Virginia Woolf on Jane Austen’s Love and freindship

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A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Jane Austen‘s juvenilia work, Love and freindship. I wanted, then, to share with you Virginia Woolf‘s take on Jane and the work, but decided it would be better as its own post, so here I am again.

Woolf was quite an essayist, as you probably know, as well as a novelist, and she wrote several essays about Jane Austen (as well as featuring Austen in her famous A room of one’s own). Today’s post was inspired by an essay that is simply titled, “Jane Austen”. You can read it at Project Gutenberg. The essay was published in 1925 in her book, The common reader, though it may have been previously published in a newspaper or journal. It says something, I think, that in an essay of just a few pages she devotes a couple of paragraphs to a piece of juvenilia (that is, Love and freindship). This is what she says:

To begin with, that prim little girl whom Philadelphia [a cousin] found so unlike a child of twelve, whimsical and affected, was soon to be the authoress of an astonishing and unchildish story, Love and Freindship, which, incredible though it appears, was written at the age of fifteen. It was written, apparently, to amuse the schoolroom; one of the stories in the same book is dedicated with mock solemnity to her brother; another is neatly illustrated with water-colour heads by her sister. These are jokes which, one feels, were family property; thrusts of satire, which went home because all little Austens made mock in common of fine ladies who “sighed and fainted on the sofa”.

Brothers and sisters must have laughed when Jane read out loud her last hit at the vices which they all abhorred. “I die a martyr to my grief for the loss of Augustus. One fatal swoon has cost me my life. Beware of Swoons, Dear Laura. . . . Run mad as often as you chuse, but do not faint. . . .” And on she rushed, as fast as she could write and quicker than she could spell, to tell the incredible adventures of Laura and Sophia, of Philander and Gustavus, of the gentleman who drove a coach between Edinburgh and Stirling every other day, of the theft of the fortune that was kept in the table drawer, of the starving mothers and the sons who acted Macbeth. Undoubtedly, the story must have roused the schoolroom to uproarious laughter. And yet, nothing is more obvious than that this girl of fifteen, sitting in her private corner of the common parlour, was writing not to draw a laugh from brother and sisters, and not for home consumption. She was writing for everybody, for nobody, for our age, for her own; in other words, even at that early age Jane Austen was writing. One hears it in the rhythm and shapeliness and severity of the sentences. “She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil, and obliging young woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her–she was only an object of contempt.” Such a sentence is meant to outlast the Christmas holidays. Spirited, easy, full of fun, verging with freedom upon sheer nonsense,–Love and Freindship is all that; but what is this note which never merges in the rest, which sounds distinctly and penetratingly all through the volume? It is the sound of laughter. The girl of fifteen is laughing, in her corner, at the world.

I like the way Woolf looks at Austen with a writer’s eye – in regards to both content and style. I particularly love the line – “She was writing for everybody, for nobody, for our age, for her own; in other words, even at that early age Jane Austen was writing”. I like her recognition of Austen’s technical skill when she describes “the rhythm and shapeliness and severity of the sentences”. On top of all this, Woolf sees Austen’s humour, her ability to laugh at the world. The humour in this little piece of juvenilia is broad, but it’s there and Woolf saw and appreciated it.

And that’s all I’m going to say, because these two paragraphs stand on their own, don’t they?

Monday musings on Australian literature: It’s all about sport, or is it?

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I’ve written previous Monday Musings on themes and motifs in Aussie literature – like the lost child, the beach, mountains and even sheep – so, with the Olympics now on, it seemed appropriate to add sport to this list.

Whether we all like it or not, Australia has somewhat of a reputation for being a sports-focused country. We’ve had our moments in the sun as a cricketing nation, a tennis nation, a swimming nation, a golfing nation, and so on. We’ve even won the Tour de France and the America’s Cup! Given all this, I started to wonder last weekend about how sport has been presented in our literature … and I must say I struggled to come up with many examples (from my own reading anyhow). This will be a short post, methinks, but it has to be done!

My first encounter with sport in Aussie literature was in my childhood, through ballads. My two favourite examples are Thomas E Spencer’s “How McDougall topped the score” (1898) and Banjo Paterson‘s “The Geebung Polo Club” (1893). The former is a comic poem about a country cricket match between two towns. It celebrates the triumph of the underdog (a popular Aussie theme) through (bush) cunning. While Spencer’s poem is about one of Australia’s most popular sports, “The Geebung Polo Club” is about a far less widespread sport, polo (of course). Polo works as an effective vehicle for depicting another common theme in Australian culture, the ordinary man versus the toff (which, in this poem, is compounded by the country versus the city conflict). The ballad also celebrates the “never say die” spirit, and is what I’d call a tragicomedy. I can’t resist giving you a flavour:

Here are the Geebungs:

But their style of playing polo was irregular and rash –
They had mighty little science, but a mighty lot of dash:
And they played on mountain ponies that were muscular and strong,
Though their coats were quite unpolished, and their manes and tails were long.

