Using Wikipedia

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There has been a great change in the reputation of Wikipedia in the two years since I started calling myself a Wikipedian. Two years ago, whenever Wikipedia was mentioned – particularly in the media, in academic circles, by the “intelligentsia” – it was accompanied by a snide remark or derogatory tone. Suddenly, though, I am hearing Wikipedia referred to as a valid source on the radio (even on Aunty ABC) and seeing it cited in such places as major metropolitan newspapers.

Jimmy Wales. Shared under: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0

Jimmy Wales. Shared under: Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0

In May 2007, the month I started writing Wikipedia articles, its cofounder Jimmy Wales visited Australia and espoused its philosophy and value. In March this year, Microsoft announced that it will cease its online encyclopedia, Encarta. Its main reason was that Encarta’s popularity faded after the nonprofit Wikipedia went online in 2001. All this is wonderfully validating for we Wikipedians, but it doesn’t mean we should rest on our laurels – and it certainly doesn’t mean that users should use it blindly. As an analyst I quoted in my last post on Wikipedia says “Wikipedia has turned into a relatively reliable source of information on the the widest possible range of subjects because, on the whole, the good drives out the bad.” But there is still “bad” there.

Here are some quick tips for sorting out the good from the bad:

  • check the footnotes/references: good Wikipedia articles cite their sources, not just as references at the end of the article, but in-line at the point statements are made.
  • make sure the sources are valid: look at the domain names (such as dot gov and dot edu) and the authority of the person or organisation behind that source. Blogs, for example, are great to read but they are not necessarily a reliable source for an encyclopedia article.
  • look for multiple sources: these can provide a double-check on statements made, particularly the more controversial ones
  • check that the sources themselves don’t cite each other: circular referencing can be common in the on-line information world.
  • look under the “Discussion” tab: this is where articles are assessed (though these are not always up to date) and where discussion about the article occurs – contentious issues, exclusion versus inclusion of information, definition of terms, etc, can be discussed here.
  • look under the “History” tab: while many Wikipedia editors are anonymous or semi-anonymous, you can get a sense of who has been involved and the level of their activity and involvement.
  • note any tags on the articles: editors tag articles that have problems, such as poor or no citation of sources, incomplete or minimal content, and so on. Some of this may be obvious but sometimes these tags can clue you in to how useful the article may be, where its weaknesses are.

The thing is that despite these caveats, most Wikipedia articles, even the very minimal ones, have something to offer. I regularly go to Wikipedia to look for links to external sites. It is sometimes easier to find a person or organisation’s home page, a town’s tourist office, or some other authoritative source, on the Wikipedia article than via a search engine – particularly in those situations where search engines throw up commercial sites ahead of the more content-driven ones.

In other words, Wikipedia rocks – but especially so if you know how to roll with it.

Consider the floor burnt…

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Courtesy:Marj K @ flickr.com

Courtesy: Marj K @ flickr.com

One of my dilettantish (you know, jack of all trades master of none) interests is dance. I did ballet for eight years as a child (not very well) and have done ballroom dancing on and off since my late teens (not very well); I have tried my hand at folk dancing, English country dancing and, if you count it as dancing, ice-skating (none of these very well either!). All this is to say that I enjoy dance – doing it and watching it – and so tonight we went to see Floorplay, the latest show by Australian ballroom dancing troupe, Burn the Floor. (You can see a You Tube excerpt of an earlier show here).

Australian and World Ballroom Champions, Jason Gilkison and Peta Roby, are the dance inspirations behind the troupe which has been going since the late 1990s. It is a great way for them to carry on their love of dance in their post-competition lives. The dancers are professional and/or competitive dancers from around the world. The show was great fun: it was high energy dancing from beginning to end. Of course, this was not ballroom as I have ever done it. It was the sort of ballroom we saw on Paul McDermott’s Strictly Dancing. The music was recorded but was supplemented by two live percussionists and two singers. This combination of recorded music overlaid with live gave a real boost to the experience. Using live percussion, in particular, is inspired, given that dance is an art form that relies so much on beat and rhythm.

