Review

Ellen van Neerven, Heat and light (Review)

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Ellen van Neerven, Heat and light, book cover

It’s silly I know, but I had a little thrill at the end of Ellen van Neerven’s Heat and light, because not only was the last story set in a place where I spent six of the formative years of my childhood – Sandgate on the northern edge of Brisbane – but one of the characters learnt to swim in the same pool there that I did, and her brother has a beagle, just as we did. Ah, childhood. Enough, though, of readerly nostalgia. Time to properly discuss the book.

Heat and light won the David Unaipon Award for Unpublished Indigenous Writer in 2013, and has been on my TBR for several months. I hadn’t prioritised it for reading, but its longlisting for the Stella Prize last week convinced me to squeeze it in before two works I had to complete by 21 and 24 February. I hope I won’t regret it. No, let me rephrase that: I know I won’t regret having read it, but I hope I don’t regret my decision to read it right now!

The first thing to say is that Heat and light isn’t a novel. It has, in fact, an intriguing form, something that’s not unusual with writers from an Indigenous background. Simplistically speaking, it comprises short stories organised into three sections titled Heat, Water and Light. However, each of these sections is quite different. Heat comprises interconnected short stories (5) about three generations of the Kresinger family, while Water is longform short fiction (54 pages in my edition) in the speculative fiction genre. Light, on the other hand, is more like a “traditional” collection of short stories (10). Together, the three sections, including the future-set Water, create a rich picture of contemporary indigenous life and concerns.

And here I confront again the challenge of being a non-Indigenous Australian reviewing a work by an Indigenous Australian featuring Indigenous people. It always makes me a little anxious: I fear sounding earnest or, worse, patronising; I fear making what’s different sound exotic; and, I fear missing the point. And yet I love reading Indigenous writers, because their perspective is different and because they (see, I’m generalising, aren’t I?) tend to be adventurous in their story-telling, often taking risks with voice, form, chronology, genre, and more. Van Neerven, as I’ve already implied, is such a writer.

The titles of the three sections – Heat, Water, Light – make me think of the elements. They are not quite the classical elements (fire, air, water, earth) but they convey, it seems to me, the essence of what’s needed for life. The focal character in Heat, though we don’t see a lot of her, is Pearl, the grandmother of the narrator of the first story which is titled, in fact, “Pearl”. Pearl is a bit of a free spirit – earthy, hot (in its sexual meaning, with “her siren eyes”), and likely to appear or disappear with the wind. Over the five stories in this section we learn about Pearl, her sister Marie, and the two succeeding generations. Van Neerven’s writing is confident, moving comfortably between first and third person narrators, all of whom are members of a complex extended family. Loyalties – to their indigenous background and to their blood relationships – are tested. As the narrator of “Pearl” says:

So much is in what we make of things. The stories we construct about our place in our families are essential to our lives.

And this is true, whether or not the stories so constructed are “true”. The implication is you need to know what you are doing. Colin, for example, finding himself, through his own actions, disconnected from his Indigenous heritage, wants to return, but

she told me if I was going to make my way home I’d better do it soon before the dust had covered my tracks.

The third section, Light, explores similar issues to those in Heat, but through ten separate stories, ranging from 2 pages to 30. The characters in both sections both move between city and country, but, while Heat is set in southeastern Queensland, the stories in Light are set in Sydney, Western Australia and Queensland. The protagonists tend to be young, and female. They also tend to be in formative stages of their lives, or at crossroads; they are sorting out their relationships, their sexuality, their identity. They confront racism and face conflict, but they also experience and give love. There’s humour, some of it wry, such as the young girl noticing that the tag on her pants states that “this colour will continue to fade”.

Water, the longform story that occupies the middle of the book, is very different. For a start, it’s set in the near future, the 2020s, when Australia is a republic with a female president. There’s a new flag and Jessica Mauboy’s song “Gotcha” is the national anthem. There’s also a social media ban! I reckon Van Neerven enjoyed imagining this. However, life isn’t perfect. Our narrator Kaden has a new job as a Cultural Liaison Officer and was initially pleased because she thought she’d be working with “other Aboriginal people” which would provide a “way of finding out about my culture and what I missed out on growing up”. But, she discovers she’ll be working with “plantpeople” who are sort of mutant plants with human features created during “islandising” experiments. Kaden’s job is to evacuate them in preparation for the Australia2 project.

I don’t want to give any more of it away, but you’ve probably guessed that it’s a story about how we treat other, about segregation, discrimination and dirty politics. It’s also about connection to country and about the importance of controlling one’s own art. Artist Hugh Ngo says:

I don’t make art for galleries. Or for money. I make art that speaks the truth.

This is a clever (and true!) book. The bookending sections Heat and Light present stories of Australian people going about their lives, and most of them happen to be indigenous. Their indigeneity is evident, and it affects the issues they confront, but there’s no specific advocacy. The middle section, on the other hand, is more overtly political. It picks up issues that appear in the shorter stories and provides a coherent, ideological context for the whole.

Heat and light is one of those really satisfying reads: it combines engaging writing with stories that make you feel you’ve got to the things that matter. So no, regardless of whether I meet my other deadlines, I’m not sorry I bumped this book up in my reading priorities.

awwchallenge2015

Ellen van Neerven
Heat and light
St Lucia: UQP, 2014
226pp.
ISBN: 9780702253218

Note: One of the stories in Light, “The Falls”, is available on-line at Kill Your Darlings

Tara Moss, The fictional woman (Review)

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Courtesy: HarperCollins Australia

Courtesy: HarperCollins Australia

In terms of feminist argument, I’m not sure that Tara Moss told me anything I didn’t already know or believe in her first work of non-fiction, The fictional woman, but that didn’t stop me enjoying her take, her approach. Moss is an interesting woman. Her careers as a model and a crime writer meant she wasn’t really on my radar for the first twenty years of her working life, but that changed a couple of years ago when she began appearing on commentary shows I watch like Q&A (see an appearance here) and The Drum. I discovered that she’s a woman of wide interests and many talents. Here are some of them: UNICEF Ambassador for Child Survival, Goodwill Ambassador; UNICEF Australia Patron for Breastfeeding for the Baby Friendly Heath Initiative; Ambassador for the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children; and a PhD candidate in the University of Sydney’s Department of Gender and Cultural Studies.

So the book. Her main thesis – born of her own experience – is that women’s lives and roles are subject to an inordinate number of fictions that contradict reality, and that this helps perpetuate ongoing inequalities for women in representation, status, value. The book starts more like a memoir, telling us how she became a model in her early teens (“The Model”), her experience of being measured by her body (“The Body”), how she survived some early experiences, including rape (“The Survivor”), and her transition to being a writer (“The Writer”). She then moves on to discuss wider topics such as “The ‘Real’ Woman”, “The Archetypal Woman”, “The Beautiful and the Damned”, and “The Crone”, though in these too, she often uses her personal experiences. To illustrate the fictions women live under, she tells of taking a polygraph test to prove that she, a “dumb” “blonde” “model”, could actually have written a successful novel.

