Inception (the movie): Great expectations or?

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Last night we saw Inception. Readers of this blog will know that I occasionally review movies but that when I do it’s usually an Australian one. After all, this blog’s prime focus is Australian (particularly Australian literature). However, my fingers regularly tap their way onto other turf, and on this occasion I’ve decided to write about this American movie, given all the hype that’s been surrounding it.

Am I being churlish to say that we were not overwhelmed? That’s not to say that we didn’t enjoy it, because we did, but it didn’t have quite the wow factor we were expecting. Is this due to a “high expectations” jinx or would we have felt that anyhow? It’s an intelligent and clever film: the plot develops from an intriguing premise that plays with the intersection between dreams and reality. DiCaprio does a good job; Ellen Page is as gorgeous and watchable as ever; the whole cast in fact is fine. There’s a neat little in-joke for movie fans: the song, Non, je ne regrette rien, plays a significant role in the plot which also features Marion Cotillard who played Piaf in the 2007 biopic, La vie en rose. The story’s complex multiple layers are developed logically and so can be pretty easily followed once you realise what’s going on. Hans Zimmer’s music is powerful – almost, but not quite, too so at times. I say “not quite” because that sort of powerful music suits the genre. The resolution has a little bite to it, and the ending leaves a door slightly open… So what’s the problem?

The problem is that it is an intelligent action-adventure movie but lacks, for us, a real emotional heart. We understood Cobb’s (the Di Caprio character) dilemma, intellectually, but we weren’t really given an opportunity to believe, or feel, it. We were told there was a great love story there but it was not set up well enough to convince us of it – and so the “journey” he takes through the film lacks the psychological intensity that we would have liked. And this gap is not filled by any of the other stories. The dying tycoon’s son’s story, for example, is pretty sentimentally stereotypical (or is that vice versa!), and the relationships between the other characters are superficial though there is an attempt to develop some level of emotional intelligence in Ariadne (the Ellen Page character). The result is that I never felt concerned for the characters. I was intellectually interested in what was going on but I wasn’t fully invested in what would happen. It’ll probably work out ok, I thought, so why worry. Did others feel this?

And so my recommendation? Do go see it. It’s an artful and rather original movie that demands some thought and concentration from the audience, and its action-adventure nature makes for a fun ride. Just don’t expect emotional engagement or psychological complexity because I don’t believe you’ll find it – and that, for me anyhow, stops a good film from being a great one.

Do you marginalia?

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I do, but I wouldn’t class myself with the likes of Sylvia Plath, Vladimir Nabokov and Mark Twain, to name just a few famous marginalians (if that’s not a word, it is now!). And so, I enjoyed a recent article, titled “Marginal”, which you can read online in The New Yorker. It’s written by Ian Frazier, an American writer and humorist (according to Wikipedia).

Since my last post was rather long, I won’t bore you with a long one this time. You’d be far better off spending your precious time reading the article yourself. It is short, just over a page, and well worth reading for its little survey of the marginalia practices of some of our best known writers.

Here are some things you’ll discover:

  •  Coleridge used abbeviations such as LM for “ludicrous metaphor”!(This is apparently known as “hostile marginalia”.) I use shorthand too – but I’m far more boring than this. My marginalia tends more to the descriptive than the “critical”, though I might occasionally be moved to write something like “What the?”!
  • Mark Twain was a voluminous marginalia scribbler, and he too could be less than positive at times, writing on one occasion that “A cat could do better literature than this”.
  • Nabokov “graded” the stories in an anthology from The New Yorker. He gave Shirley Jackson‘s “The lottery” an A … but you’ll have to read the article for yourself to see to whom he gave A+!

And so, do you write marginalia? If you do, do you always do it and what form does yours take? If you don’t, why don’t you?

