistic, but reveals a softer side. Gradually, as is typical of the romance genre, the antagonism between them is relaxed, although not, of course, without setbacks.

“a capitalist suit” versus “the feral”

And finally, there are the themes. For me, a good story isn’t enough. I need some meat, some ideas that make the time I put into reading worthwhile, and this book has meat – personal and political. In the personal realm, Jagger is a young man who had lost his way but, when some truths become clear to him – when he realises his relationship had been built on a lie and his workplace was engaging in a waste removal scam – his better self, the one his recently dead mother had so carefully tried to engender in him, comes to the fore. In his suit and fancy shoes, he surprises Nia with his deep knowledge of and love for nature. Likewise, Nia is struggling with a personal loss. She is resentful of the “capitalist suit” who comes into her cave, and finds ways of using him – and his money – to her own ends but, despite her toughness, she has a heart. So, on the personal level, The rewilding is a novel about values, about the lines you draw, about the life you choose to live and what that means personally and …

politically, because this is also a novel about climate activism. Nia and her radical Earth Rebellion mates, the Lorax, are determined to save the planet. Their focus is a mining operation in northern Queensland which is about to proceed without permission. First, though, she has something to do in disaster-struck, flooded Brisbane, something that puts her and Jagger’s lives at risk. On the run, and being followed by hit men, he has no option but to go along with the only person who can help him. It is at this point, before the final dramatic confrontation at the mine, that Nia starts to unbend a little towards Jagger and his perspective.

“Why be scared of change?”

The rewilding is a wild, dramatic novel. It does push the boundaries of credibility at times, but probably no more than you expect in a thriller. Ultimately, through her characters and their fierce, lively conversations, and through her fast-paced plot which offers a few scenarios, Cameron explores the critical issues confronting us and asks the big questions we are asking, without resorting to overt didacticism.

Climate change novels can be bleak, but many authors, even those writing the bleakest of stories, talk at writers festivals about wanting to leave their readers with some hope. That this was Cameron’s intention is foreshadowed in the epigraph from Tolkien’s The lord of the rings, “Where there’s life, there’s hope”. So, at the end, certain rapprochements are achieved, but the conclusion is real rather than simplistic. It recognises that life is messy and change is hard but that it’s worth keeping on trying. The rewilding is a worthy addition to Australia’s eco-literature field.

Donna M. Cameron
The rewilding
Melbourne: Transit Lounge, 2024
309pp.
ISBN: 9781923023062

(Review copy courtesy Transit Lounge, via publicist Scott Eathorne of Quikmark Media)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Short stories, revisited

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I love short stories but, as Jason Steger, Literary Editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, wrote in one of his recent weekly emails, not everyone does. Indeed, he writes:

I know quite a lot of people – people I would consider good readers of fiction – who find them unsatisfactory. Not enough meat to them. Not as satisfying as a novel. Always leaving you wanting more.

And he admits to shifting between the like-don’t like positions himself, before going to say that, “more often than not [with good short stories] you come away knowing precisely enough; you don’t need any more after the author has ended the story with perhaps a surprise, perhaps a neat tying together, or perhaps with ambiguity”. He offers other writers’ thoughts, including English novelist Elizabeth Bowen who wrote in her introduction to The Faber book of modern stories (1937) that “Poetic tautness and clarity are so essential to it [the short story] that it may be said to stand on the edge of prose.”

Bowen, he said, is particularly relevant to what he wanted to share, which was that Tasmanian poet and novelist Kathryn Lomer had won this year’s Furphy Literary Award. Worth $15,000 to the winner, the prize is named after Joseph Furphy, the author (using the pseudonym, Tom Collins), of the Australian classic, Such is life. Lomer’s winning story, “Nothing about kissing” (read it here), is set in Hobart’s MONA, and opens with the protagonist starting her cleaning shift. Steger quotes one of the judges, Stephanie Holt, who said the winning story “unfolds as layers of assured, erudite but often plainspoken reflection. Into these, the writer drops several crucial moments with such startling aplomb you want to stand and applaud.”

Selected recent short story collections

After this introduction, Steger notes that “despite publishers frequently saying that stories are tricky to sell, they still appear”, and then he lists some, noting that collections are more often published by smaller publishers, like Spineless Wonders and Puncher and Wattman. There are others of course, including the somewhat larger, but still independent publisher, UQP.