Moss supports her discussion of the fictions she identifies with an impressive array of statistical and other evidence. The book is extensively foot-noted (or, is that end-noted), as you would expect from a PhD student. While the points she makes aren’t necessarily new to me, much of her evidence is – and that’s worrying because her evidence is recent confirming that things haven’t changed as much as I’d have hoped since I first started thinking and reading about feminism in the 1970s.

I won’t elaborate the multiplicity of fictions she explores, the way women are simplified into virgin, whore, witch, crone, for example, because we all know them. Even the male readers here know them, I’m sure. Rather, I’d like to talk about some ideas that I found particularly interesting.

One of these ideas relates to the issue of beauty, which comes up in several chapters, but my focus here is “The ‘Real’ Woman” in which she discusses the various campaigns for/promotions of “real beauty” which encourage women to show themselves au naturel. No, I don’t mean naked, but without makeup, and other enhancing products and processes. Having lived my life this way (little or no make-up, no hair-dyeing, no waxing, etc), I was feeling comfortable in this chapter, until I reached her suggestion that these “campaigns” can be “like a beauty pageant, only with different parameters”. In other words, once again, we are asked to “judge” women on the basis of their appearance. She writes:

I see some disturbing similarities between the kinds of appraisals of women’s appearance that we commonly view as misogynistic, and appraisals that present themselves as ‘pro-woman’.

I take her point. “Using images”, she argues, “to make the claim that you are freeing women from the prison of image is a tricky thing to pull off”. I found this chapter the most confronting because, unlike the others which tended to cover more familiar ground, this one forced me to think more deeply about the complexity of how we “see” women. It’s not surprising that she loves John Berger’s excellent work, The ways of seeing.

She explores some of the underlying structural causes, particularly the way our market-driven society supported by the media contort and distort “reality” through stereotyping, simplifying and then generalising. She argues that women’s visibility in the public sphere is dominated by/limited to those “images” needed to sell products. Advertising has become “so entangled with mainstream culture … so entangled with female identity in particular”, she argues, that we do not see the real diversity of women’s engagement in society.

For many people, “gender” and “feminism” are tricky concepts. Moss unpacks them both with excellent clarity. Her definition of feminism is exactly mine. Feminists want

equal opportunity, equal rights, equality for women. (Equality = same value or status. They want to be equal to, not the same as, men).

Yes! How often do we need to repeat this? “Equal” does not mean “same”. And just because you don’t agree with some feminists doesn’t mean you’re not a feminist if you believe in equality for women. Moss understands, though, women fearing to own the term. She tells of once being asked on ABC TV whether she was a feminist, and admitted she felt

an actual ripple of fear. Part of me was afraid of the vitriol I would be subjected to for publicly identifying with the very movement that had given me the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to work and earn my own pay.

How can that be?

And this brings me, in a way, to another theme that pops up through her book: the way women undermine each other. She discusses, for example the “mummy wars” in which working mums are pitted against stay-at-home mums, and breast-feeding mums are pitted against formula-feeding mums. And yet, she also debunks the fiction “that all women hate each other” or that “women are their own worst enemies”, not only by confirming that for many women, other women provide their greatest support, but by exploring how society, and particularly the media, “read” female behaviour and interaction to put this spin. She tells how a joking comment of hers was read as “a swipe at Miley Cyrus”. Again, the main point of her argument is the social construction that supports these “fictions” about women.

In her final chapter, she discusses what she sees as the wider problem which is that the world is not “a fair and balanced place”. We do not have equality – across gender, race or class. This is what we need to address, and she calls us all to action.

Occasionally I worried that Moss was drawing a long bow or skewing her argument a little by her own experience, but in fact I found her thesis and thinking to be clear and logical, intelligently-framed, and forceful without being judgemental. It’s a good read – and provides much for us to contemplate.

awwchallenge2015Tara Moss
The fictional woman
Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014
328pp.
ISBN: 9780732297893

(Signed copy received from my sister-in-law)

The Griffyns go to China with Gough

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… figuratively speaking, of course! The Griffyn Ensemble commenced their 2015 season in fine style, with guest artist, Chinese pipa player, Professor Zhang Hongyan. As always, the concert had a theme, evident from its title, Whitlam in China (and the development of friendly relations between our two countries). It was a tightly performed, well conceived and thoroughly enjoyable concert.

Lingling Yu playing Pipa at Musée Guimet, Paris (Courtesy: Dalbera, CC-BY-2.0, via flickr)

Lingling Yu playing Pipa at Musée Guimet, Paris (Courtesy: Dalbera, CC-BY-2.0, via flickr)

First though, we had the pre-concert entertainment by the string quartet from the China Philharmonic Orchestra. They played three Chinese pieces – all folk-based – in the National Library of Australia’s Lower Ground public space. I don’t remember the names of the first two pieces, but the second one had a gorgeous melancholy to it, and it sounded a little familiar. The first violinist told us that it was about longing and homesickness, and is frequently used for Chinese New Year. I’ve probably heard it somewhere! The third piece was a lovely contrast, “Happy Girl”. Many of us listening couldn’t resist bobbing our heads a little. These folk tunes sounded fine in a Western string quartet configuration.

After this prelude, we all filed into the National Library’s lovely 300-seat theatre, a favourite place of mine and one that I had much to do with professionally, many moons ago. I love visiting it.

Somewhat unusual for the Griffyns, this program’s narrative had a clear chronology, commencing with Gough Whitlam’s election to parliament in 1952 and ending pretty much with the famous dismissal in 1975. The music itself though moved around a bit in time. Here is the program, with links to online versions* (mostly played by other performers) where I have found them:

  • I will build my house on the water. By Horace Keats to a 4th century Chinese poem. Performed by the Griffyn Ensemble (Soprano JaneParkin with Pianist Clemens Leske version)
  • Dragon boat. Traditional. Performed by Hongyan Zhang
  • Moonlit night on the Spring River. Traditional, based on a Chinese poem by Zhang Ruoxu. Performed by  Hongyan Zhang, with the Griffyn Ensemble (China Broadcasting Traditional Orchestra version)
  • In our image, in our likeness. Movements 1, 3, 4. By Leilei Tian. Performed by Kiri Sollis (Recorders), Chris Stone (Violin) (mp3 version)
  • Like spinning plates. By Radiohead. Performed by the Griffyn Ensemble, featuring Susan Ellis (Soprano). (Radiohead’s own version)
  • It’s time. By Paul Jones and Mike Shirley. Performed by the Griffyn Ensemble, featuring Susan Ellis (Soprano). (Original version)
  • Dance music of the Yi People. By Wang Huiran. Performed by Hongyan Zhang. (Chu Yuan version)
  • Big decisions: The Whitlam dismissal. By Robert Davidson. Performed by the Griffyn Ensemble.
  • The song of the pipa player. By Mo Fan to a poem by Bai Juyi. Performed by Hongyan Zhang, with the Griffyn Ensemble (Ding Yi Music Company version)

If you listen to any of these you will realise what a varied – as usual – concert it was.