And here is a description of their opponents, the Cuff and Collar team:

For the members were distinguished by exclusiveness and dress.
They had natty little ponies that were nice, and smooth, and sleek,
For their cultivated owners only rode ’em once a week.
So they started up the country in pursuit of sport and fame,
For they meant to show the Geebungs how they ought to play the game;

You get the drift, I’m sure.

The next work dealing with sport that comes to my mind is a play (later made into a film) by Australia’s best known contemporary playwright, David Williamson. Much of his work is satirical and his play The club (1977) is a great example. The sport in question is a particular type of football, Australian Rules, and the play explores the tensions between commercialism and traditional club loyalties, which, reminding me of “The Geebung Polo Club”, also translates into an exploration of class conflict. More broadly, though, it is about the struggle for power, something Williamson explores in other settings besides sport.

Okay, so I’ve discussed a couple of poems (ballads) and a play, but when I turn to literary fiction my mind goes pretty blank. There is Tim Winton‘s Miles Franklin Award winning novel Breath (2009). It’s about surfing, and is primarily about masculinity and risk-taking. Winton’s interest is more psychological than the socio-political explorations of the other works I’ve mentioned. And there’s Gillian Mears‘ recent novel, Foal’s bread, about horse high jumping. As I wrote in my review, I loved the way it, like Breath, introduced me in the most visceral way to a sport I have never experienced. It draws on some of the themes from those 19th century ballads – in particular the hardship of country life – but while they tend to romanticise the lives they depict, Mears’ work, while having an element of the heroic about it, also deals with the struggle to survive, psychologically as well as physically.

There are many novels in which sport appears (like say, Craig Silvey’s Jasper Jones) but not many, that I can dredge up, for which sport provides the principal setting. Is this because sportspeople and writers tend to be diametrically opposed? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, and whether you have any favourite novels in which sport is centre stage.

What do Anna Funder and Amarcord have in common?

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Leipzig! It’s funny isn’t it how some person, place, idea (or whatever) that you hadn’t come across in who knows how long suddenly makes its presence felt more than once in a short amount of time. This is what happened to me this week when I attended, on Sunday, a conversation at the National Library of Australia with Miles Franklin award-winning author, Anna Funder, and then two nights later a Musica Viva concert by all-male a cappella group, Amarcord. For those of you who know these people, the Leipzig connection is pretty obvious, but for those who don’t, I’ll explain. Anna Funder’s first book was the non-fiction work Stasiland which explores the impact of the Stasi on those affected by it. And Amarcord was founded in Leipzig from members of the St Thomas’ Boys Choir (which was established in 1212!).

The connection, though, is a little more complex than a purely physical one. In talking about Leipzig and her book promotion tour there, Funder commented on the paradox of being in the building* in Leipzig that the Stasi operated from and that had also been used by some of the world’s greatest musicians such as Bach (who is buried in St Thomas’ Church) and Mendelssohn. Amarcord, during the concert, talked of Leipzig’s musical heritage – of Schumann, Mendelssohn and Bach – but in the programme they also referred to the time under the Stasi:

Living in East Germany required conditioning. You needed to know whom you could trust. I really had to be careful what I said to whom. And then we had the privilege of a choir that was an island of relative freedom of speech and thought. That of course attracted children from families who needed that freedom of speech. Even as a child I felt that atmosphere strongly. In the choir, I could breathe again. (Daniel Knauft, bass)

I won’t say much more about Amarcord except that the concert was magnificent. The program, themed “The Singing Club – Four  Centuries of Song”, comprised music mostly from the Renaissance and Romantic eras, but concluded with a small selection of folk songs from around the world, including Korea and Ghana. It was a beautifully varied program, each of the singers addressed us during the performance to explain the pieces being sung, and the singing was glorious. I love performers that are serious about their music, but don’t take themselves too seriously. That was Amarcord, and if they come again, I’ll be lining up at the door.

But now to Anna Funder. She was a very thoughtful considered interviewee, which is not surprising I guess from someone who took 5-6 years to write her last novel, All that I am. She talked, for example, about how Stasiland had started as a novel but that she’d decided “it didn’t seem right” to use other people’s lives for a fictional purpose. She also talked about the challenge of believability. In All that I am she said she modified the facts because in fiction authors ask readers to jump into a world they create, but she felt there were things about the “real” story behind All that I am that are “unbelievable”, that no-one would believe in a novel! As one who doesn’t find it too hard to suspend disbelief, I was intrigued by the care she takes to make sure her fiction is believable – and she is probably sensible to do so!