He gives a few recent examples, which I am including here, in alphabetical order, along with a few of my own. I have limited the list to those published since 2022 to convey a sense of current activity.

  • Tony Birch, Dark as last night (UQP)
  • Carmel Bird, Love letter to Lola (Spineless Wonders, my review)
  • Georgia Blain, We all lived in Bondi then (Scribe, Brona’s review): posthumous publication of new stories written during 2012-2015
  • Larry Buttrose, Everyone on Mars (Puncher and Wattman)
  • Ceridwen Dovey, Only the astronauts (Penguin Books Australia, Brona’s review)
  • Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13 (Brona’s review): “a suite of interlinked stories, received a rave review in this masthead” (Steger)
  • Laura Jean McKay, Gunflower (Scribe)
  • Catherine McNamara, The carnal fugues (Puncher and Wattman, on my TBR): recently shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards
  • John Morrissey, Firelight stories (Text Publishing): First Nations speculative fiction
  • John Richards, The Gorgon flower (UQP): Gothic-infused short stories
  • Mykaela Saunders, Always will be (UQP): First Nations speculative fiction
  • Su-May Tan, Lake Malibu (Spineless Wonders)

Anthologies are a specific type of collection, of course, in that they contain writings by different authors, but are worth including here too:

  • Suzy Garcia (ed.), New Australian fiction 2023 (Kill Your Darlings)
  • Lynette Washington (ed), Futures: Stories of futures near and far: includes a story from Carmel Bird’s Love letter to Lola (Glimmer Press)

There are two broad types of anthologies, those selected from previously published stories, and those that result from a call for submissions and contain all new stories. The two above belong to the latter.

Not always, but often, short story collections and anthologies are themed or genre-linked. So, for example, Saunders’ collection comprises First Nations speculative fiction. Speculative fiction, in fact, seems to be a popular genre for short story writers, and currently they are grappling with some of the big issues like climate change and, for First Nations writers in particular, the experience of colonialism.

Ten years ago, ABR (the Australian Book Review) asked ten Australian short story writers to name some favourite short story collections and short stories. One of the ten was Carmel Bird. She introduced her selection with the comment that “I delight in the fact that the ‘short story’ is forever elastic”. She should know, as her own stories epitomise this elasticity, but she’s right because she’s not the only one. Recent stories that I’ve read have been exciting in the degree to which they push and stretch the form, from experiments with micro fiction to trying out different voices, including inanimate. If there’s one way to keep something interesting, it’s to mix it up a bit, and our short story writers are doing that. It’s exciting and encouraging.

Do you read short story collections or anthologies? If so we’d love to hear your favourites.

Jane Austen, Lady Susan, revisited (#BookReview)

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I have read Jane Austen’s Lady Susan several times, including with my local Jane Austen group in 2014 (my review). That now being ten years ago, we decided it was time to read – and consider – it again. However, as my time was tight, I decided to try an audiobook version, and found a Naxos edition in my library. Mr Gums and I listened to it on our 650+ km drive home from Melbourne, and found it excellent.

For those of you unfamiliar with Austen’s minor works, Lady Susan is, as far as we know, the first novel (novella) that Austen completed, but it was not published during her life-time, for the simple fact that she never sent it to a publisher. Written, scholars believe, in 1793/94, when she was still a teen, it was not published until 1871, decades after her death, when her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh included it in his memoir of her. It has since been adapted to film, television, stage and book. The best known of these is probably the 2016 film, which was titled Love & friendship, a strange decision given that is the title of another work of Austen juvenilia (my post).

I gave a brief plot summary in my previous post, but will again here. Lady Susan is a bewitching, 35-year-old widow of four months, who is already on the prowl for a new, wealthy husband. The novel opens with her needing to leave Langford, where she’d been staying with the Manwarings, because she was having an affair with the married man of the house, and had seduced his daughter’s suitor, Sir James Martin. She goes to stay with her brother-in-law Charles Vernon and his wife Catherine, whom she’d done her best to dissuade him from marrying. She’s not long there before Reginald, Catherine’s brother, arrives to check her out because, from what he’s heard,

Lady Susan possesses a degree of captivating deceit which must be pleasing to witness and detect.