The concert was narrated by Griffyn musical director Michael Sollis, frequently accompanied by apposite little bars on the double bass (Holly Downes). He had clearly done a lot of reading about Whitlam’s political life, and his narration included quotes from people of the time, such as other politicians and officials, commentators and journalists. While Mr Gums and I, unlike the Griffyns, lived the era, I did learn some things. Gough, after all, was some decades older than I! I learnt, for example, that the first time he mentioned Australia recognising or making overtures to China was in 1954! Sollis described in some detail Whitlam’s history-making visit to China in 1971, when he was still Opposition leader. Whitlam, Sollis reported with a wry look, told Chinese premier Zhou Enlai that

The Australian people have had a bitter experience in going all the way with LBJ. They know America made [Prime Minister Harold Holt] change his policy and they will never again allow the American president to send [Australian] troops to another country.

Sollis also quoted Stephen FitzGerald, who accompanied Whitlam and who later became Australia’s ambassador to China. FitzGerald described the trip as:

an expedition of great bravado and exposure but [also?] great political judgment and luck. It was a journey to the unknown because no one knew what would come of it or who Whitlam would meet. It was personal diplomacy of great political sensitivity.

This section of the narrative was accompanied by a performance of Leilei Tian’s In our image, in our likeness by Kiri Sollis on recorders and Chris Stone on violin to evoke the meeting between Whitlam and Zhou Enlai. I enjoyed listening to the music and thinking about how the two instruments, the two melodies, might reflect the content and tone of the talks. And it was performed with such aplomb and skill by these two musicians who clearly enjoyed what they were doing. One of the many highlights of the night.

Another highlight was the revival-style performance, led by soprano Susan Ellis, of the ALP’s 1972 election song, It’s time. The audience couldn’t resist clapping along.

And finally, while still on the Whitlam theme, I enjoyed Big decisions: the Whitlam dismissal, a piece composed by Australian Robert Davidson for wind quartet with recorded speech. We, of course, had the Griffyns, not a wind quartet, and I presume Sollis had arranged it, as he had the final piece, The song of the pipa player. The recorded speech component of Big decisions comprised excerpts of speeches made at the time – most of which we of a certain age, or students of politics, recognised. The Australian Music Centre says that “The music emphases the inherent melody in recorded voices of Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Sir John Kerr and a supporting cast of Paul Keating, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Sir Charles Court and others”. I loved the way key words and lines from the speeches were repeated with musical accompaniment working around them. Intriguing. Clever.

And then, on top of all this was the pipa, played with such energy and yet delicacy too by Zhang Hongyan. Just check the link I’ve provided under Dragon boat to see what I mean. The concert ended with an ensemble performance of The song of the pipa player composed to a 9th century poem by Bai Juyi. Sollis explained the origin of the piece … here is the beginning of the poet’s foreword to it:

In 815 I was demoted from the Capital to a local Officer of Jiujiang Prefecture. One autumn night of the following year, while seeing off friends on a boat leaving Penpu harbor on the Yangtze River, I suddenly heard a pipa tune being played from the neighboring boat. The music style was clearly from the capital. Being totally surprised, I made an inquiry and learned that the musician was a lady who used to be a famous star in the Capital … Then her glorious years past with the time as her beauty faded. Finally she had to lower herself to marry to a merchant.

Demotion, you see … a fitting conclusion to a wonderful concert in which music and narrative combined perfectly to keep the audience engaged from beginning to end.

Ensemble: Kiri Sollis (flute), Chris Stone (violin), Laura Tanata (harp), Holly Downes (double bass), Susan Ellis (soprano), Michael Sollis (director/composer).

* I tend to provide links where I can because much of the music the Griffyns play is unfamiliar.

John Clanchy, Six: New tales (Review)

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ClanchySixFinlayLloydJohn Clanchy, like Julian Davies whose Crow mellow I recently reviewed, is another Australian writer I’d heard of but not read until his piece in the Canberra centenary anthology, The invisible thread. What a treasure trove that has turned out to be! Anyhow, titled “The gunmen”, Clanchy’s contribution was an excerpt from his first novel, The life of the land, published in 1985. He’s a versatile writer, it seems, crossing genres (such as crime and mystery) and form (novels, short stories, and non-fiction). Six, the book I’ve just read, is a collection of six short stories – long short stories, in fact. An earlier collection of his, Vincenzo’s Garden, won the 2005 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Short Stories and the 2006 ACT Book of the Year. If it’s anything like Six, I can see why.

But, before I get onto the book itself, a little about the publisher. Finlay Lloyd describes itself as a

a non profit publisher dedicated to encouraging imaginative and challenging writing, to subtly innovative design and to celebrating the pleasures of print on paper in an electronic age. Without the commercial imperative of most publishers, we are able to champion ideas and authors for their intrinsic interest and quality. We support independent bookshops as local outlets for these ideas and authors. Our books are printed in Australia to support the local industry (by Griffin Press and Ligare Book Printing).

It’s the “subtly innovative design” I particularly want to mention here (while also appreciating the rest of their philosophy). I’ve handled now about four of their books and they are beautiful. The shape varies, with some, such as Six, being long and thin. Subtly different (just like all planes!), and nice to hold. Six has an additional special touch – the first page of each of the stories is on slightly whiter, finer paper. There’s no table of contents, but you can quickly locate each of the stories by flicking the book through to these pages. These are simple things, but they make you feel that the book in your hand has been produced with love and care.

Anyhow, onto the book itself. I found all six stories completely engaging, imaginative, and one, surprisingly, laugh-out-loud funny. I say surprisingly because it’s rare that I’d read a truly funny short story, although there’s often one or two in a collection that make me smile. This story, “Slow burn”, is, I suppose, a “mere male” story, and, while I don’t really approve of “mere male” stories – they can be somewhat condescending – this one is too funny, too beautifully controlled, not to make me laugh. It’s all about Daryl Turtle who is “ill. Dangerously, perhaps fatally ill” and his wish to make himself a comforting piece of toast to go with the thermos coffee his thoughtful wife has left for him.