Haruki Murakami, Blind willow, sleeping woman

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Murakami, Blind willow, sleeping woman

Bookcover, used by permission of the Random House Group Ltd

Granted, my fiction contains more than its share of invention, but when I’m not writing fiction I don’t go out of my way to make up meaningless stories. (from “Chance traveller”, 2005)

This is as good a way as any to commence my review of Haruki Murakami’s recent short story collection, Blind willow, sleeping woman, because it clues you in immediately to the games Murakami plays with his reader. In “Chance traveller”, we are told that the “I” “means me, Haruki Murakami, the author of the story” and that most of the story is “third-person narrative”. In fact, this short story, like several in the book, comprises a story-within-a-story, a story told to a narrator who is present in the story himself.

It may sound odd to say this about a short story collection but I found it a bit of a page-turner. It comprises 24 stories written between 1980 and 2005. There are a lot of similarities between the stories  – the “disconnected” tone, the frequent use of first-person narrator, the story-within-a-story technique, and the regular use of flashbacks – but Murakami’s inventions are so varied and odd that you are compelled on.

What I love about Murakami is the matter-of-fact rather detached tone he uses to tell stories that often start off being quite ordinary but usually end up taking us to the strangest places. By focussing on the ordinariness of people, by including seemingly unimportant everyday and often pedantic-sounding details, Murakami lulls us into believing in his world so that when the bizarre happens – as it often does – we accept it with barely a blink.

Those of you who know about Murakami know that he is enamoured, if that’s not too strong a word, with the West – and his stories are peppered with allusions to Western culture from Elvis to Richard Strauss, from John Ford to Balzac. His cultural knowledge is quite prodigious. It is this “westenisation” that has, historically, put him at odds with the Japanese literary establishment. He explores this amusingly but pointedly in his story “The rise and fall of Sharpie Cakes” (1981/82) which satirises the drive to conformity and tradition. The final words of this story are:

From now on I would make and eat the food that I wanted to eat. The damned Sharpie Crows could peck each other to death for all I cared.

Like Murakami’s novels, these stories tend to be about alienation and loneliness. Most of his characters have trouble connecting with others, and when they do it often doesn’t go as well as they hope. Murakami  seems to see being alone as the essential condition of life:

He found it natural to be by himself:  it was a kind of premise for living. (“Tony Takitani”, 1990).

In  “The Ice Man” (1991) the couple go to the South Pole which “turned out to be lonelier than anything I could have imagined”. “The year of spaghetti”  (1981/82) concludes with the narrator alone, cooking spaghetti and suggesting that, in exporting durum, the Italians had exported “loneliness”. And so on, from story to story. Somewhat related to this focus on loneliness is a sort of fatalism, a view that life is not to be understood but just is:

Life: I’ll never understand it. (says Tony Takitani, in “Tony Takitani”, 1990)

Life is pretty damn hard. (says a girl to the narrator in “A ‘Poor Aunt’s’ story”, 1980/81)

That’s life. (says the young man, about something pretty trivial, in “A perfect day for kangaroos”,  1981/82)

He had to be as true to his homosexuality as he was to his music. That’s music, and that’s life. (“Chance traveller”, 2005)

Get all the fun out of life while you’re still able. They’ll serve you the bill soon enough. (“Hanalei Bay”, 2005)

And alongside all this, Murakami explores the fine line between reality and unreality or illusion. His characters tend to either escape reality when they can or find it slipping away from them – or, conversely, find it intruding when they don’t want it. The young couple in “A folklore for my generation” (1989) find “reality … invisibly starting to worm its way between them”. The first-person narrator in “Man-eating cats” (1991) writes that “for a second or two my consciousness strayed on the border between reality and the unreal … I couldn’t get a purchase on the situation” and a little later says “From time to time I was sure that I could make out the cat’s eyes, sparkling between the branches. But it was just an illusion”. And in one of my favourite stories, “A ‘Poor Aunt’ story” (1980/81), the fictional aunt becomes “real”, “stuck” to the narrator’s back, and disconcerts his friends:

‘Gives me the creeps’, said one friend.
‘Don’t let her bother you. She minds her own business. She’s harmless enough.’
‘I know, I know.  But, I don’t know why, she’s depressing.’
‘So try not to look.’
‘OK, I suppose’. Then a sigh. ‘Where’d you have to go to get something like that on your back?’
‘It’s not that I went anywhere. I just kept thinking about some things. That’s all.’