While her main concerns, she said, are social justice and what it means to be human, her aim in writing fiction is not “to make an argument” but “to make a beautiful piece of work, a literary artefact”. Every nation, she said, has something in their history that is “disenchanting” (don’t we Aussies know it) but the function of literature is to “enchant us”. I must say I was enchanted by the way she juggled these two conceptual balls, by her clear fundamental commitment to her art and to her moral-ethical world view.

Louise Maher, the host of the conversation, asked her about awards and prizes, and referred to Funder’s letter to Premier Campbell Newman regarding his cancellation of the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in which she described his action as “a step towards the unscrutinised exercise of power”. She told us that given the book she’d just written – about a totalitarian state – she had to write what she did. Funder clearly supports prizes – and has won a goodly many. She sees them as a “signpost to quality” and said that while they don’t make writing easier, they improve the likelihood of having your next work published.

I did enjoy my little forays into Leipzig this week – and the places they took me.

* Probably the “Round Corner” house, though I don’t recollect her actually naming the building.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Prime Minister’s Literary Awards 2012

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National Library of Australia

National Library of Australia, viewed from Commonwealth Park on the opposite side of Lake Burley Griffin

Last year I attended and reported on the post-announcement panel for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, held at the National Library of Australia. I attended again this year and, since it occurred today, Monday, I’ve decide to devote this week’s Monday musings to it.

First, the winners:

  • Fiction: Gillian Mears‘ Foal’s bread (My review)
  • Poetry: Luke Davies‘ Interferon psalms
  • Young adult fiction: Robert Newton’s When we were two
  • Children’s fiction: writer Frances Watts and illustrator Judy Watson’s (illus.) Goodnight, mice!
  • Non-fiction: Mark McKenna’s An eye for eternity: The life of Manning Clark
  • History: Bill Gammage‘s The biggest estate on earth: How aborigines made Australia

Last year’s four awards were expanded to six this year by rolling the separate Prime Minister’s History Prize into them and, hallelujah, adding in a prize for Poetry. The awards are, I believe, the most generous of Australia’s publicly funded awards, providing $80,000 to each winner and $5,000 to each shortlisted author.

The panel members were Luke, Robert, Mark and Judy. Unfortunately, Bill Gammage is currently overseas, and Gillian Mears who suffers from multiple sclerosis had attended the announcement but needed to rest before her afternoon engagements. I was disappointed not to see her but of course can’t begrudge her putting her health first. The panel was chaired by local ABC radio announcer Louise Maher.

I won’t summarise the whole panel but just cherry pick a few interesting thoughts and ideas that came out of it. During a discussion about the writing process, in which Robert Newton said that he when he starts writing he rarely knows where his story is going to end, Mark McKenna offered a favourite quote from David Malouf:

I don’t write to record what I know. I write to find out what I know.

I like this. It makes me feel that we readers are on a journey with the author rather than being told what to think by the author.

There was, of course, the usual discussion about the impact of technology on books and reading and, while the responses weren’t quite as conservative as I felt they were last year, there still seems to be some resistance to thinking positively about change. I understand that. Livelihoods – of writers, publishers and booksellers – are at stake BUT, whether we like it or not, the change is coming (is here, in fact) and so our best chance is to embrace it.

Louise approached the question from a slightly different angle by asking how reading, which takes effort and time, fits into contemporary culture. Mark believes that the one-on-one aspect of reading is under threat, due I suppose to competition from other stimuli, and said that awards like these are important because they can bring more readers to books. (This point was, in fact, a bit of a mantra for him.) He suggested that the act of reading, the way we read, is changing and that the solitary experience is becoming rare. He noted that in just a few more decades the majority of people around will not have grown up with books the way we in the audience had. Their experience and expectations will be different, and books are likely to be produced in different formats with content and presentation varying between the formats. Mark also made the significant point that much of the change that is occurring is in the culture around the book rather than in reading itself, and I guess he’s right. The way books are sold – and published – is changing. Electronic books can’t be physically browsed in a bookshop. It’s not easy to lend an electronic book. You can’t get your electronic book signed. And so on …

Rob’s response that reading and technology will have to grow together was a pragmatic one. But he also commented, regarding the effort involved in reading, that he likes “the idea of books making kids work a bit”. Judy talked of inculcating a reading habit with children when they are young, and said she limits her (young) children’s time with technology. I liked Luke’s honesty when he said that attention span is the issue and that he can see it in himself, that he finds himself being drawn too often to “fiddly” little things on the Internet, like favourite blogs, and away from concentrated reading. But, he also said that he believes that our “emotional and spiritual” relationship with words will always be there. That makes sense. The forms and formats might change but our love affair with words and the ideas they express surely won’t! As one person said, we need to respect the new forms but recognise that the story, the empathy, will always be the thing.

