Commentary

Kiwis have style!

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Kiwi silhouette

Kiwi (Courtesy: OCAL via Clker.com)

Much as I, an Aussie, hate to admit it, those New Zealanders have style! Kimbofo has just posted, on her Reading Matters blog, New Zealand Book Council’s current promo – take a look here. Beautiful isn’t it? It springboards from Maurice Gee’s novel Going west – which reminds me that I really must read the Maurice Gee in my TBR pile soon.

On its website, the Book Council says that its mission is:

to inspire more New Zealanders to read more; to promote reading in general, but particularly to represent and promote New Zealand writing and writers – our own artists, stories and points of view.

I have not read anywhere near as many New Zealand books as I should (would like to, even!), but I have read some, most memorably:

I would recommend all of these, for different reasons. Clearly though, there are some big gaps here: the first one I should rectify is the aforementioned Maurice Gee. And, while talking about New Zealand writers, I have to admit that a few writers we claim as Aussies originated in New Zealand, including much-loved author Ruth Park and the poet and editor Douglas Stewart.

Hmmm…the more I think about it, the sooner we annex New Zealand as Australia’s 7th state the better! I’m sure Lisa at ANZLitLovers would agree!

The trouble with audiobooks (for me)

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Headphones

Listening (Courtesy: OCAL on Clker.com)

Once was audiobooks were used primarily by visually impaired people and travellers, but with the rapidly increasing miniaturisation of audioplayers, audiobooks are now being “read” by people going on walks, working out in the gym, doing housework, sitting on public transport, or even working at their computers. In other words, people listen to audiobooks pretty well anywhere that they can. I am not, however, one of them. In fact, I can count on one hand (excluding snippets heard over the years on radio) the number of audiobooks I have “read” (or is that listened to?). Do you “read” an audiobook? How differently do you experience a book when you listen to it versus read it?

For me, the experience is so different that when I am in a listening situation I prefer radio and music to books. And here is why (but please, this is a purely personal thing – it is about how I like to enjoy books and is in no way intended to be prescriptive about how everyone should enjoy books):

  • I like to see the words – know how they are spelt and so on – partly, but not only, because this can be critical to my understanding (particularly with authors who engage in wordplay).
  • I like to stop and think as I read – ponder about a phrase or an idea, and even flip a few pages back sometimes to check a link that I think the author is making.
  • I like to make notes as I go and, if I own the book, I do this in the book – making notes helps me remember what I’m reading, and helps me write a blog or prepare notes for later discussion.
  • I don’t want to miss visual clues – some authors, and particularly post-modern ones, use visual clues and games to add to their text, but there are other more subtle visuals in “normal” books that you miss in an audio version.
  • I don’t particularly like it when a reader acts out the voices in a book – it distracts me from my own understanding of the text. The reader for the audiobook of Ruth Park’s Swords and crowns and rings (link here is to ANZLitLovers review), for example, irritated me intensely with her voices and dramatisation, though as she wore on I got used to her because it is a great story!
  • I like the physicality of the book (though I can probably relinquish this in the same way that I am pretty happily converting from CDs to iTunes for my music).

All this said, I have enjoyed a couple of audiobooks. The outstanding one was Roald Dahl reading his own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Authors readings their own works can be a hit-and-miss affair, but Roald Dahl was perfect. I heard snippets of Barack Obama reading his Dreams from my father on the radio and thought he also read his own work beautifully. On another tack, I enjoyed hearing Mary Durack’s memoir Kings in grass castles when we did a long long family trip several years ago.

Audiobooks clearly have their place. They work best for me when they are memoirs or simple plot-driven books rather than literary fiction, and so on the next very long trip we do I’ll probably seek out some memoirs. I also know that I will be very glad of their existence when (or, hopefully, if) my sight fails me. But, otherwise, I will be sticking to reading rather than listening…and this means that the technology that is likely to attract me is the eBook. I can see myself trying them in the not too distant future.

Were you an Argonaut?

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Before the sun and the night and the blue sea, I vow to stand faithfully by all that is brave and beautiful; to seek adventure, and having discovered aught of wonder, or delight; of merriment or loveliness, to share it freely with my comrades, the Band of Happy Rowers. (from The ABC Weekly, 28 Dec 1940)

Once an Argonaut always an argonaut!  Erato 30 (aka Cat Politics) has blogged a couple of times about the Argonauts Club , which was a hugely-popular-in-its-day children’s club broadcast on Australia’s ABC radio from 1941 to 1972. You had to be between 7 and 17 to join, and you were given a Ship Name and Number – that is you became one of the 50 rowers on one of Jason’s ships. (Jason and the Argonauts – get it!) Hence Cat Politics was Erato 30 and I, Whisperinggums, was Athos 26. As Cat Politics (or is it Erato 30?) says, avatars existed a long time before the Internet!

