Australian literature

Monday musings on Australian literature: Aussie writers on writing

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As I was writing my review of Carmel Bird’s Fair game yesterday, I was reminded that in addition to novels, short stories, and essays, she has also written a book on writing, titled Dear writer. I’ve dipped into it, but not being a professional writer – and having no plans myself to write a book – I must say I haven’t specifically sought out these sorts of books. Nonetheless, I thought it might be interesting to suss some out and share them with you – partly because I think they may have something to offer readers, and partly because it’s interesting to see who has chosen to write about writing.

Here goes (in chronological order of publication):

BirdDearWriterSpinelessCarmel Bird’s Dear writer (1988, republished 1996). This book comprises writing advice in the form of a series of letters. As Bird writes on her website, it’s been used by students and teachers, individually and in courses, as well as by readers “interested in the writer’s art”. An updated edition, Dear writer revisited, was published in 2013. This is the one I’ve been dipping into. In addition to her own advice, she includes advice from other writers, such as America’s Mark Twain and Australia’s Marion Halligan. In Letter 2 she discusses the use – or, non-use, more like it – of adjectives and adverbs. She says:

Perhaps you thought that you, as the writer, were the one who had to do all the imaging, and that the reader was to get every detail of the picture from your words. The reader of fiction takes pleasure in doing some of the work, and will more readily believe you and trust you if there is work to do. Strangely enough, the strength of fiction seems to lies much in what is left out as what is included …

Hmmm … I thought a book on writing fiction mightn’t be relevant to me but this, this is. I struggle with avoiding cliches, and particularly with trying to find fresh adjectives, but perhaps I should think about avoiding them altogether? Something for me to think about, as I try to describe in my posts the impact or value of a work.

Bird has also written Writing the story of your life.

Kate Grenville’s The writing book (1990) is, if can remember that far back, the first of these books to come to my attention. Grenville, about whom I’ve written several times, lists it on her own site. She says it has become a classic, being used, like Bird’s book, by individual writers and in writing courses. She shares some of her advice on this page. I particularly like this response to a popular notion:

‘Writing has to have a strong story.’

How interesting is it to have someone tell you the plot of a book they’ve just read? Not very. This means that plot alone isn’t what makes a book interesting. What makes it interesting isn’t what’s told but the way it’s told. In some of the best stories, almost nothing happens.

I think she’s right – and I have always said so! Plot is not necessarily the main or only point.

Grenville has written other books on the topic, including Writing from start to finish: A six-step guide.

John Marsden’s Everything I know about writing (1993, republished in 1998). For those of you who don’t know, Marsden is best known as a writer for children and young adults, including the bestselling Tomorrow, when the war began series. I’ve loved some of his YA books, including the unforgettable Letters from the inside. I found this advice from his book on GoodReads:

Use strong words sparingly – less is more. Minimise your use of qualifiers. Recognise words that are at the limits already (e.g. Boiling, delicious, evil), there is nothing you can do to strengthen them.

My family will tell you that one of my favourite mantras is “less is more” so, as I said of Bird’s advice above regarding the use of descriptive words, I love this.

As with Grenville’s book, you can find excerpts on Marsden’s own website.

Mark Tredinnick’s The little red writing book (2006). Of the writers I’ve mentioned here, Tredinnick is the one I know the least, that is, I know of him, but have not read him. He is a poet and essayist, and teaches writing, particularly “creative nonfiction” according to the GoodReads biography. He also edited Inkerman and Blunt’s Australian love poems. (You may remember that I reviewed their Australian love stories). Anyhow, Scott Downman, reviewing this book, says that it is pitched to “a broad audience who simply desire to write better”. Tredinnick says that he aims not to teach students to be writers but to teach them how to write. Summing up the book, Downman writes:

Tredinnick in the opening chapter urges the reader to not just tell a story but to make their writing sing: ‘In song, it’s how you sing, not just what you utter, that counts. And so it is with writing’

This, of course, is similar to what Grenville, above, said – the content is only part of the point.

Do you read books about writing? And if so, what are your favourites or, what are the most important lessons have you learnt?

Carmel Bird, Fair game: A Tasmanian memoir (Review)

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Courtesy: Finlay Lloyd

Courtesy: Finlay Lloyd

As I started reading this next fl smalls offering, an essay this time, I was reminded of one of my favourite Australian writers, Elizabeth von Arnim. Von Arnim was a novelist, but she also wrote several pieces of non-fiction, including her delightful non-autobiography, All the dogs of my life. The similarity stems from the fact that both writers play games with the reader regarding their intentions or subject matter – “This not being autobiography, I needn’t go much into what happened next”, writes von Arnim at various points – but this similarity fades pretty quickly because Bird’s piece, despite its similarly light, disarmingly conversational tone, has a dark underbelly.

I thought, given its subtitle, that Fair game was going to be a memoir of Bird’s growing up in Tasmania. But I had jumped too quickly to conclusions. The subtitle “a Tasmanian memoir” means exactly what it says, that is, it’s a memoir of Tasmania. Her interest is Tasmania’s dark history – “the lives of convict slaves, and the genocide of the indigenous peoples”. The title Fair game, you are probably beginning to realise, has a deeply ironic meaning.