There was a question from the floor late in the session regarding what difference the monetary prize would make to their lives. The answers weren’t really surprising but were interesting nonetheless:

  • Luke, who admitted to being more broke now than he has been for many decades, said he will pay off his debts and that the remaining money will give him a buffer enabling him to say no to jobs that he “shouldn’t” be doing, that aren’t, he said a little self-consciously, in response to his muse.
  • Rob said he’d buy a new surfboard and a laptop with working shift and caps lock keys, and that he’d consider taking some time off from his job as a firefighter to write full-time.
  • Mark said it would buy a little financial independence and provide some seed money for his new book, which will tell the history of Australia through some selected places that he will need to visit.
  • Judy also said it would take off some of the financial pressure and allow her to work on what she wants to rather than on jobs “for the money”.

A great session. I thank the National Library for again providing the opportunity for members of the public to “meet” the authors this way, and I thank the authors for giving up their precious writing time to talk with us!

Jane Austen, Love and freindship (Review)

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Love and Freindship editions

Love and Freindship editions

If you are a Jane Austen fan, you don’t just read her six novels. You read her letters, her unfinished works and her juvenilia. And you read them more than once. So it is that I have just – for my local Jane Austen group – reread Love and freindship (sic), the short epistolary novel she wrote in her 15th year. It is a fun – and illuminating – read. It’s the illuminating part that I plan to focus on here.

But first, a little about the plot. It commences with a letter in which Isabella asks her friend Laura to tell her daughter “the Misfortunes and Adventures” of her Life. “You are this day 55”, she says, and surely now safe “from the determined Perseverance of disagreeable Lovers and the cruel Persecutions of obstinate Fathers”. Laura, while rejecting that she is too old for such “unmerited” misfortunes, agrees to tell her story  to Isabella’s daughter Marianne as a “useful lesson”. What follows is a melodramatic story of sudden friendships, quick-not-always legal marriages, and wild coincidences, accompanied by much fainting and “running mad”.

This doesn’t sound much like the writer described by Charlotte Bronte as “sensible and suitable” does it? And, in fact, this wildly improbable, effusive story isn’t much like her. Or is it? This is the point I’d like to explore a little in my post, because there are many seeds here of the writer Austen was becoming – of the things that were to concern her and of the style she was developing.

The thing that concerned her most was to make fun of silly or ridiculous people and ideas. The most obvious of these in Love and freindship was the late eighteenth century’s cult of sensibility, which involved the favouring of sensibility over sense, the fostering of an overactive imagination (as evidenced by the popularity of Gothic novels). But what is exaggerated and parodied in Love and freindship become more considered subjects in her first novels, Northanger Abbey and Sense and sensibility.

There are, for example, obvious similarities between Laura, here, Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey and Marianne in Sense and sensibility, but Laura’s complete refusal to recognise that sense has any place in her life is modified in Catherine and Marianne who learn through experience that their imagination and sensibilities, if left uncurbed, can get them into trouble. (Intriguingly the recipient of Laura’s letters is a Marianne. A little Austen in-joke perhaps?). Pride and Prejudice’s Lydia could perhaps be seen as Laura’s true heir: Lydia is not described in quite the same terms as Laura, but she certainly pays no credence to anything remotely sensible.

Now I’m going to be lazy and simply illustrate Austen’s changed approach with some comparative examples. Here is Laura on an older man, her husband’s father:

for what could be expected from a Man who possessed not the smallest atom of Sensibility, who scarcely knew the meaning of Simpathy, and who actually snored.

And here is Marianne, in love with the dashing Willoughby, on Colonel Brandon:

He was silent and grave. His appearance, however, was not unpleasing, in spite of his being in the opinion of Marianne and Margaret an absolute old bachelor, for he was on the wrong side of five-and-thirty; but though his face was not handsome his countenance was sensible, and his address was particularly gentlemanlike.

While Laura ends her tale with:

I took up my Residence in a romantic Village in the Highlands of Scotland where I have ever since continued, and where I can, uninterrupted by unmeaning Visits, indulge in a melancholy solitude my unceasing Lamentations for the Death of my Father, my Mother, my Husband, and my Freind.

Catherine learns her lesson and

… was completely awakened. Henry’s address, short as it had been, had more thoroughly opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies than all their several disappointments had done. Most grievously was she humbled. … The absurdity of her curiosity and her fears — could they ever be forgotten? She hated herself more than she could express.

Exaggeration and parody are the tools used in Love and friendship, while the adult Austen used the more sophisticated, though no less funny, tools of wit and irony to achieve her satire.  And again, I’ll demonstrate with comparative examples. In Love and freindship she satirises novel-reading with broad humour:

“Where, Edward in the name of wonder (said he) did you pick up this unmeaning gibberish? You have been studying Novels I suspect.”