The Argonauts Club had a long history, which I won’t go into here. For a good rundown, check my link above to the Wikipedia article. Suffice it to say that members were encouraged to submit contributions – poems, stories, art works, musical compositions – as well as questions to experts such as Mr Melody Man (Lindley Evans). In addition stories were heard, and information imparted on everything from writing to sports, music to nature, all in the spirit of fun, adventure and creativity.

Now, the thing is that we Argonauts are starting to grow old and, while some histories have been written, such as Rob Johnson’s The age of the Argonauts, the ABC apparently does not have a complete list of ship names, let alone of the 100,000 or so members. The Friends of the National Film and Sound Archive would like to rectify this and so have set up an Argonauts Register. If you were an Argonaut and would like to register, here is the form. Please do – our cultural history needs you!

That was one reason for writing this post. My other reason was to comment on the number of significant Australian writers, artists and musicians who passed through the Argonauts Club, either as presenters or writers for the show, or as members. Presenters included poets A.D. Hope and Dame Mary Gilmore, artist Jeffrey Smart, actors John Ewart and Peter Finch, the photographer Frank Hurley, to name a very few. One of the most well-known writers for the the Children’s Session was Ruth Park whose serial, The muddle-headed wombat, is one of the first things mentioned whenever two or more Argonauts get together.

Famous Australians who were Argonauts include comedian Barry Humphries, novelist Christopher Koch, composer Peter Sculthorpe, writer Robert Dessaix, musician Rolf Harris and television writer Tony Morphett, again to name a very few. Morphett is reported as saying that the Argonauts inspired him to see writing as a career: “This is a valid thing to be doing – it’s okay to be a writer.”

As for me, I was not one of those keenly contributing Argonauts who aimed for the Dragon’s Tooth award let alone the ultimate Golden Fleece and Bar, but I loved the show. It was an important part of my childhood. There has, I think, been nothing quite like it since, on radio or TV, that has inspired such a wide age-group for so long. What a shame that is.

Rob Johnson
The golden age of the Argonauts
Rydalmere: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997
270pp
ISBN: 0733605281

Snow gums

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Give me a home among the gum trees (from song by W. Johnson and B. Brown)

Every Australian should have a gum in their yard somewhere! Pretty well every home I’ve lived in, and I’ve lived in a few, has had one in the yard or in the street just outside. My current home, in which we’ve lived for 12 years, has a lovely Snow Gum or Eucalyptus Pauciflora, and here it is:

Eucalyptus Pauciflora

Eucalyptus Pauciflora

Pauciflora means “few (or poor) flowers” and I suppose that’s true. Our tree does produce flowers in season – creamy white ones – but, while you can see them, they don’t jump out at you, partly I suppose because of their muted colour and the height of the tree. According to the article at the Australian National Botanic Gardens, another name they go by is Weeping Gum. I think you can see why when you look at ours. It has quite a lovely drooping habit (and would have had more if I’d been able to stop Mr Gums having a go at it last year!)

But, the thing they are most famous for is their wonderfully coloured bark, particularly on the subspecies (at least I think it’s a subspecies) that grows in Australia’s (admittedly not very high) alpine regions. These alpine ones can also be stunted, often into quite amazing shapes. As a result, if you search for “snow gums” on the internet you will find many gorgeous photos (both amateur and professional). I may as well add to them: it was taken on the Dead Horse Gap Walk in Kosciusko National Park in the Snowy Mountains. Judging by the little off-trail detour path to it, I’m not the only one to have photographed it:

Snow Gum trunk

Snow Gum trunk

This trunk, after rain, would be wearing a more intense technicolour coat of creams, browns, olives, and greys. And, just to bring this back to books, think of these (and other) gums when you read my next review (coming soon) – A.B. (Banjo) Paterson’s The man from snowy river and other verses.

Kangaroo in the suburbs

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A propos of nothing really, but our lovely afternoon has just been made more lovely by the arrival across the road of:

Kangaroo in the garden across the road on a Spring afternoon

Kangaroo in the garden across the road on a Spring afternoon

I could write now about the role of kangaroos in Australian culture … but I think I’ll just leave it at this.

(PS For those interested in such things, it’s an Eastern Grey Kangaroo)

Library for a fiver!

