Reading weeks/months/years

Michael Wilding, The man of slow feeling (#Review, #1970 Club)

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Michael Wilding’s short story, “The man of slow feeling”, is hopefully the first of two reviews I post for the 1970 Club, but we’ll see if I get the second one done. I have been making a practice of reading Australian short stories for the Year Clubs, so when the year is chosen I go to my little collection of anthologies looking for something appropriate. My favourite anthology for this purpose is The Penguin century of Australian stories, edited by Carmel Bird, because it is a large comprehensive collection and because the stories are ordered chronologically with the year of publication clearly identified. Love it!

Who is Michael Wilding?

With these later year clubs, like 1970, there’s a higher chance that the authors we read might still be alive. This, I believe, is the case with Michael Wilding. Born in England in 1942, he took up a position as lecturer at the University of Sydney from 1963 to 1967, before returning to England. However, two years later, in 1969, he returned to Australia and stayed. He was appointed Professor of English and Australian Literature at the University of Sydney in 1993, and remained in that position until he retired in 2000.

AustLit provides an excellent summary of his career. As an academic, he has, they say, had a distinguished career as a literary scholar, critic, and editor”, specialising in seventeenth and early eighteenth century English literature. Since the early 1970s, he has also “built a reputation as an important critic and scholar of Australian literature” focusing in particular on Marcus Clarke, William Lane and Christina Stead. And, he has been active as a publisher, having co-founded two presses, and at least one literary magazine.

However, he also, says AustLit, “came to prominence as creative writer in the late 1960s, when he was at the forefront of the ‘new writing’ movement which emerged in Australia in at that time”. He was part of a group of writers, editors and publishers “who were influential in promoting new and experimental writing, and in facilitating the revitalised Australian literary landscape of the late 1960s and 1970s”. AustLit doesn’t identify who was in that influential group, but I think Kerry Goldsworthy does in her introduction to Penguin’s anthology. She writes that “short fiction was the dominant literary form in Australia in the 1970s” and the most recognised practitioners were Frank Moorhouse, Peter Carey, Murray Bail and Michael Wilding. (All men, interestingly.) This writing, says Goldsworthy, was heavily influenced by European and American postmodern writing, but she doesn’t specifically reference Wilding’s story in her discussion.

Wilding has published over twenty novels and short story collections. AustLit adds that his short stories have also been published widely in anthologies, and that many have also been translated. Wikipedia provides an extensive list of his writing.

“The man with slow feeling”

“The man with slow feeling” is a third-person story about an unnamed man who, as the story opens, is in hospital after a serious accident from which he had not been expected to survive. However, he does survive. Gradually his sight and speech return, but not his sensation. That is, he can’t taste food or feel touch.

Soon though, he realises that sensation is returning, just some time after the actual experience. For example, he and his partner, Maria, make love, but he feels nothing – until some hours later. Not good! Not only is there the problem of feeling nothing, but when they are making love, he might experience some unpleasant sensation from three hours ago. Then, when he is out shopping three hours later, he experiences the orgasm. Or, regarding food, he will eat lunch but not taste it until 4pm. It is all, to say the least, disorienting. So, he sets up a system where he records his “sensate actions” so he can prepare (or “warn”) himself “after a three hours’ delay … of what he was about to feel”.

I’m sure you can see the practical problem with this. Soon, he becomes trapped in “a maze of playback and commentary and memory”, where he is trying to record the present for the future while at the same time experiencing the past. It becomes intolerable.

The tone is one of disassociation, alienation – which had me heading off down that more “modernist” path. But, the “recorder” aspect suggested that the theme involves partly, at least, exploring the conflicted role of recording versus experiencing – which is a more post-modern idea. Can you do both? Can a writer do both? Can, I remember discussing at length during my film librarian career, a documentary filmmaker record and not experience (or not affect the experience) during the act of recording? What are the bargains you make between the two?

I don’t know enough about this time in Australian literature – I haven’t read enough – to understand where Wilding’s ideas and thoughts fit into the zeitgeist. In her introduction to the anthology, Kerryn Goldsworthy says that the writing of this time incorporated “elements of fantasy, surrealism, fabulist, literary self-consciousness, and the process of storytelling itself”. She says the stories by Murray Bail and Peter Carey are concerned with “the riddles and paradoxes of representation itself”. Wilding’s story could also be read as part of this exploration.

This is a dark story in which, if I stick with my idea about the theme, Wilding suggests that the life of sensation is what it’s all about. Fair enough, but where does that leave the writer (or recorder)?

“The man with slow feeling” had me intrigued from its opening lines to its close. I’m not sure I have fully grasped all that Wilding intended by it, but this was a time of experimentation with the short fiction form and new writerly freedoms. I wish I could point you to an online version of the story.

* Read for the 1970 reading week run by Karen (Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings) and Simon (Stuck in a Book).

Michael Wilding
“The man with slow feeling” (orig. pub. Man: Australian Magazine for Men, July 1970)
in Carmel Bird (ed.), The Penguin century of Australian stories
Camberwell: Penguin Books, 2006 (first ed. 2000)
pp. 232-238

Monday musings on Australian literature: 1970 in fiction

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Once again it’s Karen’s (Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambling) and Simon’s (Stuck in a Book) “Year Club” week. This week, it is 1970, and it runs from today, 14th to 20th October. As for the last 6 clubs, I am devoting my Monday Musings to the week.

Despite the excitement and idealism of the 1960s, 1970 Australia was strongly conservative, politically speaking, with some notorious conservative leaders (like Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Sir Henry Bolte, and Robert Askin) being premiers of their respective states. But, there were exceptions. The socially progressive Don Dunstan became premier of South Australia during the year, and, while our Prime Minister, John Gorton, was a conservative, he was recognised as a supporter of the arts.

The war in Vietnam was still underway but was becoming increasingly unpopular. This was the year Australia decided to go metric for weights and measures, and, more relevant to this post, it was also the year that Germaine Greer’s The female eunuch (which I read the following year) was published.

A brief 1970 literary recap

Books were of course published across all forms, but my focus is Australian fiction, so here is a selection of novels published in 1970:

  • Jessica Anderson, The last man’s head
  • Richard Beilby, No medals for Aphrodite
  • Richard Butler, Sharkbait
  • Diane Cilento, Hybrid
  • Jon Cleary, Helga’s web
  • J.M. (John Mill) Couper, The thundering good today
  • Geoffrey Dutton, Tamara
  • Catherine Gaskin, Fiona
  • Shirley Hazzard, The Bay of Noon
  • Edward Lindall, A gathering of eagles
  • William Marshall, The age of death
  • Cynthia Nolan, A bride for St Thomas
  • Barry Oakley, A salute to the Great Macarthy AND Let’s hear it for Prendergast
  • Dal Stivens, A horse of air
  • Colin Thiele, Labourers in the vineyard
  • Ron Tullipan, Daylight robbery
  • Barbara Vernon, Bellbird (based on the ABC television series)
  • F.B. Vickers, No man is himself
  • Patrick White, The vivisector

A few of these writers are still respected and read today; a few are known but read less frequently; while some have fallen out of public consciousness (to my knowledge, anyhow!)