Not only do I like this for its idea – the making concrete of the thing you are thinking about – but it’s a good example of Murakami’s facility with dialogue.  “A ‘Poor Aunt’ story” has to be a bit of a writer’s manifesto – about the power and the limits to that power of words (and perhaps more generally of art). In fact, the idea of art as salvation appears a couple of times in the book. Earlier in this story it is suggested that writing about something, like a poor aunt, means “offering it salvation” and in “A seventh man” (1996) there’s a sense that art may offer “some kind of salvation … some sort of recovery”.

I could write much more on this book – tease out delicious story after delicious story, and give lots of examples of his expressive imagery, such as “I was beginning to feel like a dentist’s chair – hated by noone but avoided by everyone” (“A ‘Poor Aunt’ story”). However, that might spoil the pleasure for you (if you haven’t already read it), so I will finish with Murakami’s own words from his introduction:

My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left behind. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short stories are the guideposts to my heart, and it makes me happy as a writer to be able to share these intimate feelings with my readers.

All I can say to this is, what a fascinating heart to know…

Haruki Murakami
(Trans: Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin)
Blind willow, sleeping woman
London: Vintage Books, 2007
436pp.
ISBN: 9780099488668

Indigenous Australian stories – and digital technologies

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In my recent on the literary road post, I referred briefly to Indigenous Australian stories. Rather coincidentally, I have just spent three days at a conference titled Information Technology and Indigenous Communities, hosted, primarily, by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) with the aim of exploring “the ever-increasing use of IT to access, create and collate tangible and intangible cultural information and heritage”.  That’s the background – now onto more the interesting stuff!

Nabulwinjbulwinj rock art at Nourlangie Rock

A warning and a story: Narbulwinjbulwinj is a dangerous spirit who eats females after killing them by striking them with a yam

As I said in that literary road post, indigenous Australians have a rich story-telling culture. Theirs was a non-written culture and so stories and traditions were passed on orally and via art, music and dance. All these forms of communication have continued post-contact but, due to breaks in contact with country, many stories and traditions have, tragically, been lost.  It was consequently encouraging to hear, at the conference, about how remote indigenous communities are using modern digital technologies to tell stories – traditional and modern – and thereby re-engage with and reinvigorate their culture.

I hope this doesn’t sound paternalistic because it is not meant to – and I hope it also doesn’t suggest that the real problems don’t exist – but it was exciting to hear positive stories about these communities because most of what we, living in predominantly white urban Australia, hear are the negative – and hopeless sounding – stories of substance abuse, domestic abuse, and the awful health problems that are resulting in unacceptable disparities in life expectancy.

We were given a wonderful taster of what is being produced at the film night held on the first evening of the conference. We saw films by professional artists such as Warwick Thornton and Tracey Moffatt and by makers from various remote community projects. You can see a couple of these on the internet:

If you’d like to see more, here are a couple of sites, both providing access to self-produced and home-grown audiovisual content:

  • Mulka Project from the Yolngu people in northeast Arnhemland – and to see some of the variety of their work, using live action, animation, archival footage, check their YouTube site
  • IndigiTube, which contains media produced by a number of remote indigenous groups. If you click on Watch Videos you will see on the right hand side the variety of topics the videos cover from informational to “creative”, from traditional to modern.

But none of this is easy:

  • resources are minimal, so people spend way too much time writing grant applications – not just to run projects but for their very existence;
  • training is difficult and tends to be organised in-house often by people already stretched too thinly; and
  • access to the Internet is expensive, usually slow, and flakey or non-existent – the digital divide is a fundamental problem. (This was well demonstrated at the conference when they could not get a Skype session to work from a remote community in central Australia but could for a speaker from Montreal).

