Monday musings on Australian literature: Miles Franklin, and the mysterious Brent of Bin Bin

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Miles Franklin, 1902

Miles Franklin, 1902, by H.Y. Dorner (Presumed Public Domain)

In last week’s Monday Musings I discussed an article by Canadian-born author Aidan de Brune on the novelist Bernard Cronin in his West Australian series on Australian Authors. The now little-known Bernard Cronin was no. 3 in his series. Number 4, though, was one of the giants of Australian literature – then, and still now – Miles Franklin. Most of you will know that she bequeathed our most significant literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, and you probably have also heard of her most famous book, My brilliant career. But, Miles Franklin did have a secret …

This secret, as we now know, is that in addition to several other novels published under her name, she wrote a series of six novels using the pseudonym “Brent of Bin Bin”. They were completed by 1933 but not all had been published by her death in September 1954. According to Paul Brunton, editor of The diaries of Miles Franklin, Franklin saw this as “a publicity device”. She wrote in 1929 that “hiding under a pen-name … will be more fruitful of publicity”. Her plan was to retain the mystery until the last book was published at which time she would reveal her identity. Unfortunately, she died before they were all finished. Nonetheless, Brunton says, she “enjoyed the speculation on Brent’s identity”. In 1941 she chaired, “with a straight face”, a meeting of  the Fellowship of Australian Writers at which Brent of Bin Bin’s identity was discussed. Brunton continues:

She had no scruples about praising Brent’s books publicly as though she had nothing to do with them, as she does in her diaries. She even praised them in her Commonwealth Literary Fund lectures in 1950.

She also wrote to others, including the critic Nettie Palmer, as Brent of Bin Bin. I should add here that the current theory is that she used “Brent of Bin Bin” (and her other pseudonyms) because she feared not being able to repeat her My brilliant career achievement.

Anyhow, back to Aidan de Brune writing in 1933. He commences his article with:

Thirty years ago literary circles in Australia were astounded by the publication of an extraordinary book, written by a girl of sixteen, Stella Miles Franklin. The title of the book was audacious — “My Brilliant Career.”

He praises the book saying:

It throbs with a passionate love of the Australian bush, and particularly of horses, and with an equal passionate hatred of the cruelties of life endured by the people on the land, particularly by the women. It is the first statement, and to this day it remains the greatest statement, of the case for Australian bush womanhood.

He also quotes Henry Lawson’s praise in the book’s preface for its “painfully real” depiction of “bush life and scenery”. De Brune is concerned that in 1933 it, like many “fine” Australian books had been allowed to go out of print, with copies being hard to come by. He then gives a little of Franklin’s biography – her twenty years abroad working for the Feminist Movement in the USA, in the Scottish Women’s Hospital in Salonika, and for a housing committee in London. But now, he tells his readers, she is back and in 1932 had published a book, Old Blastus of Bandicoot, “under her name”. (Hmm … !) It was highly praised by many critics including John Dalley in The Bulletin. He also advises that another book, a detective story, would be published in 1933.

But, he asks:

Is that, then, the whole story of Miles Franklin? We shall see. Is it likely, or possible, that a writer of such power and sheer genius as the author of “My Brilliant Career” should have been silent for more than twenty years?

Fair questions! He goes on to tell his readers that “Miles Franklin will not admit it” but many people are identifying her with

the mysterious “Brent of Bin Bin,” whose books (published by Blackwood, of Edinburgh, be it noted) are acknowledegd to be the finest presentation in fiction of the Australian outback epic which have yet been written. “Brent of Bin Bin” loves the bush and understands horses, and hates injustice to bush women, as only the author of “My Brilliant Career” and “Old Blastus of Bandicoot” could love, and understand, and hate.

Brent of Bin Bin’s books are now Australian classics he says but, like My brilliant career, are hard to come by. How lucky we are that publishers like Text Publishing, Allen & Unwin, and others, are bringing back Australian classics in our times, eh?

Anyhow, I did love the conclusion to his article:

If Miles Franklin is also “Brent of Bin Bin,” then she is the greatest Australian bush novelist alive. And if she is only Miles Franklin of “My Brilliant Career” and “Old Blastus of Bandicoot” she takes second place to one writer alone — the tremendously gifted and mysterious author who writes in Miles Franklin’s manner under the pseudonym of “Brent.”

Ha ha … I bet he had fun writing that! I’m intrigued though that the praise is qualified, that she is “the greatest bush novelist”. I sense though that he doesn’t intend to diminish her achievement but to simply describe the milieu she was writing in. What I hear is that the bush continued to be a significant concern in 1930s Australia and was therefore seen as a worthy topic for our literature.

POSTSCRIPT: In an article written after her death, Murray Tonkin asks whether her death will finally solve the literary mystery. So, although many were confident they knew the identity, Franklin clearly kept up the pretence to the end. Tonkin says that he will “gladly eat his hat” if Franklin is not identified as “at least a close collaborator”. Love it!

Jane Austen, Emma Vol 2 (continuing thoughts)

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EmmaCoversThe friendship plot – that theme I discussed in my post on Volume 1 of Emma – thickens in Volume 2. Several “new” friendships are presented, as Austen continues to deepen our understanding of what constitutes community via the little village of Highbury. For Jane Austen, I think we are going to realise, friendship is both a deeply personal thing as well as something that underpins society.