However, getting back to my introduction, Bird does start by leading us on a merry little dance. Her essay commences slyly with a discussion of epigraphs – hers being taken from one of her own books – and the cover illustration. She doesn’t, though, identify the illustration at this point, but simply describes it as “an image of a flock of Georgian women dressed as butterflies, sailing in a glittering cloud high above the ocean”. She then takes us on all sorts of little digressions – about birds, and gardens, and collectors, about her childhood and such – but she constantly pulls up short, returning us to “the story”, or “rural Tasmania”, suggesting that the digressions are “not relevant to this story”. Except they are of course, albeit sometimes tangential, or just subtle, rather than head on. Indeed, she even admits at one stage that:

I have wandered, roving perhaps with the wind, off course from my contemplation of the butterfly women of 1832, they roving also with the wind. It must be clear by now that frequently in this narrative I will waver, will veer off course, but I know also that I do this in the service of the narrative itself. Just a warning.

I love reading this sort of writing – it’s a challenge, a puzzle. Can I follow the author’s mind? One of the easier digressions to follow – and hence a good example to share – is her discussion of a 1943 book published by the Tasmanian government, Insect pests and their control. Need I say more? Bird does, though – quite a bit in fact – and it makes for good reading.

Anyhow, back to the image. A few pages into her essay she tells us more. It’s an 1832 lithograph by Alfred Ducôte, and it is rather strangely titled “E-migration, or a flight of fair game”. On the surface it looks like a pretty picture of women, anthropomorphised as butterflies, flying through the air with colourful wings, pretty dresses and coronets. However, if you look closely, you will see that what they are flying from are women with brooms crying “Varmint”, and what they are flying to are men, one with a butterfly net, calling out “I spies mine”.  Hmm … I did say this was a dark tale, didn’t I? The illustration’s subject, as Bird gradually tells us, is that in 1832, 200 young women were sent from England to Van Diemen’s Land on the Princess Royal. They were the first large group of non-convict women to make the journey, and their role was to become wives and servants in a society where men significantly outnumbered women. As Bird says partway thought the book, “it is not a joyful picture; it is a depiction of a chapter in a tragedy”.

I’d love to know more about Ducôte, and why he produced this work, but this is not Bird’s story. Her focus is the history of Tasmania, and these particular women – who are they, what were they were going to? It appears that Bird has been interested in this story for a long time, since at least 1996 when Lucy Halligan, daughter of Canberra writer Marion Halligan, sent her a postcard with the image. Since then Bird has researched and written about the story. In fact, as she tells us, her research led to the creation of a ballet by TasDance in 2006. They called it Fair Game.

Finally, she gets to the nuts and bolts, and the so-called digressions reduce as she ramps up the story of how these women were chosen, their treatment on the ship, and what happened on their arrival. It is not a pretty story, but represents an important chapter in Australia’s settlement history. I commend it to you – for the story and for the clever, cheeky writing.

awwchallenge2015Carmel Bird
Fair game: A Tasmanian memoir
(fl smalls 7)
Braidwood: Finlay Lloyd, 2015
63pp.
ISBN: 9780987592965

(Review copy courtesy Finlay Lloyd)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Utopia, Paraguay and Australian writers

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The workingman's paradise (Courtesy: Sydney University Press)

The workingman’s paradise (Courtesy: Sydney University Press)

Utopia, Paraguay, Australia? I’m referring, of course, as many Australians will know, to the Utopian colony, New Australia or Colonia Nueva Australia, which was established in Paraguay in 1893 by the New Australia Movement, with the support of the Paraguayan government. This movement was founded by William Lane, whose novel The workingman’s paradise I reviewed quite early in this blog. The settlement did not succeed. According to Wikipedia (linked to above), conflict started early “over prohibition of alcohol, relations with the locals and Lane’s leadership”. Colonist Tom Westwood is quoted as saying, “I can’t help feeling that the movement cannot result in success if that incompetent man Lane continues to mismanage so utterly as he has done up to the present”. Oh dear.

The settlement has been written about by historians (Gavin Souter’s A Peculiar People and Anne Whitehead’s Paradise Mislaid) and at least one novelist, Michael Wilding‘s The Paraguayan Experiment. Australian travel writer Ben Stubbs has written about his trip to talk to “remnants” of that settlement in his Ticket to paradise: A journey to find the Australian colony in Paraguay among Nazis, Mennonites and Japanese beekeepers. Several musicians have also written songs about it, according to Wikipedia.

Mary Gilmore, 1927 (Public Domain, at State Library of QLD, via Wikipedia)

Mary Gilmore, 1927 (Public Domain, at State Library of QLD, via Wikipedia)

So why am I mentioning all this now? Well, it has to do with those creative Griffyns and their last concert for the year, titled The Utopia Experiment, which is inspired by this settlement. I’ve known, of course, all year that it was coming up, but an article in today’s Canberra Times, which reminded me of other (contemporary) literary links besides Lane, encouraged me to write this post. The main link is Dame Mary Gilmore (née Mary Jean Cameron) who, in the first half of the twentieth century, was regarded Australia’s greatest woman poet. According to NSW’s Migration Heritage Centre website, she said of Lane’s The workingman’s paradise that:

 the whole book is true and of historical value as Lane transcribed our conversations as well as those of others.

Gilmore, in fact, became one of the 200-odd settlers, but returned after 5 years. She said in an interview over 60 years later that:

It was purely communistic. I wouldn’t say it was a success, but I certainly wouldn’t say it was a failure. The reason it had to break up, or disappear, is because William Lane would only have British people in it…

The aforementioned Anne Whitehead has written a book specifically on Gilmore’s Paraguayan story, Bluestocking in Patagonia: Mary Gilmore’s quest for love and Utopia at the world’s end, suggesting, says reviewer Sarah Macdonald, that Gilmore joined the settlers as much in search of a prospective husband as for the socialist ideal. Perhaps so, but she must have been looking for a particular type of husband to take such a trip!

