Monday musings on Australian literature: Indigenous Australian memoirs

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As Australians would know, this week – July 7-14 – is NAIDOC week. NAIDOC originally stood for an organisation – ‘National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee’ – but the acronym has now become the name of the week itself. Fascinating how acronyms can take on lives of their own, isn’t it? Anyhow, the theme for this year’s celebrations is We value vision: Yirrkala Bark Petitions 1963.

This theme commemorates the 50th anniversary of two bark petitions which were sent by the Yolngu people of Yirrkala in northeast Arnhem Land to the Australian Parliament. The petitions concerned the Commonwealth Government’s granting of mining rights on land excised from Arnhem Land. They asked the Government to recognise the Yolngu peoples’ traditional rights and ownership of their lands. These petitions were the first indigenous Australian documents recognised by the Government and helped, the NAIDOC website says, to “set into motion a long process of legislative and constitutional reforms for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”. Many Australians know of Eddie Mabo and the Native Title Act of 1993, but I wonder how many know of actions like this which occurred decades earlier?

In this spirit of commemorating the past, I thought today’s Monday Musings could focus on indigenous Australian memoirs/autobiographies. I’ve written on this topic before, and so will try to avoid repeating myself too much. Interestingly, all of the books I mention below are by women. The Cambridge companion to Australian literature says, in fact, that since the 1970s, Aboriginal women have dominated indigenous autobiography.

A number of themes run through indigenous memoirs/autobiographies and, of course, identity is a big one. One of the best known examples of a memoir about identity is Sally Morgan‘s My place which was published in 1988, Australia’s bicentenary year – the bicentenary, that is, of white settlement in Australia. It was not a year that was universally celebrated by indigenous Australians, for good reason. My place was, possibly, the first book by an indigenous Australian that many non-indigenous Australians had read – and it became a best-seller. Morgan, also an artist, told the story of her family – and of their shame that was so strong that she had not been told she was indigenous. She’d been let think she was of Indian (that is, from the subcontinent) extraction, until she was well into her teens. I haven’t read My place since 1988, but I expect it would still stand up well today. Morgan is a great story-teller.

Anita Heiss‘s Am I black enough for you, which was published in 2012, is also about identity, but in a different more confident way. I’m reading this one now. In it, Heiss aims to educate Australians about the breadth of indigenous life and experience in Australia, to show us that people do not have to be living a traditional indigenous life in the desert to identify as indigenous.

A big topic for indigenous memoirs is the experience of the Stolen Generation. Many of these also deal with identity, but from a specific point of view. I mentioned one – Doris Pilkington‘s Following the Rabbit Proof Fence – in my previous post. While I’ve read a couple of novels dealing with this issue since that post, I haven’t read more memoirs. There are many out there, though, including Rosalie Fraser’s Shadow Child: A Memoir of the Stolen Generation (1998), Doris Kartinyeri’s Kick the tin (2000), Donna Meehan’s It is no secret: The story of a stolen child (2000).

As Australians would know, the most comprehensive study of the Stolen Generation appeared in the government report Bringing them home (1997). This 700-page report contains excerpts from the testimonies of over 500 indigenous people about their or their families’ experiences of being stolen.

A common style of memoir – for indigenous and non-indigenous people alike – is what I’d call the “success memoir”. You know, those chronicling major success or high achievement. Sydney 2000 Olympic Games gold medallist Cathy Freeman wrote Cathy: Her own story in 2003. As often happens with memoirs written by non-writers, she had a co-author, the sportswriter Scott Gullan.

Last but not least is the simple story-of-my-life memoir, though most memoirists wouldn’t be writing their stories if they really were simple! Ruby Langford Ginibi would fall into this category – I think, as I haven’t read her yet. Ginibi published her first book, the gorgeously titled Don’t take your love to town, in 1988 when she was 54. She won a Human Rights Literary Award for it. Ginibi was a lecturer in and historian of Aboriginal history, but her start was way different. She married young, had nine children, lived and worked in the bush, and also worked as a clothing machinist. One of the obituaries written after her death says:

Through her numerous books, short stories, poetry, interviews and public appearances and her commitment to ‘edu-ma-cating’ non-Aboriginal people about Indigenous peoples’ circumstances and struggle she made a distinctive and substantial contribution to Australian history and literature.