In Volume 2, three people are introduced to Highbury – Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill, about whom we’d heard heard in Volume 1, and Mrs Elton, the new bride of Highbury’s minister, Mr Elton. Through them, and the previously introduced characters, we are introduced to several facets of “friendship”. Positive examples include:

  • Colonel Campbell’s generous act of friendship to Jane Fairfax’s late father by taking Jane into his household and educating her along with his daughter;
  • Mr Knightley’s neighbourly style of friendship in providing food from his estate to the Bates and transport for them to a wintry evening dinner-dance;
  • Emma’s similarly neighbourly friendship in providing food to the Bates;
  • Miss Campbell’s open-hearted, trusting acceptance of her fiancé’s preference for her friend Jane Fairfax’s piano playing over her own; and even
  • Mr Woodhouse’s entertaining some of the older women in the town.

More questionable ones include:

  • Mrs Elton’s profusions of friendship to Jane Fairfax but in fact interfering with Jane’s wishes; and
  • Emma’s inability to befriend Jane Fairfax.

In Volume 1, Austen explored the role (and value) of friends in providing advice and emotional support to each other, what we could call perhaps the more “personal” side of friendship. In Volume 2, there is I think a slight shift of emphasis to more practical, or societal, aspects such as the provision of material comforts and company. Through all these manifestations of “friendship”, Austen seems to be building a rich picture of human relationships, of what we need from, and can do for, each other.

There is also in this volume a discussion of what Emma doesn’t like in a friendship: it’s the “coldness and reserve” that she sees in Jane Fairfax, with whom everyone, including Mr Knightley, expected and still expects her to be intimate. She says of not looking to Jane for friendship:

But I must be more in want of a friend, or an agreeable companion, than I have yet been, to take the trouble of conquering any body’s reserve to procure one.

An additional impediment to Emma’s willingness to befriend Jane Fairfax is fact that Jane is lauded for skills in areas in which Emma is less accomplished (through, it seems, lack of application!) Interestingly, late in the volume, Mr Knightley, responding to suggestions that he might be thinking of marrying Jane Fairfax, says he is not interested:

She is reserved; more reserved, I think, than she used to be: and I love an open temper.

It will be interesting to see whether the issue of love and its relationship to friendship is teased out in Volume 3.

Jane Austen – protofeminist?

Just how “feminist” you see Jane Austen depends somewhat on your definition of feminism, but for me she demonstrates a clear recognition of the (economic) inequalities that affect women’s lives and of the (societal) factors that hold them back. She demonstrates this in Emma by presenting a heroine who is independently wealthy and who therefore has no economic need to marry. Emma recognises this and says early in the novel, in volume 1 in fact, that she won’t marry:

“I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry …  without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband’s house as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man’s eyes as I am in my father’s.”

Part of the trajectory in Emma is for her to learn that there are other reasons to marry besides those of money and consequence. By contrast, her foil/double, Jane Fairfax has no independent wealth. The most likely course of life for her is to be a governess, but it’s not a cheery thought:

“I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade,” replied Jane; “governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different certainly as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies…”

For Jane Fairfax, a good marriage would save her from what she sees as a pretty devastating fate.

Contrasting these two quite different situations is Mrs Elton. In Austen, as in most authors, you need to be aware of who is speaking when assessing what they say. Mrs Elton is a figure of ridicule in Emma, rather like Mr Collins in Pride and prejudice. She’s the upstart who “has a horror of upstarts”. Her idea of standing up for women involves counteracting Mr Weston’s statement that “delicate ladies have very extraordinary constitutions”. She says:

I always take the part of my own sex; I do indeed. I give you notice, you will find me a formidable antagonist on that point. I always stand up for women; and I assure you, if you knew how Selina feels with respect to sleeping at an inn, you would not wonder at Mrs. Churchill’s making incredible exertions to avoid it. Selina says it is quite horror to her; and I believe I have caught a little of her nicety. She always travels with her own sheets; an excellent precaution.

The satire here is multi-layered, but includes ridiculing Mrs Elton’s notion of standing up for women by asserting their focus on niceties!

More …

There’s a lot more I could discuss about this volume, such as its perfect plotting in which very little happens, or is said, that doesn’t move the plot forward, but that does it in such sly ways that we are barely aware it’s happening. However, I think I’ve made the main points here that particularly caught my attention during this re-read … so, onto volume 3 in April.

Ognjen Spahić, All of that (Review)

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Regulars here know that I enjoy short stories, and that I review them regularly. Most of these reviews, though, are of Australian writers. I was therefore pleased when blogger roughghosts, in his review of a novel by Ognjen Spahić, provided a link to a Spahić short story titled “All of that”. As I haven’t reviewed many Balkan writers here, and definitely no Montenegrin writers, I grabbed the opportunity to read this story.

According to the biography provided by the online journal BODY, Spahić “is the best-known member of the young generation of Montenegrin writers to have emerged since the collapse of former Yugoslavia”. He’s published two collections of short stories and his novel Hansen’s Children (the one reviewed by roughghosts) won the 2005 Meša Selimović Prize for the best new novel from Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Elsewhere I read that he’s been a resident writer at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and won, in 2011, Romania’s Ovid Festival Prize for a prominent young talent. Have you heard of him? I hadn’t. Another win for litbloggers, methinks.