A 1911 newspaper article quotes Renmark Pioneer editor, who knew Gilmore at the time, as stating that she:

joined the Cosme Colony in Paraguay, where a number of us, under the leadership of William Lane, were giving communism a trial. We were at that time a very happy family, and Mary Gilmore entered into the life whole-heartedly. She rendered good service to the colony, not only taking charge of the school (thereby releasing the former teacher, John Lane, for work in the fields), but doing much to add to the success of the social gatherings that were a marked feature in the life of our little community.

Mary Gilmore went on to live a long and highly productive life, dying in 1962 when she was 97. She was a socialist and activist, a poet and journalist, who argued for better conditions for working women, children and indigenous Australians. (Critic A.G. says in the Age in 1941 that “Her association with the early days of the Australian Labor movement has deepened and widened her social outlook … she speaks especially for the “little” people”).

Her Paraguay experience followed her for the rest of her life, as the National Library of Australia’s Trove reveals. Here is a description of her in a 1923 newspaper, Melbourne’s Advocate, when she would have been 58:

Mrs. Gilmore, who was one of the band that went to Paraguay with the late William Lane on the New Australia adventure, is a proven Irish sympathiser as well as a good Australian.

“A proven Irish sympathiser as well as a good Australian”. What I love about reading old newspapers is the insight they give into the thinking and values of the times.

The literary links don’t end here, however, because Gilmore was very keen for that other great Australian poet-writer of the time, Henry Lawson, to join the settlers. Certainly Lawson had the appropriate socialistic leanings. In 1893, he wrote a poem, “Something better” supporting the Paraguayan vision:

Give a man all earthly treasures – give him genuine love and pelf* —
Yet at times he’ll get disgusted with the world and with himself;
And at times there comes a vision in his conscience-stricken nights,
Of a land where “Vice” is cleanly, of a land of pure delights;
And the better state of living which we sneer at as “ideal”,
Seems before him in the distance — very far, but very real.

However, he didn’t join the settlers.

I could explore these two writers more, but life is busy right now – and, you never know, I might return to the subject after the Griffyns have presented their musical version.

Paul McDermott, Fragments of the hole (Review)

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"Paul McDermott DAAS" by Canley - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.
“Paul McDermott DAAS” by Canley. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

If you’re an Australian, you are sure to know who Paul McDermott is. If you are not Australian, you may not, and this book in fact would not enlighten you, because nowhere on the book is it made clear that “this” Paul McDermott is indeed “that” Paul McDermott. It doesn’t take much reading though to realise that indeed it must be. Have I intrigued you? I hope so.

Fragments of the hole is the first of the second set of fl smalls released by small independent publisher Finlay Lloyd. I mentioned them in my recent post on small books, and said then that I’d review them individually as I read them, so here I am.

I’ll start, having already mentioned him, by telling you about the author. Wikipedia describes him as “an Australian comedian, actor, writer, director, singer, artist and television host”. I knew about most of those, but I didn’t realise that his writing included more than writing scripts for his shows, or that he was an artist too. He first came to public notice as a member of the satirical musical comedy group the Doug Anthony All Stars. The Doug Anthony in their name refers to the longtime leader (1971-1984) of the National Party of Australia, which will, perhaps, give you a sense of his political leanings. However, Fragments of the hole is not political satire, so let’s get onto it …

McDermottFragmentsFinlay

The jokes start pretty much on the title page when we are told that the book comprises:

a collection of previously unpublished work from various writer/artists:

Young Master Paul, The Nymbus Art Collective, The Marvellous Mr Me, The Generator, Paul McDermott, Ol’ Miss Daisy & The Caravan King.

Hmm … the way I read it they were all written and illustrated by Paul McDermott but, you know, I could be wrong! Whoever wrote them, though, they are delightful – dark, whimsical, and a little cryptic. The collection comprises one prose story, followed by five in verse form, and most read a little like fairy stories or fables. There’s usually a little point to ponder at the end, even if that point raises another question.

Take, for example, the first poem, “The Bread Girl and the Sparrow”. It is reminiscent of “The Gingerbread Man” which, Wikipedia tells me, is just one of many folktales about “runaway food”. Who’d have thought?  Anyhow, in McDermott’s story, in addition to the issue of trust, there are layers of sacrifice and loyalty between food and predator which adds quite an interesting philosophical twist.

There’s a Roald Dahl-esque edge to the stories. The humour is dark. These are not for (most) children. “Asleep/Awake”, for example, is about the sleeping (real) self meeting the dream self. The exhortation at the end, if you are suggestible, could very well bring on a nasty case of insomnia. You have been warned. I loved too “The man who thought (he was a fog)”, and McDermott’s suggestion that perhaps the initial assumption was not the right one at all. “You look for answers where you may/You find them when you can” he says, but, are you asking the right question?

If any single idea underlies the stories it is something about “self” – what is your “self”, do you protect it, how does it interact with others? Sacrifice – sometimes chosen, sometimes inadvertent – appears in a couple of the stories; the idea of alternative selves appears in others. There is also a sense of life not going to plan. It may not always be –

That evil and sorrow await the naive
At every twist and turn

– but it doesn’t hurt to always have your wits about you.

The poems are told in a fairly simple a-b-c-b rhyming pattern, but the line lengths vary at times to change the pace. McDermott, a comedian who lives by his words, is sure in his language, which is clear and unforced. The pencil drawings are delightful. You can feel the twinkle in his eye – the fun he is having – as you read the stories and look at the pictures. They made me chuckle.