In other words, the challenges are immense, but the commitment and creativity are inspiring. There’s a long way to go and what culture has been lost is unlikely to be found, but the opportunities digital technologies offer for people to re-engage with each other, their communities and their culture are immense. It was a privilege to be able to there.

Hilary McPhee on Australian writing

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I was going to write my next post on why I like short stories – as a prelude to my next review – when I heard on the radio today that Hilary McPhee has just edited a book of Australian short fiction. To most Australians, Hilary McPhee is – and if she’s not she should be – a literary giant. With her friend Diana Gribble, she founded in 1975 a small independent publishing company called McPhee Gribble. Together they filled a major gap in Australian publishing at the time by introducing new Australian authors like, oh, you know, Tim Winton, Helen Garner and Murray Bail! Writers, in other words, who have gone on to be giants themselves. McPhee Gribble survived for 14 years before being sold in 1989 to Penguin.

Some years later, McPhee wrote a part-memoir part-history, titled Other people’s words (2001), of her experience as publisher/editor. For anyone interested in publishing, editing and the booktrade, particularly in the Australian scene, it’s an eye-opening book. And, I’d happily write a mini-review of it right now if I had a copy to hand – but unfortunately it’s one of those few books I’ve read that I don’t own myself. What I remember about it is her thorough description of the publishing industry and booktrade in general, and of the role of editors in nurturing and developing authors. She particularly details the problems in the booktrade at that time of getting books out there in an increasingly commercialised and commodified market. She was also concerned about the fact that, in the late 70s and 80s, British publishers and reviewers in general did not give much credence to Australian writers and writing, whereas the same Australian writers were generally well reviewed in the US. In today’s interview, she indicated that Australian writing still seems to not be a part of the world, and said that our writers are instead “cherry picked”.  From my experience of the blogosphere, I’d say she’s not wrong.

And this brings me to the new book. Titled Wordlines: Contemporary Australian writing it contains pieces of Australian short fiction that, as McPhee said in the Radio National interview today, meet her criteria of being “international, engaged and political”. She doesn’t define these, particularly “political”, narrowly but in terms of exploring a “different moral universe”. In other words, she doesn’t look to Australian literature to define what being Australian is, but to its ability to offer a particularly Australian sensibility or perspective on the world.

The writers in this collection include those she has loved (and often nurtured) from her publishing days – such as Gerald Murnane, Drusilla Modjeska, Carmel Bird and Cate Kennedy – and new authors she has discovered since her return from a stint overseas – such as Nam Le, Amra Pajalic and Abigail Ulman. The pieces include some that have been previously published and others written specifically for the volume.

It sounds a fascinating collection. Having been compiled by McPhee, it is, as some of the promos suggest, likely to be idiosyncratic; and it includes some writers I haven’t yet read and some I’ve barely heard of. But the main reason I’d like to read it is because she believes there is a new sensibility in Australian writing, a new way of looking at and being part of the world. I’d like to see exactly what she means by that.

On the literary (cultural) road, in the Top End

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Last month, Mr Gums and I holidayed in the Top End (of Downunder). I’m not quite sure where the Top End ends as it is a loose description for the northern part of Australia’s Northern Territory, but I believe it encompasses all the areas we visited. For ten days, we explored Katherine and Nitmiluk National Park for the first time, and re-visited Kakadu National Park and Darwin. Besides the fact that we love exploring Australia, it provided a good opportunity to escape the cold. The maximum in our city the day we left was 7.8degC. In Darwin, that same day, it was 32degC. A little different, n’est-ce pas?

Katherine Gorge

Gorgeous gorges in Nitmiluk National Park

Landscape

The landscapes here are ancient (dating back 1650 million years and more) and are home to some weird and wonderful flora and fauna, of which the crocodile is probably the most (in)famous. Like most landscapes, they have inspired many artists: writers, painters, songwriters, filmmakers (think Jedda and Crocodile Dundee for a start) and so on. And there is a rich and fascinating indigenous culture to learn about.