“All of that”, which I suspect comes from his first short story collection, All that, published in 2001, is a first person story by a father concerned about his son Danilo’s ability to cope with the death of a schoolfriend and with attending her funeral. Most of the story takes place on a father-son fishing trip in which the father plans to take his son’s mind off the death, but the son has other plans:

‘Dad, have you ever been to the cemetery?’ he asked as we were driving.

And so starts a conversation … I loved the writing (albeit I read a translation). The dialogue, which constitutes much of the story, is simple, direct, and true, but it is in the father’s reflections that the truth of the matter comes out. It’s the father who has problems with death. He’d lost his father (car-crash) when he was 6 years old and his mother (illness) when he was thirteen. “It’s difficult to talk about death”, he says

And even more difficult to explain to a child the ceremony and rituals which go with it in this rotten country.

“This rotten country” is alludes to something wider than the story at hand, and suggests to me there may be another level on which the story might be read. Interestingly too, as the father and son are rowing, the son says he doesn’t like fog though it doesn’t bother him. This surprises the father, but he suggests:

‘OK Danilo, Strange Prince of Darkness. Let’s row a little bit faster to that deserted island.’

Strange Prince of Darkness? Why does he call his son that? It seems affectionate. Other religious references, on the other hand, are more direct, such as “Deformed quotes from the Bible”.

Anyhow, the fog returns a few times in the story. At one time the father says it “creeps like a python after the slow process of digesting its prey”. It lifts towards the end, suggesting some resolution for the father/narrator’s anxieties.

What I enjoyed was the way Spahić slowly teases out the father’s feelings – through the dialogue, his reflections, the style (particularly the use of repetition), and the language and imagery – because in the end the story is more about the father’s feelings. Just after the “strange Prince of Darkness” comment, the father talks of making “a pretence at adventure, a small harmless attempt to escape from reality”. And yet, the son gives no sense of needing to escape from reality. It’s the father.

I’m not going to write more about this story. It would certainly bear multiple readings, but is powerful enough on the first reading to give a sense of yet another writer I’d like to get to know more. I might read Hansen’s children yet.

Ongjen Spahić
“All of that” in BODY, June 30, 2013
(Trans. by SD Curtis)
Available online at BODY

Monday musings on Australian literature: Bernard Cronin, an Old Derelict!

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Bernard Cronin

Bernard Cronin (Presumed Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

It’s a bit cheeky, really, to write about a writer I’ve never read, but I do this occasionally, particularly in Monday Musings because I use them to educate myself as well as to share ideas and knowledge with you. I came across Bernard Cronin (1884-1968) when I was roving around Trove earlier this year. He’s an English-born Australian writer and you can read about him on Wikipedia and at the Australian Dictionary of Biography. If you want to read about his life, do go there, because my focus is not going to be that.

However, I will give you a nutshell! Cronin came to Australia when he was 6 years old, and graduated from an agricultural college. He worked in cattle-farming, as a salesman and clerk, and as a journalist, but for most of his life he was also writing. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and verse, some in his own name and some using pseudonyms. In 1920, he co-founded the Old Derelicts’ Club (don’t you love that!) for struggling authors and writers. This became the Society of Australian Authors in 1927, with Cronin its first president, but in 1936 the society was wound up because, according to Cronin, it was becoming “infiltrated by politics”. Cronin St, in a suburb in my city, is named for him.

Cronin first came to my attention when he appeared in the top 10 of the 1927 plebiscite on Australian authors*. And then, as I was following other links, I came across him again in an article written in 1933 by Canadian writer, Aidan de Brune (1879-1946), who also settled in Australia. Aidan de Brune wrote a series of articles on Australian authors for The West Australian, devoting the third article to Cronin. By this time, 1933, Cronin had published around 15 or so novels, and saw himself as an Australian writer. De Brune writes that unlike many writers he had stayed in Australia, and quotes Cronin as saying:

The writer in the Old Country finds his scenery, as it were, ready made for him. In this country it is definitely not to be found upon the surface of things. One has to dig deeply to become aware of the very great natural beauties of the Australian landscape. Real treasure is mostly of the buried variety. To my mind there is more character in an old Aussie gum tree than in any other tree I ever heard of. Incidentally, I should say that that much abused genius, D. H. Lawrence, came closer to an understanding of the spirit of the Australian landscape than any other writer, local, or imported, has yet done. He is the first scribe definitely to sight the real genii of the bush.

De Brune interprets this as Cronin seeing “Australia as a literary theme”, but without a need to “sentimentalise” it. I’m intrigued by Cronin’s comment on DH Lawrence. I still haven’t read Kangaroo and, while I’m not driven to read Lawrence again, I feel I should make an exception for this, one day. I also love Cronin’s description the “Aussie gum tree”. Yes!

De Brune then quotes Cronin again:

Our trouble is that we lack real breeding, and crudeness is a poor scaffold for the Arts. Further, the indifference of our rulers to the absolute need to develop a national soul has not made matters any better. Hansard will never make this country aware of the sublimities of human destiny. We need to see Australia from her own standpoint, and with her own individuality. The Arts are our only hope of salvation.