 “‘Edu-ma-cating’ non-Aboriginal people”. That’s what all these writers are doing in their different ways … I’m glad they are, and will continue to read a few each year.

Unfortunately, many of these books are likely to be out of print but most should be available in libraries – in Australia at least. If you’d like to read one, I suggest you do so now and join ANZLitLovers Indigenous Literature Week. Lisa will, I understand, accept reviews after the week has finished.

Willa Cather, Peter (Review)

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Surely a whole year can’t have passed since I last wrote about a Library of America short story? But yes, it has. My last one was Robert Frost’s “The question of a feather” in July last year. Many times I’ve chosen one to read, and many times I’ve let other things get in the way – but finally I sat down to read a short piece by Willa Cather, one of my favourite American writers. The story is “Peter” and was apparently her very first published piece. It was published when she was 19 as the result of her university professor sending it off to a magazine.

LOA’s notes, as usual, provide some interesting background, including the information I’ve just provided above. They say that she went on to publish it two more times in 1892 and 1900, each with some revisions, and then incorporated its essence into her novel My Antonia which I’ve reviewed here. No wonder it felt familiar!

English: Willa Cather's childhood home in Red ...

Willa Cather’s childhood home in Red Cloud, Nebraska. (Photo courtesy: Museumsparrow via Wikipedia)

It is, essentially, a character sketch. Its focus is Peter, an old man – now 60 – who emigrated to Nebraska from Bohemia with his wife, oldest son Antone, and other children five years before the story starts. In Bohemia, Peter had been a second violinist “in the great theatre in Prague”.  Without belittling the important role of second violinists, I think in terms of Cather’s story, “second” is meant to convey something about Peter:

He could never read the notes well, so he did not play first; but his touch, he had a touch indeed …

Why he could never read the notes well, we are not told, but we can guess because his neighbours in Nebraska see him as “a lazy, absent-minded fellow”. In fact, it is his son who runs the place:

… people said he was a likely youth, and would do well. That he was mean and untrustworthy every one knew, but that made little difference. His corn was better tended than any in the country, and his wheat always yielded more than other men’s.

There is no love lost between these two rather unappealing men. The story starts with Peter telling his son that “thou shalt not sell it [the violin] until I’m gone”. From his son’s point of view, Peter can no longer play due to trembling and the money would be useful. For homesick Peter though it’s his link to happier times. He doesn’t like “the country, nor the people, least of all he liked plowing”. Cather’s characterisation is effective. We are forced to choose between the hard but hardworking Antone who is trying to support the whole family in a harsh land, and the rather pathetic Peter who, even in his past, was “a foolish fellow, who cared for nothing but music and pretty faces”. Antone and Peter are set up as foils for each other, opposites, and Cather wants us, I think, to see and understand but not judge.

This is a classic migrant story, in which the old find it harder to adapt than the young, for whom the immigration was usually made in the first place! It’s also a father-son/generational clash story. Neither understands each other, and neither seems inclined, it seems, to make many concessions. Given all this, the ending is both shocking and not surprising.

It’s an impressive debut for a 19-year-old writer. However, according to LOA’s notes, Cather regretted allowing her professor to publish it before her style matured. Her biographer Phyllis Johnson wrote that the older Cather “warned aspiring young writers against too early publication”. I wonder why? What damage does she think it did to her? As a reader, I love having access to early works like this – or, to say, Jane Austen’s juvenilia. They illustrate, as LOA suggests, the writer’s “the literary journey”.

What do you think? Do you like to read early/youthful works of favourite writers, or would you rather only read their mature works?

Willa Cather
“Peter”
First published: The Mahogany Tree, May 1892.
(Published several times after this, in various revised versions)
Available: Online at the Library of America

Rachel Hennessy, The heaven I swallowed (Review)

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Rachel Hennessy, The heaven I swallowed

Cover: Courtesy Wakefield Press

It feels strange to be reviewing a Vogel Literary Award runner up, which Rachel Hennessy’s The heaven I swallowed was in 2008, in a year when the judges decided not to award the prize because they didn’t find ‘that special quality that a winning entry has’. C’est la vie I suppose, but what a shame for this year’s entrants. I hope it doesn’t discourage them. Rejections can be good for you – or so I’ve been told.