But in Northanger Abbey, the plot itself demonstrates the foolishness of reading novels unwisely, while a respected character conveys Jane’s truth:

The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Love and friendship is unsubtle, and is clearly the work of a youthful writer, but it is a hoot to read and we are lucky to have it (and her other juvenilia) to show us an author in the making.

Note: Love and friendship (1790) is available in many formats and manifestations. My first copy was in RW Chapman’s edition of her Minor works, but this time I read it on my Kindle using a bought version, the Oxford World Classics edition titled Catharine and Other Writings. However, you can read (or obtain) it online at Project Gutenberg.

Robert Frost, The question of a feather (Review)

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Well I never! Never knew, that is, that Robert Frost wrote prose as well as poetry. I suppose I didn’t know that he didn’t do it, either, but now I know that he did! And how do I know? Through the Library of America of course! This week’s story is “The question of a feather” by Robert Frost.

LOA’s notes, as usual, provide some interesting background. It appears that in 1899 Frost was chronically ill with, the doctor thought, tuberculosis which had caused his father’s death. The doctor’s advice? Go work outdoors, young man! And so Frost, “a born-and-bred city boy”, and his wife, decided to take up poultry farming, first on a rented farm and then on a farm bought for them by Frost’s grandfather. Robert and Elinor farmed for around nine years at the beginning of the 20th century.

Still wanting to write, Frost wrote poems which were, apparently, regularly rejected for publication so, LOA says, “he eventually lit upon the idea of writing pieces for the regional poultry-farming papers”. “The question of a feather” was one of these pieces. Frost scholar, Mark Richardson, amusingly wrote of these pieces:

In regards to Frost’s writing for poultry journals, it must be acknowledged first that they are certainly the best poultry-stories written by a modern American poet.

I bet they are!

Now, I have to be honest here and say that I really only know a couple of Frost’s famous poems – “the road not taken” and so on – so this is not going to be an analysis of how this sketch illuminates or represents his work. Rather I’m just going to introduce it a little, and hope you decide to read it yourselves using the link below. It’s a short piece. (LOA’s notes say that there are hints of this story in his poem “A Blue Ribbon at Amesbury”).

It is subtitled “How an editor got out of the frying pan and into the fire” and concerns the editor of the poultry journal, Hendom, who receives a letter from a reader stating that their poultry farm

is the result of following your instructions to the letter … You have been our only teacher, and we want you to be the judge whether it has been to our advantage.

Now, our editor is not thrilled about this. He tells his readers not to follow him exactly, but to “use judgment in keeping hens”. However, he’s been stuck in his office all day “and he was tired of it” so decides to visit the two sisters “though he did not feel he was to blame”. He fancies the result will be “bad” or “amusing”. He assumes he will be confronted by “a failure to make money in hens”. There’s a mock-heroic sense to all this, which I liked:

He considered himself as having one of the good times incident to his calling. He liked nothing better than visiting a farm, and visiting this one had a spice of real adventure.

Of course, what he finds is not what he – the superior male editor – assumes. And he is confronted with an ethical question regarding poultry showing:

“… you are just in time, Mr Fulton, to help us with that feather on the leg of, I think, our best pullet.”
“Pull it?”
“Yes, pullet.”
“Help you pull it, I mean.”
“Tell us whether it is right to pull it,” she answered, flushed and serious.

There is quite a bit of sly humour in the piece … and a lovely description of character. You know exactly what sort of man the editor is – pompous and patronising towards women, particularly spinsters, and yet his unwillingness to be definite about anything gives away a degree of wishy-washiness, a lack of confidence perhaps. And you know the sisters too, their conscientiousness, openness, and willingness to confront the difficult questions. It’s an odd little piece, really, but shows to me a Frost interested in the details of everyday life, in how people do or don’t communicate, and in describing character. It also provides a little picture of New England at the time.

Robert Frost
“The question of a feather”
First published: Farm-Poultry, July 15, 1903.
(Library of America’s text is from Mark Richardson, The Collected Prose of Robert Frost: A New Critical Edition, Rutgers University doctoral dissertation, 1993. Reprinted by permission)
Available: Online at the Library of America

Monday musings on Australian literature: The sheep’s back

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As a baby-boomer, I grew up knowing that Australia “rode on the sheep’s back”, that our economy, in other words, was based on the wool trade. It’s not quite so now – though wool is still an important product – but I was reminded of the saying last weekend as we were introducing a young American to a little bit of country Australia. We were, in fact, focused on one of our wine regions, but it was the sheep that she particularly noticed.