And here I will end because this is a book that is best experienced rather than described or analysed. It’s a cheekily clever but also delightfully charming “little book”. It would, dare I say it, make a perfect stocking stuffer for the discerning reader on your gift list.

Paul McDermott
Fragments of the hole: an illustrated collection (or, Odds and ends, bibs and bobs, and little bits of nothing)
(fl smalls 6)
Braidwood: Finlay Lloyd, 2015
[60pp.]
ISBN: 9780987592958

(Review copy courtesy Finlay Lloyd)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Novels set in Sydney

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Oh, it's fun driving on Pennant Hills Road!
Oh, it’s fun driving on Pennant Hills Road! (With apologies to Sydney-lovers)

My life has been rather topsy-turvy in recent weeks. My aunt died on 30 October, as regular readers here know, which has necessitated two five-day trips to Sydney, not to mention other related work in between.  Consequently, I haven’t had much time for reading or, even, for thinking about Monday Musings, but I have been thinking a little about Sydney … particularly since these trips have been to the part of Sydney in which I spent my teen and university years.

My family moved to Sydney in 1966, and it was from this time that my relationship with my aunt was really established, although I have many memories of her before that. Alison loved having two teen nieces in town to take out and show off her beloved Sydney to. And we loved having an aunt who was fun company and keen to take us out. It was she who taught us about Sydney’s history and culture. She took us to the Sydney Rocks area, long before it was cool, where she showed us old buildings like the Garrison Church. She took us to an early settlement re-enactment on historic Fort Denison (aka Pinchgut, or Mat-te-wan-ye, as it was to local Aboriginal people). And, being a beach lover, she took us frequently to Sydney’s famous beaches.

It suddenly occurred to me that one way I could honour my aunt would be to share some novels about her city, so that’s this week’s plan. I will list them in chronological order of their setting (not of when they were written). They are of course a very small selection of the books I’ve read, and an even smaller selection of those written about the place.

  • Kate Grenville’s The secret river, despite the controversy it engendered, made a significant contribution to our understanding of Sydney’s origins, because Grenville, finding a dearth of detailed evidence, tried to imagine what may have happened at an individual level between the European immigrants/settlers and the indigenous people when those settlers “took up” land in the Sydney region. (Grenville followed her exploration of early Sydney in the other books in the trilogy, The lieutenant and Sarah Thornhill). I appreciate that Grenville’s novel is not “history”, but I liked her attempt to present a possible scenario of how things may have gone, and why.
  • William Lane’s The workingman’s paradise (my review) is probably the least well-known of the books I’m listing here, but I’m including it not only because it’s one that I’ve read and reviewed on my blog, but because it’s set in the late nineteenth century, just prior to Australia’s Federation, during a time of social and political unrest when socialist ideas were being explored. It contains some gorgeous physical descriptions of Sydney in that time, as well as providing insight into contemporary intellectual debates about how to improve conditions for workers.
  • Emma Ashmere’s The floating garden (my review) captures Sydney at one of the most significant times in its life, physically speaking that is. Set in the late 1920s to early 1930s, it tells of the dispossession of working class people of their homes to make way for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Funny, isn’t it, how so often it’s those who have the least resources who end up wearing the biggest costs of “progress”.
  • Kylie Tennant’s Tell morning this is set in Sydney during World War 2. Tennant wrote several novels about Sydney in the 1940s and 1950s, but the first that I read was Tell morning this. I enjoyed it for the vivid picture Tennant paints of Sydney at a time when young women met American servicemen. She doesn’t pull any punches in her story of Rene who is jailed for living with one of these Americans, and of David who is also jailed, but for being a conscientious objector. The irony of this – of jailing those who were practising the freedoms we were apparently fighting for – may not be lost on contemporary audiences!
  • Ruth Park’s The harp in the south tells the story of a poor working class family living in Sydney’s Surry Hills in the immediate post-war era. It’s a good example of the social realist novel – the sort of novel some criticise for being “too” documentary and not imaginative enough, but which, when well done, can starkly show what life is like for the have-nots, that is, for those whose hold on employment is tenuous, and for whom, therefore, survival can be a daily struggle. Harp’s picture of Surry Hills is warm and vivid, and remains popular today. As novelist Delia Falconer wrote in The Griffith Review, it “still bludgeons us about the heart”.
  • Madeleine St John’s The women in black (my review) is set in the 1950s in a Sydney department store. Its characters tend to be middle-class, but they range from conservative suburban Australians through aspirational working women to educated European immigrants. All, though, face pressures – to do with acceptance, aspiration for improvement, and/or escaping stultifying expectations. St John’s book is more a comedy of manners, than Tennant and Park’s social realist approach, but nonetheless presents a thoughtful picture of a city in flux.
  • Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi is a young adult novel that is fast becoming a classic. Published in the early 1990s, it is set in what had become by then a well-established multicultural Sydney. Marchetta explores the tensions experienced by the children born of immigrant parents, as they negotiate the expectations of their parents’ culture and those of the culture into which they’ve been born. Marchetta also touches on class, unrealistic expectations, and the public-private school divide.
  • Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of travel (my review) continues the theme of immigration, among other ideas, through the alternating stories of travel-writer Laura and Sri Lankan immigrant Ravi. De Kretser analyses from multiple angles, and for both characters, the idea that “geography is destiny”. She looks at the role of place in modern life: to what extent is it a physical construct, and what role does it play in a virtual world in which we travel by choice or necessity in order to find our lives? Sydney, Australia’s first settler city, seems a perfect place from which to base such exploration – for Kretser who has set her previous books in France, Sri Lanka and Melbourne.