The heaven I swallowed is Hennessy’s second novel, though I hadn’t heard of her before. Her first, The Quakers, won the Adelaide Festival Award for an Unfinished Manuscript. She has also had many short stories published, a short play performed, and a short film, Not Waving, Drowning, screened at several festivals. She’s clearly been around.

According to Wakefield Press’s Media Release, The heaven I swallowed was inspired by Hennessy’s grandmother who was a member of the Stolen Generations, and by her paternal great-aunt whose husband fought in the second world war. The novel is set in the 1950s, with flashbacks to the past. It tells the story of Grace (Gracie to her husband Fred) and opens around 1950 when Grace is 40. She’s alone, having lost her husband, Fred, to the war, and childless, having had a miscarriage after Fred enlisted. She decides to take in 12-year-old Aboriginal girl, Mary, who, we later realise, is a stolen child. Grace, though, has been told that Mary’s an orphan. Caring for her, Grace says, represents “the epitome of my goodness”. The novel is divided into two parts, with the second part set 5 years after the first.

My problem is how to talk about it without giving too much away. Telling you what separates the two parts would rather spoil the tale. It’s not a heavily plot-driven story, but there are some significant events that mark its progress, so instead I’ll focus on character and style. And, I’ll start by saying the novel reminded me of Anita Brookner. Grace could have stepped right out of a Brookner novel. She’s an outsider, she’s isolated, she’s lonely. She was an orphan, brought up by nuns – and that seems to have set her off on a path from which she finds it hard to deviate.

This orphan business leads to one of the main themes of the novel – secrets, lies and deception. Grace identifies with orphans. She often reads about them. Jane Eyre, David Copperfield and Tom Jones all make appearances in the novel. Consequently, Grace feels an affinity with Mary – though Mary says she has a mother. When Grace discovers, via her parish priest who had organised Mary’s placement, that Mary’s mother is looking for her, she accepts the priest’s advice and hides this fact from Mary. After all, as Father Benjamin says, “the girl’s much better off with you”. Yep, that’s true! She’s learning a lot about housework! Such was usually the lot of stolen generation girls.

This, though, is not the only lie in Grace’s life. There’s another big one that shadows her – to do with her role as a widow – and there are innumerable small ones. Many are those “little white lies” people tell, but in Grace’s case they are a way of life and serve to isolate her from those people who do reach out to her. Meanwhile, she is doing her best to raise Mary, albeit relying a little too much on the nuns’ methods she experienced, methods that were short on love and high on rules. One of the rules concerns lying: “Don’t lie to me again Mary”, she says. The irony, the hypocrisy, is not lost on the reader.

The heaven I swallowed is a well-plotted novel with lovely links that unite the plot, characters and themes. For example, the opening scene is a flashback to an experience Grace has when she was 12 – a visitation at night from what she believes is the Virgin Mary. Twenty-eight years later, 12-year-old Mary comes to stay with her. She feels Mary as a “presence”, but she also comes to love her, in her own way. Visits, visiting, presence, shadows run through the novel – some physical, some imagined, some spiritual. They provide much of the novel’s tension.

The story is told first person, by Grace. I found her a sympathetic character, but Murray Waldren on the back cover of my edition calls her “a memorable monster”. That’s a little harsh, I think. Grace makes many, many mistakes, but she’s a person in pain, describing herself at one point as “alone and untethered”. She’s not intentionally cruel, she’s not vicious, but she’s defensive and self-centred. In trying to protect herself she hurts both others and herself. It’s a credit to Hennessy that she can write about a “perpetrator” of the Stolen Generations with such compassion – she enables us to empathise with Grace without at all condoning her behaviour.

It would be hard for any book to follow Hilary Mantel‘s Bring up the bodies, and I must say that for the first few pages of this novel I was a little disengaged. Here we go, I was thinking, another girl damaged by her religious upbringing, but Hennessy soon got me in. She has captured the era – the 1950s with its small-mindedness, its gossipy church communities, its racism and sexism – convincingly. She seems to have listened to her family’s stories well!

As for Mary? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out what happens to her. I recommend you do, because this is a quiet but fierce little book about real people and real situations. It’s not always pretty, but it has a heart.