De Brune comments that “by this last phrase our fierce realist is revealed as an idealist, after all”. Perhaps so. What interests me, these eight decades later, is that ongoing battle against indifferent rulers for validation of the arts, for recognition of the importance of the arts to our souls, national and otherwise.

Cronin’s next novel, to be published in 1933, was The sow’s ear. Set in Tasmanian timber country, it is, says De Brune, “a ruthless exposure of the tragic life of young girls enslaved by the system of marrying without love, at the command of domineering parents”. He writes that all Cronin’s novels have this “fierce” quality, exposing what Cronin “considers to be wrong, stupid or uneconomic. In this sense he is the strongest of the Australian writers who wish to make us aware of our short comings, so that we may eliminate them, and become a truly civilised nation.” So, Cronin had a very clear image of what sort of Australia, what sort of “national soul” he wanted us to develop.

After giving a brief rundown of Cronin’s life and career to date, de Brune concludes with Cronin’s role in the Australian Society of Authors. He again quotes Cronin:

There is much to discourage the Australian writer. Nevertheless, he holds steadily to his job. He hopes that the pioneering work which he is doing will prove an invaluable foundation for the generation of writers to come. Give him the support of his own Government and public, and he will win to wider distinction inside a decade. But he’ll win through, any way.

I love that optimism – that writers will “win through anyway”. In many ways I think they do – but I do often wish it were easier for them! De Brune ends his article forecasting that “when Australian authors have finally won recognition from their own people, the name of Bernard Cronin will stand high in the roll of honour of those who have fought for this objective”. Now, that makes me sad. Maybe this is a case of back-slapping between mates, but somehow, reading Cronin’s words, and of his role in various writers’ organisations, I suspect there is a good deal of truth in De Brune’s assessment – and yet I didn’t know Cronin. I’d love to know if other Aussies here do.

* I wrote on this plebiscite in a Monday Musings last year, but only gave the top 6 novelists. Cronin was number 7!

Jessica White, Entitlement (Review)

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WhiteEntitlementVikingEntitlement is a powerful title for Australian author Jessica White’s second novel, but then White wanted to explore some powerful themes – though they are, unfortunately, somewhat belied by the rural romance/saga looking cover. The author bio at the front of the book tells us that White grew up on a property in northwest New South Wales and it becomes clear very early in the book that she knows whereof she speaks!

Of what does she speak, then, you are probably asking? Entitlement is set in contemporary times on a cattle property near a fictional place called Tumbin. The story starts with 29-year-old Cate McConville, now a practising GP, returning home because her parents wish to sell the property. She, with other family members, is a partner in the business, and all need to agree to the sale. But, Cate’s holding out – not because she loves farming and wants to return, but because her only sibling, her much-loved brother Eliot, had disappeared several years earlier and she wants him to have a home to return to. The farm – the land – also contains her memories of, and therefore her link to, him.

While the plot-line is established gradually, the first chapter sets the book’s tone and style. It tells us there’s tension between Cate and her parents; that memory is going to feature strongly in the telling; and that indigenous issues are likely to be part of the story. The book then progresses, introducing more and more characters over the next few chapters. Each chapter tends to be dedicated to one character, or a small group of characters, and usually involves flashbacks, as the character remembers something from, or reflects on, the past. White handles this well. There are many characters, but the present-flashback narrative style keeps them clear and in their place (if that makes sense). This style does risk becoming a little rigid, but White breaks it up every now and then with a chapter purely set in the present, or one that commences in the past.

Very early, as the characters are introduced, the themes start to become clear. The story is told within two main contexts – farming succession and indigenous connection to land. Over-riding all this is the notion of stolen and lost children. Local indigenous man, Mellor, has worked for a couple of decades for the McConvilles, as had his wife until she’d died of cancer. His extended family, particularly his two aunts, live with him on the edge of the property, and have experienced the stealing of their children. Cate’s father, Blake, is racist and dismissive of indigenous people and their rights, while her mother Leonora, by contrast, is on friendly relations with Mellor and his family.

Now, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll have read some of my discussions of non-indigenous people writing about indigenous issues. It’s uneasy ground to walk on, but for White, with her farming background, the issues of stolen children and indigenous land rights are things she’s likely to have lived. I’m not surprised she wanted to explore it. Indeed, she wrote a comment on this blog nearly two years ago, saying that this novel:

raises the question of who, in contemporary Australia, is entitled to the land? I also tried to show, through the break up of a white family that was fighting over land, how Indigenous people have been affected by their dispossession. I don’t think it’s a question that can ever be answered, though I did aim for a (probably utopian) resolution at the end of the book.

She couldn’t do this, really, without creating indigenous characters and that means of course that she had to present (her understanding of) their attitudes. I think she’s handled this sensitively, but of course I’m non-indigenous. I did wonder if she’d stepped onto shakier ground when she drew comparisons between Cate’s mother’s loss with that of the stolen generation mothers. However, in her acknowledgements White thanks “Michael Aird and Sarah Martin for their conversations and resources on Indigenous culture and history”. She has not, it seems, walked this ground lightly. And she doesn’t leave it at country and stolen generation issues, but touches on other injustices, such as indigenous health and housing, and racist violence.