After all, she is “the most accomplished coquette in England”! Of course, the inevitable happens and the artful Lady Susan captivates him. Meanwhile, Lady Susan wants her shy, 16-year-old daughter, Frederica, to marry Sir James, the man she’d seduced away from Miss Manwaring – but sweet, sensible Frederica wants none of this weak “rattle” of a man. And so it continues …

Lady Susan, then, is a fairly simple tale, containing the deceits and silliness common to its 18th century genre, but also showing restraint and innovation which hint of the novelist to come – her wit and irony, her commentary on human nature, and her themes. I wrote about this too in my last post and don’t plan to repeat it here. There are many angles from which the book can be considered, and this time I’m interested in another, its form as an epistolary novel.

The epistolary novel was common in the eighteenth century. It’s something Austen tried again with Elinor and Marianne, which she wrote around 1795 to 1797, but later rewrote in her famous third person omniscient voice. Retitled Sense and sensibility, it became her first published novel in 1811. Pride and prejudice’s precursor, First impressions, may also have started as an epistolary novel. It’s interesting, then, that although she made a “fair copy” of Lady Susan in 1805 she didn’t rewrite it too. Why she didn’t is one of the many mysteries of Austen’s life. Perhaps it was the subject matter, because this is not Austen’s usual fare. Lady Susan belongs more to the 18th century tradition of wickedness, lasciviousness and adultery, forced marriages, and moralistic resolutions. Characters tend to be types rather than complex beings, and the novels are racily written, with a broad brush rather than a fine pen. This is true of Lady Susan, but there are departures. For a start it’s a novella not one of those 18th century tomes!

I might be going out on a limb here, because, while I have read a couple of 18th century epistolary novels, including Samuel Richardson’s, my memory has faded somewhat. However, Wikipedia helps me out a bit. Its article on the epistolary form says that there are three main types: monophonic (comprising the letters of only one character); dialogic (using letters of two characters); and polyphonic (which has three or more letter-writing characters). Lady Susan is an example of the last one. The main letter writers are Lady Susan (mostly to her friend Alicia Johnson in London) and her sister-in-law Catherine Vernon (mostly to her mother Lady De Courcy), but we also see some letters back from these correspondents, making four letter writers. But wait, there’s more! There are also letters – albeit just one in two cases – from others, namely Reginald De Courcy, his father Sir Reginald De Courcy, and Lady Susan’s daughter Frederica.

So, in this short book, we have 7 letter writers. But wait, there’s even more. To conclude the novel, Austen discards the epistolary-form and writes a first person denouement, which includes commentary like this:

Whether Lady Susan was or was not happy in her second Choice — I do not see how it can ever be ascertained — for who would take her assurance of it on either side of the question? The World must judge from Probability; she had nothing against her but her Husband & her Conscience.

The thing that intrigued me most as I was “reading” Lady Susan this time was the form. Austen used it for Love and Freindship, Lady Susan, Elinor and Marianne, and perhaps First impressions. But she abandoned it for the style for which she is recognised as a significant innovator – a third person narrative characterised by free indirect discourse, meaning the narrator’s voice embodies the perspectives of the characters. As John Mullan, writing primarily about Emma, explains: “Before Austen, novelists chose between first-person narrative (letting us into the mind of a character, but limiting us to his or her understanding) and third-person narrative (allowing us a God-like view of all the characters, but making them pieces in an authorial game). Austen miraculously combined the internal and the external”.

So, my thinking is that she started by using a form with which she was familiar as a reader and which was popular with readers of the day, but whose limitations she soon started to feel. Her using a relatively large number of letter writers, enabling us to see Lady Susan in particular from different perspectives, and her turning to an over-arching first person narrator for her conclusion, suggests that she understood the limitations of writing a novel-in-letters in terms of developing complex realistic characters, of managing plot, and of incorporating narratorial commentary. The rest, as they say, is history.

Thoughts anyone?