The program covered a wide range of styles from traditional ballroom (like waltz and quickstep) to Latin (like rumba and samba, tango and the paso doble). Thrown in there too were those fun party dances like the jive and jitterbug, but it all moved so fast that only the experts could have picked up all the styles performed. (Note that my categorisation is a lay one – ballroom dancers make much finer distinctions when they describe and group dances). The rather expensive program described “scenes” such as Harlem Nights and Fire in the Ballroom, but knowing this was probably not essential to enjoying the show. There was no real sense of narrative beyond that which is intrinsic to the individual dances themselves: rather, the show is about entertainment and display.

So, what else to say? The costuming was gorgeous, the execution was excellent, and the transitioning from routine to routine was, to use a cliche, seamless. The dancing was sensuous, but appropriately so, though the couple of routines comprising one woman and several men could have some uncomfortable readings. We saw just one slip and it was recovered so well that, if we hadn’t both seen it, I would have thought I’d imagined it.

At the end of the night my toes were tapping and, while I’ll never dance like that, I’m not ready to put away my dance shoes quite yet! It’s time I looked for my next class…

Cute but not cutesy

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Courtesy:CKSinfo.com

Courtesy:CKSinfo.com

Cute has become a much maligned word but it originated as a shortened form of acute and meant  “keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd”. This, I think, works well as a description of Sarah Watt‘s latest film My Year Without Sex, particularly when combined with more recent meanings of the word such as “charming”.

(WARNING: SOME SPOILERS)

The basic premise of the film is how a couple copes when the thirty-something wife and mother, Natalie, nearly dies from a brain aneurysm and is advised, on her discharge from hospital, that one of the risk factors is sex! Natalie (Sacha Horler) and Ross (Matt Day) learn earlier than they expected just what those marriage vows, “in sickness and in health”, imply.

Not surprisingly from the title, the film is structured around the months of the year, each month introduced with a different graphic accompanied by a sexually suggestive word/phrase such as “foreplay”, “faking it”, “doggy style” and “climax”. This could come across as artificial and contrived – and it does break up the narrative a little – but its overall impact is whimsical and fun. And it shows off Watt’s roots in animation and design.

The film teases us at times by undermining what we have come to expect of drama – an overlooked scratchie does not turn out to be a winner, a strange older man talking to a young boy does not turn out to be a pedophile.

Sarah Watt has said that “I love the big ticket life questions writ upon small domestic stories”. This is what informed her previous feature, Look Both Ways, and what informs this film. The people are very ordinary: as Natalie says, in answering her child’s question about whether they are middle class, she would like to be a “bit closer to the middle of the middle”! They live an a small, messy suburban home and cope with the day-to-day issues of job insecurity, Christmas shopping, kids birthday parties, and friendships as well as the bigger issue of “what does it all mean”?

The film deals a lot with “chance” and “luck”, from the low-odds chance of experiencing an aneurysm and the luck of its occurring in a doctor’s office, to raffles, scratchies and playing the pokies. Probably life’s biggest lottery though is one’s choice of partner and this is where Natalie and Ross, in the end, discover their best luck lies.

My Year Without Sex is one of those delightful films that does exactly what I would like more films to do – tell Australian stories in a very Australian way, that is, down-to-earth but with a touch of cheeky humour.

When is a sequel not a sequel?

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Courtesy Cambridge University Press

Courtesy Cambridge University Press

What Janeites call sequels, others, such as Elizabeth Paton writing in the June 2009 issue of  goodreading, call fan fiction. And, I guess, fan fiction is a little more accurate since what Janeites call sequels is, in fact, “fiction written by the fans, for the fans of a particular book”. In her essay titled “Sequels” in Cambridge’s Jane Austen in context that I referred to in a recent blog, Deidre Shauna Lynch commences with “the sequels, prequels, retellings and spinoffs that Jane Austen’s novels have inspired”. In other words, what Austen fans loosely call “sequels” are not necessarily sequels at all.

Paton’s description of fan fiction works well:

Fan writers shape or expand their favourite works, taking existing characters, settings or plots and creating their own stories. Fan writers may attempt to fill holes in the story or completely change the ending, add new characters or transfer original ones into different settings, tease out subplots or even merge the storylines of two different books.

She goes on to say:

In many of these stories, the imagination can take precedence over quality. Pornographic content is common, as are two-dimensional characters, illogical plots and poor sentence construction. … you may need to sort through a lot of dross to find fan fiction gold – but it is out there.