Of those I didn’t know, a couple caught my attention for their subject matter. F.B. Vickers is one. Trove describes No man is himself as “A novel set in the north west of Western Australia concerning an officer in charge of Native Welfare who is sympathetic to Aborigines but involved in personal difficulties with the white community and his wife.” The other is Edward Lindall whose A gathering of eagles is also set in Western Australia, and has a First Nations character. Google Books describes it as a “thriller set in the remote barren wasteland of north western Australia; an outcast Aboriginal woman, Ilkara, assists the survivors of a murderous plot to outwit their would-be killers.” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says Lindall was the pseudonym used by Edward Ernest Smith (1915-1978). He is also listed at a Classic Crime Fiction site.

Writers born this year include novelists Julia Leigh and Caroline Overington, and those who died include Herz Bergner (whose Between sea and sky I’ve reviewed), children’s fiction writer Nan Chauncy, Frank Dalby Davison (who was part of “the triumvirate” with Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw), and George Johnston.

There were not many literary awards, yet, though the state awards we know were getting close. And, several of the main awards made in 1970 weren’t to fiction. The ALS Gold Medal, for example, went to historian Manning Clark, and the Colin Roderick Award to Margaret Lawrie’s Myths and legends of Torres Strait.

There were some fiction awards, however, including of course, the Miles Franklin Award, which went to Dal Stevens’ A horse of air. The trade union-supported Mary Gilmore Award (my post on this award) was made to Keith Antill for Moon in the ground. It’s an Australian science fiction story set around the secretive Pine Gap near Alice Springs. The “$1,000 Rothman’s award for the best Australian novel of 1969” was awarded in 1970 to George Johnston‘s “semi-autobiography Clean straw for nothing” (from Trove).

The state of the art

As for previous club years, I checked Trove to see what newspapers were saying about Australian fiction. This was a little trickier for 1970 because, due to copyright, many newspapers from this time have not yet been digitised. However, some papers, most notably The Canberra Times and Tribune, along with some regional ones, have made their content available to Trove. To them I am most grateful.

George Johnston

Book cover

If one name loomed large in my my 1970 Trove research, it was George Johnston, and not just because he died in July. There were, of course, the obituaries, but, unrelated to his death, is his being used as a benchmark by commentators. For example, John Lleonart, reviewing Barry Oakley’s A salute to the Great McCarthy in The Canberra Times (8 August), has some “niggles” about the book but concludes that “Oakley has given us in McCarthy a classic figure of Australian mores to rank with George Johnston’s My brother Jack“.

Meanwhile, in discussions about the need for more Australian content on television, the television miniseries of My brother Jack was suggested as a benchmark for good Australian television content. Frances Kelly, writing in The Canberra Times (August 26), discusses the economic and artistic challenges to producing more “good” Australian content, and suggests one solution could be for Australia to

follow the BBC’s lead and begin work on adaptations. There are many fine Australian novels, which if we must still fly the flag, would bear dramatisation. My brother Jack was a shining example. 

The obituaries sum up Johnston’s career well – at least as it was seen at the time of his death. Maurice Dunlevy writes in The Canberra Times (23 July) that:

He had come back to his gumtree and kookaburra womb to find a new land, a people without a soul, and some uncomfortable ghosts from his past. “I would like to help Australians to find a new identity, a new soul, a new spirit”, he said on television. But to do so he had to sort out his own attitude to a country where he had left “the irrecapturable rapture of being young”. He was trying to do this in the third volume of the trilogy [A cartload of clay] during the past year.

Roger Milliss discusses Johnston at some depth in Tribune (12 August), concluding that

the important thing is the task that George Johnston recognised and set for himself — that of modernising Australian literature, of dragging it screaming into the 1970’s, of giving it a shape consistent with the world around it. That task must now be taken over by someone else — perhaps a writer who will emerge from the ranks of this new emerging generation.

These two obituaries make good reading if you are a Johnston fan.

Bookworm diggers

Meanwhile, over in South Vietnam, reported the Victor Harbour Times (May 29), Australian soldiers were well supplied with most amenities, but were running short of reading material. They had, says the report, “ample supplies of newspapers and regularly published magazines” but “novels, other books and paperbacks [were] in short supply”. Donations were being called for, and the Army would deliver them.

Australian classics

Publishers publishing classics is not new, but it’s always interesting to see “what” publishers see as those worth publishing at a particular time. In 1970, the Australian publisher Rigby published two Australian classics, Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery under arms and Marcus Clarke’s For the term of his natural life, in $1.25 paperback editions. The Canberra Times (May 30), described them as “quite massive little tomes as paperbacks go” but said they gave readers “the opportunity of owning at a reasonable price two books that will be read and reread as long as Australian literature survives”. I love the qualification, “as long as Australian literature survives”. I wonder what the reporter thought might happen? Anyhow, these are still recognised “classics” but more have been added to the Australian classics pantheon since then.

While not quite making classics status, two other authors from the past were mentioned in the year’s papers. One was Communist Party member, Jean Devanny, whose papers were donated by her daughter to the University of Townsville. (I included her in my post on women writers and politics in the 1930s.) The Tribune‘s report (January 28) says that Jean Devanny had had more than 20 books published by Australian and overseas publishers. One of her best known, Sugar heaven (1936), is a novel of class and politics on the Queensland cane fields, and was published in the Soviet Union in 1968.

The other author, Vance Palmer (1885-1959), came from the same era, and while not a Communist, was left-leaning politically. By 1970, he was seen as old-fashioned, but Professor Harry Heseltine thought he was due for a reassessment, and published his Vance Palmer in 1970. I will share more about this in another post.

Censorship and Book Bans

“Australia is still the country of interfering and sometimes ridiculous censorship, but there are signs of vitality on the cultural scene” (Paris newspaper Le Monde, The Canberra Times, December 21, 1970).

The last book banned in Australia was Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s complaint. It was banned in 1969, but after protestations by booksellers and publishers, and two trials in New South Wales which ended in hung juries, the ban was lifted in 1971. In 1970, however, it was all still happening. There’s way too much reporting for me to cover here, so I’m just to entertaining references to whet your appetite.