Rachel Hennessy
The heaven I followed
Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 2013
182pp.
ISBN: 9781862549487

(Review copy courtesy Wakefield Press)

Monday musings on Australian literature: AustLit FREE TRIAL

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When I first discovered AustLit (Australian Literature Resource) in the early 2000s I was thrilled. What fan of Aussie literature wouldn’t be excited by a database for Australian writers and writing? Created in 2000 by Australia’s university sector and led by the University of Queensland, AustLit “aims to be the definitive virtual research environment and information resource for Australian literary, print, and narrative culture” (from AustLit’s About page) – and it pretty much is, I’d say.

However, it is also a subscription service – and an expensive one at that – so my use of it has been limited to when I’ve been able to access it, either through public/national library logons (on-site at the library) or through my occasional contract work for a university (logon at home). But, during June and July (2013), AustLit is offering a free trial. Why didn’t I know? I’ve wasted a month’s good research! OK, I probably should have known. It was very likely announced in one of the many emails I receive and I missed it. Hands up who manages to read every email from every service they subscribe to?

Anyhow, I’d say, if you are interested in Australian literature and have some writers or works you want to research, hop to it now by clicking through to the AustLit website. Search, for example, on Elizabeth Jolley and you will get a link to AustLit’s author page for her. Author pages contain the following information, where applicable:

  • Most referenced works (with a link to all the author’s works)
  • Brief but useful biography
  • Awards
  • Awards for works

There are also – and here is where it gets exciting – links to:

  • Works about the author
  • Works about the author’s works

Click on these to get a listing of articles, books, essays etc about the author (349 for Jolley) or the works (546 for Jolley). They are listed alphabetically by title, but in the right sidebar are options for sorting and filtering. So, for example, you can sort the list by date or filter it by form, such as to retrieve just “reviews” or “criticism”.

But here is also where the disappointment hits. These lists comprise citations to the articles, essays etc. In most cases, you then need to find the journal or book in which they are located – through a journal database or the old way through a library catalogue. Being a person of the digital age, I want the content and I want it now! Admittedly, some are available on-line – indicated by a clickable arrow over which you can hover to see an abstract – but, not surprisingly, they are mostly recent works and there aren’t many of them. I’m sure DRM issues are involved here, in addition to availability in electronic form. To locate this content quickly, you can limit your search by clicking the “full text only” box. Do that on the main search page where you’ve also entered Elizabeth Jolley – did I tell you I’m a Jolley fan? – and you get 20 hits. Not a lot, but a good start. I understand that digitisation is an ongoing project so more and more content will become available.

There is more to AustLit. There are full text versions of poems and novels (either on the site or linked to from the site) and there’s a wide range of projects including ScreenLit, BlackWords and Banned in Australia. But, if you are interested, get in quick. Your free trial access has 30 days to go!

Seriously though, AustLit is a seriously good site.

Have you used the AustLit database, and if so what do you think? If you are not from Australia, are you aware of similar database projects for your national literature – and if so, what is it?

Satellite Boy (Movie review)

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It’s disappointing to say the least that the new Australian film, Satellite Boy, is in very limited distribution. It was released 10 days ago, and in my city, with 6 cinema complexes, it is screening in only one. Why? It’s rather an indictment of Australian audiences that such a film is not receiving wider distribution.

Off the soapbox, now, and onto the film. Satellite Boy tells the story of Pete (Cameron Wallaby), who’s around 11 years old and who lives in an abandoned, derelict drive-in cinema on the edge of town with his grandfather, Old Jagamarra (David Gulpilil). His mother has left, but Pete is expecting her back to carry out their plan of turning the cinema into a restaurant. Meanwhile, Old Jagamarra and Pete learn that the land is to be taken over by a mining company, so Pete sets off, on bike, with his friend Kalmain (Joseph Pedley), to change the mining company’s mind. Shortly into what is supposed to be a 2-day ride, they end up on foot, walking through some pretty forbidding country. Pete confidently says to Kalmain:

If you walk country, country will look after you.

East Kimberley landscape

Between Wyndham and Kununurra

Of course, it’s not that simple. The Australian outback is a harsh place, and while indigenous Australians have traditionally lived in it, we know that Pete has not yet learnt enough to survive.  “I’m sick of your stories” he mutters at the beginning of the film as his grandfather tries to pass on knowledge. However, as indigenous director Catriona Mackenzie has said in interviews, Satellite Boy is not a realistic film.