Writing generally on fan fiction, Paton provides a brief history of the genre and a wide range of examples from a 1614 sequel to Cervantes’ Don Quixote written by Alfonso Fernandez de Avellaneda to Geraldine Brooks’ 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning March which reimagines Mr March from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. She concludes her article describing in a little more detail “perhaps the most succesful sequels[!]”, “those rewriting or continuing Jane Austen’s Pride and prejudice“.

This brings me to Deirdre Shauna Lynch and her fascinating analysis of “sequels” in the Cambridge publication. Early in the essay she makes a rather apposite point:

the history of Austen sequels … seems to confirm a cynical understanding of sequel writing as the literati’s closest approximation to a get-rich-quick scheme.

However, she then delves a little more deeply into the phenomenon, asking why Austen’s novels have proven themselves so hospitable to sequelisation. She suggests there are two types of sequels:

  1. the kind (that I would call the “true sequel”) that goes past the original ending to recount what happens next. This kind she says feeds into the pleasure humans  “derive from gossip”. She suggests that “these narratives often feel like throwbacks to the Gothic and sentimental novels that Austen liked to burlesque”.
  2. the kind that finds other ways to return to Jane Austen’s world, such as reimagining a story from the point of view of another character, or combining characters from more than one book. These books, she says, sometimes explore unsettling undertones in the original, and can display “a kind of postmodern playfulness and predilection for insider joking”.

In her analysis she suggests that at least some of the “sequels” represent the very playing around with narrative conventions that Austen herself liked to do, what she calls Austen’s “unorthodox narratology” which includes repetitions, circularity and implied backstories (ie prequels).

I have to be honest here and say that while I have read Barbara Ker Wilson’s Jane Austen in Australia, I have never read an Austen sequel. I have been wondering lately though whether the best of them, particularly Lynch’s second kind, might operate a bit like a novel commentary: a good writer retelling Emma from Jane Fairfax’s point of view, for example, may very well jolt me into a new way of looking at Emma. And it’s never a bad thing to find a new way to look at a Jane Austen, or indeed any much-loved, novel.

Cheaper books? At what cost?

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Richard Flanagan gave the closing address at this year’s Sydney Writers Festival and spoke about recent moves to end territorial copyright in Australia which would allow the sale of overseas editions in Australia. It appears that this move is supported by big businesses such as Dymocks, Coles and Woolworths who apparently call themselves the Coalition for Cheaper Books. Flanagan argues that they should more rightfully be called the Coalition for Bigger Business.

IMG_3462I should put my cards on the table:

  • I buy books.
  • I buy new books mostly.
  • I prefer independent stores but I also use chain stores.
  • Price is an important criterion but is not the only criterion.
  • I like to buy books from knowledgeable staff who are prepared to help me if I’m having trouble.
  • I rarely buy online.

As I understand it the current situation is, partly anyhow, that:

Australian publishers have 30 days to publish a domestic version of any book that has been released anywhere in the world. If the book is published within 30 days, all booksellers are obliged to buy the publication from the Australian publisher and cannot import the book from an overseas publisher. (Bookseller.com)

I must admit that I don’t fully understand how this territorial copyright really plays out in terms of authors, publishers, booksellers and bookbuyers. How can I? With all the vested interests presenting their cases – and often making diametrically opposed statements –  it is hard to separate out the remainder from the classic. So, who do I support? I guess the main question to ask is, what is broken that this proposal is trying to fix? 

The Coalition says this in their submission to the Productivity Commission:

The Coalition supports the removal of these restrictions because an open market for books will lead to lower prices and quicker availability. This benefits consumers.

Ah, how sweet, they care about us, the consumer! And look, they continue with “There is strong evidence that access to books increases literacy”. I will repress my desire to be sarcastic here.

And then we get to the point: “Without parallel import restrictions [the same thing as “territorial copyright” I presume?] the consumer will have greater choice and pay less because it will be in the interests of Australian publishers to serve the consumer better…”

In other words, this appears to be, just as Flanagan said in his speech, a fight for control between booksellers and publishers. The funny thing is that the Australian Booksellers Assocation (presumably not representing the big boys) has changed its position from the one it held in 2001 and now supports the status quo.