White is on safe ground when she discusses the land and farm from Cate’s point of view. I thoroughly enjoyed her descriptions of the landscape and farm life – little scenes of her father and uncle undertaking farm tasks, of Mellor tending to fences, or of Cate running through the land, for example. Here’s a description of an Australia Day picnic:

Flies and mosquitoes plucked at their skin. The scents of the bush were drawn out by the heat and bundled together like a sweet, loosely woven shawl. Kangaroos bounded away in alarm as they made their way up the hill. Crickets whirred, rising from the long grass, and cockatoos screeched.

Her characters, too, are real; they are imperfect, believable human beings. Cate’s inflexibility, her selfish unwillingness to understand the health issues forcing the need to sell, made me cross but the pain, the loss, driving her behaviour is believable. Her parents are presented as having a loving relationship, but not without its tensions and conflicts. And so on.

Entitlement is an engrossing and serious, though not a grim read. As White admits, she does try for a positive resolution, which could almost do the seriousness of the issues a disservice. However, the story is not completely neatly tidied up, presumably because she realised that her question – how do we handle conflicting relationships to this land so many of us call home – does not have a simple answer. It’s therefore important that both indigenous and non-indigenous writers put stories and ideas out there for us to think about. It can only help the discussion, don’t you think?

awwchallenge2015Jessica White
Entitlement
Melbourne: Viking, 2012
289pp.
ISBN: 9780670075935

(Signed copy won in a blog giveaway)

Stella Prize 2015 Shortlist

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I rarely write longlist, shortlist and winner posts, but for the Stella Prize I don’t mind making an exception. Last month, I posted on the longlist, and yesterday, the shortlist was announced.

  • Maxine Beneba Clarke’s Foreign Soil (Hachette): short story collection that I really must read, a debut book
  • Emily Bitto’s The Strays (Affirm Press): another debut book, this a novel that’s been garnering excellent reviews, and I’m keen to read this.
  • Christine Kenneally’s The Invisible History of the Human Race (Black Inc): the only non-fiction in the list, about her research into DNA and humanity’s origins.
  • Sofie Laguna’s The Eye of the Sheep (Allen & Unwin): second adult novel by an award-winning playwright and writer for children, about an individual young boy who may be, though it’s apparently not stated, on the autism spectrum.
  • Joan London’s The Golden Age (Random House): the only shortlisted book by a well-established novelist. I love her writing so need to read this. All these “must reads” make me wonder what I have been reading!
  • Ellen van Neerven’s Heat and Light (UQP): another debut book, and an intriguing collection of short, long and interrelated stories. I reviewed it last month.

It’s great seeing so many smaller publishers in the mix. Reminds us again that we should not overlook them when we are seeking quality books! This Stella Prize link will give you all the gen on the shortlist, including excerpts.

I was disappointed not to see Helen Garner’s The house of grief shortlisted, but not having read all the books, I’m in no position to pass judgement.

PS Apologies to those who saw it for the early incomplete posting of this post. I’m on the road and, against my better judgement, stupidly tried to use WordPress’s app. I like most things about WordPress, but detest the iPad app, so I tediously finished this in the browser on the iPad. Not a fun thing to do.

Lynette Washington (ed), Breaking beauty (Review)

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Lynette Washington, Breaking Beauty

Courtesy: MidnightSun

As I’ve said before, I usually don’t read book introductions until the end. In the case of Breaking beauty, an anthology of short stories edited by Lynette Washington, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had read it first because Brian Castro’s intro gave nothing away while at the same time saying a lot. He starts by noting that the short story is making a come-back, “and wondering why it ever went away, perhaps because we were too imbued with the great whatever novel in the Borealis of canons or by the glossy fits of fashionable shades of grey”. Love the bite in that!

It’s a great introduction. It’s erudite, pithy, and often tongue-in-cheek. Castro says, reading my mind, “what good is an intro-duction if you haven’t been in-ducted, or even read the stories”. What indeed? And yet, his “intro-duction” manages to craftily incorporate the stories and their contexts, the ideas that drive them, without over-explaining or giving anything away. It is one of the most delicious introductions I’ve read in a very long time – unlike my introduction, so let’s move on!

Breaking beauty is a collection of stories by graduates of the University of Adelaide’s Creative Writing course. As Castro hints through a reference to Rousseau and as Washington states more directly, the stories explore the “complementary forces” and “dualities” encompassed by the idea of beauty, the notion that “there is no beauty without ugliness”. There are 28 stories, of which 22 are by women. They range in length from three or four pages to ten or so. Five of the stories have been published elsewhere, including Melanie Kinsman’s heart-rending “A paper woman” which was published in the Margaret River Press’s The trouble with flying (my review).