Jedda Rock

Jedda Rock, Nitmiluk National Park, taken from a helicopter

We didn’t really spend much time tracking white culture in the area, as I have in my other “literary road” posts, so I will just mention Charles Chauvel’s film, Jedda. Jedda (1955) is notable for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was the first Australian film shot in colour. But, more significantly, it was the first to use indigenous actors in leading roles – and to confront some of the implications of white colonisation on indigenous Australians. It was shot on location in the Northern Territory, with the final tragic scene being shot at what is now called Jedda Rock at Nitmiluk. However, that footage was lost in a plane crash, and the scene was re-shot in rather different landscape – the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney! As a retired film archivist, it was special to me to see this rock.

Indigenous culture

Sign re Jarwoyn Rock Art in Nitmiluk

There are stories here ...

We took as many opportunities as we could to learn more about indigenous culture, as there are far fewer prospects for doing so down south.

The best way for short-term tourists like us to do this is to join tours, particularly those which have indigenous guides – and so this is what we did. The most interesting of these tours were:

Through these, we added to our slowly growing knowledge of how indigenous people relate to country and of their food and cultural practices. We dug for yams, threw spears and ate green ants. It was all good!

As KevinfromCanada wrote in one of his posts, indigenous people tend to have a strong oral story-telling tradition, and this is the case with indigenous Australians. No only did we hear some of their creation stories – and saw rock art depicting these stories – but we also heard more recent life stories, some humorous, and some not so. This story-telling reminded me of a rather infectious book recently reviewed at Musings of a Literary Dilettante, Every secret thing by new Australian indigenous writer, Marie Munkara. I have dipped into it, as it’s currently next to my bed, and it reads like an orally told story. Anyhow, it was a real privilege to have these stories shared with us.

… and in conclusion

Crocodile in the Katherine River

...but he can smile at you!

This was our second trip up north and won’t be our last. I could ramble on more about sites seen and lessons learnt but I’d rather leave you wanting… And so, because you know I like a bit of nonsense, I will finish here with the following, rather apposite words for the Top End:

Never smile at a crocodile!
No, you can’t get friendly with a crocodile;
Don’t be taken in by his welcome grin;
He’s imagining how well you’d fit within his skin!
Never smile at a crocodile!
(Words by Jack Lawrence)

The importance of tone

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And I’m not talking muscle tone, as important as that is! This is a litblog after all, and so what I am talking about is the tone of a piece of writing. It’s important to me – it’s often what engages me first and what can keep me going when, say, the plot is weak or character development minimal. Is the book melancholic, or ironic, or satirical, or humorous, or playful or, heaven forbid, didactic or? Of course, the tone is not always consistent throughout a book, but it often is.

I was thinking about tone as I picked up my current read (review to come soon-ish), Haruki Murakami’s Blind willow, sleeping woman. It’s a collection of short stories, and I settled in for a good read because I’m a Murakami fan and one of the things I like about his writing is the tone. And, what should I come across 6 stories in but a little statement about tone. He read my mind! What Murakami writes, in the story “A folklore for my generation: A pre-history of late-stage capitalism”, is:

… I think things took place pretty much as I set out. I say this because though I might have forgotten some of the details, I distinctly recall the general tone. When you listen to someone’s story and then try to reproduce it in writing, the tone’s the main thing. Get the tone right and you have a true story on your hands. Maybe some of the facts aren’t quite correct, but that doesn’t matter – it actually might elevate the truth factor of the story. Turn this around, and you could say there are stories that are factually accurate yet aren’t true at all.

And there you have it. Tone = Truth! Now (if you have been reading my blog for a while) you can see why I like tone so much. It is through the tone that you glean the writer’s attitude to his/her subject and once you have  done that, then you can usually identify the underlying meaning, the main message or truth, of the work.