This is an important point because, from a realism point of view, the film has holes. Firstly, for those who like accuracy in fiction, the story’s geography is out of whack. You don’t for example, travel to Kununurra from Wyndham via Purnululu (the Bungle Bungles) National Park. But then the destination is never named, so the geography only fails if you know the region. Not naming places helps McKenzie, who also wrote the script, give the film a mythic or fabular tone – and enables her to focus on country rather than place. The other “hole” is that the film does not confront, with any depth, the conflict between old and new, or the likely ramifications of Pete’s choice. Despite some hints of cultural conflict and dysfunction, particularly in Kalmain’s family, it’s not a gritty film, like, say, Samson and Delilah (my review).

Purnululu (The Bungle Bungles)

Walking in Purnululu (aka The Bungle Bungles)

And so, of course, Pete and Kalmain do make it through, albeit with some scary moments, particularly for Kalmain who doesn’t quite have Pete’s faith or knowledge (or the guiding spirit of a grandfather). Most of the film concerns their journey, which buys into both the picaresque tradition, and the “lost child” motif I’ve written about before. As the boys start to lose their way, moving deeper and deeper into forbidding landscape without food or water, the camera cuts between Pete trying to put into practice his grandfather’s lessons and Old Jagamarra, worrying, and willing them on.

At its heart, the film is a coming-of-age story, indigenous-style. It is about a young man learning about country and having to decide what it means for him. Catriona McKenzie said that

the notion of country from an Aboriginal perspective is that it supports your spirit. It sustains you on a spiritual level, as well as a physical one if you have that understanding. That’s what I was going for.

And is, I think, what she achieved.

I loved David Bridie’s music. It’s evocative and engaging, sometimes playfully toe-tapping as when the boys set off on their journey, other times moodily spiritual as when Old Jagamarra appeals to the sky spirits/ancestors to bring the boys home. That the sky and the Milky Way are important to indigenous Australians’ belief system is made clear in the film’s opening when Old Jagamara sings “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” in language. This significance is reinforced when, a little later, the camera looks up from Pete’s bed to show us the ceiling decorated with star stickers – and again when, during their journey, the boys sleep in a satellite dish cradled between land and sky.

It’s a beautiful film, though also a slow one, which may be one reason why distribution is limited. Mr Gums felt the landscape photography was self-indulgent at times but, given the theme, I felt it was (mostly, anyhow) justified. The performances from the three main characters are excellent – Gulpilil is luminous, and newcomers Wallaby and Pedley are convincing.

The film was shown last year at Toronto International Film Festival. I wonder what that audience made of it. For me, it adds another perspective to the indigenous films that we are starting to see – not as tough as Samson and Delilah, not as joyful as Bran Nue Dae, but nonetheless thoughtful and relevant.

Satellite Boy
Dir: Catriona McKenzie
Prod: Satellite Films, 2012

Delicious descriptions from Down under: Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell on books

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Portrait of Thomas Cromwell. New York, Frick C...

Thomas Cromwell, by Hans Holbein the Younger. New York, Frick Collection. (Photo: Wikipedia)

There are many delicious descriptions to choose from Hilary Mantel‘s Bring up the bodies, which I reviewed earlier this week, and some have already been posted by bloggers in other posts (such as John at Musings of a Literary Dilettante, Lisa at ANZ LitLovers, and Alex in Leeds). Their excerpts relate more to thematic issues, but I want to share one that just tickled my fancy. Thomas Cromwell is, we know, a reader. He comments, for example, on Machiavelli‘s The Prince, which was published in 1532.

I enjoyed this little description of Cromwell and books early in the novel:

After supper, if there are no messengers pounding at the door, he will often steal an hour to be among his books. He keeps them at all his properties: at Austin Friars, at the Rolls House in Chancery Lane, at Stepney, at Hackney. There are books these days on all sorts of subjects. Books that advise you how to be a good prince,  or a bad one. Poetry books, and books that tell you how to keep accounts, books of phrases for use abroad, dictionaries, books that tell you how to wipe your sins clean and books that tell you how to preserve fish. His friend Andrew Boorde, the physician, is writing a book on beards; he is against them. He thinks of what Gardiner said: you should write a book yourself, that would be something to see.