As you would expect, the stories look at beauty from all sorts of angles, physical, emotional, spiritual, even intellectual, but they rarely tell it straight. In Matthew Gabriel’s “To my son”, for example, an ugly father presents, to his apparently similarly ugly son, his solution for “neutralising physical appearance” which, he believes, will “not only rid the world of ugly’s plague but also its inextricable and toxic inverse”. Jo Lennan’s “A real looker” explores an extra-marital passion that resulted in a daughter who struggles to understand the adult world of passion, and a father transfers this passion to a boat called Marilyn. Sean Williams’ “The beholders” is a speculative fiction piece which cleverly twists the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

In other stories, beauty is more abstract . The second story, Corrie Hosking’s “A well strained fence”, is told first person by a young man for whom beauty is neatness and order. It’s a nicely sustained story that epitomises what a complicated notion or concept beauty is. It also neatly provides me with an opportunity to talk about voice. Just over half the stories are told first person, and two are told second person. One of these, Mary Lynn Mather’s mother-and-child story, “Whatever happened to the fairy-tale ending”, uses second person effectively to convey an emotion that is almost beyond bearing.

But of course voice is about more than which “person” is used; it’s about the persona used to tell the story, that is, about how the narrator of that story sounds to us. In short story collections – particularly anthologies – we usually find a great variety in voice (and, related to this, tone). Lynette Washington, in “Lia and Amos”, uses a matter-of-fact, reporter-like third person voice to tell a story with an unusual twist. The voice keeps us on our toes, divulging only what is going on in the moment, with no backstory or additional information, so that the end, when it comes, surprises and yet seems natural at the same time, because nothing has been sensationalised. By contrast, Rosemary Jackson’s narrator, Athina in “Athina and the sixty-nine calorie burn”, exudes the distressing (in this case), naive confidence of the young while the reader knows exactly what’s going on.

Several stories, including some already mentioned, tackle contemporary society’s (over-)emphasis on beauty. Others look at a broader notion of aesthetics from some interesting angles. Rebekah Clarkson uses an argument about aesthetics – a finial, in fact – in “A simple matter of aesthetics” to expose male arrogance, while in Katherine Arguile’s “Wabi-Sabi” a man’s commitment to aesthetics puts his family’s health, indeed survival, at risk. Meanwhile, Stefan Laszczuk’s narrator in “The window winder” finds beauty in a very gruesome place.

There’s no way, of course, that I can mention all twenty-eight stories. The ones I’ve mentioned here aren’t the only ones I enjoyed. There are moving – and often painful – stories about love, about sons and mothers, nieces and aunts, husbands and wives, mothers and children. There are stories about ageing, and the losses that usually attend, in one form or another. And there’s Lilian Rose’s cheeky story about a very unusual “Ladies Tea Party”.

Castro writes in his introduction of “the fleeting and the fleeing before one’s eyes, as a good short story is wont to do, not allowing its meaning to fully emerge because that would kill it, but letting it flit mothlike into memory”. This definition of good short stories could also define “true” beauty – as I’m sure the writers in this diverse and enjoyable collection would agree.

awwchallenge2015Lynette Washington (ed)
Breaking Beauty
Rundle Mall: MidnightSun Publishing, 2014
228pp
ISBN: 978192522700

(Review copy supplied by Midnight Sun)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Novels set in Canberra

/ Whispering Gums / 24 Comments

The time will come, I’m sure, when I start repeating myself in my Monday Musings posts. This week’s post comes perilously close. I’ve written before about Canberra’s centenary publications (The invisible thread and the Meanjin Canberra issue), and I’ve written about Capital women and men poets, and women and men novelists*, but I haven’t specifically written about books set in Canberra. So today, Canberra Day, that’s what I’m going to do. Canberra Day, for those of you who don’t know, celebrates the official naming of Canberra on 12 March, 1913.

Canberra, as you’ll know if you’ve been reading my blog, boasts many writers (past and present). However, those writers have often not written about or set their novels in Canberra – and, sometimes, writers who don’t come from here, have. Consequently, this post’s focus is the works, not their creators’ origin. As always, I’m presenting a small selection – and the books will be presented in chronological order of their setting (as best as I can determine that).

  • M Barnard Eldershaw’s Plaque with laurel (1937) is believed to be the first novel set in Canberra. Unfortunately, I’ve not read this book but historian Patricia Clarke wrote about it in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2012, the 75th anniversary of its publication. A satirical novel about Australia’s literary scene, it is about a writers’ conference held in “inscrutable” Canberra and is apparently not at all complimentary about what was then barely a city. One character apparently describes living there (here) as “just awful”. Clarke sees it as an “invaluable historical record of Canberra in the 1930s”. I really must read it, and try not to let my patriotic blood boil!
  • Frank Moorhouse’s Cold light (2012, my review) spans around two and half decades, from 1950 to 1973. The last book in the Edith trilogy, it completes the story of Edith’s career which started in Europe in the League of Nations and ended in Canberra during some of the city’s most formative decades. These were the years when, for example, Lake Burley Griffin was created after much dispute. One of Edith’s first jobs when she arrives in Canberra is to work as a town planner, and Moorhouse gorgeously chronicles the discussions and controversies that raged at the time about Canberra as a place to live and work. I loved Edith’s desire to see Canberra as a “social laboratory”, which would “try out all sorts of ideas for good living”, and as a “place for citizens to ask questions”. I think Edith would love to see today’s Canberra!
  • Andrew Croome’s Document Z (2008, my review) is set in the mid-1950s and tells the story of Canberra’s most famous spies, the Petrovs. Croome describes the Canberra of those days, the suburbs and shops of the inner South, with an authenticity that suggests thorough research. Like Moorhouse’s novel it’s a good example of historical fiction, which I see as a work that combines an interesting story with well-researched depiction of the times in which it is set.
  • Sara Dowse’s West block: the hidden world of Canberra’s mandarins (1983) is set in the 1970s in West Block which is one of Canberra’s early buildings housing public service functions, and was, for some time, the home of the Prime Minister’s Department. This book is about the machinations of the bureaucracy, about the public servants who work behind the ministers to create and manage the policies the ministers want. My reading group loved it when we read it in the 1980s, because it rang true to the world we knew.
  • Fog sculture, National Gallery of Australia