Take Murakami, for example. His tone is, more often than not, detached. His narrators rarely express strong emotion, but rather “speak” as if one step removed from what they are talking about. He does this in a number of ways. One is by using qualifiers (such as “maybe” and “perhaps”) and the other is by using imagery or telling stories that have a slightly bizarre or off-centre edge to them which effectively unsettles you and removes you from the central emotion that may be occurring. This tone is perfect for his themes which tend to be dislocation, alienation, being out of touch with or distanced from life/reality.

Jane Austen, on the other hand, writes with an ironic tone, that is, what is said and what is meant are often two different things. This is the perfect tone for her themes which are to do with mocking (and therefore exposing) the pretensions, superficiality and/or misconceptions of the world her characters inhabit.

Then again, sometimes the author can use a tone which appears to be in direct contrast with the import of the story, and in so doing shocks us into fully heeding the meaning. This is a risky approach and does not appeal to all readers. Good examples are the light-hearted tones used in two Holocaust novels, Marcus Zusak’s The book thief and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is illuminated. There are some who do not like to see humour and Holocaust in the same sentence, and yet I think these writers use a light tone well to convey the dark side!

I could go on, but think I’ve made my point. Is tone important to you? If so, I’d love to hear what books/authors, in particular, appeal to you for their use of tone.

Louann Brizendine, The female brain

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Louann Brizendine (Courtesy: Andy Feinberg)

Louann Brizendine, 2009 (Image: Andy Feinberg released into the Public Domain, via Wikipedia)

Beware – the F-word is coming! Yes, Feminism. It might be a dirty word in some quarters, but I regard myself as a feminist – 1970s style – and so I approached Brizendine’s best-selling book, The female brain, with my cautionary antennae out. It’s not the sort of book I would necessarily have chosen myself but it was a bookgroup read and my number one reading priority is my bookgroup’s schedule. And, really, I’m glad I read it because it is good to keep up with the various arguments and debates going on.

The way I see it – and it’s pretty obvious really – the influences on our behaviour are threefold:

  • biological/biochemical
  • genetic
  • environmental/social

The BIG question is, then, in what proportion do these play out in our lives? Clearly men and women are not the same – you just have to look at us to see that – but as a young woman I believed that environmental factors were the strongest in determining the course of women’s lives. And I still think that’s largely the case. Environmental (or socio-cultural) factors may not necessarily be the determining factors in our individual behaviours but I believe they still do play a major role in the trajectory of women’s lives. As I’m sure they do for men too – but I believe that women still tend to draw the shortest straw.

And yet, there’s a niggle. Statistics – and the obvious evidence around us – show that the proportion of women in leadership roles, for example, in boardrooms, in politics, and so on, is way below what would be pro rata. Why is this? Is it the glass ceiling? Or, is there something else going on? Brizandine suggests women have “superior brain wiring for communication and emotional tones”. Does this discourage us from seeking these leadership roles which, in our current western capitalistic environment at least, tend to be adversarial if not downright aggressive. And then, the thinking and the niggles get murkier. What happens in non-western-capitalist societies? And in indigenous societies? In these (with some notable matriarchal exceptions), women also tend not to be the leaders. Why? Is human society inherently adversarial and aggressive – or is it just that men have made it so. If the latter, can women – with their superior emotional wiring! – change the nature of society?  You see, what happens? Round and round in circles.

And this brings me back to Brizendine, neuropsychiatrist and founder of the Director of the Women’s Mood & Hormone Clinic (which rather suggests where she is coming from). Her book focuses pretty much exclusively on biology. The backcover blurb describes the book in these terms: Brizendine “reveals how the uniquely flexible structure of the female brain determines not only how women think and what they value, but how they communicate and whom they will love”. It’s all in the biology you see! We are “programmed” to seek out the most symmetrical (yes, really, or so she says) good-looking male because it is all about reproduction of the species. Occasionally she qualifies her statements, such as “Humans are not quite so biologically determined [as Syrian hamsters, for example!]” (p. 132) but the  qualifications are minor and infrequent.