The University of New South Wales’ student newspaper, Tharunka (April 21), devoted a special literary supplement to the issue, asking writers to comment on censorship. One was Thomas Keneally, who commenced his piece by saying he felt “uneasy contributing to a forum on censorship because I have never achieved banmanship”. He is tongue-in-cheek about the reasons for the ban, which had to do with its being a “dirty” book. Keneally doesn’t see orgasm as “the key to the vision of man”, and argues that “there is very little of less value to the novelist than a person enjoying himself”. Fair point! Nonetheless, despite his “spinsterish views on eroticism in literature”, he thinks the ban is “an embarrassment”.

Maurice Dunlevy takes satire further in his article “The Portnoy tug-of-war” (The Canberra Times, September 5). Do read it … And, for a more recent history of the saga, check this article by Sian Cian in The Guardian (February 2, 2022). She quotes Des Cowley, of the State Library of Victoria:

“There’s been a lot written about the whole saga with Penguin and the legal case, but a little part of that story is that a small group of people got together and defended the right of literature to exist. It is such a beautiful case because, in a way, it ushers in the change Australia saw between the 1960s and 70s, with the progressive Whitlam government, and going from a literary backwater to a world stage.”

I’m not finished with 1970 … but this post is long enough. I’d love to hear any thoughts you have about the year, or about the stories I’ve shared here.

Sources

  • 1970 in Australian Literature (Wikipedia)
  • Joy Hooton and Harry Heseltine, Annals of Australian literature, 2nd ed. OUP, 1992

Previous Monday Musings for the “years”: 1929, 1936, 1937, 1954, 1940 and 1962.

Do you plan to take part in the 1970 Club – and if so how?

Monday musings on Australian literature: 1937 in fiction (2) – and Trove

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Karen’s (Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambling) and Simon’s (Stuck in a Book) “Year Club” officially finished yesterday, but I focused so much in last week’s post on the issue of the state of Australian criticism, that I didn’t get to share some other ideas I found. So, I’ve decided to bookend the week with Monday Musings posts!

Trove

First, though, I’d like to explain a little about how I use Trove. For those who don’t know what Trove is, it is an online library database managed by the National Library of Australia. It is a fantastic resource for researchers because it contains an extensive – in depth and breadth – range of digital resources, including newspapers, journals and gazettes; official and personal archives and manuscripts; images; archived websites; and more. I mostly use the digitised newspaper collection, so I’m going to focus on it.

The process for putting non-born-digital newspapers online involves scanning the papers (from print or microfiche form) and then using OCR (optical character recognition) to produce readable text. On Trove, we see both the original and the OCR-ed texts. The quality or accuracy of the OCR text varies greatly, depending on the quality of the original from which the scanning was done. Trove’s solution to this has been to use crowdsourced (aka volunteer) text-correction.

Of course, as a librarian, I can’t use a service like this without doing my bit, so whenever I search Trove I end up doing corrections. This can be a tedious business when the original was poor, and can take a large amount of time. But, I don’t want to link in my blog an article that my readers will find hard to read, so, to do the time! The result is that I may not always research Trove as much as I would like in order to write my posts, but I hope that I research enough to make what I say valid or worthwhile!

I do sometimes cut corners. Where the item I am interested in is, say, part of a multi-subject column, I will, occasionally, only correct the section of interest to me. That’s a pragmatic decision I just need to make sometimes. (Just telling you in case you click on one of these links and wonder what I have been doing!!)

Back to 1937

On developing Australian literature

In my last post I focused on discussion about the importance of a good critical culture to the development of an Australian literature, but other thoughts about the state of Australian literature were also shared during the year. For example, in February, commenting on a gathering – attended by “many prominent men” – to commemorate Henry Lawson, the Williamstown Advertiser observed that Lawson’s “Australianism” is a heritage to be treasured, and that Australians need to

encourage home writers whose individuality cuts through the meshes of old-world hyperorthodoxy in literature, which conveys an assumption that the “blawsted colonials” are mere vulgarians.

Two months later on 10 April, Melbourne’s The Herald ran an article discussing the development of Australian literature, comparing it with the the challenges faced by American literature. It looked at the two nations, and commented on the problems faced by Australian writers. It suggested that America had now developed its own style. From the realism of Dreiser and Anderson, “the American literary spirit has taken lucid shape in the works of Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos”. It says that this new spirit represents “a revolt against nineteenth century English romanticism” and that the new style encompasses “typical Americanisms, the characteristic speech, the special vocabulary, the distinctive syntax and, above all, the natural mode of expression”.

Is Australia ready for “the emergence of a style in which an Australian outlook is implicit, and which would incorporate the characteristic speech, syntax and vocabulary of Australia?” Creating this, it argues, “is a labor of love; there is no material reward in it, at present”. Unfortunately, Australia, it says, has not recognised its similarity to America, and “is still awed by the heaped-up riches of the English literary tradition”. This does not, it concludes, prevent our making an “intelligent assessment of the lines upon which distinctively Australian writing should, develop”.

A week later, 17 April, there was a lengthy riposte in The Herald. You can read it at the link provided, because it covers several issues, but it starts by arguing that the most important issue is

that people read books not because they are written by Englishmen, or Americans, or Australians, but because they are entertaining.

So there, you writers! Write what the readers want! “Patriotism,” it says, “does not enter into the plain man’s choice of books”. It accepts that there’s a critical minority of readers who are interested in the technical experiments needed to improve literary standards, but

A critical minority … does not make a best-seller. For that the writer must look to the reading public as a whole, to the suburban libraries, to the man who has never heard of James Joyce or Aldous Huxley— except when one of his books is banned.

The article then argues that Australian artists have developed an Australian style, and suggests how Australian writers might proceed. It concludes that “it would be absurd to believe that the public is hostile or the Australian scene barren” (which I don’t believe the previous article argued.)

Education

Education is critical to encouraging interest in local literatures. At least, it is, I’d argue, for those whose culture has been – or risks being – swamped by larger cultures. The issue of education popped up a few times in 1937.

A pointed reference came from Brisbane’s The Catholic Advocate of 14 October. Written, I believe, by “Pasquin”, it opens with:

Is there a Chair of Australian Literature in any one of our six Universities?

It notes that “the University of Queensland tacks on to the course of English literature half-a-dozen lectures or so on Australian letters”, but then says

Surely it is a disgrace to Australia that in none of our seats of learning is our literature considered worth anything more than a digression or an aside.

It then goes on to ask how many Professors of English Literature are Australian? Go Pasquin, eh? “It is no wonder we have an inferiority complex”. Pasquin then pushes on:

How many are English ex-patriates like Professor Cowling of Melbourne, who in a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald declared that he was at a loss to name a single Australian novel suitable for the classroom.

Hmm … Many journalists in 1937 could name “good” Australian writers, like, Henry Handel Richardson and Katharine Susannah Prichard! Pasquin concludes by saying that “Even J. T. Lang has been moved to describe the Senate of the Sydney University as “the most un-Australian body in Australia.”