    Fujiko Nakaya’s Fog sculpture rising over Dadang Christanto’s Heads from the North

    Dorothy Johnston’s The house at no. 10 (2005, my review) is set in the early 1990s, on the cusp of the legalisation of the sex industry in Canberra. This Canberra is the Canberra of suburbs and neighbours, of love and betrayal. It could almost be set in any city, except that Johnston knows Canberra and uses its particular history and features – such as the lake to divide the two aspects of the main character’s life as a mother and sex-worker – to ground the work in a particular place and time while also exploring universal themes.

  • Marion Halligan’s The fog garden (2001) is set around the time it was written. It is her novel about coming to terms with the loss of a much-loved partner. It’s also a clever book about the art of fiction – about finding the truth in the nexus between fact and fiction. It has an autobiographical element, but “Clare is not me” she says. The title is metaphorical, describing the “fog” that comes with grief, but also drawing from the wonderful fog garden at Canberra’s National Gallery. This is just one of several books that Halligan has set in Canberra.
  • Kel Robertson’s Smoke and mirrors (2010) became, by popular vote, the ACT’s book in the 2012 National Year of Reading collection of eight books designed to “articulate the Australian experience – remote, regional, suburban and metropolitan”. I haven’t read this, though Mr Gums has, but I was intrigued that a crime novel was chosen by Canberrans to represent us. Then again, perhaps it’s alright, as the murders being investigated take place at a writers’ retreat! (Maybe Robertson had read Plaque with laurel!) Also, the murders are political, relating to an about-to-be-published memoir of a government minister that is suspected to reveal CIA involvement in Gough Whitlam’s dismissal in 1975.

Have you noticed how many of the novels have politics at their core? That’s not surprising, given the sort of city we are, but I also noticed that most of the novels are fully or mainly set south of the lake (or where the lake ended up being). This is interesting, particularly given the CBD is north of the lake, but maybe it reflects my first point – parliament house, the centre of politics, is located in the south!

For a more extensive list of novels set in Canberra, check out the blog Dinner at Caphs, which documents blogger Dani’s year of reading and reviewing Canberra-set novels.

* I should probably use the adjectives “female” and “male” here, and I did in the title of one of those posts, but for some reason it just doesn’t sound right to me.

Jane Austen, Emma Vol 1 (Review, or perhaps just thoughts)

/ Whispering Gums / 12 Comments
EmmaCovers

Every now and then my local Jane Austen group does a slow read of one of Austen’s novels. With 2015 being the 200th anniversary of the publication of Emma, we decided it was the logical choice for our next slow read. I love this activity because what happens when I re-read an Austen novel – particularly when I take part in a slow read – is that I “see” something new in the novel, something new to me that is, because it’s hard to think that anyone could come up with something totally new about Austen.

So, last time I re-read Emma, the thing that stood out for me was how beautifully plotted it is. There isn’t a word or action that doesn’t imply or lead to something telling, even if we don’t know it at the time. This read, with the plotting firmly in my brain, I’m finding that the aspect is flying a little under the radar. Instead, I’m noticing how often the word “friend” or notion of “friendship” is appearing. The novel, in fact, starts with Emma losing her ex-governess-then-companion Miss Taylor to marriage. They’ll remain friends but … so Emma, alone in a big house with her fussy, demanding, albeit gentle father, develops a friendship with Harriet, “the natural daughter of Somebody … [who] had no visible friends but what had been acquired at Highbury”.

This, though, is not the only friendship involving Emma to appear in Volume 1. Mr John Knightley, Emma’s brother-in-law, advises Emma “as a friend” that Mr Elton’s attentions are more than friendly, but Emma believes that she and Mr Elton “are very good friends, and nothing more”. Emma and her long-standing friend and neighbour, Mr Knightley, decide to “be friends again” after one of their quarrels. Meanwhile, we, like Mr Knightley, wonder whether Emma’s friendship is helpful to Harriet or not.

In the third paragraph of the novel, Austen suggests what she sees friendship to entail:

Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouse’s family, less as a governess than as a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly of Emma.  Between them it was more the intimacy of sisters.  Even before Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint; and the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they had been living together as friend and friend, very mutually attached, and Emma doing just what she liked; esteeming Miss Taylor’s judgment, but directed chiefly by her own.

I’m talking about the words “and Emma doing just what she liked”. Miss Taylor/Mrs Weston, as Mr Knightley says to her later, had been a good companion to Emma but had also been better at submitting her will to Emma than in giving Emma the “complete education” he thinks she needed. Mr Knightley’s view of friendship encompasses providing honest, wise advice. He’s therefore severely angry with Emma when she encourages Harriet not to accept Robert Martin’s proposal:

 You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma.