The other five stories – “Slow burn” is the third in the collection – are more serious. They deal with contemporary situations, a father who turns out to be gay and another who is discovered to have had a second family in another country. There’s a husband whose affair with an indigenous woman exposes an ugliness that shocks him. And there’s a powerful story about a couple whose daughter was killed overseas in a Bali-style bombing. These are the sorts of situations you read or hear about and wonder how the people at the centre of them cope. Clanchy explores just this, with sensitivity and authenticity, teasing out the underlying humanity of his characters. Whether they are a philandering husband, or rebellious daughter, a grieving father or lonely postman, we empathise and are encouraged to see the extent of human capacity to accommodate the unexpected. To put it another way, Clanchy’s characters tend to be confronted with seemingly black-and-white situations but find themselves capable of recognising the greys and responding, in most cases, generously and/or with growth.

The stories are not tricksy. In other words, they are not the sorts of short stories that you get to the end and wonder, “what was that about?” This may come from Clanchy’s experience in writing genre – two collaborative crime thrillers with another Canberra writer, Mark Henshaw. It may also relate to the fact that these are long-form short stories. (My rough calculation is that they are around 15,000 words, some shorter, some longer, whereas short stories are typically half that or less.) You may have noticed that, with the exception of “Slow burn”, I haven’t named the stories I’ve referred to. This is to avoid spoilers implicit in my comments. That said, while each story has a strong narrative arc with clear plot points, the focus is not really the plot. It’s the characters – which is where my interest lies and why I enjoyed the book so much.

I also enjoyed Clanchy’s writing. It’s clear and direct, and abounds with sharp observation. There’s humour, even in the serious stories, and fun wordplay. Here’s a description I loved:

Dot runs the general store and post office in town. She hates the sound of ‘Dot’ and you won’t get the time out of day if you call her that. ‘Dot is what a pen does to an eye,’ she says to anyone who doesn’t know, ‘and I’m an optometrist’s daughter, so call me May.’ And since she’s in charge of the town mail, that’s exactly what people do, though most people think that Dotty would suit her better. (from “True glue”)

As I neared the end of the last story, I was reminded of one of my favourite quotes, Wallace Stegner’s “Civilisations grow by agreements and accommodations and accretions, not by repudiations” in Angle of repose. In Six, as in most fiction of course, the characters are challenged by some event or situation and need to decide how they will respond. Stegner’s quote can, I believe, be applied not just to civilisations but to relationships and, indeed, character. Six evokes this perfectly. I really don’t know why Clanchy is not better known.

John Clanchy
Six: New tales
Braidwood: Finlay Lloyd, 2014
245pp.
ISBN: 9780987592934

(Review copy courtesy Finlay Lloyd)

Pulse: First 2014 (Review)

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Now here’s the thing. I’m a librarian by training, so I have certain expectations of how publications are titled, and Pulse, I must say, confused me. However, we librarians also know that publishers and writers don’t care about our rules; they just do what appeals to them! Fair enough. They’re the creators after all. Still, when I see a serial publication titled Pulse: First 2014, my immediate assumption is that the serial’s title is Pulse, and that I have in my hand the first edition for 2014. Not so, in this case. In fact, the serial – here, an annual – is titled First, and the title for the 2014 edition is Pulse! Got it? I have now!

So, what is First? It is “an anthology of creative works by students at the University of Canberra”. It has been published as First since 1995, but it commenced in 1993 under another title, Analectica. The editors of the 2014 edition therefore see Pulse as the anthology’s 21st volume, a “coming-of-age” edition. An impressive achievement I think. I’m not an expert on student-writing publications but 21 years in a world where projects come and go with some rapidity demonstrates a wonderful commitment by the university to its teaching of writing, design and editing.

The volume was put together by an editorial committee comprising students, some of whom feature in the volume. We are assured however that entries were all read blind. According to the university’s online news site, Monitor Online, there were 130 entries from which the final 26 stories and poems were chosen. Two prizes were given, though this is not noted in the volume: Best short story to Andrew Myers for “Neon Snow”, and best poem to Madonna Quixley for “The Archeological Dig”. The Monitor Online article also says that this was the first time all first year design students at the University submitted designs for the book’s cover. Sarah Watson won with her design which suggests “a sharp and energetic heartbeat”. It’s an attractive design, simple but strong, and I like the way a simplified version of the heartbeat (or pulse) carries through at the bottom of each page. Very stylish.

So, the content. I’m always interested in the order used in anthologies. In this collection, the first story, Alex Henderson’s imaginative “Easiest job in the world”, is futuristic, about a new way of creating energy using human power. There is a sinister mismatch between the protagonist’s unquestioning acceptance of his/her role and the reader’s suspicion that this acceptance is dangerously naive. It makes for a powerful start to the anthology. The last story is, fittingly, about death! Titled “Death’s apprentice”, and by Kaitlyn Wilson, it’s a reassuring, somewhat light-hearted, but by no means trivialising exploration of dying. In between is a diverse collection of works including poems, a graphic short story and a travel piece, as well as more short stories. Let’s talk about the poems, first.

Nine, if I’ve counted correctly, of the works are poems. I laughed at Cameron Steer’s “Nuts”, and smiled at the wry but wistful “Love song” in which an uncertain Katherine McKerrow writes to her potential lover, as yet unknown:

I’m not sure you should
look for me.
Try someone made with more
reality, brave enough to sing with the world

I loved Marjorie Morrissey’s short but evocative poem, “Canberra”, in which she captures the life and noise of the bird we love to hate, the Sulphur-crested cockatoo. If you like dogs, you’ll relate to the powerplay between master and dog in Owen Bullock’s “On the beach”, and if you like Murakami you’ll enjoy spotting his books in Gloria Sebestyn’s “Ode to Murakami”. Then, of course, there’s Madonna Quixley’s winning “The Archeological Dig” to which I can certainly relate. It starts:

Called ‘my side of the bedroom’,
it bears imprints of
geological and metaphorical
layers; not necessarily
related to years or epochs.
Books, almost categorised,
files, letters, pretty pieces of
paper that wrapped
gifts, now unclothed,
lie strewn throughout the sediment.
There are attempts at organisation
amongst the dust.

Against this, in the margin, I wrote “oh yes”!

This is an unusual anthology – at least in my experience – for the diversity of forms it contains, the most surprising of which is a graphic short story. It’s “The bringer” by architecture student Christopher Olalere. The art is sure, with a lovely use of colour. Like a few of the stories in the anthology, it has a speculative fiction element, this one to do with a “wishing star” that isn’t what it appears.