It all reads a little simplistically. Like any good non-fiction work, the book is comprehensively referenced with 23 pages of citations/notes and nearly 80 pages of references. However, she herself agrees that it is difficult to properly research the workings of the brain and so many of her arguments are made using either anecdotes, drawing conclusions from the animal world, or based on one-off studies. I don’t have the resources to check all her citations but the Nature magazine reviewer found them wanting in terms of  “scientific accuracy and balance”*. A quick search of the ‘net brings up counter arguments, such as those of Insitut Pasteur neurologist Catherine Vidal, who states that “the differences [in brain development] between individuals of one and the same gender are so great as to outweigh any differences between the genders”. And regarding male versus female test results in, say, mathematics, she says that the main factor is socio-cultural:

The second study, conducted last year with a sample of 300,000 in 40 countries, showed that the current socio-cultural environment is conducive to gender equality. ‘More girls are getting good test scores in maths,’ Dr Vidal highlighted. ‘In Norway and Sweden, the results are comparable, and in Iceland, the girls beat the boys.’ It should be noted, however, that the boys beat the girls in Korea and Turkey.

Of course, she’s talking more about intellectual/academic skills/achievement rather than behaviour which is more Brizandine’s focus – but it serves nonetheless to sound a warning about ascribing causes too simply.

I’m late reading this book which apparently caused quite a flurry when it was published in 2006. I’ll end with Deborah Tannen’s conclusion to her review in the Washington Post (2006):

Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould once said he despaired of the constant question “Is it nature or nurture?” because “biology and environment are inextricably linked.” Ideally, readers will sift through the case studies, research findings and scientific conjectures gathered in this non-technical book and be intrigued by some while questioning others, bearing in mind the caution that hormones and brain structure play a role in gender differences but are not the whole story. And if this book joins a “nature” chorus that has swelled as a corrective to the previous pendulum swing toward “nurture,” we can assume that another corrective will follow. But given the character — and rancor — of our dichotomous approach to the influences of biology and culture, readers likely will be fascinated or angered, convinced or skeptical, according to the positions they have staked out already. That would be a pity.

Fair enough … and meanwhile, for me, the bottom-line remains: regardless of how similar or different we are, and why, all humans deserve to be respected and treated equally regardless of gender, race or religion.

*Nature, Vol. 443, 12 October 2006.

Louann Brizendine
The female brain
London: Bantam Books, 2007 (First pub. 2006)
352pp.
ISBN: 9780553818499

John M. Duncan, A Virginia barbecue

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Now for something different from the Library of America – a little 3-page excerpt, titled “A Virginia Barbecue”, from Scotsman John M. Duncan’s Travels through part of the United States and Canada in 1818 and 1819, which was published in 1823. In it, Duncan describes a barbecue to which he was invited by Bushrod (what a name, eh?) Washington, who was apparently a favourite nephew of (the) George.

Ground oven cooking, Kakadu

The original barbecue: Ground oven cooking in Kakadu National Park (Photographer: Me)

I wanted to read this for a number of reasons: I like to read about food; I like travel writing; I lived in Virgnia for two years; and I wanted to see what he meant by “barbecue”. The thing about “barbecue” is that in my experience Americans mean something different by it than we downunder do. In the brief introductory notes to Duncan’s piece, Library of America informs us that by the middle of the 19th century regional differences were appearing and that “debates about the best meat (pork for the South, beef for Texans), the proper smoke (cool or hot), the best sauce (thick and tomatoey in the Mexican manner or vinegar-steeped with hot peppers in the manner of the Atlantic seaboard), and the appropriate accompaniments were already beginning to rage”. Duncan, however, was a bit early for this debate so he simply describes what he sees:

The meat to be barbecued is split open and pierced with two long slender rods, upon which it is suspended across the mouth of the pits, and turned from side to side till it is thoroughly broiled. The hickory tree gives, it is said, a much stronger heat than coals, and when it is kindled is almost without smoke.