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In May 1940, Professor Walter Murdoch (of the University of Western Australia) wrote three articles in The ABC Weekly arguing that, with £5, you could give yourself “a liberal education in so far as books can give it”. It takes three articles for him to list and justify his selections which are grouped under categories: Fiction, History, Philosophy, Poetry and Drama, Biography, and Sociology. For brevity’s same, I’m just going to list the fiction here:

Notice anything strange? There are no women writers, and there are no Australian writers. In fact they are all British and European writers. Signs of the times I suppose!

But wait, he has a supplementary list for “the judicious bargain-hunter” who is able to extend his/her fiver by buying second hand. The fiction in this supplementary list comprises:

  • Pendennis and The Newcomes, by William Makepeace Thackerary
  • Old mortality and The heart of Midlothian, by Walter Scott
  • Les miserables, by Victor Hugo
  • Crime and punishment, by Fyodor Dostoievsky
  • Pride and prejudice, by Jane Austen
  • Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope

Aha, a woman at last – and the right one too! As for references to Australia, there are none in the main lists, but the supplementary list includes Ernest Scott’s Short history of Australia.

Anyhow, while a modern compilation of books suited to a liberal education might be quite different to this, it is nonetheless interesting to see that most of the books he lists are still well-regarded today. It is also interesting to hear his criteria for choosing – he says he is not going to focus solely on “hoary old classics”:

People say that it’s only after a writer has been dead a number  of years that we can tell whether he is a great or a small man; and the same with books – you have to see it from a distance before you can say whether it’s a good book or not.

Do you really believe that? Do you really believe that men who are trying to climb Mount Everest don’t really know it’s a high mountain: they have to get away and look at it from a distance to get a sense of its real size? I don’t believe a word of it.

So, the books I am going to name for your consideration are not all classics, in the sense of being old. On the other hand, they’re not books conspicuous as bestsellers at the moment…

The Mount Everest analogy seems a bit odd really, and none of the novels listed were published after 1900, but I applaud his thinking. We should indeed be able to say now what a good book is – even if we can’t second guess which ones will last into the future. Has anyone read Pendennis or The ordeal of Richard Feverel?

The value of the imprimatur

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In the October issue of Limelight, conductor-composer Guy Noble has written about that Washington Post experiment in which renowned violinist, Joshua Bell, busked in downtown Washington. Only one person recognised him. No-one else showed much interest and he ended with the princely sum of  a little over $30, $20 of which came from the person who recognised him and felt sorry that he’d been reduced to busking! The point of the experiment, says Noble, was to see how people would relate to fine art outside a fine art institution like a concert hall…and the answer, it appears, is not too well! In other words, it appears that we need the imprimatur of the concert hall, or art gallery, etc, to have confidence in the quality of what we are hearing or seeing.

Image from Clker.Com (Public Domain Clip Art)

Image from Clker.Com (Public Domain Clip Art)

And this made me think of my Review Policy and the question I received regarding why I’ve said that I don’t read self-published works. My answer was that “a book that is ‘formally’ published has gone through some external (to the author) selection and editing process which implies that some sort of standard has been met”. Clearly, I too need the imprimatur of some sort of authority!

Guy Noble concludes his article with the question: “If anyone can record music and anyone can publish themselves on YouTube, who is going to decide for us who is good or not?” My answer is another question: Do we need the imprimatur because we lack confidence in our ability to discern quality, or because in our time-poor world we like to outsource the first stage of the selection process? I like to think it is the latter … but fear it is more often the former. Whatever the reason, the resultant risk is that new “artists” can get lost in the mix. However, I’m sorry to say that this is not going to make me change my review policy! Time is, in the end, too short!

Australian Battle Cry, circa 1941

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Dame Mary Gilmore, 1948 (Presumed Public Domain, from the State Library of NSW, via Wikipedia)

Dame Mary Gilmore, 1948 (Presumed Public Domain, from the State Library of NSW, via Wikipedia)

Somehow I would not have thought of socialism and patriotism being combined in the same person but, logically I suppose, there’s no real reason why they shouldn’t be. And it does appear they were combined in Dame Mary Gilmore, a famous Australian poet and journalist who was also well-known as a socialist.

How do I know? Well, today in my reading of The ABC Weekly (issue of 22 February 1941), I came across the words and music for a song titled “Australian Battle Cry”. I’m not sure what the copyright situation is for reproducing a song, but I’m going to take a risk and quote the lyrics in full – anything less (and you will soon see why) would seem rather ridiculous:

We’re the Boomeranglanders, we’re the Boomeranglanders, we’re the Boomeranglanders,
Sons of the Boomerangland !
We’re the Boomeranglanders, we’re the Boomeranglanders, we’re the Boomeranglanders,
We fight for the Boomerangland !
Boomerang, Boomerang, Boomerang*, Boomerang!