If he did, it would be The Book Called Henry: how to read him, how to serve him, how best to preserve him. …

I love this for several reasons, not the least of which is the insight it provides into publishing in the 16th century. I hadn’t realised quite how varied the output was. I’d also never heard of Andrew Boorde but he’s clearly well enough known to make it into Wikipedia (see the link on his name above). He’s also the subject of a delightful post I found from a blogger called Early Modern John who, as well as describing Boorde as “randy and carnivorous”, filled me in a little about the book on beards.

As with much of Mantel’s writing, though, this excerpt is enjoyable for other reasons, such as for the humorous reference to Machiavelli’s The prince; the sly reference to Stephen Gardiner whom Cromwell sees as his enemy; and the insight into Cromwell’s character, into his love of books and his focus on and loyalty to Henry (with whom, of course, he believes his own best chance of success lies!).

Hilary Mantel, Bring up the bodies (Review)

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Hilary Mantel, Bring up the bodies

Courtesy: HarperCollins Australia

In her author’s note at the end of her second Thomas Cromwell novel, Bring up the bodies, Hilary Mantel writes that:

In this book I try to show how a few crucial weeks might have looked from Thomas Cromwell’s point of view. I am not claiming authority for my version; I am making the reader a proposal, an offer.

And what an offer it is! In my review of the first novel, Wolf Hall, I quote Cromwell’s statement that “…homo homini lupus, man is wolf to man”. This was related to the theme of the book – the machinations behind the scenes that change the world, something that we Australians are more familiar with right now than we’d like to be. (This is, in fact, a very modern book.) Anyhow, Bring up the bodies continues this theme but with a difference …

That difference is Thomas Cromwell’s motivations, but more on that anon. The plot concerns Henry’s desire to replace Anne Boleyn with Jane Seymour as his wife – and we all know where that led! It’s a much tighter plot – and a somewhat shorter book – than Wolf Hall. It takes place over about 9 months, from September 1535 to Summer 1536, and while the political climate is still evident – the continuing struggle to entrench the Church of England over the Roman Catholic Church and attempts at social welfare reform – politics and political change are not so much to the forefront in this second novel. Why? Well, because ….

Mantel wants to propose a motivation for Master Secretary Cromwell’s engineering of Anne’s downfall: revenge. Now, the word “revenge” is not, at least I don’t recollect it, actually used in the novel, though the softer word “grudge” appears a couple of times. But this is the motivation that Mantel proposes. It’s all to do with which men were and weren’t tried for treason (adultery with Anne) and their role in the downfall of Cromwell’s much-loved mentor, Cardinal Wolsey. Why, for example, was Thomas Wyatt never tried despite his professed attraction to Anne, while Henry Norris was? You’ll have to read the book – although you probably already have, given how late I am coming to it – to see Mantel’s proposition.

It is this revenge “take” on Cromwell that unifies Bring up the bodies in the way that the story of the separation of England from Rome and the Acts of Supremacy unified Wolf Hall even though both are ostensibly about the downfall of a queen. However, I don’t want to write a lot more about the plot and subject matter because I’m guessing many of the reviews before me have done that. What I want to write about is her writing. It’s breathtaking – the way she gets us into Cromwell’s head, the way she makes us feel the times, and particularly the way she uses language to drive the plot and themes.

Appealing to the subconscious, being almost subliminal, is common in fiction, I suppose, but Mantel does it with such aplomb. It’s the dropping of words and ideas that you barely notice or first notice and think they mean one thing only to find they are pointing to another. Take Wolsey for example. When he is first mentioned in the novel, it’s logical, it’s part of filling in the backstory that is common in sequels. But, the thing is, he is dead, long dead before this novel starts, and yet his name keeps cropping up. It’s always logical, but it starts to carry some larger weight – which becomes apparent as the denouement draws near. There are other words too – phantoms, spoils, truth, angels – which start to convey more than their literal meaning or which, through repetition, point us to larger meanings or themes. None of this is heavy-handed. You could almost miss it, but it’s there – drip, drip, drip.

If people had one criticism of Wolf Hall, it was Mantel’s use of the third person “he” for Thomas Cromwell. It seems Mantel took this to heart, so in Bring up the bodies she frequently qualifies the pronoun, using “he, Cromwell”. It does the job, though for one who didn’t find Wolf Hall a problem, it did feel a little clumsy to me at times – but I forgave her that. There’s so much to love.