Sheep among the vines at Stanton and Killeen

Sheep among the vines at Stanton and Killeen, Rutherglen

This made me think about sheep in Australian literature/culture. How do (did) they feature, given the role that they’ve played in our “wealth for toil”. Rather negatively, in fact. Horses and cattle-droving are romantic, and often feature in Australian outback novels and ballads, with a sense of heroism (as in “The man from Snowy River”). Sheep and shearing don’t quite cut it in the same way. They too can be romanticised, but more in the “rough diamond” category rather than the “heroic” one.

One of the best known Australian songs/ballads to feature sheep is “Click go the shears” which describes the hard work of the shearer, the various roles played in the shearing shed (the “boss”, the “tar-boy”, the “old shearer”, the inexperienced “snagger”) and the drinking at the pub when it’s all done. The other, more famous song featuring sheep is of course “Waltzing Matilda” about the swagman who steals a sheep (the “jolly jumbuck”) to eat. The song, written by Banjo Paterson, was probably inspired by the hardships endured by shearers during and after the Great Shearers’ Strike of 1891. It depicts the class division in Australian society between the “battler” (or working-class man) and the “squatter” (or, landowner).

And this reminds me of a novel I reviewed early in this blog’s history, William Lane’s The workingman’s paradise, a social realist novel which explored both urban poverty  (Sydney) and rural hardship (Queensland shearers). The novel is set in Sydney, but the plight of the shearers is a major theme. Another, much later novel, Jeremy Chambers’ The vintage and the gleaning, is set in the vineyards of northeast Victoria (where this post’s photo was taken) but is narrated by Smithy, who had been a shearer for 47 years before becoming a vineyard worker. Smithy rues his years of hard-drinking (see “Click go the shears” above!) and its impact on his health. A third Australian work to focus on the rough, hard side of the shearer’s lot (alongside its mateship aspects) is the movie Sunday Too Far Away. Hard drinking features here too, in a story about shearers fighting to retain their bonuses against the threat of non-union shearers.

There are other “takes” on sheep, however. One is the film Babe, that was filmed in Australia but based on English writer Dick King-Smith‘s children’s novel, The sheep-dog. It’s a romanticised pastoral story about a pig that herds sheep like a sheep-dog. King-Smith’s (English) sheep are intelligent and manipulative, quite different from the typical description of sheep in Australian literature. Another, more interesting depiction, though, comes from Jeanine Leane’s Purple threads which I reviewed earlier this month. In that review I commented on Leane’s use of sheep symbolism. Her book is set in a sheep farming area. The narrator sees her indigenous family’s practice of adopting the black sheep that are spurned by the farmers as reflecting Jesus’ teachings about charity and inclusiveness. It’s pretty obvious, I suppose, but I liked the way she makes her point by mixing Christian symbolism with something symbolising anglo-Australia’s encroachment on her people’s country.

But I can’t resist returning to Banjo Paterson, my favourite bush poet, to close today’s post. He wrote a piece called “The merino sheep”, which you can read online. He describes the sheep as a “dangerous monomaniac” whose “one idea is to ruin the man who owns him” and concludes with:

The hard, resentful look on the faces of all bushmen comes from a long course of dealing with merino sheep. The merino dominates the bush, and gives to Australian literature its melancholy tinge, its despairing pathos. The poems about dying boundary-riders, and lonely graves under mournful she-oaks, are the direct outcome of the poet’s too close association with that soul-destroying animal. A man who could write anything cheerful after a day in the drafting-yards would be a freak of nature.

Oh dear … and I thought it was caused by heat, aridity and remoteness!

Anyhow, if you are Australian, I’d love to hear of other references to sheep in our literary (or cultural) life that have struck you (as my discussion here is brief and limited). And, if you are not Australian, does this post inspire any thoughts about ongoing motifs in your own national literature?

My most unforgettable books, to date!

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I was going to title this post “Life-changing reads” but decided that that wasn’t quite right. I’m not sure that any book has quite changed my life though many have opened my eyes to other ways of seeing and being in the world.

May marked my third year of blogging and I started this post then, thinking to mark the moment by reflecting on the books that have most impacted me (in some way or another). Somehow life got in the way, and I am only getting back to it now. I think it’s still worth doing – for my benefit, if not for anyone else’s. It’s going to be hard to keep my list short – as you litbloggers and litblog readers will surely understand. So here goes, in alphabetical order by author – it’s hard enough limiting the number (to a self-imposed arbitrary number of ten) without ranking them too!

Margaret Atwood‘s The handmaid’s tale: Such an astonishing evocation of what might happen should extremist fundamentalist views be taken to their, hmm, logical conclusion. The book functions as both a wake-up call – we can never rest on our laurels while injustice and inequality remain in our world – and a great read.

Jane Austen‘s Pride and prejudice: A great read on multiple levels that introduced me to Austen. I love all Austen’s novels and really can’t pick a favourite, but this is the one that started it all. I can read (and have read) her books multiple times – and every time I find something new. Can’t ask more than that from a writer I reckon.