These are just a few of the novels I’ve read that are set in Sydney. Other favourites include Shirley Hazzard’s The transit of Venus, Elizabeth Harrower’s The watch tower (my review), and Patrick White’s The solid mandala, to name a few. You can find more ideas in Wikipedia’s list of novels set in Sydney (though interestingly not all of mine are there).

Reviewing my list, I see that each book explores Sydney at a time of change – social, cultural and/or economic. Perhaps that’s a fact that differentiates cities – they never stand still?

Do you have favourite books about a city that’s been significant to you?

Paul Hetherington and Jen Webb, Watching the world (Review)

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Hetherington and Webb, Watching the worldI hope it’s not condescending to suggest, at this time of year, that a book would make a good Christmas present? I know some publishers, and fair enough too, choose around now to release certain types of books deemed to be good gift material. That, however, is not the case with this book, Watching the world, as it was in fact published back in July. It’s just that I’m reviewing it now and, quite coincidentally, I think it would make a good Christmas book. This is not because it’s a light, easy summer read, as it’s not your typical beach book, but because it’s a very attractive book that is priced reasonably and that can be enjoyed in multiple ways. You can meander through it sequentially, stopping to ponder, or dip in and out, exploring what catches your fancy.

Subtitled Impressions of Canberra, Watching the world comprises poems by Paul Hetherington paired with photographs by Jen Webb. It has a rather interesting genesis, as the Introduction explains, in that it’s the “result of an extended collaboration” between the poet and the artist. Their aim was to explore Canberra as a place in which people live and work, rather than, as is usually the case, as a planned city that is also the national capital. I like that idea. Too often Canberra is used as shorthand for the federal government – as in “Canberra said today ….”. But, as we who live here know, there is far more to Canberra than that.

Hetherington and Webb’s method of working was interesting too. They worked, they say, semi-independently:

Jen took photographs, which Paul then used as springboards into poems. Paul’s poems led, in turn, to Jen taking new photographs, or editing existing ones.

They continued this “iterative process” until they found “enough poem-photo pairs” that would satisfy their intention. They suggest that in this method of working a new “reality” appeared, one that was somehow separate both from themselves as individuals and from their partnership, a reality which confronted them with ideas about “the incommensurability of world, image and word”. That makes sense to me – I think! At least, it makes sense to me that we never can completely or exactly capture in one form – say poetry – that which is in another form – in this case life in Canberra. It seems both obvious and sophisticated at the same time to make this point! And so, when you have a poem and a photograph both “commenting” on each other and on life in Canberra, then the meaning (or the “reality”) surely becomes multi-layered? Hmmm … I think I’ll leave the philosophising here, but I hope that I’m making sense and that I’ve understood what Hetherington and Webb are saying.

Now, I’ll get to more concrete stuff (a very poetic word, that), starting with the wider project. In the Introduction, again, we are told that it was initially produced as an installation for the Imagine Canberra exhibition during Canberra’s 2013 centenary celebrations. It then had a couple of other iterations – at a conference, and as a set of scholarly essays – before finding its way into this book form this year. I love that they have managed to achieve such varied mileage out of their work.

And finally, the book itself. The poem-photo pairs are divided into three sections – Where we live, Memory places, and Paddocks and perambulations. They are, as you’d expect from the process described, idiosyncratic, although there is logic too to the groupings. The first poem-pair is titled “Waltz” and captures the physical sense of Canberra. I was amused by the poem’s opening:

Like algebra, these straight-drawn streets,
curves, crescents and rounding circles

Starting with the “straight-drawn streets” must surely be a little provocative gesture to the popular cry from tourists that they get lost in Canberra’s circles! We do, I’m sure, have far more traditionally designed streets than circular ones. It’s just that the circular pattern is a feature of the inner, early Canberra where tourists focus. The accompanying image is a low aerial shot of a warm, cosy looking Canberra suburb in autumn. The poem suggests that there is magic in Canberra, that for all the apparent “algebra” in its straight lines and curves, there is much here that cannot be easily defined or narrowed down to simple formulae.

The poems vary in tone. There is, for example, a subdued reference to indigenous inhabitants in “Ainslie”, whimsical self-deprecation in the simply titled “Canberra”, and wry or defiant humour in “Letter”. At least, it made me laugh: a woman hands her letter to someone, perhaps a husband she is leaving:

‘I know it’s not done
to be so formal
but just this once
I’d like the last word’

The accompanying image shows the back of a blue car driving away in light rain.

Sometimes the meanings of the poems and the connections with the photography are clear and unambiguous, more literal perhaps. Other times they are more tenuous, or abstract, as in “Handkerchief” with its accompanying leaf-litter image, encouraging the reader-viewer to delve further. I enjoy these challenges. It would be interesting to see whether different combinations challenge different readers.

The images are, of course, important, though being primarily a verbal/textual person, my focus tends to be the words. However, there are some gorgeous images here. I’ve mentioned a couple already. I also like the mystical tone of the poem-photo pair titled “Boundaries”, the sense of coming into and out of our different spiritual and physical selves, our individual and our social selves, and so on. A simple image and a two-line poem. Perfect.