(* Pause for effect – as per instructions on the score).

The music was set by Madame (I suppose if you’re not a Dame, Madame will do!) Evelyn Grieg.

Now, the introductory notes to this, Australia’s first, “national battle cry”, calls it “a deep-throated and rousing theme calculated to stir a nation to action in war and effort in peace”. It goes on to say that Gilmore based it on an “Aboriginal corroboree cry” she heard as a child in 1872 in central New South Wales. These notes also inform the ABC Weekly’s readers that copies of the words and music have been sent to “our fighting forces in Africa and Palestine” and have been published in The Education Gazette so that schools can use it “to rally the rising generation in Australia”.

And so now I bring it to you. Consider yourselves (well, the Aussies among you anyhow) rallied!

Think twice about questioning an author!

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I have to admit that I’m not one of those readers who gets too hung up about accuracy in fiction. After all, fiction is, by definition, a work of imagination, and not of fact. And so, when I read fiction I’m pretty good at suspending my disbelief. I’m more interested in the world created by the author and whether what is written makes sense (is consistent) within that world. I know this is a simple response to a complex question, but it is the rule-of-thumb I go by and has served me well over the years!

This is not so for all readers…as I have discovered over many years of book discussion. I was thus entertained to come across the following exchange in the “Other People’s Letters” section of The ABC Weekly issue of 15 February 1941 which I read today. It concerns a story, by Australian playwright and novelist Max Afford, that had been serialised in the magazine.

Here is the letter:

Why do authors persistently make their characters wear spectacles with “thick” lenses, such as Edward Blaire apparently needs in your serial Owl of Darkness. No spectacle lenses are ever made thick, as thickness has no effect whatever on the lens power, and would only increase their weight. If it were meant to imply that the spectacles had lenses of high power in them, they could be referred to as “strong” but definitely not “thick”. [Name withheld – by me!]

Here is Max Afford’s response:

It is regrettable that your correspondent is not as careful over facts as he is about nonsensical hair-splitting details. The gentleman is entirely wrong! Sydney oculists assure me that, in some cases, spectacle lenses are ground to as much as 1/4 inch [about 6mm for my younger readers here!] thick.

So there you have it! Our poor gentleman loses on both counts: he is hairsplitting and he is wrong anyhow! Personally, I’d rather enjoy the story and find something more useful to write to the editor about.

The thin end of the wedge?

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I don’t think so actually. I am referring to Wikipedia’s plans to introduce “flagged revisions” on articles for living people. This really could just be seen as an improvement on the current practice of protecting or semi-protecting articles that are continually “vandalised” with false and sometimes scurrilous information. The trouble is that this “protection” practice is a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, as it usually only occurs when significant vandalism has been occurring for some time.

I have been involved in such a situation, albeit way milder than some of the examples cited in media discussions of the policy change. It all started when, as a reasonably new editor, I removed from an article (whose subject I won’t name, for obvious reasons) the following: “He has a reputation for ruthlessly and warrantlessly savaging younger scholars, perhaps out of professional jealousy and a profound insecurity”. This removal resulted in increasing attempts by an unregistered editor to “weight” the article with negative assessments. The end-result was “semi-protection” by an administrator, whom I had called on for advice when I didn’t know how to handle the situation. This administrator, a volunteer of course, took a lot of flack for his decision, but in the end we brokered an agreement and the semi-protection was lifted. A whole lot of pain, not to mention wasted time, could have been prevented by this “flagged revision” policy.

Jimmy Wales. Shared under: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0

Jimmy Wales. Shared under: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0

This policy is currently only planned for articles on “living people”. I assume that it may, if it works, be applied to more types of articles. I don’t see this as a problem – except, and this is no small exception, for the potential of a revision backlog, resulting in out-of-date data AND multiple similar revisions to be sorted out as, say, 10 editors all try to update in a close space of time Tim Winton’s article with his Miles Franklin win! It will be up to the Wikipedia community to design a model that will facilitate rapid throughput of revisions – but, however they do it, the plan is that the previous version of the article will be available for users to search and read.

Wikipedia, as Jimmy Wales is quoted as saying, has “become part of the infrastructure of how people get information”. Those of us committed to it are glad – proud even – that this is happening. But, the model is now getting close to a decade old. Is it wrong to reconsider some of its original practices? Should Wikipedia stay put while all else in the information/communication technology world changes? I think not.

That said, given the proliferation of “wiki” practice throughout the web, this policy change will be watched closely. What will be the ramifications … and how will they affect the exciting and ever-changing world of information creation and distribution?