Albert Camus‘ The plague: Oh, this one fed my youthful idealism, except I don’t think I’ve ever grown out of the belief that Camus’ Rieux is right when he says “that there are more things to admire in men than to despise”. I have read this three times, and will read it again. (My review)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez‘s Chronicle of a death foretold: It’s all about the tone. I love the way this story is told. I’ve read and enjoyed other books by Garcia Marquez but this is the one that stays in my brain.

Kazuo Ishiguro‘s The remains of the day: This one’s all about the tone too – and the unreliable narrator. There’s a wry humour to the butler’s narrow-minded focus on things that don’t matter while being completely oblivious to the things that do.  I have gone on to read all (but one, so far) of Ishiguro’s oeuvre.

Elizabeth Jolley‘s The newspaper of Claremont Street: I loved the black humour here. It reminded me of a (very) modern Jane Austen. I’m sure Austen would have loved Jolley. After all, I love them both.

Rohinton Mistry‘s A fine balance: This book showed me how a grim book can still offer hope (though not all readers agree with me). What else can I say? If you haven’t read it, I say do!

Toni Morrison‘s Beloved: This post was inspired by the “Getting started with Toni Morrison” post at Book Riot. It’s impossible to forget Sethe and the decision she makes.

Junichiro Tanizaki‘s The Makioka sisters: I didn’t know much about Japan when I read this in the early 1990s, but what I knew was that it was a pretty homogenous society. And, it is, but The Makioka sisters showed me a more diverse society than I had imagined. This is not the main subject of the book, but it was eye-opening for me. I also enjoyed it as a thoughtful analysis of Japan on the cusp of change from a traditional to a modern society , particularly in relation to the lives of women. Oh, and it is an engrossing story.

Patrick White‘s Voss: What can I say? Voss introduced me to Patrick White. It spoke to my teenage sense of the romance of grand ideas and of doomed love in language that was intense but accessible. I went on to read more Patrick White – and am still reading him. I’ve some still to read, and some I’ve read more than once. Such is the life of a reader…

Three of these books – Pride and prejudice, The plague and Voss – I read in my teens. I shall be forever grateful to them for the introduction they provided to the world of literature and what it can mean to one’s life.

I’d love to hear about the books that resonate most with you. (And I’m sure that, for some of your choices at least, I’ll say, “Oh yes, that too!”)

Monday musings on Australian literature: Who is Colin Roderick?

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Regular readers here will know that a couple of recent Monday musings were based on two books written in the late 1940s surveying Australian literature. At the time of writing those posts, I’d never heard of the man behind those books, one Colin Roderick. I soon learnt, though, that he was a somewhat significant figure in 20th century Australian literature. In fact, according to Peter Pierce*, in his obituary for Roderick in 2000, “no other figure has been more influential in giving intellectual rigour and self-belief to Australian literature”. Wow … this is clearly someone I should know at least something about I thought. And so I did a little research and discovered some interesting things.

I didn’t know, for example, that there is a Colin Roderick Award. It was established in 1967 by James Cook University’s Foundation for Australian Literary Studies which Roderick founded. The award is presented annually, and has been won by many writers I’ve reviewed here, such as Deborah Robertson, Peter Temple, Tim Winton, Ruth Park, Peter Carey, Alan Gould and Thea Astley. It is not limited to fiction, so, for example, Don Watson has also won for his book on Paul Keating, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM, and Peter Rose for his memoir, Rose boys.

This is great – I’m a believer in literary awards – but, what struck me was the award’s criterion: “the best book published in Australia which deals with any aspect of Australian life”. Now, if you are an Australian literary award watcher, this will ring a bell – and the bell is the criterion for our premier award, the Miles Franklin Award. Its criterion is “the best Australian published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases”. It’s not totally surprising, I suppose, that awards created in Australia be targeted to Australian published books about Australia. But there is something particularly interesting about this case, because …

Colin Roderick was one of the original judges for the Miles Franklin Award. In fact, the terms of Miles Franklin’s will set out the first judging panel for the Award. According to the Miles Franklin Award website, the panel was to include “the then Mitchell Librarian at the State Library of New South Wales; two representatives of Angus & Robertson publishers, Beatrice Davis and Colin Roderick; the poet Ian Mudie and George Williams, Miles’ accountant.” Colin Roderick remained a judge from the first award in 1957 to 1991 when, according to Peter Pierce, “he resigned in acrimonious circumstances over the definition of what constituted a work of Australian fiction”. Ah, awards controversies! Don’t you love them? Patrick Allington wrote an article about the award, including a discussion of this affair, in the Australian Book Reviewof June 2011. I won’t go into details – you can find Allington’s article (a pdf) online – but apparently Roderick felt that Nicholas Jose’s The avenue of eternal peace, that was on the 1990 shortlist, should not have been eligible (though he apparently felt it was a better book than the winner).