Some of the pieces are universal, that is, they could apply to a lot of places in which people live, but many draw on signs and symbols familiar to Canberrans – the circles, the balloons, and Black Mountain Tower, for a start. We are a bush capital, and along with our trees come the birds. I enjoyed the cheekiness of the poem titled “Birds” (and the accompanying image setting movement against stillness) which suggests that for all the planning, life in the city might have other ideas. If you are now intrigued, have a look at the sample provided online by Blemish Books. That will probably speak louder than my 1000 words!

Watching the world is a quietly subversive work that looks at Canberra from an insider’s point of view – with a lot of affection but a willingness to cast an acerbic or questioning eye at times too. And remember, it’s Christmas soon!

Paul Hetherington and Jen Webb
Watching the world: Impressions of Canberra
Canberra: Blemish Books, 2015
79pp.
ISBN: 9780994250827

(Review copy courtesy Blemish Books)

Monday musings on Australian literature: More on small books

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Why is it that when we humans see change, we tend to prognosticate doom? I’m thinking how it was argued that TV would be the end of radio, and videos the end of cinema. It hasn’t happened has it? These older industries may have had to rearranged themselves a little but they have survived. Then a few years ago, with the advent of e-books, it happened again with commentators forecasting the end of the printed book. That hasn’t happened – yet, anyhow, and I really don’t think it will happen anytime soon. What drives all this? Fear I suppose. Enough of that, though, as my aim here is not to philosophise about change. Rather, I want to talk about the small book …

Yes, I know that I wrote about them only a couple of weeks ago, but since then I’ve come across more discussion of them, and more initiatives. Short books, it seems, are gaining in popularity – or at least a number of publishers seem willing to give them a go, and not just for publishing cheap classics which they can expect to have an audience. No, as I wrote in my previous post on the topic, some are publishing contemporary material, sometimes specifically commissioning or putting a call out for contributions or even holding competitions.

Giramondo, an independent Australian publisher, started their Shorts program back around 2012. Giramondo Shorts is, they say:

a new series of short form, short print run books, designed to take account of the new technologies of digital printing, and to appeal to a community of literary readers. The series carries a quote from Les Murray’s poem ‘The Dream of Wearing Shorts Forever’: ‘it is time perhaps to cherish the culture of shorts.’

There are now 8 books in the series, and the books have an unusual square format. At $19.95 each, they are priced a little higher than many small books, but the fact that they are continuing suggests some level of success. It seems like digital printing technologies are enabling Giramondo to produce their books more efficiently.

One of the reasons that I decided to write this follow-up post was because in my role as Literary and Classics coordinator for the Australian Women Writers Challenge, I came across Jonathan Shaw’s review (for his blog Me Fail? I Fly!) of the Going Down Swinging Longbox. This is a set of  “five slim books” containing pieces the literary magazine had rejected for publication in its magazine. Shaw calls this little collection “a beautiful artefact”. It is for this reason that I particularly wanted to mention it, because not only are these small books, but beautiful design is an important part of their production. In other words, they are a long way from the cheap Penguin 60s initiative. After all, there’s nothing like holding a beautifully designed book is there – something that is hard to experience in the e-format. (Going Down Swinging is a literary magazine that has been publishing in print, and later also online, since 1979.)

Finally, for this post anyhow, there’s Griffith Review’s novella project. Including this is a bit of a cheat, really, because in this case the book itself is not especially small, and these two posts have been focussed on physical smallness, not just smallness (or shortness) of content. However, I thought it was worth mentioning because it represents a commitment to the novella form, which as you know is a favourite form for me. Here is what they say:

In 2012, Griffith Review 38: The Novella Project played a major role in enabling Australian and New Zealand authors to gain a foothold in the English language revival of the novella underway internationally. In 2014, Griffith Review 46: Forgotten Stories – The Novella Project II published five novellas with an historical dimension in a confronting, moving and provocative collection.

And so, Griffith Review 50: Tall Tales Short – The Novella Project III has just been published. It contains five novellas which were selected in a blind-judged nationwide competition.

The printed book, in other words, looks to me like it’s not going anywhere soon. There might be a bit of a shake-down as publishers explore what is going to work best and for whom, but it is exciting to see them continuing to explore the possibilities of print, including producing short works in new forms and formats.

Caroline de Costa, Double madness (Review)

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De Costa, Double madnessI’m not a crime reader as most of you know, and in fact most of the crime novels I’ve read here have been review copies sent to me. Caroline de Costa’s Double madness is one of these. I accepted it for a couple of reasons. It’s a debut novel by a doctor, indeed a professor of Medicine at the James Cook University in Cairns, who has been shortlisted for a nonfiction work in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. And it is set in beautiful far north Queensland, my home state.

Not being an expert in crime writing, I can’t really compare it with other novels, but I’d say it’s in the sub-genre known as police procedural. According to Wikipedia, in police procedurals the detective is a police officer and the story depicts the activities of the police investigating the crime. Tick. However, Wikipedia also says that in police procedurals the perpetrator is often known to the reader, but this is not the case here, and that the novel will often deal with a number of unrelated crimes, which is also not the case here, though several references are made to one other crime. None of this matters, really thought, does it? Categories can be helpful in analysis, but in the end what counts is the work itself. I was just intrigued.

Double madness opens with the victim’s body being found, by accident, in a secluded part of the north Queensland rainforest, by a doctor and his wife who are driving home the scenic way. Finding the body is, I presume, a pretty traditional opening for a crime novel of this sort. The dating, like the setting, is also precise – 27 February 2011, which is three weeks after the category-5 Cyclone Yasi hit northern Queensland, causing significant destruction. The novel is told in almost straight chronology, with each chapter titled by a date, the last being 17 March 2011. Early in the novel, though, there are a few flashback chapters – mostly to 2009 – which flesh out a few characters for us.