Meanwhile, grass roots action was occurring. The Sydney Morning Herald reported (14 October) that the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) had organised “a tutorial class in Australian Literature” for the summer. It was to be run by Fisher University librarian and critic H. M. Green, and Hartley Grattan, an American literary critic, with expertise in Australian literature.

On 9 November, Sydney’s The Workers Weekly reported that a Central Cultural Council had been established as the result of a conference convened by Sydney’s Writers’ Association. Indeed, it appears this conference had not only inspired the abovementioned WEA course but the Teachers’ Federation deciding to give more attention to the teaching of Australian literature in schools!

Keeping to the subject of schools, my last 1937 article comes from Queensland’s The Northern Miner on 18 December. It reported on a speaker at a Sydney luncheon. Dr. G. Mackaness, described by the ADB as “educationist, author and bibliophile”, made an “appeal for a better appreciation of Australian literature”. He saw the education system as one of the problems, and said “it was appalling that over a period of five years only one Australian writer was included in the books which had been chosen for Leaving or Intermediate Certificate examinations”. This report concluded that:

The fault of lack of appreciation of Australian literature was equally divided among those who had the selection of certain literature for studies, the non-progressiveness of Australian publishers to help the Australian writer, and the uneducated mind of the average Australian to the culture obtainable from Australian authorship.

We have come a long way since then, but there’s always more to do…

Previous Monday Musings for the “years”: 1929, 1936, 1954, 1940, 1962 and 1937.

Marjorie Barnard, The lottery (#Review, #1937 Club)

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This will probably be my only review for the 1937 Year Club but I am thrilled to do it, because it is by Marjorie Barnard, an author whom I have mentioned many times, but have not yet managed to review here. My post is on a short story from her collection, The persimmon tree and other stories, which is one of the very few short story collections I’ve read more than once. It is so good. And don’t just take it from me. Carmel Bird mentions it in her bibliomemoir, Telltale, calling it “extraordinarily powerful”.

I wasn’t sure, in fact, what I was going to read for this week. I certainly hadn’t considered this collection because it was first published in 1943 but, rummaging around Trove, I discovered a story by Marjorie Barnard in The Bulletin of 6 January 1937. The page was titled “Of a lottery winner: First Prize” but I recognised it immediately, and let out an internal whoop. Here was my chance.

“The lottery”, as it is titled in the collection, has been anthologised, including in The Penguin best Australian short stories (1991), though the titular story, “The persimmon tree” is, I believe, the most commonly anthologised from the collection.

Who was Marjorie Barnard?

Marjorie Barnard (1897-1987) was an Australian novelist and short story writer, critic, historian and librarian. She wrote five collaborative novels with Flora Eldershaw, under the pseudonym, M. Barnard Eldershaw. Their first novel, A house is built, was published in 1929, having jointly won, with Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Coonardoo, The Bulletin prize in 1928. Their last, the futuristic Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow was censored, and published in an expurgated edition as Tomorrow and tomorrow in 1947. Barnard also wrote works of literary criticism, and is credited with writing the first assessment of Patrick White (in Meanjin in 1956) and the first biography of Miles Franklin. (Jill Roe writes of the biography in the ADB, saying that “written with misgivings and before the release of Franklin’s voluminous papers, it exhibited characteristic virtues, with insight and style making up for ambivalence and inevitable error.”)

Barnard, along with Eldershaw, and other Sydney-based writers, like Frank Dalby Davison, was deeply concerned about the social and economic upheavals of the 1930s. These three, known as “the triumvirate”, held literary soirees which were attended by like-minded writers including Xavier Herbert and Miles Franklin. They were active in promoting writer’s rights (through the Fellowship of Australian Writers), and opposed censorship. She was a pacifist, and was apparently named in those political witch hunts of the 1950s, making her cautious about what she admitted to in terms of political affiliations. She was one of many writers who corresponded with, and often asked advice of, Nettie Palmer. She was a significant force.

In 1983, she was awarded the Patrick White Award, as was also her admirer Carmel Bird, years later. Hers was a long, and active life – far too long for me to cover here – and unfortunately, I don’t think anyone has done a biography of her. She is more than a worthy subject.

“The lottery”

What is so “extraordinarily powerful” about The persimmon tree and other stories is the quietly controlled but clear-eyed way Barnard interrogates human experience, in general, and women’s experience, in particular. Many of the stories have a strong feminist undercurrent, and “The lottery” is one of these. What makes it remarkable is that it is told third person through the perspective of the husband, which sets us up to align with him – perhaps.

The story is set in suburban Sydney. It starts with the husband, Ted Bilborough, having just boarded the ferry on his way home from work. His co-passengers tell him – show him in the paper, in fact – that his wife had won the lottery, “Mrs. Grace Bilborough, 52 Cuthbert-street.’… First prize, £5OOO, Last Hope Syndicate.” The thing is, Ted didn’t know. We then follow him on his way home as he goes through various emotions – and as he does so, we glean a picture of who he is and the sort of life his wife has led. A disconnect builds between how he – the perfect unreliable narrator – sees that life and the way we do.

At first, we are told that “everyone likes Ted”. He’s decent, it seems, in that typical-for-the-time suburban-husband way, and because of this “he’d always expected in a trusting sort of way to be rewarded, but not through Grace”. It’s little qualifications like this – “but not through Grace” – that give the game away.

Alongside Ted’s thoughts are descriptions of the evening. They too contain nuances that suggest deeper truths are at play. “The sun was sinking into a bank of grey cloud, soft and formless as mist” and two pine-trees have a “soft arrested grace”, a bit like his Grace, we readers might think. A little further on, “Ted could see that the smooth water was really a pale, tawny gold with patches, roughened by the turning tide, of pale frosty blue”.

He wonders how she’d paid for the ticket, “He hadn’t noticed any difference in the housekeeping, and he prided himself he noticed everything”. He starts to rethink Grace, who’d been “a good wife”, while he’d been “a good husband”. Indeed, “theirs was a model home” but, “well, somehow he found it easier to be cheerful in other people’s homes than in his own”. Whose fault is this? Well, Grace’s of course!

She wasn’t cheery and easy-going. Something moody about her now. Moody. He’d worn better than Grace; anyone could see that, and yet it was he who had had the hard time. All she had to do was to stay at home and look after the house and the children. Nothing much in that. She always seemed to be working, but he couldn’t see what there was to do that could take her so long. 

And so it continues, Ted ruminating on the situation, on their marriage, and on how things might proceed – even starting to feel a bit magnanimous with this money that’s not his own – until he arrives home, and discovers exactly what Grace intends. It’s all in the name of the Syndicate!

The writing is delicious. Spare, and accessible, it nails women’s lives and the constrictions so many live under. There is little agency for many of her women, and Barnard draws this with such simple but knowing realism it takes your breathe away. I love many of the stories in the book – and this is as good as any of them.