This controversy aside, Roderick played a significant role during his life in promoting Australian literature through much of the mid to late 20th century. Allington describes his “career long commitment to Australian literature”, a commitment that can be demonstrated through his:

  • work as an editor (and later director) of Australia’s then premier publisher of Australian literature, Angus & Robertson, for around 20 years
  • role in the movement to establish a chair in Australian literature at Sydney University
  • creation of the Foundation of Australian Literary Studies (and the associated annual Colin Roderick Award and Colin Roderick Lecture) in 1966
  • role as a Miles Franklin judge
  • prolific, wide-ranging writings on Australian literature including critical and biographical works on Rosa Praed, Miles Franklin (whom he knew), and Henry Lawson.

This is not to say he was universally revered. Even Miles Franklin, who chose him for her first judging panel, wrote to Angus & Robertson’s most famous editor, Beatrice Davis:

You can measure how much I miss you when I say that Roderick seems the flower of the flock to me there now, and I’m glad of his friendly welcome till he spoils it by some literary obtusity.

Oh well, we all have our feet of clay. I’ll be returning to Colin Roderick’s books on Australian literature in future – and when I do, at least we’ll all know a bit about him.

* The obituary was published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 17 June 2000.

Djuna Barnes, Come into the roof garden, Maud (Review)

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English: Djuna Barnes, writer

A stylish Djuna Barnes (Presumed Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

Okay, I’ll admit it, I’ve never heard of Djuna Barnes (1892-1982). However, I was intrigued when I saw her pop up in the Library of America‘s (LOA) Story of the Week program last month, and so decided to investigate. I discovered that, while I didn’t know her, many did, such as, oh, ee cummings, TS Eliot, Carson McCullers, and other contemporary literary luminaries. She even interviewed, apparently, James Joyce. She was a modernist writer, and, according to Wikipedia, a key figure in 1920s-30s Bohemian Paris.

LOA’s notes state that she wrote around 100 articles for various newspapers, and that these articles “straddle the line between fiction and journalism”. That’s certainly how I’d describe “Come into the roof garden, Maud”. I decided to categorise it, according to my minimal blog taxonomy, “Review – Essays”. It’s an uncomfortable fit, but it’ll do!

Anyhow, to the article I’m reviewing today. LOA’s notes describe it as “fictionalised, comic snapshots of the fashionable crowd chasing the latest craze of the 1910s: rooftop dancing”. I did enjoy it – partly because reading about New York in the early 20th century is a treat in itself, but mainly because it is so deliciously satirical and I do like a bit of satire.

I don’t usually do this, but I think I’ll quote the beginning paragraphs of the article:

First of all, enter the atmosphere.

And this, the atmosphere of a roof garden, is 10 per cent soft June air and 10 per cent gold June twilight, and a goodly per cent of high–hung lanterns and the music of hidden mechanical birds, swinging under the tangle of paper wistaria, fifty feet above, where, between guarding panes of glass, shine electric signs, plus a few stars, of Broadway.

A good deal of the grace of God is there, too. It is a majestic something that keeps a distance east of the champagne bucket, and goes out upon the dancing space not at all.

The thing that is really lacking is a sense of humour. There are not ten people with a really good laugh in their systems in a whole evening on a roof garden.

Doesn’t this – together with the clever title – want to make you read on? It did me …

She goes on to describe the “beautiful people” (though that’s my term, not hers of course) who frequent the roof gardens, skewering their superficiality and inability to have a good time because they are too “hung up” (oh, dear, another anachronistic 1960s term from me) on appearance and being seen. Her language and writing are delicious as she describes this one and that one attending roof garden events. Dancing is a big thing in (or is it “at” or “on”) roof gardens. I loved this description of a band conductor:

The conductor, a great, towering figure in white flannels, stands knee-deep in green foliage, which may or may not be false, but which looks extremely like asparagus gone to seed, fine and green and feathery – a soft accompaniment to a fearsome pair of legs.

And her description of those women “who can come in without looking interested – the very essence of refinement”. (Hmmm … Is this still the case? Are “refinement” and “enthusiasm” mutually exclusive? I fear they may be, at least in the eyes of those who define “refinement”.) There is, though, a couple who throw themselves into dancing … but they’re not American. Her criticism of refined New York is a little reminiscent of Edith Wharton – but reminiscent only. Wharton was three decades older, and her style rather different.

Do read the story: the link is below.

Meanwhile, my question to you is: Have any of you read Djuna Barnes, in particular, her novels? If so, I’d love to hear what you think.

Djuna Barnes
“Come into the roof garden, Maud”
First published: New York Press, July 14, 1914
Available: Online at the Library of America