I would love to pay less for books – and here I disagree with Flanagan that books cost about the same in the USA as they do here. In my experience they don’t. But, I am also aware that there has been a wonderful renaissance in Australian writing and publishing over the last couple of decades. If there is any risk that changes to these laws will see reduced publication of Australian authors then I am not willing to support these changes. 

So, let’s have an honest analysis of the problem – I’m still not sure what it is though can guess it’s to do with threats, real or imagined, being posed by the electronic and online world – and canvass a range of solutions. Flanagan puts forward a couple in his speech. Let’s not shoot from the hip with a solution that seems to be currently supported by only one part of one sector of the Australian book industry.

Note: See Australians for Australian Books for the anti-Coalition case.

Notes from a Wikipedian

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Two years ago I made my first edit in Wikipedia … and got hooked. You see, as a young teenager I decided I wanted to write an encyclopedia. I did start one, but didn’t get very far. Life got in the way as I recollect. As with several of my early dreams, however, life has had a way of seeing them realised, almost without my being aware of it, and so to Wikipedia I came.

Like any communities – and Wikipedia is a community – it has its ups and downs. Within a couple of days I had incurred the wrath of the “copyright” patrol. Some young (I could tell from their user page) French Wikipedian slapped a “speedy deletion” notice  for copyright infringement on a page one hour after I had created it and while I was still working on it. You see, I had “copied”, with some minor changes, a couple of sentences from a website into a new article I had created. The article was about a conference and these sentences essentially said the conference was held biennially and rotated around the states.  There are only so many ways you can say that! As someone who had worked closely with copyright all my career, I didn’t think I’d breached anyone’s creativity in almost-but-not-quite copying those sentences and, anyhow, I was still working on the article. My initial reaction was, I have to admit, a high level of distress. Sitting quietly on my comfy sofa with my laptop on my lap I felt attacked – personally and professionally (in terms of my sense of self). But, I calmed down, decided to react sensibly and got through it: I politely left a message on the tagger’s user page explaining what I was doing and set about enhancing the article. Three hours later the tag was suddenly, and as mysteriously, removed. Phew! I relaxed. But I did learn some things from that experience:

  1. the Wikipedia quality police are out and about 24/7;
  2. the best way to react is calmly so that you don’t enflame the situation; and
  3. there is an “under construction” tag you can put on a new article to tell the police (and other eager editors) to lay off for a while.

All this came back to me as I read David Runciman’s review in the London Review of Books of a book by Andrew Lih called The Wikipedia Revolution. Runciman describes in some detail the way the Wikipedia community works suggesting that it reverses Gresham’s Law which states that “bad money drives out good”. He writes:

One of the remarkable achievements of Wikipedia is to show that on the internet Gresham’s Law can work in reverse: Wikipedia has turned into a relatively reliable source of information on the the widest possible range of subjects because, on the whole, the good drives out the bad.

And how do they do it? Via the police of course! Because the truth of the matter is that my French Wikipedian was simply doing his best to ensure that the high principles of Wikipedia were being upheld. He wasn’t to know I was an honest newbie still feeling my way.

Anyhow, read the article … Runciman says some interesting things and, along the way, does manage to talk a little about the book he is reviewing.

When too much Jane Austen is barely enough

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Cover image: Courtesy Cambridge University Press

Cover image: Courtesy Cambridge University Press

Okay, this is not going to turn into a Jane Austen blog but, nonetheless, you will probably find her the author I talk about the most. Today I read Frank Kermode‘s review in the London Review of Books of the recent Cambridge edition of the works of Jane Austen, Volume IX: The later manuscripts and Claire Harman’s Jane’s fame: How Jane conquered the world. Having reviewed, for a Jane Austen journal, another volume in the Cambridge edition, Jane Austen in context, I was interested to read Kermode’s take on what Cambridge has done. Not surprisingly he is impressed by the scholarship involved though recognises the end result is not necessarily geared to the lay reader (or even the lay enthusiast). Funnily, he talks more about other books in the series than the one he is reviewing. He spends a bit of time on Jane Austen in context, complimenting the range and level of commentary it provides. I heartily concur – it is indeed a wonderful book.

Cover image: Courtesy Cambridge University Press

Cover image: Courtesy Cambridge University Press

I’m not going to ramble on here about his review except to say that in his very dignified and scholarly way – I read that he turns 90 this year – he has a sly dig at that pehonomenon that so frustrates we Janeites, that is the Austen enthusiasts who haven’t read the books. He writes:

It is said that among the television audience there were some who saw Darcy’s emergence from his pond – an event omitted from her narrative – as the high point of the book.