Jane Austen
Lady Susan (Classic Literature with Classic Music)
Naxos Audiobook, 2005
Duration: 2hrs 30mins

Available in e-text.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Forgotten writers 7, Grace Ethel Martyr

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The forgotten writers I have been writing about vary greatly, and most will stay forgotten because, to be honest, their time has past and not all writing remains relevant. This is not to say, however, that they are not worth revisiting. They are, after all, part of our literary culture, and they paved ways, whether we are aware of it or not. Grace Ethel Martyr is an example. She is notable enough to have entries in AustLit and Wikipedia, and was interesting enough in her time to catch the attention of Zora Cross (who wrote about her for a series she did for The Australian Women’s Mirror.)

Martyr is another writer I have posted about on the Australian Women Writers (AWW) blog, but again, I am not including here the piece written by her that I published there. Titled “The blue jar”, its subject is domestic violence, though that term would not have been used then. It’s not typical of her best-known work. However, in the light of our own times, it is worth reading. It is told from the 1920s perspective that women just need to put up with brutal husbands and manage as best they can. They didn’t have much choice. But, in this story, a bit of luck comes the wife’s way … check it out at AWW.

Grace Ethel Martyr

Grace Ethel Martyr (1888-1934) was a Victorian-born poet, short story writer and journalist. She wrote under various permutations of her name – G. E. Martyr; E. Martyr; Ethel Martyr; Grace E. Martyr; and G. Ethel Martyr.

Born in Ballarat, she was the only daughter of James Kent and Grace Flora Martyr. She grew up in Maldon in central Victoria, but spent much of her working life in Bendigo. She apparently passed the University of Melbourne matriculation examination in 1906, but I haven’t found evidence that she went on to university. AustLit and Wikipedia both say she was employed by the Bank of New South Wales, for whom her father had worked, for four and a half years, but left due to ill-health. While working at the bank, she published a collection of patriotic war poems, Afterwards and other verses (1918), but she didn’t begin to write seriously until she had left the bank. Zora Cross (writing as Bernice May in The Australian Women’s Mirror) tells how this book was given to her to by Martyr’s cousin who wanted her assessment of it, and says it was she, Cross, who encouraged Martyr to leave the bank (though the ill-health part is also true, I believe).

The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 May 1918, commented on Afterwards and other verses, describing it as “unequal” (meaning “uneven”?) but also as

characterised by sincerity, depth of feeling, and a burning patriotism which redeems many shortcomings. Her technique, though not faultless, is usually correct, and at her best Miss Martyr can reach a high level of dignified expression.

Perth’s Western Mail, 31 May 1918, offers similarly qualified praise:

War has given inspiration to Miss Martyr’s muse, and if her verse does not reach the loftiest peaks, the level of its quality is rather beyond that common to such collections.

Writing about Martyr ten years later, Cross says that

So far, Miss Martyr’s best work has been done in verse. But her true vein is the child story and child-verse. I know of no Australian writer who has so beautifully caught the spirit of the child in verse as she has. And she is that rare writer, the one who never forgets that child-verse should also be poetry.

Martyr, then, wrote children’s poetry and fiction, including several stories serialised in The Australasian, but AusLit says that her principal literary output is the poetry she published in The Bulletin and The Australian Woman’s Mirror. In addition to this writing, Martyr also worked for The Bendigo Advertiser, where she edited the women’s columns and the children’s page, and she was Bendigo’s social correspondent for several Melbourne publications.

Cross praises much about her work, saying

She shows inner melody in her verse which is often of a very high standard. Her love of music and nature comes out in her poetry. Like all Australian writers her best work has appeared in the Bulletin.

Martyr won prizes at Ballarat’s South Street Literary Awards – in 1918 for best patriotic poem and in 1919 for best original poem. In 1920 she came second to David McKee Wright, from a field of 125 entries, in the Rupert Brooke Award, which was established by the Old Collegians’ Association of Melbourne’s Presbyterian Ladies’ College.

Martyr was also a pianist, and worked with musicians Margaret Sutherland and William James on various projects. In particular, she wrote stories and verses for the 3LO children’s hour, with James setting her verse to music. (William James is best known, to me anyhow, for the 15 Australian Christmas Carols he composed with lyricist John Wheeler. I wrote about them early in my blog.)