Towards the end, during the process dissolving Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, the Lord Chancellor says

The truth is so rare and precious that sometimes it must be kept under lock and key.

This is deeply cynical (and ironic). The “council” of men has decided to grant the decree annulling the marriage but to keep the reason secret. Why? Because they really couldn’t agree on a valid one – they just knew it had to be done.

Bring up the bodies is a beautifully constructed but chilling novel in which Cromwell’s character becomes murkier and murkier. What’s to admire and what’s not is the question that confronts us every step of the way. Like many, I can’t wait for The mirror and the light, the next instalment of Cromwell’s story – and would love it if Mantel continued with the Tudors after that. What a fascinating time it was – and what a spin Mantel puts on it.

Hilary Mantel
Bring up the bodies
London: Fourth Estate, 2013
462pp.
ISBN: 9780007315109

Monday musings on Australian literature: ASA’s Authors Unlimited eBook portal

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In her comment on my recent Monday musings about e-Publishing, Australian author Dorothy Johnston, whose novel The house at number 10 I reviewed recently, mentioned Authors Unlimited. I responded that I’d look into it and perhaps post on it. I did and now I am. Never let it be said that Whispering Gums is not true to her word. (Hmmm … perhaps you should ignore that … I don’t always follow through methinks, at least not promptly.)

Anyhow, Authors Unlimited is the “information and sales portal for authors, books and eBooks” for the Australian Society of Authors (ASA). The masthead on the homepage has the tagline “buy eBooks from Australian authors” but in fact it also contains pretty extensive information about Australian authors, who are members of the ASA, and their books*. So, for example, if you click on J under Authors, and then click on Dorothy Johnston you get some information about her (written by her) and a list of her books. To find out more about any particular book, click on a title and you’re taken to a page describing the book and providing publication details. If the book has an e-version – in ePub or mobi format generally – you can purchase it from that page … as I did for …

Kindle ebook ereader

Kindle (Courtesy: OCAL via clker.com)

… Johnston’s collection of short stories Eight pieces on prostitution. It includes her first story, “The man who came with the news”, which was published by Frank Moorhouse in State of the Art in 1983. It also includes a long story – almost a novella, she says – titled “Where the ladders start” and “Mrs B” which was included in Meanjin’s The Canberra Issue this year (my review). I have bought this book – for AUD9.95 – and plan to read it when I travel later in the year. Prices vary, but they all seem pretty reasonable to me.

I’m not an author or publisher, as you know, but Dorothy Johnston is enthusiastic about this initiative. I notice that popular Australian children’s writer Hazel Edwards (whom I mentioned in my post on the inaugural Canberra Readers’ Festival) is selling her novel Fake I.D. available through the site. It was originally published in 2002, and in her description of the book she writes “Originally a popular print book, now only available in e-format”.

And there’s the thing … Authors Unlimited provides a great opportunity for authors to publish their out-of-print books with the help of ASA. I presume most (all?) books published in the last two or more decades were published from electronic versions. It should be a relatively easy matter, technically, to convert them to one of the e-Book standards. Some books’ rights are, presumably, still held by publishers – and some publishers are now using e-publication for out-of-print backlists but it’s good to know that authors have another option. They can publish via ASA using its conversion process, sell via ASA’s ordering and delivery mechanisms, and promote via their own websites, Facebook pages, and so on …

Here’s to more options for authors  – to republish old works, as is or in new permutations, and to publish new work.

* I believe the author listings here are automatically fed through from ASA, and so includes many authors who do not have books for sale through the portal.

Vale Jeffrey Smart

/ Whispering Gums / 16 Comments

There is a logic for writing a brief post on the death of an artist on my litblog …

For those of you who haven’t heard, the Australian artist Jeffrey Smart died today in Italy (20 June in the Northern Hemisphere), at the age of 91. He painted in a style described as Precisionism – and I wish I could include a couple of images here to show you, but of course they are still in copyright. A Google Images search on his name will, though, quickly introduce you to his work. His subject matter was urban – stark, often focusing on the industrial. Warehouses, roads, factories, high-rises – with nothing natural to soften them. There are often figures, but while they are to scale they tend to be overwhelmed by what’s around them. The figures are rarely personalised. The paintings are clean, geometric, stark and often bright in colour. They feel surreal.