And, anyhow, he is not specifically interested in describing the cooking itself but in conveying the whole experience. From our 21st century point of view, he seems completely unconscious of the disparity between the black workers slaving over the barbecues and the guests (presumably all white) dancing, eating and drinking. This is not totally surprising, given the period, although William Wilberforce, back in England, would have been full throttle on his abolitionist campaign. Here are some of the ways Duncan describes the black workers:

…a whole colony of black servants …

Servants? Or, slaves?

… black men, women and children, were busied with various processes of sylvan cookery…

“Sylvan” is, to me anyhow, a rather poetic word for forest connoting a sense of romantic idyll that is somewhat belied by the reality of the situation.

Leaving the busy negroes at their tasks – a scene by the way which suggested a tolerable idea of an encampment of Indians preparing for a feast after the spoils of the chase.

A more socially or politically aware writer would probably, even at that time, have seen the irony in this comparison, but I don’t think Duncan did. I’m not trying to play politically correct revisionist games here, but rather reflect on how writing like this can convey meaning that was not necessarily intended at the time. Such writing – in the way it documents practices and attitudes – can be a real mine for researchers!

Duncan then describes the dancing – mainly cotillion – and the dining arrangements. I found it a little confusing when he wrote that “few except those who wish to dance choose the first course; watchfulness to anticipate the wants of the ladies, prevent those who sit down with them from accomplishing much themselves”. That is, they don’t get to eat much. Being “too little acquainted with the tactics of a barbecue, and somewhat too well inclined to eat”, he joins this first course. I had to read this a couple of times before I realised (at least I think I’m right) that “first course” actually means “first sitting”. It appears that when the ladies arise, all are expected to “vacate their seats”. The “new levy succeeds” (that is, as I read it, the next sitting) and many of these diners contrive to sit through the next “signal” to rise, thereby managing to get a good feed!

He also describes the drinking but makes it clear that while there was “jollity”, he saw no “intemperance”. He specifically states that this is so for the members of the judiciary, such as Judge Washington, who were present. Duncan makes such a point of this that I wondered whether he “protesteth too much”. I’m guessing though that it’s more a case of having his eye on his market: there was a strong temperance movement in early 19th century Virginia.

This piece is included in an anthology titled American food writing: An anthology with classic recipes. It would be fascinating to read more…

What my bookgroup will be reading for the rest of 2010

/ Whispering Gums / 30 Comments
Woman reading with cushion

Courtesy: Clker.com

I haven’t done this before – that is, discussed my reading group in my blog – but I thought I’d share the schedule my group decided on last night for the rest of the year. Our practice is to make our selections twice a year: 6 books for the first half of the year, and 5 books for the second half. The last meeting of the year is our Christmas meeting and we’ve discovered that scheduling a book when you are going to dine (not to mention embroiled in Christmas busy-ness) just doesn’t work. There are few rules. We focus on fiction but do occasionally read non-fiction, and the books need to be readily accessible, preferably in paperback. And, of course, it goes without saying that they need to be likely to engender discussion.

The way we create our schedule is to maintain a small – regularly pruned – list of recommendations, and call for more nominations just prior to the meeting. Then, we sit around and bandy the titles around until, through some sort of consensus (which may or may not involve bullying and bribery – of the nicest kind, of course), we come up with our list. If you are not at the meeting you just have to hope that the rest are kind enough to consider your wishes!

So, here is our list for the rest of this year:

  • Solar, by Ian McEwan
  • Truth, by Peter Temple
  • So much for that, by Lionel Shriver
  • The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoat, by David Mitchell
  • Parrot and Olivier in America, by Peter Carey

I’m looking forward to it. It’s a pretty typical reading group list, though with only one woman and not one translated text, it’s a little more white male anglo-oriented than most of our schedules. However, it’s a list that should, I think, provide for some good discussion. Expect to see these books appear on the blog in coming months.

Are you a member of a reading group? How do you choose your books, and what sorts of books work well with your group?