Martyr seems to be another example of a woman who managed to make a career for herself as a writer, by turning her hand to a wide variety of forms and audiences, but she also died relatively young. She was not completely forgotten, however, because five of her poems were included in Michael Sharkey’s 2018 anthology, Many such as she: Victorian women poets of World War One. An exhibition was held at Bendigo’s Soldiers Memorial Institute Military Museum in association with this book. Curator Kirsten McCay specifically mentioned Martyr, saying “Poet Grace Martyr lived locally and was a journalist for the Bendigo Advertiser. She also gave illustrated talks on famous composers at St Paul’s Cathedral, where a cross commemorates her life.”

Cross concluded her 1927 article with:

Grace Ethel Martyr’s work is always getting better, which is surely the best sign in any writer. Time, I think, will prove her to be one of the most sincere writers among us.

Six years later, at the age of 46, Martyr was dead. The report of her death, which was repeated in several Victorian newspapers, is brief but says that:

Miss Martyr’s literary gifts were apparent at an early age, and during the years that followed she established something of value to Australian literature.

I rest my case!

Sources

Willa Cather, The bookkeeper’s wife (#Review)

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Willa Cather
Willa Cather, 1936 (Photo: Carl Van Vechten; Public domain, via Wikipedia)

It’s nearly two years since I posted on a Library of America (LOA) short story, and it’s over a year since they published Willa Cather’s “The bookkeeper’s wife” as their Story of the Week. However, this morning I had a quiet moment and decided to check over my little LOA TBR list. Willa Cather’s seemed just the ticket because, as I have written before, I like her “robust, somewhat terse and yet not unsubtle style”. I have read three novels by Cather, and a few short stories, starting with, “Peter”, which was first published in 1892. “The bookkeeper’s wife” was published much later, in 1916, after her first three novels were published, but before My Ántonia (1918). (You can check out my Cather posts here.)

One of the notable things about her stories is their variety. Not all are about the tough life of the pioneer, or even about midwestern landscapes, albeit these were among her favourite preoccupations. She did write about urban environments, and this story is one of those.

“The bookkeeper’s wife”

LOA’s usual introductory notes explain that in 1917, Willa Cather was working on a new book, a short story collection called Office wives. These stories would be published in Century magazine, and would then be published in book form. The book never eventuated, and only four stories were written, of which three were published. The fourth manuscript has, apparently, been lost.

LOA suggests that the proposed title for the series, Office wives

seems to have been a subtle act of provocation; of the five working women featured in Cather’s three stories—stenographers, typists, clerical workers—only Stella Bixby, “the bookkeeper’s wife,” is married … Cather explores the ways in which working women and their male supervisors mirror, in a distorted fashion, the domestic arrangements between wives and husbands. 

The stories offer a different look at the “New Woman” type which was the vogue in popular magazine fiction of the early twentieth century. These women were financially independent employees in warehouses, shops, and offices, but Cather – as was her wont – had a more realistic take on the situation. She understood the prevailing power structures in such work environments, and her stories, says LOA, “depict how the freedom and independence available to women in the workplace” were “still limited by their dependence on and subservience to men”.

Cather knew whereof she spoke, having worked herself in the business world. LOA says that she had worked “as an editor, columnist, and occasional business manager at Home Monthly in Pittsburgh; as the telegraph desk reporter and headline writer for the Pittsburg Leader, a daily newspaper; and, most significantly, as a staff member from 1906 to 1912 at McClure’s magazine, where she became the managing editor”.

Interestingly, despite the planned book title, the protagonist of the first story she wrote for it, “The bookkeeper’s wife”, is the man, the bookkeeper. But, his wife, Stella, as the title implies, is the story’s linchpin. Superficially, the plot set-up suggests something predictable. It starts with our bookkeeper, Percy Bixby, sitting at his desk at work. He’s the last one there and he is about to embezzle (sorry, “accept a loan from”) his company in order to marry Stella, a stenographer working for another company, and offer her the lifestyle she expects. He has won her over a flashier man, salesman Charlie Greengay, whom Stella knew “would go further in the world” but who didn’t have Percy’s “warm, clear, gray eyes”. We think we know where this will go, but, pleasingly, it only partly plays to expectation.