I wish, as I’ve said before, that I could comment on all of the pieces, but we’d be here forever, so I’ll just comment now on a few of the short stories. I liked, for example, Kieran Lindsay’s “Emily”, which is a cancer story with an unexpected ending. Ashley John’s “Not a toy” is about an arguing couple in which the apparently down-trodden husband gets his own back in a shocking way, while Rachel Vella’s “The noose” is a surprising story about a rather sour mother-son relationship. Claire Brunsdon effectively builds up tension in “Run”. I enjoyed Niki van Buuren’s “Only silence leads to salvation” about a future world in which music has been banned! Wah! No music? The story itself is a little predictable, perhaps, but I did laugh at the idea of a “Silence Revolution”. Andrew Myers’ “Neon snow” is a father-son story about a father’s concern for his gay son, and his promise to always be there. Nick Fuller’s entertaining “How not to write”, on the other hand, provides some wise advice about writing, despite its “philonoetic hebephrenia*”!

I wasn’t sure what to expect of a tertiary student anthology, but I enjoyed it. Not all the students are young. Some, from the bios, are clearly “mature-age”. Consequently, there’s a range of stories from those dealing with transition to adulthood to those exploring more mature relationships. I was intrigued by the overall tone. Although individual pieces vary and although much of the subject matter – like cancer, the environment, noxious relationships, good relationships under threat, and technology – is serious, there is, somehow, a light touch. Misery isn’t laboured, and yet there is no sense that life is easy either. Interesting too is the fact that several pieces either fall into the speculative fiction spectrum or involve eerie happenings or other-world beings. Does this signify a loosening of genre division, a willingness to break free of the purely rational – or it simply that this is a broad-brush anthology?

Whatever the case, Davis puts it well in her Introduction:

There’s magic, humour, hope, fear, colour, variety, simplicity and complexity in this Pulse: First 2014.

There’s talent and heart too. It will be interesting to see where these writers go next.

awwchallenge2015Pulse: First 2014
Managing editor: Irma Gold
Introduction: Brooke Davis
Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra, 2014
85pp.
ISSN: 1838-5303

(Review copy courtesy University of Canberra)

* “Philonoetic : intellectual” AND “Hebephrenia : a condition of adolescent silliness” (according to Nick Fuller)

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and punishment (Review, hmm)

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DostoevskyCrimePenguinPart way through my reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and punishment I wrote in my book – because, yes, I am a marginalia writer – “Who does Dostoevsky agree with?” It’s a somewhat naive question, I know, because the author doesn’t have to agree with anyone – and very often doesn’t. You just have to look at Humbert Humbert for example, or Patrick Süskind’s Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. But, in those novels, you can assume the authorial viewpoint. Crime and punishment, however, seems to me to be very different. What is Dostoevsky’s viewpoint? Does he have one?

SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW … THIS IS A CLASSIC, SO FAIR GAME I’D ARGUE.

This brings me to why I read classics. There are two main reasons: one being simply that I’m interested in our literary heritage, and the other is because they still have something to say. I guess this partly answers the question I posed a couple of posts ago doesn’t it? I read for insight into “the human condition”, to understand what makes us tick, and therefore, I suppose, to know myself and others better. Anyhow, back to Crime and punishment and my marginalia comment. The central question in the novel is, really, why did Raskolnikov do it? And his reasons are so ambiguous, so paradoxical, that he slots pretty comfortably into our post-modern world of uncertainty, self-consciousness and fluidity. Of course, he’s not modern (or post-modern). He’s a 19th century creation (and this is a mid-19th century novel with a happy ending). But he’s a creation who is hard to pin down, because he’s the creation of a writer from a society in flux, and of a writer who was perhaps himself in flux. Indeed, Raskolnikov’s name, so the translator of my edition tells me, derives from “raskol” meaning “a split or schism”.

So, Raskolnikov commits his crime. He murders not only the “old hag”, a pawnbroker with whom he’d had several problematic dealings, but her sweet, simple-minded sister Lizaveta, who surprised him in the act. Raskolnikov evinces little or no obvious guilt for his actions, though his physical illness and mental disarray post-murder are surely a psychosomatic response to what he’d done. His behaviour is quite schizoid, at one moment warm and generous, and then suddenly cold and calculating. No wonder those close to him can’t make him out. He’s a slippery beast.

And he’s a slippery beast because it seems – if I understand the various end-notes included in my edition – he’s a vehicle for Dostoevsky’s views on Russian society and intellectual life at the time. So, here I’m answering my opening question: Raskolnikov represents Dostoevsky in that he speaks to Dostoevsky’s concerns about some critical issues, but these concerns are multifarious so cannot be pinned down to one main idea. In some ways Crime and punishment could be seen as Dickensian, in its description of the grime and poverty of St Petersburg, but I don’t see Dostoevsky as a Russian Dickens. His main focus is not social justice, though the idea of “justice” features frequently in the novel, but more intellectual, political and psychological. Raskolnikov’s “motives” range from utilitarian ones (the world will be better off without the “hag”, “a useless, foul, noxious louse”) through philanthropic ones (her money could be used to help others) to megalomaniac and egotistic ones (“I wanted to become a Napoleon”, am I one of the “extraordinary” people “who dares to stoop and grab”, one who “moves the world and leads it towards a goal”?). These motives address many of the debates that were occurring in contemporary Russia, debates about socialism, Westernisation, moral responsibility versus environmental impact on human behaviour, and social Darwinism. Overlaying all this is Dostoevsky’s Christian belief. Sonya, the young girl who takes up prostitution to provide for her step-mother and siblings, is the person to whom Raskolnikov first confesses. While shocked, she listens and refuses to believe, or at least accept, his baser motives. Her solution is a Christian one, to “accept suffering and atone”.

In the end, at his trial, Raskolnikov gives practical reasons for the crime to do with his poverty and desire to use the victim’s money to help his career (except he didn’t touch the money), and admits he turned himself in because of “heartfelt remorse”. He receives a relatively light sentence (only eight years in Siberia) for various reasons, including his sickness before the crime, his generous character, and the fact he did not use the money.

Raskolnikov is one of literature’s great anti-heroes, alongside the likes of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Camus’ Meursault, to whom he has been compared. I can see why – though he doesn’t have the clear motivation of Macbeth, nor the absence of motivation of Meursault. Like Meursault in particular, Raskolnikov is complex and engenders endless debates that are as affected by the reader’s beliefs, experiences and attitudes, and dare I say by the reader’s times, as they are by the text itself.

The novel’s ending suggests “renewal” and “rebirth”, but what exactly Dostoevsky meant by it all is not completely resolved, at least in my mind. There has been enough ambiguity and paradox throughout – for example, Raskolnikov argues that if he has to question whether he has “a right to power” then he doesn’t because one who does wouldn’t ask – and the trial is covered with such brevity to undermine complete confidence in the resolution. I like this sort of openness. It seems appropriate, therefore, to conclude with Raskolnikov’s loyal friend Razumikhin who says to Razkolnikov’s mother and sister:

Keep fibbing, and you’ll end up with the truth! I’m only human because I lie. No truth’s ever been discovered without fourteen fibs along the way … Name anything you like: science, development, thought, inventions, ideals, desires, liberalism, rationalism, experience, anything at all, anything, anything – and we are all, without exception, still stuck in the first years of preparatory school! We just love making do with other people’s thoughts.