I would call him spare (not minimalist which is something different). And regular readers here know I like spare. By spare in this context, I mean his art looks simple; your eyes can’t get lost – there’s nowhere for them to go. The shadows, any details, are up-front, in your face. And yet, there’s complexity – the meaning isn’t clear and we are forced to ponder what we think he is saying. I find his work beautiful but disturbing.

Given his style, I didn’t find it surprising that in an interview on ABC TV’s Talking Heads a few years ago, he said that he liked T.S. Eliot:

I was interested in poetry anyway. And the images were not about daffodils and roses in the spring, it was about vacant lots and suburban houses, slummy corridors – ordinary, ordinary things, made into great poetry. He was a brilliant man.

On tonight’s ABC TV report of his death, the newsreader quoted Smart as saying that he couldn’t use words so he articulated his ideas in art.

Smart was apparently a neighbour and good friend of Australian author David Malouf who also lived in Italy. Smart painted Malouf’s portrait but it’s not like any portrait of a writer I’ve ever seen – though it’s recognizably Malouf. You can see it on the ABC’s website.

These are a few reasons for writing about Smart on a litblog – but there’s another. And that’s the book of short stories, Expressway, which comprises “invitation stories by Australian writers from a painting by Jeffrey Smart hosted by Helen Daniel”. The painting is Cahill Expressway (1962) (image at NGV). The book was published by Penguin in 1989 and I read it with my reading group in 1990, too long ago now for me to write a review but not so long ago that I’ve forgotten it.

The book was the brainchild of Australian editor Helen Daniel. She chose the painting, and invited over 40 writers to write a short story in response. She ended up with 29 pieces from Australia’s established and emerging writers of the time. They include writers I’ve reviewed here such as Elizabeth Jolley, Kate Grenville, Barbara Hanrahan, David Malouf, Gerald Murnane, and Louis Nowra; those I’ve read before such as Glenda Adams, Peter Goldsworthy, Rodney Hall, and Janette Turner Hospital; and some I’ve still to read like David Foster, David Ireland and Finola Moorhead. It’s a gorgeous, special book that I have kept by my bedside for years.

I shall conclude with some lines from the wicked first story in the collection, “Art is dangerous. Not so?” by Morris Lurie. It’s about an art class:

‘So could we talk about, say, perhaps, what that certain something is, under the symbol, under the metaphor. Estrangement, someone said. Yes. Very good. Modern estrangement. Fine. So shall we, um, nudge that concept a little? Prod it? A poke? Zero in? Anyone? Too dangerous? Come on. Let’s be dangerous. Art is dangerous. Not so? Hmm.’

Here’s to dangerous art – and the artists who create it. Vale Jeffrey Smart!

Australian Women Writers 2013 Challenge completed – and Miles Franklin Award Winner 2013

/ Whispering Gums / 17 Comments

Australian Women Writers ChallengeAs regular readers here know by now, last year I broke my non-challenge rule to take part in the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge. It was so satisfying, I decided to do it again this year. After all, it’s really the challenge I’d do when I’m not doing a challenge.

Like last year, I signed up for the top level: Franklin-fantastic. This required me to read 10 books and review at least 6. I have now exceeded this – and will continue to add to the challenge, as I did last year – but one of the requirements of completing the challenge is to provide a link to a complete challenge post. Here is that post.

I have, in fact, contributed 13 reviews to the challenge to date, but decided to wait to write my completion post until I’d read 10 books. I have now done that – with the other three being individual short stories or essays.

Johnston, House at Number 10 bookcover

Courtesy: Wakefield Press

Here’s my list in alphabetical order, with the links on the titles being to my reviews:

Except for the Baynton, Astley and Johnston reviews, they are all for very recent publications. I would like in the second half of the year to read some more backlist, more classics. Will I do it? Watch this space!

Miles Franklin Award winner for 2013 …

has been announced and it is Michelle de Kretser‘s Questions of travel. I’m pretty thrilled as this is the book my reading group decided to do in July (from the shortlist). As much as I enjoyed Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with birds, it has won two significant awards this year already, and I don’t think it serves literature well for one book to have a stranglehold on a year’s awards – unless there really is only one great book published in a year but that would really be a worry wouldn’t it?!

You can read about the announcement on the Miles Franklin Literary Award site.