The story is told third person, mainly through the eyes of Percy, but we do have moments in Stella’s head, and in that of Percy’s similar-aged boss, Oliver Remsen Junior. What makes the story so enjoyable to read, besides its plotting, is Cather’s tight, spare writing. Her words carry weight. Look at the names for a start, the stolid Percy Bixby, the exciting Charlie Greengay, the aspirational Stella Brown, and the classy Oliver Remsen Junior. Description is minimal, but there’s just enough to layer meaning, like Percy and Stella’s “clock, as big as a coffin and with nothing but its two weights dangling in its hollow framework”, and their “false fireplace”. Five years in, the marriage is clearly “hollow”, “false”. It’s worth noting, however, that they have had a baby die, but we only hear this via Oliver, so how it has impacted the marriage is left to us to think about.

Of course, Percy is found out – part-way through the story – because he ‘fesses up, in fact. There are no histrionics, no high drama. Each character behaves in accordance with their nature as established by Cather. Percy, who like so many young men got caught up in the competition for a pretty girl with high expectations, is fundamentally honest and sensible, albeit rather ordinary. Charlie’s “dash and color and assurance” sees him win, even when he loses. Oliver, a new-style humane boss, was prepared to help Percy, but has to be realistic in the end, while the titular Stella – she of the “hair [that] had to be lived up to” – ultimately sees the fundamental difference between her and Percy. Needing excitement and show, she decides to go for it, but we are told enough to know that it is still a man’s world and that, for all her independence, things may not turn out the way she so confidently expects.

“The bookkeeper’s wife”, from its title to its ending, is so beautifully nuanced that, even today, one hundred years later, we might see that things are, perhaps, not as different as we might have expected.

Willa Cather
“The bookkeeper’s wife”
First published: in Century, May 1916. 
Available: Online at the Library of America

Melissa Lucashenko, Edenglassie (#BookReview)

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Broadly speaking, Melissa Lucashenko’s latest novel, Edenglassie, does for southeast Queensland what Kim Scott’s That deadman dance does for Noongar country in southwest Western Australia. Both tell of the early days of their respective colonies from a First Nations perspective; both are written in a generous spirit but with absolute clarity about the dispossession that took place; and both suggest things could have been different.

Unlike That deadman dance, however, Edenglassie, is a dual narrative story. The main storyline, featuring two young people, Mulanyin and Nita, is set around the Magandjin or Meanjin (Brisbane) region during the mid-1850s, making it just a little later than Scott’s first contact narrative. Dispossession, massacres and other brutalities from the colonisers were met with armed resistance, but there were also attempts to work together. Paralleling this historical story is a modern one, featuring Granny Eddie, Winona, and Dr Johnny, set in the same area at the time of its 2024 bicentenary. These stories, one using historical realism and the other modern humour, riff off each other to provide a complex picture of the colonial project – then and now.

Melissa Lucashenko said much that interested me in the conversation I attended for this book, but here I’ll focus on two points she made. One is that the book’s central question is “what was going through these people’s [the colonisers’] minds?” Things could have been different then, she said, and could still be now. The other point is that she wanted to counteract the trope of the dying race. This idea has been slowly changing since Mabo, she said, but is still evident. The modern storyline, with its confident and politically involved Goorie characters, ensures that we see a vibrant, living culture in action.

Realising these two ideas is a big ask, and in my reading group there were some equivocations, but I think Lucashenko pulls it off, through creating engaging characters who come alive on the page and narratives that ring true to their times. Mulanyin, the kippa (young initiated man) from the historical period, and Winona, the fiery young woman in modern times, represent the passion of youth. They are impatient and want things to happen – or change – now. Both, however, also have elders guiding them – in the Goorie way, which is to encourage people to work it out for themselves and to remedy their mistakes.

“needing to endure the unendurable” (Mulanyin)

So, what is it that these young characters must contend with? The novel starts with two pointed events. In the modern storyline, Granny Eddie trips over a jutting tree root and is ignored by passersby until two young brown faces – Malaysian students as it turns out – help her up and get her to hospital. The modern scene is set, and all is not well.

We then flash back to 1840 where members of the Goorie Federation are looking forward to the imminent departure of the dagai, only to be told that this is now unlikely. A Goorie mother wonders what

If life never returned to normal. If the rule of law was never restored. What would her son see as a man? … Would her daughters be subject to the terrors the dagai brought?