Our main detective is the 30-something now-single mother, Cass Diamond. She’s of indigenous Australian background. Ah, so we have a non-indigenous writer, as far as I know anyhow, writing an indigenous character. You may remember discussions we’ve had here on this topic. I’ve quoted writer Margaret Merrilees, “To write about Australia, particularly rural Australia, without mentioning the Aboriginal presence (current or historical) is to distort reality, to perpetuate the terra nullius lie”. De Costa is writing about Far North Queensland, a place with a significant indigenous population, where it would indeed be poor form to ignore indigenous characters. My assessment is that de Costa has done it well. Cass makes some references to her indigeneity, and to some of the challenges she faces, but this is not her defining characteristic in the novel. She is “just” another police officer, and is defined as much, if not more, by being a single mother whose “fridge was a temple consecrated to convenience foods”. In other words, she’s in that band of job-jolly detectives who struggle to keep their personal life going, though Cass does a better job than most (that I’ve seen on TV anyhow). She does, for a start, seem to have a good relationship with her teenage son. Moreover, she’s not drunk, middle-aged or unduly cynical – yet, anyhow!

Back now, to the plot. Tucked into the copy sent to me was a slip of paper containing a short interview with the writer by reviewer Fiona Hardy. De Costa tells Hardy that she had “for some time been interested in the concept of folie-à-deux [share psychosis]”. Folie-à-deux translates as double madness – hence the book’s title. De Costa also tells Hardy, when describing the sort of detective she has created, that she has to write what she knows. And she knows medicine. Consequently, not only does the investigation and resolution of the crime involve some medical knowledge, but the story is set largely amongst the community’s medical fraternity. In other words, the good doctors of Cairns have been getting up to a bit of mischief with our victim, so when the murder is committed they find themselves in the frame. They are not, however, the only ones. There be a husband, and sons, and sundry other possibilities. All I’ll say is this is a tricky plot with a goodly dose of red herrings. For more, you’ll have to read the book.

I wouldn’t call Double madness a ground-breaking or particularly innovative detective novel, but it’s an enjoyable read. The writing is clear and straightforward, keeping to the point and moving along at a fair pace. There’s no unnecessary description, but where it is needed, such as to describe the bush or, say, a doctor’s experience of working through a cyclone, it feels real and authentic. Hardy, in her interview, notes that the cyclone Yasi makes an effective metaphor for the havoc wrought by the victim, Odile Janvier, on those around her. She’s right, it does.

When I read fiction, as I’ve said before, I look for some underlying messages or themes or issues being explored because I like my reading to further my understanding of humanity. Double madness is not, in this sense, a deep or enquiring book, but it is quietly subversive in the way it handles race and gender. Its indigenous characters are not defined by their indigeneity, and women detectives and medicos play important, but accepted and unremarked, roles in the investigation and resolution of the crime. Moreover, while the murder victim is a woman, she is far from the norm of murdered women victimhood. Good on de Costa.

So, if you are looking for a new crime author for your crime fan friends this Christmas – because yes, it’s that time of year again – then Double madness is well worth putting on your list.

awwchallenge2015Caroline de Costa
Double madness
Witchcliffe: Margaret River Press, 2015
359pp.
ISBN: 9780987561565

(Review copy courtesy Margaret River Press)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Fiction about death and dying

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Today’s Monday Musings is more personal than these posts usually are. Ten days ago, the last aunt of my aunts and uncles died. She’d been failing for some time, really, but she fought death to the end. Indeed, when we were in her house last week starting that awful job of clearing a house, we were told we needed to find five library books. We found four but where was the last? We searched all the likely places but to no avail – and then it came to light. She’d packed it in her hospital bag. Just hours before she died, in a state described as “gravely ill”, she went to hospital and took a book, of course! This got me thinking, once again, about the role of literature in our lives – and, particularly, what we can learn from reading.

So, what have I learnt about death and dying from books? I’ve read several non-fiction books – mostly non-Australian, but one, Bianca Nogrady’s The end: The human experience of death, is by an Australian and I’ve reviewed it here. These books have been interesting, but they tend not to get to the heart of things. For that, think, we need fiction (or, poetry, but I’m limiting my discussion here to fiction). Learning, though, is perhaps not quite the right word. Experience might be better, because when we read fiction, we don’t so much “learn” facts, as “feel” or “experience” the emotions and ideas being shared. A memorable dying scene for me comes from English writer Penelope Lively’s Moon tiger. Claudia is seized by joy and wellbeing at the sight of the sun catching raindrops on trees, sending out sparks of colour, and then:

The sun sinks and the glittering tree is extinguished. The room darkens again. Presently it is quite dim; the window is violet now, showing the black tracery of branches and a line of houses packed with squares of light. And within the room a change has taken place. It is empty. Void. It has the stillness of a place in which there are only inanimate objects: metal, wood, glass, plastic. No life. Something creaks; the involuntary sound of expansion or contraction. Beyond the window a car starts up, an aeroplane passes overhead. The world moves on. And beside the bed the radio gives the time signal and a voice starts to read the six o’clock news.

Maybe it’s just me … but I found this sense of the person being there one minute and then gone the next, and of life continuing regardless, quietly powerful. It has framed my ideas of dying ever since, I think.