Is Raskolnikov an original, a creative truth-teller, or just another confused human being prattling off ideas he’s heard from others? That is the question.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and punishment
(Trans. by Oliver Ready)
London: Penguin Books, 2014 (Orig. ed. 1866)
702pp
ISBN: 9780141192802

Julie Twohig, Full circle (Review)

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When I review individual stories, I tend to choose ones that are available on-line. Is that fair, I wonder? It means the author receives no payment for the story I review, but it does mean readers can enjoy a story that they may not otherwise easily access and, I suppose, that the author receives some exposure. Does that make sense? Whatever! This is what I do!

So, to Julie Twohig. She came to my attention when she commented on one of my posts. As most of us do when people who have blogs themselves comment on our blogs, I checked out her blog. It turned out that Twohig is a short story writer, and has had some success, winning or being shortlisted for various awards/competitions, and being included in a few published anthologies. She’s a good example – I hope she doesn’t mind being held up as an example – of the hard work short story writers put into getting their stories known and published.

She provides the text for a few of her stories on her blog, but I chose to read “Full circle” because it is, she writes, her “first winning story and first short fiction to be published”. It won the Leader (Leader being a newspaper group) Darebin (being a community in Victoria) Short Story Competition and was also Commended by The Society of Women Writers Victoria Inc. I enjoyed the story. It’s not one of those tricky short stories that leaves you wondering at the end, but it’s a story from the heart about a middle-aged woman, Jean, returning to the Luang Prabang area of Laos, alone, thirty-two years after her previous visit with Peter, the man who was to become her husband. Peter isn’t with her because, we soon realise, he has died (not because of divorce). Early in the story Jean remembers him saying “I’ll rest when I’m dead”. The tone, here, is sad, nostalgic, not angry or bitter.

The story starts like a typical travel story. Our protagonist is on a bus in an unfamiliar environment, trying to work out how to navigate a different culture. It’s nicely done:

After freeing her backpack from an overhead rack Jean tries to dodge the spillage while scrambling past passengers packed tightly along the aisle. ‘Sorry, sorry … excuse me.’ She had thought it might be rude to thump her fist on the ceiling the way the locals do to make the driver stop. She wishes now she had.

All travellers are, I’m sure, familiar with this uncertainty about how to act. Anyhow, we are not sure what Jean is doing except that it is something she feels she must do – “this trip is for her. For Peter. Full circle”. Aha, there it is, the title, half way through the story.

I’d love to discuss what she is doing because it rang true to me – not that I have experienced exactly the same thing (my spouse is still alive), but I’ve experienced enough for it to have that lovely sense of “ah yes, this makes sense”. The story is well structured. There are a few flashbacks to give us a sense of where Jean is in her life, but only as is needed to convey who Jean is and why she might be doing this trip. The imagery isn’t particularly original, but it is effective, and not overdone, which suggests that Twohig has taken care to hone her story.

At the end of the story on her website, Twohig tells us that poor handling of the publication of the anthology resulted in a furore, which led to the competition not being repeated. Interestingly, the very same Leader newspaper group ran an article in February last year announcing the inaugural Mayor’s Writing Awards in Darebin, with two prizes – for Adult and Children’s short fiction. The winners of these prizes were announced in June on the Darebin Arts website. The winning and highly commended stories earned a cash prize and the “option to be published in n-SCRIBE issue 9″, the City of Darwin’s community arts magazine, which is published annually. It remains to be seen whether this competition will be run again in 2015. Full circle?

awwchallenge2015Julie Twohig
“Full circle” in Around the block: Our Darebin Community
Greensborough, Vic: Flat Chat Press, 2007
Available online at the author’s website

Julian Davies, Crow mellow (Review)

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Julian Davies, Crow mellow Book cover

Courtesy: Finlay Lloyd

Julian Davies, author of Crow mellow and publisher at Finlay Lloyd, has written six novels, some of them short-listed for significant literary awards, but, embarrassingly, I only became properly aware of him through his inclusion in the two Canberra centenary volumes that I reviewed in 2013, The invisible thread and Meanjin’s The Canberra Issue. It’s the Meanjin piece that immediately came to mind when Crow mellow landed unexpectedly in my letterbox last year, probably because I was fascinated by Davies’ description of building himself a place in the mountains south of Canberra near Braidwood. (In fact, I mentioned him in a Monday Musings post about the region). He wrote about people’s fear of the bush, about country versus city living, and about the challenges and paradoxes involved in trying to live a self-sufficient life. It’s not something I can imagine doing myself, but I love reading about people who have the passion to do so. Anyhow, this and the short excerpt from his novel The boy in The invisible thread were my introduction to Davies.

I was therefore intrigued when the odd-looking Crow mellow appeared. It is an unusual shape (longer and narrower than most paperback novels), has a dramatic orange and black cover, has no pagination, and is full of black and white drawings, so full in fact that it was a challenge for me to find space to pencil in my marginalia. I managed however! There are no blurbs on the back cover, just these two sentences:

This book is a novel. It has drawings on every page.

I love this sort of cheekiness, so was looking forward to reading the novel produced by the mind behind it. The cheekiness begins with the title, which might ring a bell with some of you? It is a play, as Davies writes in his Introduction, on Aldous Huxley’s first novel Crome yellow (1921). Indeed, if you read the plot summary in the Wikipedia article on Huxley’s novel, you will have a decent summary of Crow mellow – just ignore the names – because, as the Press Release explains, Davies’ novel is “a contemporary social satire closely based on” Crome yellow.

Now, unlike Lisa (ANZLitLovers) who decided to re-read Crome yellow before reading Davies’ “riff”, I decided to read Davies’ book cold. While I cannot speak for how I might have reacted had I read Huxley first, I am happy to report that the novel holds its own as an independent read. Harking back to the tradition of the 19th century “English country house novel” (Wikipedia), it does have a whiff of the “old world” about it, despite its references to modern technology and financial crises. In fact, it’s a rather odd beast. Its set up – a group of artists staying in a country house/bush retreat with their patrons and admirers – suggests historical fiction, but it is firmly set in contemporary times. This past-present tension adds to the fun of it. The tension is compounded by other factors, one being Phil Day’s drawings which provide whimsical and sometimes very pointed satirical commentary on the text, and another being the fact that the novel’s main character, a poet/novelist who observes more than he acts, is named Phil Day! Games must surely be being played with us!