* Read for the 1937 reading week run by Karen (Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambling) and Simon (Stuck in a Book) who, I discovered, has reviewed the collection.

Marjorie Barnard
“The lottery” (orig. pub. in The Bulletin, 6 January 1937)
in Marjorie Barnard, The persimmon tree and other stories
London: Virago Press, 1985 (first published by Clarendon in 1943)
pp. 97-105

Full text of The persimmon tree and other stories is available online at the Internet Archive

Monday musings on Australian literature: 1937 in fiction

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Once again it’s Karen’s (Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambling) and Simon’s (Stuck in a Book) “Year Club” week. This time the year is 1937, and it runs from today, 15th to 21st April. As I’ve been doing for a while now, I am devoting my Monday Musings to the week.

If the 1960s, from which our last “year” came, were exciting for many of us, the late 1930s were very different, particularly for those living in Europe. Of the 1930s, in general, Wikipedia writes that “the decade was defined by a global economic and political crisis that culminated in the Second World War”. For my purposes here, that just about says it all. It certainly provides a flavour for what concerned the major writers of the period. Realist fiction was still in force, and in Australia writers like Marjorie Barnard, Flora Eldershaw, Frank Dalby Davison, Eleanor Dark, and Katharine Susannah Prichard were expressing their ideas about social and economic injustice, for example. Many were pacifists, and many supported or worked for the trade union movement. It was, generally, an unsettled time, here and abroad. (By way of contrast, the best-selling book in the USA in 1937 was, apparently, Gone with the wind! But this was also the time of John Steinbeck, et al!)

I found books published across all forms, but as my focus here is Australian fiction, I’m just sharing a selection of novels published in 1937:

There were very few literary awards at the time, but the ALS Gold Medal went to Seaforth Mackenzie’s The young desire it. He is now among the least known of the authors listed above.

Writers born this year include novelist Colleen McCullough (died 2015) and political scientist and writer Don Aitkin (died 2022). I didn’t find many deaths, but novelist Catherine Martin (born, 1848) died this year.

Finally, also in 1937, the Commonwealth Literature Censorship Board replaced the Book Censorship Advisory Committee. It temporarily lifted the ban on James Joyce’s Ulysses – only to re-apply it again in 1941 after pressure from church groups.

The state of the art

As always, I checked Trove to see what newspapers were saying about Australian literature, fiction in particular. In addition to references to specific books and events, what I found overall was concern about the state of Australian literature, along with discussions about causes and remedies. This is similar to 1936, which I wrote about in my Monday Musings for the 1936 Club, so I’ll try to supplement – rather than repeat – what found then.

One issue discussed several times through the year concerned the importance of a good critical culture, so that’s my focus for this post. The Telegraph (14 April) took up this issue, arguing that the “leading articles” papers publish at the end of the week, versus the reviews published during the week, make a “considered contribution” to “strengthening … literary values among the numerous readers who look to the daily Press for guidance among a vast and ever-changing array of books”. The article comments on the importance not of comparing (“grading”) writers, but of offering

a consideration of their absolute quality as writers. The practice of relative appraisal too often leads to confusion where the authors considered are admittedly worthy of critical study, but derive their literary strength from different sources. The wise newspaper critic of fiction — it is with fiction that for the moment we are primarily concerned — is he who endeavours to establish the qualities which explain his attraction to, or repulsion from, a writer and then evaluates those qualities by the degree and consistency of his own sensibility.

That’s a nice, clear description of criticism – to establish one’s criteria and then evaluate them.

The Telegraph makes the point that Australia is capable of producing good literature. It believes that while achievement is uneven across the different forms, there is “no cause for pessimism about the future of Australian literature”. Indeed, the article says that:

A country that has produced, among living novelists*, Henry Handel Richardson, Vance Palmer, Katherine Susannah Prichard, Miles Franklin, Helen Simpson, the Barnard-Eldershaw combination, and Brian Penton is not deficient in generative power …

And adds that more writers could be added to this list.

Meanwhile, “Norbar” (Dr Norman Bartlett) in The West Australian (7 August) also discussed critical culture, observing that

One of the great disadvantages under which those in Australia who are genuinely interested in national literature suffer is the lack of guidance. Other national literatures have reliable historical and critical signposts. 

His point was that in Great Britain, for example, “reputable literary periodicals, with critical traditions”, help readers make choices. Critics, he admits, “are often wrong, and commercialism has tainted the trade of criticism, but there is a tradition of judgment”. No-one, he says, who is interested in Virginia Woolf would buy books by romance novelist Ethel M. Dell. He then discusses the work of two critics, the American expert on Australia, C. Hartley Grattan, and the Australian, H.M. Green. Speaking of Grattan, Norbar makes an important point about the role of critics:

To accept him as a guide is not to accept his judgments, but he serves the purpose that competent introductions to English literature serve, by erecting signposts in the wilderness of letters.

In other words, it’s not the “absolute” lists of names that are important but the guide they provide to the literary landscape – and, thus, presumably, encouragement for debate.

The final two articles I’ll refer to come from The Age. The first (18 September) is ascribed to R.G. (presumably, the academic and founding editor of Southerly, Robert Guy Howarth), and the second (2 October) is a response from poet and critic, Furnley Maurice (Frank Wilmot), who takes offence at R.G.’s analysis of the state of Australian literature.

R.G. commences by arguing that:

Contrary to the opinions of some critics, Australian literature is not a dependent off-shoot of English literature, but is a vital entity in process of achieving expression of its individuality.

He has very clear opinions about the development of a truly Australian literature, much of which we would agree with now. He talks about its needing to pursue its own course, to be released “from the curb of nineteenth century influences, which have so long entrammelled imagination and held it in subservience to traditional forms and ideas”. While he names some writing that he believes is truly Australian, such as that of Henry Lawson, he believes things have stagnated:

Lack of canonical criticism is responsible to an unfortunate degree for this stagnation, because contemporary Australian criticism stands equivocally in the midst of several schools of thought. A false standard of values has been created by the persistent determination of many commentators to include everything written since Wentworth’s “Australasia” in the category of literature.

Unfortunately, as well as taking criticism to task, he also finds failings in Australian writers! Some have attempted to capture Australian experience, he says, but have failed, and he gives his reasons. These Maurice does not like, so he fights back:

One fact to bear in mind is that the shortcomings of our criticism are as great as the shortcomings of the writing, if not greater. The chief fault of the criticism is one that “R.G.” appears to share — that of making sweeping general statements and giving no particulars. Surely our writers have not all “failed because they lacked technical equipment,” because they “chose banal themes,” or because they “did not possess the basic culture necessary!” Such statements would suggest that “R.G.” has the bad national habit of forming definite opinions before he assembles the facts.