What indeed?

Having asked the question, Lucashenko then moves her historical story to 1854-1855. Mulanyin is living with his law-brother Murree north of his own saltwater Nerang/Yugambeh home. Here, he is in close contact with the colonisers, and particularly with the Petries. At this time, the Petries, particularly the young Tom Petrie, were sympathetic to, and tried in their own way to work with, the Goories on whose land they resided. Lucashenko seems to be saying that, given colonisation was happening and wasn’t going to be undone, there were ways in which it might have been made to work (or, at least, work better). Conversations between Tom, Mulanyin, and other characters, explore their differences, particularly regarding attitudes to country. Mulanyin wants to know

what goes on in the brain of an Englishman? When he arrives in another man’s country to steal his land, and water, and game, and then with a straight face, calls those he steals from thieves? Is this how it is in Scotland? Is this why your people have fled that terrible place?’

The ensuing discussion has Tom struggling to explain the English, but admitting that “in their ignorance, they don’t understand that the land here has its own Law. They think that only their British law exists”. However, he says, they “respect some boundaries still … Those that are well defended”.

What did ‘well defended’ look like, Mulanyin wondered, if not like a thousand Goories assembled at the Woolloongabba pullen pullen? If not like Dundalli, leading the warriors who had willingly assembled under him, from Dugulumba to K’gari?

Fair point, Mulanyin.

Meanwhile, the modern-day characters are living with the fall-out from the failure of the colonisers to make it work and of the colonised to succeed in their resistance. Goories are still here, yes, but life is a struggle, and Winona wants to fight back, wants “to bite em hard onetime, while we got the chance”. She can’t understand why Granny Eddie, who grew up “with a dirt floor and empty belly” doesn’t think she deserves more. Granny, though, is two things. A pragmatist who sees that “Dagai not going away! We gotta get on with them”. And she’s an elder well-versed in her culture, so when Winona takes a hardline with Dr Johnny, who claims Aboriginal heritage, Granny says

“You’re thinking like a whitefella when ya close him out. That’s not our way. We bring people in, we bring our Mob home, and we care about them. We teach them how to behave proper way…”

Further, she argues,

“We can’t be sunk in bitterness … Or stuck in the past. We need to focus on the good dagais, like Cathy and Zainab, and them Petries, and –.”

Winona, Granny Eddie and Mulanyin all make sense, but they speak from different angles. What makes Edenglassie so interesting is the way Lucashenko gives space and respect to these angles. She certainly shows what was lost – and the utter unfairness of it. But, with the generosity of spirit we keep seeing, she also shares through her characters what living with deep connection to country means. And, she encourages everyone to think about alternative ways we can do this.

Towards the end of the novel, Gaja (Aunty) Iris shares an important story with our modern protagonists, introducing it with

we all know how important our stories are … People all over the world keep their stories close. Middle Eastern people believe … that by telling a story you can change the world, and nothing is as powerful as the right story at the right time.

With ideas about truth-telling and decolonisation becoming part of modern Australian culture, now feels like the right time for stories like Edenglassie. It might be an uncomfortable time to be a settler Australian, but that’s nothing compared with what First Nations people have endured and continue to endure. The least we can do is try to understand. Books like Lucashenko’s not only help us along this path but give us a lively read at the same time.

Melissa Lucashenko
Edenglassie
St Lucia: UQP, 2023
306pp.
ISBN: 9780702266126

Monday musings on Australian literature: Poetry Month 2024

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National Poetry Month – in Australia – is now four years old, and once again it is spearheaded by Red Room Poetry, which is described by ArtsHub as “Australia’s leading organisation that commissions poets and produces live poetry events nationally”. ArtsHub adds that this Month is “a festival that celebrates emerging and established writers, as well as public figures with an unexpected passion for poetry”. I don’t know how successful it is at reaching its goal of increasing “access, awareness and visibility of poetry in all its forms and for all audiences” but something must be working. I was thrilled to not only hear the month mentioned on our national ABC radio station but to hear that the ABC would be featuring poems during the month.