As you would expect from a “country house novel”, whether or not you’ve read one, the novel takes place over several days, and mostly comprises conversation, over meals, and in different parts of the house and gardens as the inhabitants while away their days. Davies writes in his Introduction that he was attracted to Huxley’s novel for two reasons – the idea of having a go himself at “a playful novel of ideas” and the fact that these ideas, in Huxley’s novel, have to do with “the value, purpose and pretensions of art”. He recognised the challenges in taking this on – novels of ideas are often criticised for being didactic, and “art about art risks disappearing up its own fundament” – but these challenges are of course what appealed to him.

Fortunately, I rather like novels of ideas. Ideas – plus character and language – intrigue me more than plots, so this novel with its flawed characters discussing the “important” things in life – art, love and money – was right up my alley. And of course, art-with-a-capital-A is the idea that interested me most. In an interview last year with journalist Sally Pryor, Davies described how, long ago, he’d become frustrated with the pretensions of the art world and, also, with how “venal” publishing had become, which is why he, with three others initially, had established Finlay Lloyd. He questioned publishing’s definition of “success”, saying:

We have a notion that you have to be a bestseller to be successful, but maybe it’s more interesting to do something a little bit weird and different and have a smaller audience who appreciates it.

Finlay Lloyd has succeeded with Crow mellow, achieving that difficult double of producing something different that is also accessible and fun to read.

And now, I believe I’ve done something different too. I’ve written a long so-called review without many specific references to the book itself. Do I need to I wonder, given the book, by its creator’s admission, closely follows Crome yellow’s story? Well, yes, perhaps I should say something. As I was reading, I made many marks in the book, noting ideas that interested me. Here, in Chapter 3, is cynic Scogum (also called, with appropriate Aussie adolescent humour, Scrotum) speaking to Phil Day about novels:

How many million novels would you say have been written in the last century and a half? Before that people seem to have got along well enough without the blasted things, but now every man and his word processor is blathering away putting words on paper, recounting some lame aspect of their own personal lives, celebrating their petty creativity, as though any other human being on earth could really give a damn. And what possible insight could you have to contribute that Tolstoy or Dickens or Proust or Joyce and so on hasn’t put on paper already? Seventy years ago Scott Fitzgerald had already despaired that the novel was obsolete. What original thought could you have, my dear Phil, what formal invention?

Of course, Scogum is not intended to be the last word on the matter. His is just one of the many views put forward about art in the novel. In another scene, Melissa, on the hunt for a love affair, expresses concern that artist Paul’s drawing is too “literal … where were the ideas in this picture, where the irony?” She asks him about his fine, but literal, charcoal marks:

… but don’t you intend to do something with them? I mean, pull them apart and put them in some sort of context that makes an ironic comment on art as a commodity?

And so the discussions go on throughout the book, sometimes pompous, sometimes sincere, but never reaching resolution because in our post-postmodern world, there is no resolution. And that, too, is part of the underlying, albeit tongue-in-cheek, tension in the book.

Meanwhile, Phil hankers for Anna, the daughter of his wealthy host, while she flirts with artist Paul, and Melissa searches for a love affair elsewhere. The set piece of the story is the annual masked ball to which the neighbourhood and wealthy friends are invited and for which the drawings are particularly exquisite. It’s flirty, and fun, but a little creepy too, in a Nero-fiddled kind of way!

Life, Oscar Wilde said, imitates art, more than vice versa. For Davies and Day, I suspect, life and art are so deeply entwined we couldn’t possibly say – but then that’s probably just what we would say in our highly-conceptualised world. Crow mellow is yet another good read coming out of a small publishing house. Do pick it up if it comes to a bookshop (or library) near you, and let me know what you think.

Lisa (ANZLitLovers) has reviewed the book (including a good description of the art), and author Dorothy Johnston’s review was published just last weekend.

Julian Davies
Crow mellow
Illustrated by Phil Day
Braidwood: Finlay Lloyd Publishers, 2014
No numbered pages (but 384pp, says the Press Release)
ISBN: 9780987592941

(Review copy courtesy Finlay Lloyd Publishers)

Anna Funder, Everything precious (Review)

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Anna Funder, Everything preciousI must thank John aka Musings of a Literary Dilettante for introducing me to this intriguing little e-work by Miles Franklin award-winner, Anna Funder. When John read it, back in October, it was in daily instalments, but when I clicked the link in his post I was offered several e-book versions, including for the Kindle and iPad, or for an audiobook which I believe is read by Funder. It’s free.

So, what is it? Here’s the description at the start of the story:

This story is a unique collaboration between Paspaley, acclaimed author Anna Funder, photographer Derek Henderson and award-winning actress Teresa Palmer. It’s an original story of love, self and all things precious, featuring the most beautiful pearls in the world.

Paspaley, for those who don’t know, is an Australian-based company founded in the pearling industry of northwestern Australia. Although it has now diversified into other businesses, it is probably still best known for its pearling arm. As you might assume from the title of Funder’s story, “Everything precious”, it is the pearling arm that sponsored Funder. John wrote his post before he finished reading the story, and said he feared finding some product placement at the end. However, in a postscript added later, he advised there was no such thing. He’s right – in a sense – as there’s no reference to pearls or Paspaley in the text. But, in my e-book version, between chapters 4 and 5, there is a series of five photographs taken presumably by Derek Henderson and featuring, again presumably, actor Teresa Palmer. They are tasteful in that high-class-magazine way … no text, just beautiful images of a lovely woman wearing gorgeous pearls.

I researched a little more, and discovered that the story is part of a “multi-channel campaign” to launch Paspaley’s new Touchstone collection. The “campaign uses storytelling to engage a new, younger, more fashion conscious audience and make pearls relevant and appealing to them”. Intriguing eh! I wonder how successful it’s been?

What, besides presumably money, did it all mean for Anna Funder? Here’s what she says:

Working with Paspaley has been one of the most exciting writing experiences I’ve had. To have total creative freedom, a time limit and an audience turn out to be the perfect conditions for writing a short story. And the idea that a company, which makes things of great beauty and value from nature, values literature, which (on a good day) is also something of beauty and value that reflects the world around us, was inspiring. Writing this story has been a joy and a privilege, and was some of the most fun I’ve ever had writing.

Now, let’s talk about the story, which the promoter’s website I’ve linked to above describes as “a short story of desire, need, love and all that is precious”. The plot is pretty simple. It’s about Tess, who works in online legal publishing, and would be in her mid thirties. She has a husband, Dan, head of epidemiology in the State Health Department and a lovely SNAG if ever there was one, and three children, Charlotte who is 13, and the twins, Tom and Lorna, who are 6. She also has a father, Howard, a retired judge who is in Assisted Living because he has dementia. This is, then, an upper middle class, professional family. Tess and Dan have been together for 17 years and she’s feeling a little trapped and restless. A bit of a midlife crisis, in other words, or, as Funder writes in the story, Tess is:

at a hinge moment: between youth and age, between the life you thought you wanted and the one you feel might, now, suit you better.