Take that, R.G! He then goes on to identify what he sees as quality Australian literature, and includes* Price Warung, Vance Palmer, Brent of Bin Bin (Miles Franklin), Martin Mills (Martin Boyd), M Barnard Eldershaw, Eleanor Dark and Capel Boake. He challenges R.G. to provide evidence for his statements, and then discusses “the facts” as he sees them, identifying the “difficulties” and “practical conditions” under which Australian writers “must work”.  

He is pleased though that ‘”R.G.” supports a proper national principle in writing even if he has not much to say for the work done to date’. 

While I think Maurice over-reacted somewhat, as R.G. makes some good sense, both writers have something useful to add to the debate, and if you are interested, the articles make good reading. Meanwhile, I will close here – but may very well write a second post next Monday.

* Links are to my post/s on these writers.

Sources

  • 1937 in Australian Literature (Wikipedia)
  • Joy Hooton and Harry Heseltine, Annals of Australian literature, 2nd ed. OUP, 1992

Previous Monday Musings for the “years”: 1929, 1936, 1954, 1940 and 1962.

Do you plan to take part in the 1937 Club – and if so how?

Elizabeth Gaskell, Lizzie Leigh AND Cousin Phillis (#BookReviews)

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This year, Bill (The Australian Legend) has framed his usual January “Gen” (short for generation) week, as Gen 0. Zero? How can that be? Well, let’s get it from the horse’s mouth. Bill says, “I am using ‘Gen 0’ as a designation for those writers – necessarily not Australian – whose work influenced, predated or paralleled the first wave feminists of AWW Gen 1”. In other words, we are looking at mostly 19th century writers – like Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Bill’s list is just a start. I would add Kate Chopin in there too, but more discussion and expansion of Bill’s list will presumably happen over the week, so I’ll get on to Mrs – or Elizabeth – Gaskell.

My Gaskell journey started in my teens when my mother, seeing my enthusiasm for Jane Austen, suggested I read Mrs (as she was on the book) Gaskell’s Cranford. From there I read North and south, Wives and daughters, and Ruth – all before blogging. I had hoped to read her first novel, Mary Barton, for this week, but when I saw how tight my reading schedule was this month, I decided to go for a novella (in the end, two novellas) instead. As it turned out, Bill has already posted on one of them, Cousin Phillis.

The Independent Woman

Bill’s AWW Gen weeks, which started back in 2018, draw from his thesis that “a case can be made for a parallel myth” to that of historian Russell Ward’s male-dominated Lone Hand. It features “the Independent Woman, who makes her way without, and often despite, men”. He is talking Australian women, of course, but for Gen 0 we are looking at what was happening elsewhere that may have affected, or simply parallel, what was happening in Australia. Elizabeth Gaskell is a perfect example, because, despite being a wife and mother of four daughters, she managed to forge a career for herself as a writer of novels, short stories, and biography.

She could do this for a few reasons, including the fact that the church she belonged to, and married into, was the dissenting, non-conformist Unitarian church, and that her minister husband William Gaskell was himself a writer and poet. He was also, according to Wikipedia, “a charity worker and pioneer in education of the working class”. It’s no surprise, then, that Gaskell’s themes, as Bill succinctly puts in it his post on Cousin Phillis, encompassed “dissenting religion and the plight of the poor, as well as strong women characters”, are all important themes in her work.”

Her fiction falls broadly into to main strands – the “ghost” stories, and the “social novel“. It is into the latter that Lizzie Leigh and Cousin Phillis fall.

Lizzie Leigh

Lizzie Leigh, published in 1855, is the simpler, shorter, of the two novellas, and its themes remind me of the 1853-published Ruth. It starts with the death of the “hard, stern, and inflexible” husband and father, James Leigh, who says to his wife on his deathbed “‘I forgive her, Anne! May God forgive me!’” We soon learn that the “her” being forgiven is their fallen daughter “Lizzie” whom he’d disinherited.

With her husband gone, Anne decides to rent out the farm for a year and go to Manchester with her two sons, the 21-year-old responsible Will who sees things his father’s way and the much younger Tom. She wants to find Lizzie.

The rest of the novella concerns her search for Lizzie, and the difference of opinion between her idea of religion – a forgiving, New Testament-based one – and Will’s. He is prepared to support his mother, for a year anyhow, but he believes Lizzie is dead and, further, that her sin brings shame on the family. When he meets an angelic young woman, he’s convinced that her knowing about Lizzie will spoil his chances with her. But things are not as he sees them, and his mother, who had been a submissive wife, starts to express her own beliefs, and commands him to listen to her on tolerance and forgiveness:

She stood, no longer, as the meek, imploring, gentle mother, but firm and dignified, as if the interpreter of God’s will.

So, two independent women here – Gaskell the writer and Anne Leigh the character.

Cousin Phillis

This novella, originally serialised in The Cornell Magazine (1863-64), is briefly introduced in my Delphi edition with “many critics agree that Cousin Phillis is Gaskell’s crowning achievement in short fiction”. It is a longer, somewhat more complex tale, and is, essentially, a coming-of-age story in which 19-year-old Paul, and his 17-year-old second cousin, Phillis – both only children – learn some tough lessons.

The story is told first person by Paul, who speaks from later in his life about when, as a young man, he had obtained a job in a country town working to an engineer in a railway building company. He begins visiting some previously unknown relations, the aforementioned Phillis and her Nonconformist clergyman-farmer father and plain-thinking mother. You might be expecting a romance to develop between these two, but quite early on Paul decides that Phillis is not for him. Not only is she still, strangely, wearing a childish pinafore, but she is taller and, like her father, bookish, which makes him feel inferior. This will not do, so they quickly fall into a sibling-like relationship, and Paul slots comfortably into their lives whenever he can. Well and good.

However, there is another man in the story, Paul’s supervisor, Mr Holdsworth, whom he hero-worships. Paul describes him as “really a fine fellow in a good number of ways”, adding that “I might have fallen into much worse hands”, which of course makes us wonder whether this is an ironic hint. As it turns out, yes and no. Heartbreak does ensue, and Paul, with well-intentioned naïveté, plays a role in bringing this about. But, he should not shoulder the full blame because we, like guilt-ridden Paul and sensible servant Betty, have seen how much her parents have babied Phillis: ‘”the child” is always their name for her when they talk on her between themselves’, says Betty.

Most of the action takes place on Phillis’ family farm, with Gaskell beautifully rendering rural life, while also introducing readers to the increasing industrialisation, bringing hints of the social change she portrayed with more depth in North and south‘s exploration of rural tradition versus modern values.

Gaskell also conveys some of her progressive views on religion. Early on, Mr Holdsworth asks Paul about his cousins:

How do preaching and farming seem to get on together? If the minister turns out to be practical as well as reverend, I shall begin to respect him.