Red Room is running similar events and activities to those they’ve run before – their 30in30 daily writing competition with prompts from Red Room commissioned poets, poetry ambassadors, online workshops, showcases, a community calendar, and more. And this year, “more” includes something new which is that they are closing out the month with “the UK’s biggest poetry and performance festival, Contains Strong Language” in Sydney from August 28-31. 

Poetry is beyond time. It’s a way of bringing together the countless generations of humanity. It’s a means of connecting past and present. It’s a way of imagining the future. ~ L-Fresh the Lion (via Red Room Poetry).

National Poetry Gala … and more

This year their National Poetry Month Gala, if I read the website correctly, will happen in Sydney on 29 August at the State Library of New South Wales. It will be hosted by Chika Ikogwe (an award-winning Nigerian born actor and writer) and will feature Julia Baird, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Lorna Munro, Felicity Plunkett, Hasib Hourani, Rob Waters, Dan Hogan and Pascalle Burton, plus guests from the UK, Simon Armitage (their current Poet Laureate) and Princess Arinola Adegbite, and live music from Paul Kelly.

Contains Strong Language is a four-day festival in which local poets and spoken word artists will appear on stage alongside visiting UK poets including Simon Armitage. It’s the first time this annual broadcast festival, founded by the BBC in 2017, has left Britain. Events will be held across Gadigal and Dharug land in Greater Sydney (including one in the Blue Mountains) and will also be broadcast to Australia and around the world, through the BBC and ABC. The events include “performances, masterclasses, panels, galas, slams, live and online workshops, and international writing collaborations featuring 70+ artists”. Sounds like a real coup. The program, which includes free and paid events, can be found here.

Line Break is a new podcast from Red Room Poetry, and is presented in partnership with the Community Radio Network. It will include, over August, their daily 30in30 poetry commissions and writing prompts, plus various special series hosted by our Red Room producers. Some of Australia’s poetry-loving favourite public figures will apparently also share their ‘gateway’ poems. Who are they, and what will they share?

If you would like to know what is happening through the month – in various locations, including online – this Showcase page is a good place to start (or Red Room’s main site which I’ve linked in the opening paragraph).

And, I’ll just add that this might be a good month to check out – on your preferred music streaming service – the Hell Herons’ debut spoken word (poetry and music) album, The Wreck Event, about which I posted recently.

Musica Viva, the Choir of Kings College Cambridge, and a Poem

On Saturday night, we attended the Canberra Concert of the Kings College Choir of Cambridge’s current Musica Viva Australian tour. As regularly happens when this choir comes to Canberra, Llewellyn Hall was packed. It was a wonderful program which included some different programming decisions, but my focus here is the commissioned piece they performed*.

This piece was a setting to music of a prose-poem by, coincidentally, the Canberra-based poet and visual artist, Judith Nangala Crispin, who traces her ancestry to the Bpangerang people of North-Eastern Victoria and the NSW Riverina, as well as to Ghana, the Ivory Coast, France, Ireland and Scotland. Titled On finding Charlotte in the anthropological record, the poem won the Blake Poetry Prize in 2020 – read it online here – and was set to music by composer Daniel Barbeler. He says, in the program, that the poem captures “the real-life experiences and reflections” which came from Crispin’s “20-year search through paper records and via physical travels” to find information about her Indigenous Australian heritage. She eventually found “a solitary photograph of her great-great-grandmother, Charlotte”.

Among other things, Barbeler says his music captures the Australian landscape, specifically Lake Moodemere (pictured) in Northern Victoria where it’s likely Charlotte was born and died. Barbeler describes this part of the country as “peaceful but haunting” and, having visited this lake a few times (including earlier this year), I concur. The poem is certainly haunting, and one particular line from it – “Charlotte is a map of a Country stained by massacres: Skull Creek, Poison Well, Black Gin’s Leap” – is repeated a few times in the musical version. I wondered what these (some very) young British choristers made of it. (You can listen to the piece via music streaming services, as a single under the Choir of Kings College Cambridge.)

* A special thing about Musica Viva concerts is that they regularly commission new Australian pieces for the visiting international artists to perform in their program.

Image: I assume Red Room Poetry is happy for their Poetry Month banner to be used in articles and posts about the month.

Thinking about the Line Break program, I’d love to know if you have a “gateway” poem, and what it is.