So, Tess decides to consider that other life she might have had, but … well, I won’t give the ending away because it’s easy for you to access at Paspaley.

It’s interesting to look at this story in terms of the campaign because I’m presuming that although Funder had “total creative freedom” there must have been a brief – one that at the very least identified a target market, oops audience, for the story. This audience would, I’m sure, identify pretty easily with the character and set up, with the restlessness attended by guilt that she should be so restless. The brief must surely have identified a tone too. You wouldn’t sell pearls with a grim story – or did they assume Funder would have the nous to make the story appropriately positive? Regardless, the story would clearly suit what I assume was Paspaley’s target market – upwardly mobile or already there professional thirty-to-forty-something women who have the disposable income but who may see pearls as the province of their Baby Boomer mothers.

This all sounds pretty cynical, and to some degree it surely must be. I would describe the story as “chicklit” for the well-to-do married woman. It’s not challenging reading. The resolution is easy to comprehend and reassuring. However, it is written by Funder. This means that the writing is good, there’s intelligence at play (including an allusion to Chekhov!), and the insights into the pressures of early 21st century professional family life are authentic even if not explored in any depth.

awwchallenge2015Overall, then, it’s an enjoyable read and an interesting concept to ponder. I certainly wouldn’t criticise Funder for taking up the opportunity offered to her. Writers, like all of us, have to live – and if a company like Paspaley is prepared to pay, and offer “complete freedom”, why would you say no?

Anna Funder
Everything precious
Sydney: Paspaley, 2014
Smashwords Edition
Available: Gratis at Paspaley

Annie Parker, Passages in the life of a slave woman (Review)

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I have, this year, reviewed a couple of Library of America‘s (LOA) stories about slavery in the USA, one being Harriet Ann Jacobs’ “The lover”, and the other William Wells Brown’s, Madison Washington. I’ve always been interested in slavery in the US, so when Annie Parker’s “Passages in the life of a slave woman” appeared in my inbox, I of course wanted to read it – and discovered yet another intriguing story.

When I say I discovered “another intriguing story”, I don’t just mean Parker’s story but the story of Parker herself. Let me explain. Parker’s story, “Passages in the life of a slave woman”, was published, according to LOA’s always illuminating notes, in Autographs for freedom. This was an annual anthology of antislavery literature published as a fundraising venture by the Rochester Ladies Antislavery Society. (Only two were apparently produced). The anthologies included “original works by such dignitaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Theodore Parker, William Wells Brown, Catherine M. Sedgwick, William H. Seward, and Horace Greeley”, as well as Frederick Douglass’ novella, The heroic slave, about Madison Washington. They also included two pieces by Annie Parker – a poem, Story telling”, and the story I’m discussing here. But, here’s the thing – no-one, says LOA, apparently knows who this Annie Parker is (or was).

So, like any good blogger, I did an internet search – just a little one – and found a guest post on the blog of the IAHI, aka, the IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis) Arts and Humanities Institute. The guest post, published in September 2014, is titled “In Search of Annie Parker by Professor Jack Kaufman-McKivigan”. Kaufman-McKivigan’s post concerns a symposium that was coming up in October at which experts were “to examine the historical and literary significance of Douglass’s novella, The Heroic Slave.” In preparation for this event, staff members were engaging, he said, in some “literary detective work” – and one of these projects was trying to identify Annie Parker.

Harriet Ann Jacobs, 1894 (Presumed Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

Harriet Ann Jacobs, 1894 (Presumed Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

Kaufman-McKivigan writes in the post that in recent decades her story “has been anthologized several times as one of the earliest works of fiction by an African-American author”. That’s interesting in itself, because it means they (whoever “they” are) have assumed she was an African-American contributor. It could be so, and the story could be autobiographical, but I also wondered, given the lack of information about her, whether “Annie Parker” was a pseudonym. Anyhow, our professor says they found a couple more articles by an Annie Parker in a temperance journal from Geneva, New York, but then the trail went “cold, very cold”. Genealogical research, he says, turned up “a few possible ‘Annie Parkers’ in the upstate New York region” but none had “any known connection to the antislavery movement and all were white”. He then posits that Annie Parker may not have been a runaway slave as others have speculated, but might have been “a pen-name”. The question then is whose? One possible idea is the above-mentioned Harriet Jacobs. There are some valid reasons for making this connection, as he explains in the post – so do read it at the link above if you are interested. Why Jacobs might have wanted to use a pseudonym is a question the literary detectives are now working on. All very interesting – and one of the reasons I do enjoy these LOA offerings.

Now, though, the story – which is told first person in the voice of a slave, after the opening paragraph is told third person. I was, I must say, quite flummoxed by this. The paragraph has some odd punctuation, in that there are opening quotation marks but no closing ones. LOA’s notes suggest this is to indicate that the rest of the story is composed entirely of her narrative. Fair enough, though I don’t quite understand why Parker needed to start with the third person, except that it does make for an easy way of telling us who the narrator is.

The story is told by the slave, Phillis, sister of another slave, Elsie, who had died giving birth to her second child. Both Elsie’s children – the first, a son, and the newborn, a girl – were fathered by “the young master”. The son, who looks too much like his father is sold off before the young master brings a wife home, thus preventing any awkward questions being asked. Meanwhile, Phillis cares for the daughter, Zilpha, as she grows up to young womanhood. I won’t give away the story here but simply tell you that LOA introduces it as a “tale, charged with incest and gothic intrigue”. You can read it at the link, below. It’s only 6 pages.

This is not a story about beatings and cruel physical treatment. Indeed the new mistress:

proved a kind and gentle mistress. All the slaves loved her, as well they might, for she did everything in her power to make them comfortable and happy.

But, we never forget that slaves are powerless – and, as we know only too well, when anything happens that threatens an owner’s happiness or security, little thought, even on the kindest plantations, is given to the “feelings” of the slaves. They are possessions and can be moved around at will. Their emotional or psychological needs, let alone their physical safety, are not relevant. And so, in this story, as certain truths come to light, the owner takes actions to protect his security and happiness. The irony is that he, like his mistress, is generally (perhaps “superficially” is the better word) kind and fair, but there are limits – and it is the impact of those limits that we are left with, confirming once again what a destructive institution slavery was, indeed is.

Annie Parker
“Passages in the life of a slave woman”
First published: In Autobiography for freedom, 1853.
Available: Online at the Library of America