There are other friendships in the novel that don’t directly involve Emma, some with and between neighbours, and some within families. Her father, Mr Woodhouse, may be “no companion” for Emma, but we learn in Chapter 3 that he “liked very much to have his friends come and see him”. One of those visiting friends is Miss Bates who feels fortunate to be “surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother and so many good neighbours and friends”. And one of these “good neighbours and friends” is Mr Knightley who supplies the low-income Bates’ women with apples and other produce from his estate. Emma’s friend Harriet, herself, has friends who invite her to visit, the Martin family who manage a farm on Mr Knightley’s estate. See what’s happening? An intricate set-up of all sorts of friendships. Austen must be on about something.

Emma more than any of Austen’s six novels paints a fairly in-depth picture of a diverse community. There are the Westons, Mrs and Miss Bates, and their niece Jane Fairfax, Mr Knightley and his estate, Mr Elton the minister and his wife, Mrs Goddard and other members of her school, the new-money Coles, and various other members of the community who appear briefly, including the poor and gypsies. This is a more complete “Country Village” than we find in the other novels, even though her focus here is still her favourite, that is, “3 or 4 families” (Letter to her niece, Anna, 9 September 1814). It’s not surprising, then, that with such a wide and diverse group that friendship would feature more significantly. I look forward to watching and thinking about how she develops this concept over the next two volumes. Watch this space …

Monday musings on Australian literature: Pitch days

/ Whispering Gums / 15 Comments

When I was researching last Monday’s post on development programs for writers, I came across several references to publisher “pitch” days. As someone who isn’t writing a book, and who has no plans to, the concept of a “pitch” day was something that hadn’t made a big impact on me, though of course I knew what it meant.

If you are a writer who’s tried to get a book published, you know there are various ways of going about it. One is to find an agent who will tout/pitch your book to publishers. Another is to win a prize that involves publication – not that there are many of those! Yet another is to send your manuscript, unsolicited, to a publisher and hope they will read it. We’ve all heard stories about what happens then. They end up in a pile, and more often than not don’t get read. What authors want, of course, is some sort of guarantee their work will be read. This is where “pitch” days come in.

So what, exactly, is a pitch day? Most publishers have always accepted unsolicited donations, albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but their pitch days offer two specific things: the publisher clearly identifies what they are looking for, what the writer needs to submit, and how; and they (mostly) offer some sort of guarantee that the work will be read and the time-frame within which this will happen. These pitch days are a fairly new thing, I believe, and stem partly from the possibilities offered by digital publishing.

Here are some of the programs I’ve come across, and that I believe are currently operating:

  • Allen & Unwin’s The Friday Pitch has been running for 6 years or more, and is open to writers for adults, young adults and children. They ask writers to “email a short synopsis or outline of your chapters and contents, and the first chapter of your work and related illustrations if relevant” on any Friday. They say that “if we like what we read … we will get back to you within a fortnight”. They don’t say, but I think imply, that they will read everything. They also say that Friday Pitch has discovered some bestselling authors, including Fleur McDonald, Helen Brown, and Mary Groves, though I must say that I don’t know these authors myself.
  • HarperCollins’ The Wednesday Post started in 2013. Writers can send fiction and nonfiction submissions each Wednesday, for print and digital publication, and digital-only publication. They say they will respond to authors within three weeks if they are interested. According to Writing WA, HarperCollins wants to find “new adult and YA titles and is particularly interested in ‘exceptional contemporary women’s fiction'” from new and established writers.
  • Pan Macmillan’s Manuscript Monday is a “new” initiative (though I don’t know when they wrote that statement). This process only occurs monthly on the first Monday of the month. They “accept submissions between 10am and 4pm that are sent electronically” and comply with the guidelines available via the link above. They say they will read every submission within three months of receipt, but won’t provide reasons for their decision nor give any feedback. And you can’t ring or contact them to chase up your submission. I think this includes pitches for Momentum, which is PanMacmillan’s “digital first imprint”.
  • Penguin’s Monthly Catch was created because Penguin “is keen and excited to read new work from Australian authors”! This program operates over the first 7 days (that is from the 1st to the 7th, regardless of days of the week) of every month. Only electronic submissions are accepted, and only works for adults. They say they’ll read every manuscript, and will get back to successful authors within three months. They do not provide feedback.

These are just a few of the programs out there. There are, for example, some genre-specific ones, such as for Romance writers. And some conferences run pitch-to-the-publisher programs, such as GenreCon and the Perth Writers Festival.

What these publishers won’t accept is fairly consistent. Poetry, plays, and educational works are frequently identified as not wanted. Some exclude works for children and young adults, while others will accept these. Authors need to check each publisher’s guidelines to make sure.

If you are interested in reading more about pitching, you might like to read the experience of two authors: Patrick Lenton who was published by Pan Macmillan’s digital arm, Momentum, and the above-mentioned Fleur McDonald who was published by Allen & Unwin. I also enjoyed reading this blog post on the “art of pitching to publishers”.

As always, I’d love to hear if any readers here have used “pitch days” … or have any stories about being published.