Towards the end of the story, when Phillis is critically ill, her father is visited by some local ministers who preach their punitive religion to him, suggesting he consider “what sins” had brought this trial upon him, and

whether you may not have been too much given up to your farm and your cattle; whether this world’s learning has not puffed you up to vain conceit and neglect of the things of God; whether you have not made an idol of your daughter?’

Our minister will have none of it. He will confess his sins to God, but, he says

‘I hold with Christ that afflictions are not sent by God in wrath as penalties for sin.’
‘Is that orthodox, Brother Robinson?’ asked the third minister, in a deferential tone of inquiry.

The ending, while not tragic, is open, which works well for me, though according to Wikipedia, she had considered adding two more parts to this four-part story. All up, another good read from the independent Mrs Gaskell!

Elizabeth Gaskell
Lizzie Leigh (1855) and Cousin Phillis (1864, available online)
in Complete works of Elizabeth Gaskell (illustrated)
Hastings (UK): Delphi Classics, 2015 (Version 5)

William Trevor, The hill bachelors (#Review)

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Well, Kim (Reading Matters) and Cathy’s (746 Books) “A year with William Trevor” project is all but over, and I’ve only done one post – on the titular story in the little The dressmaker’s child collection. The second story, “The hill bachelors” (as in bachelors living in the hills), was first published in his collection titled The hill bachelors.

William Trevor (1928-2016), as most of you will know, is an Irish writer of novels and novellas, short stories and plays. He is particularly good at writing about marginalised people, or those who are loners or outsiders, and writes authentically about them, regardless of their age or gender. “The hill bachelors” is another of these, though perhaps more a variation on the theme. Is the protagonist Paulie marginalised? In a sense perhaps? Is he a loner or outsider? Again, it depends on how you see him, and the choices he makes.

Trevor is one of those writers who lets the reader work out who’s who, what’s what, as we go. The first two paragraphs of this story describe a 68-year-old woman, wearing mourning clothes, waiting for “them” who will decide her future. Very little is overtly explained, but by the end of the second paragraph, we know that she has worked hard and got on with whatever life has thrown at her – and, it seems, she will continue to do so with a calm resignation.

Then, we are introduced to a man we come to realise is her 29-year-old son, Paulie. He is coming for his father’s funeral/wake. He is the youngest of five children, and had not had a good relationship with his “hard” father. It soon becomes apparent that the mother expects the children to work out what will happen to her now – and what will happen to her now, as soon becomes apparent, is that Paulie will return to the family farm. After all, “he was the bachelor of the family”, and his job as a lorry driver “wasn’t much”. However, to do this he will have to give up the woman he loved as she is not interested in a farm life.

While he is working out his notice back in town, his mother is helped by neighbours, the bachelor Hartigan and his sister. It is this sister who introduces the idea of the hill bachelors. She suggests that Paulie would not want to come back because

“It’s bachelors that’s in the hills now. Like himself,” Miss Hartigan added, jerking her bony hand in the direction of the yard, where her brother was up on a ladder, fixing a gutter support.
“Paulie’s not married either, though.”
“That’s what I’m saying to you. What I’m saying is would he want to stop that way?”

Seeing bewilderment in Paulie’s mother’s face, she goes on to explain that “the bachelors of the hills found it difficult to attract a wife to the modest farms they inherited”.

And so Paulie comes back. He “harboured no resentment … it was not the end of the world”. What was “the end of the world”, however, was hearing the woman he loved say that life on a farm did not attract her. He works hard, and he starts dating local women, but Miss Hartigan seems to have known whereof she spoke.

The story is told third person, through the alternating perspectives of the mother and Paulie. We hear what the the rest of the family thinks, or has done, mostly through Paulie’s and his mother’s thoughts and assumptions, through their deep knowledge of how their family works and of the rural traditions within which they live. There is a little dialogue, but not much. Paulie and his mother are both “types” and yet quietly individualised too.

There’s no big drama in this story, just ordinary people making the decisions that seem right at the time. Paulie’s mother is not unkind or demanding. Indeed, she offers to move in with a married daughter, and, in a little revelatory moment, Trevor lets on that she’d shed some private tears in her early days on the farm. She would do her best to make it easy for a new wife, unlike her own experience. However, marriage to a man from the hills has taught her passivity, to do what she’s told, so she resigns herself – as we are led, from the opening paragraphs, to expect she’d do – to see out her lot. Paulie, too, seems resigned, like his mother, to play out the role set for him, even if it means joining the titular hill bachelors.

All this makes it a far more complex story than it might seem on the surface. It means that, as much as we’d like to, it’s hard to see Paulie as a victim, because he does have a choice, difficult though it may be. But the pull of tradition and responsibility is strong, and while Paulie is aware of what is happening to him, he is resigned to it. Ultimately, as he himself realises, “guilt” and “goodness” have nothing to do with it, it just is what it is, “enduring, unchanging” – and he is not going to buck it.

Trevor thus leaves it for us to think about – to think what the different choices might mean for his mother, for Paulie, and, more widely, for the rural way of life that, regardless of their decisions or their own thoughts about it, does seem to be on its way out. It is up to us readers to ponder the bigger picture, to wonder where that will get him, them or the farm. After all, if he doesn’t marry, what will happen? In continuing their rural traditions, will anything be ultimately achieved, or will this be another sad little life?

Cathy (746 Books) has reviewed the collection.

William Trevor
“The hill bachelors”
in William Trevor, The dressmaker’s child
London: Penguin Books, 2005
pp. 21-39
ISBN: 9780141022536
(First published in The hill bachelors, 2000)

Novellas in November 2023: Week 5, New to my TBR

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You will of course have realised that November is somewhat over, but in the blogosphere we are pretty flexible – at least I think we are – so I am going to do this final Novellas in November post more than a week into December.

The final theme for the month is that we talk about the novellas we’ve added to our TBR since the month began. I strongly resist adding any new books to my TBR, but my willpower failed me – partly because I am partial to novellas.