Fiction about death and dying tends to deal with three broad aspects: fighting or rejecting death, reflecting on it, and accepting it. Most books, naturally, encompass two or three of these aspects. Anyhow, here is a small selection of Australian novels that deal with death in some way, that don’t simply have deaths “in” them but tackle in some way the meaning or implication of death. I’ve listed in alphabetical order by author:

  • Peter Carey’s The chemistry of tears (my review) tells the story of two people – a contemporary museum conservator who is devastated by the loss of her (secret married) lover and a 19th century father who commissions an automaton to entertain his consumptive son. Grief, and how to live with it, underpins this novel, though it explores many other issues too.
  • Brooke Davis’ Lost & found (my review) was inspired by the untimely, freakish death of her mother. Its three characters, a young girl and two old people, are all facing the death of a significant person and end up on a quest together searching how to live with loss – something we all face at least once, and mostly many times, in our lives.
  • Helen Garner’s The spare room is an uncompromising novel about a woman caring for a friend with terminal cancer. The friend is fighting her prognosis, including trying some alternative treatments that seem to be having no beneficial effects whatsoever, though the friend maintains the faith. The narrator – significantly called Helen – becomes increasingly frustrated with her friend’s inability to accept the facts, and finds it increasingly difficult to maintain her caring role. It’s a confronting story. I admire Garner’s honesty in presenting a story that is not pretty.

  • Hannah Kent, Burial Rites bookcover

    Courtesy: Picador

    Hannah Kent’s Burial rites (my review) was inspired by the story of Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman executed in Iceland. The book takes place between the time when Agnes is convicted and sentenced and when the sentence is actually carried out. Kent explores the reactions of people to Agnes, and Agnes’s own sense of who she is. Death hangs over this novel, in the way it forces people to confront mortality, their own values, and justice.

  • David Malouf’s The conversations at Curlow Creek is set in the 1820s and concerns the conversations that occur between a military officer and an arrested bushranger who is to be executed in the morning. It’s about the connections made between the two men, between the captor’s reflections on his own life and the condemned man’s concerns about death, God and forgiveness. It’s a long time since I read this book, but it has a mesmerising quality, a sense of grace, that has stuck with me.
  • David Malouf’s Ransom was inspired by the section of the Iliad which chronicles Achilles’ revenge killing of the Trojan prince Hector and Priam’s visiting Achilles to ask for his son’s body back. The story plays out much the way it does in the original, except that Malouf’s Priam does attempt to cut through the brutal, revenge-fuelled pattern of behaviour to something more humane. I am always attracted to works which question the revenge code.
  • Marcus Zusak’s The book thief (my review) is quite different altogether. A Holocaust novel, it is about state-sanctioned death. It is also, and some reviewers find this a little twee, narrated by Death, who is fascinated by what defines humanity. He concludes that there is no simple answer, that humans are capable of wondrous things and of heinous things. Zusak takes that idea that it is death which defines life, which gives it meaning, and runs with it in a pretty audacious way.

Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin’s book, The novel cure, includes dying as one of the “ailments” they deal with. Their focus of course, given their therapeutic goal, is on literature “which consoles and stills, while gently encouraging acceptance”. However, what I like about the books I’ve listed here is the way they look at wider issues – from managing grief to how the presence of death helps us understand humanity. I’m reminded of a favourite line from Marion Halligan’s novel, The fog garden, which was inspired by her grief over her husband’s death. She wrote “read a wise book and lay its balm on your soul”. Amen to that!

I’d love to know if you have any favourite books about death.

 

Delicious descriptions: Emily Bitto’s The strays

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In my recent post on Emily Bitto’s The strays I commented on the quality of the writing but didn’t really exemplify it – so I’m doing so now. But just sharing without in-depth commentary, as I’ve been tied up this week with family matters.

Here is a description of Evan Trentham, the leading artist in the Melbourne Modern Art Group:

Evan Trentham was put together from mismatched stuff. The sinews were too short for the long bones. The tendons behind his ankles and the bald stones of his knees stuck out, hard as catgut on a tennis racquet. He was like a rubber band stretched tight and close to snapping. He wore blue work pants cut off at the knee and a white undershirt that was yellow beneath the armpits. He was paint-stained and sweat-smelling.

A taut, highly strung artist?

And here is a description of the night of on of the Trenthams’ bohemian parties:

The night that followed was a slip down the rabbit hole. Summer was taking up its place like a chestnut seller setting up his stall, lighting the coals and letting the scented smoke drift down the street before he begins to call out to passers-by. It was not too hot by the fire in the centre of the garden clearing, nor too cold away from it in the darker, leafier peripheries.

Interesting imagery here given when chestnut season is, but I like the scene she is setting.

Then there’s her description of Helena Trentham’s three daughters:

I believe she envied her daughters their relationships with one another, just as I did. And so she brought three girls into the world and let them roam it without telling them to fill the pockets of their pinafores with bread and to leave a trail of crumbs that would lead them, in a crisis, home.

Love the allusion to Hansel and Gretel here.

And finally (though it appears some time before the above quote in the book), Lily describes that moment that comes in most girl friendships when puberty reaches one before the other:

She’s leaving me behind, I thought. I felt tricked. With Eva, I had given no thought to the world of adulthood that awaited us. But she had crossed some secret threshold while I was facing the other way, absorbed still by the childish fantasies she had cultivated for us: our talk of travelling the world together […] Now, I saw so clearly that all of that had been a silly game. She had a lover, presumably, while I did not even truly know what this vague and glamorous term entailed. She had become a woman, with no thought to warn me that I should be packing away my own childhood, dismantling it piece by piece like a rotten treehouse, and preparing myself for the new world.

I remember the feeling!

Overall, I thought Bitto’s writing was nicely evocative, without being overblown.