So, here goes, in alphabetical order by title, some of the books that captured my attention around the month:

  • Rebecca Campbell, Arboreality: Bill Holloway (The Australian Legend) posted on this before NovNov but it is a novella, it attracted my attention and I am in fact reading it right now.
  • Michael Fitzgerald, Late: Lisa (ANZLitLovers) posted on this and I also have it in my review pile to read. It sounds right up my alley, and I have bought it as a Christmas gift for a family member too.
  • Natalia Ginzburg’s The dry heart: Claire (Word by Word) posted on this one, describing it as “this brilliant, page turning feminist classic, originally penned in 1947”. How could I not be in?
  • Margo Glantz, The remains: Claire (Word by Word) posted this before NovNov but it is a novella so I am including it here. She commenced her post by describing it as an “incredible literary masterpiece. A lyrical elegy of tempo rubato.” This and the rest of her review captured my attention.
  • Hans Keilson, Comedy in a minor key: Cathy (746 Books) wrote that this is about “citizens risking their lives to harbour Jews in Nazi-occupied Netherlands but deals with this serious theme with a lightness of touch.” I know some readers don’t like a light touch applied to deadly serious subjects like this, but I do. Sometimes a light touch makes a bigger impact, in fact.
  • Elizabeth Lowry, The chosen: Bookish Beck reviewed this, not in the month, but, during the month, she paired Thomas Hardy’s wife Emma’s memoir Some recollections with Lowry’s novella. Lowry’s book, says Beck, “examines Thomas Hardy’s relationship with his first wife, Emma Gifford”. I like Hardy, so this of course caught my attention
  • Janet Malcolm, The journalist and the murderer: Cathy (746 Books) wrote on this before NovNov, but it caught my attention because I have been wanting to read Malcolm ever since I discovered that Helen Garner admires her. Any one Helen Garner admires is of interest to me. In this book Malcolm apparently explores the relationship between journalist and subject, particularly when that subject is a murderer.
  • Joyce Carol Oates, Black water: Lisa (The Short Story Editor) recommended this book on my NovNov week 2 post calling it “the most quintessential novella on my shelf”. I have read an Oates novella, Beasts (my review), but not this one.

Eight books, one of which I am reading now. I’m not sure how many more I will read, but at least I have now got them on my list?

Has Novella November affected your TBR pile this year?

Written for Novellas in November 2023

Nonfiction November 2023: Worldview Shapers AND New to my TBR

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Once again, I am combining my Nonfiction November weeks because this month has been very busy personally as well as blog-wise.(I did Week 1, on its own, and then combined Weeks 2 and 3).

Nonfiction November is hosted by several bloggers, each one managing one of the weeks. This year, Week 4 – Worldview Shapers is hosted by Rebekah at She seeks nonfiction, and Week 5 – New to my TBR, by Lisa at Hopewell’s Library of Life.

Worldview Shapers

This week the questions relate to the fact that

One of the greatest things about reading nonfiction is learning all kinds of things about our world which you never would have known without it. There’s the intriguing, the beautiful, the appalling, and the profound. What nonfiction book or books have impacted the way you see the world in a powerful way? Is there one book that made you rethink everything? Do you think there is a book that should be required reading for everyone?

“Everyone” is a big call but I’m going to say it anyhow. I believe that, in the interests of truth-telling (or, is it, truth-receiving) that everyone in Australia should read more First Nations authors, fiction and non-fiction. I have read a few that I’d recommend, starting with this year’s standout read, Debra Danks’ We come with this place (my review), which I have already written about a couple of times this Nonfiction November. As I wrote in my last post, through it, I learnt new things about First Nations history and culture; I better understand this history and culture, particularly in terms of connection to Country; and, as a result, I can better explain and defend my support for First Nations’ people’s fight for fairness.

So, I thought I would add two more books on the topic that I have read in recent years, books that are readable, confronting but also generous in outlook, like Stan Grant’s Talking to my country (my review) and Anita Heiss’s Growing up Aboriginal in Australia (my review). I have read other First Nations nonfiction, but these two provide excellent introductions to the experience of living as a First Nations person in Australia.

Although written by an old-ish white man, my brother Ian Terry, I’d like to add to this list his book published this year, Uninnocent landscapes (my post, review to come), which is part of his truth-telling journey on the impact of colonialism on the Australian landscape, and thus, by extension, on First Nations Australians.

New to my TBR

Our instruction is obvious, to identify any nonfiction books that have made it onto our TBRs through the month (and noting the blogger who posted on that book).

I’m sorry, but I tried very hard not to be tempted as I have a pile of nonfiction books already on my TBR and I’ve read so very few of them this year. I was intrigued though by Patrick Bringley’s All the beauty in the world: A museum guard’s adventures in life, loss and art posted by Frances (Volatile Rune). I love going to museums and galleries, and often wonder about those people who stand guard in the various rooms. Do they like their job? Are they interested in the collections they are guarding? How do they cope with being on their feet for so long? Bringley apparently answers these questions, and many more, including some I hadn’t thought of.

I am also hoping to read in the next few months two recent Aussie nonfiction books, Anna Funder’s Wifedom (which Brona has reviewed), and Richard Flanagan’s just published Question 7. I think that’s more than enough to keep me out of mischief.

A big thanks to the bloggers who ran Nonfiction November this year. I wasn’t as assiduous as I could have been, but I did appreciate reading the bloggers I did get to, and I enjoyed taking part on my own blog in the little way I did.

Any Worldshapers for you? Or, new nonfiction must-reads?

Novellas in November 2023: Week 4, The short and the long of it

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This week’s question is the Novella version of Nonfiction November’s Book Pairings. It goes like this

Pair a novella with a nonfiction book or novel that deals with similar themes or topics.

I am doing several pairings with Jessica Au’s novella Cold enough for snow (my review), because although it’s a “little” book, it’s so rich.

  • Mother-daughter trip instigated by a daughter, novella-novel pairing: Larissa Behrendt’s novel, After story (my review), is about a daughter taking her mother on a literary tour of England. Behrendt’s novel, however, had a clearer resolution than Au’s complex “little” book in which the issues to be resolved are more subtle and internal.
  • Mother-daughter migration stories, novella-memoir pairing: I’m pairing three books here, Susan Varga’s Heddy and me (my review), Anna Rosner Blay’s Sister, sister (my review), and Halina Rubin’s Journeys with my mother (my review). These three hybrid biography-memoirs are all about post-war migrations, and in each the daughter is challenged by her mother, though in different ways. Sometimes it’s that the mother is hesitant to share a painful past, while in others the mother is a challenging personality. In Cold enough for snow, the issue seems to be a sense of distance or difference that the narrator feels with her migrant mother, and their respective expectations, and a desire to work that through.
  • Mother-daughter disconnect, novella-novella pairing: Elisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho (my review) is about a daughter who struggles to live up to her mother’s expectations and those of the society she lives in. Both daughters seem uncertain about their relationship with their mothers, and both have decisions to make about the way forward in their own lives. Both novellas have open endings.
  • Daughters questioning their relationships with their mothers, novella-memoir anthology pairing: Rebellious daughters (my review), edited by Maria Katsonis and Lee Kofman, contains stories about rebellions against mothers (and also some against fathers and grandmothers). Not all are resolved but as I wrote in my post, in most of the stories, age and experience eventually bring rapprochement: daughters come to understand their mothers (or whomever) a little more, while their mothers likewise learn to accept the daughter they have. In Au’s book, there is a sense that the daughter has come to understand her mother more but also to understand that there are limits to this understanding.

Do you have any pairing ideas?

Written for Novellas in November 2023