Need I say more? Anyhow, this leads nicely to Claire Harman’s book, Jane’s fame. This fame is a matter of some controversy among Janeites. Do we love the fact that everyone loves her? Do we become frustrated that by focussing on the films (including such biopics as Becoming Jane and Miss Austen Regrets) many “learn” things about Jane and her books that are not, in fact, “true”. Do we hope that after seeing the films people will turn to the books? What do we make of Pride and prejudice being rewritten as a zombie story? Or made into a Bollywood film? Or a series of Marvel comics? Is there a point of no return and has it been reached?

These are not, though, the questions Kermode asks. Having tracked a little the rise of her fame as described by Harman, he asks a more basic one:

How many novels of merit, less fortunate, have disappeared forever, or to wait for scholarship, perhaps only for a moment, to revive them. And is it true, as Harman claims, that it is ‘impossible to imagine a time when she or her works could have delighted us long enough’?

Good questions. And I would answer that I hope if those works are out there they do not replace Janeism but produce more wonderful writers for us to read and delight in.

Jane Austen’s letters, 1814-1816

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By 1814, Jane Austen had published Sense and sensibility (1811) and Pride and prejudice (1813).  Mansfield Park (1814) was about to be published, and Northanger Abbey had been written many years previously but was not yet published. She was over half way through her major published oeuvre of 6 books and had less than 4 years to live. Tragedy!

Jane Austen's desk with quill

Austen’s desk, Chawton. (Courtesy: Monster @ flickr.com)

There have been several editions of her letters, the most recent being Jane Austen’s letters, published in 1995 and edited by Jane Austen scholar, Deirdre Le Faye. Of the estimated 3000 letters she wrote, only about 160 survive so it is well to savour them slowly. I have just (re)read the letters from 1814 to 1816, and found much to delight a Janeite. They contain some of her most famous quotes regarding her subject-matter and style, advice to her nieces on novel-writing, criticisms of other writing which provide insight into her own writing, as well as a lot of detail about her daily life.

One of her most famous comments was made to her niece Anna (nèe Austen) Lefroy in September 1814:

You are now collecting your People delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life – 3 or 4 families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on.

Somewhat less well known is her response to James Stanier Clarke, the Prince Regent’s chaplain and librarian, who suggested she write a novel about an English Clergyman. She writes:

The comic part of the character I might be equal to, but not the Good, the Enthusiastic, the Literary. Such a Man’s conversation must at times be on subjects of Science & Philosophy of which I know nothing  […] A Classical Education, or at any rate, a very extensive acquaintance with English Literature, Ancient and Modern, appears to me quite Indispensable for the person who would do any justice to your Clergyman. And I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible Vanity, the most unlearned, & uninformed Female who ever dared to be an Authoress. (December 1815)

False modesty perhaps, but she she knew what she was comfortable writing and this was not it. She makes clear in her letters exactly what she thinks makes good writing and one of those things is to write what you know. She tells Anna that it is fine to let some characters go to Ireland but not to describe their time there “as you know nothing of the Manners there” (August 1814). Interestingly, it would have been around this time that she was writing Emma – some of whose characters go to Ireland but no details are given of their life there. She also tells Anna that fiction must appear to be realistic as well as be realistic when she says:

I have scratched out Sir Tho: from walking with the other Men to the Stables &c the very day after his breaking his arm – for though I find your Papa did walk out immediately after his arm was set, I think it can be so little usual as to appear unnatural in a book. (August 1814)

In other words, truth is allowed to be stranger than fiction!

In the September 1814 letter referred to earlier, she advises Anna to keep her characters consistent, and to be careful about providing too “minute” descriptions.  And in another letter written that same September she warns Anna off “common Novel style” such as creating a character who is “a handsome, amiable, unexceptionable Young Man (such as do not much abound in real Life)” and to not have a character “plunge into a ‘vortex of Dissipation’ … it is such thorough novel slang – and so old, that I dare say Adam met with it in the first novel he opened”!

There is a lot in these letters – about writing and getting published, the weather, fashion, health, and the like. However, in the interests of brevity I will close with something completely different but which, given the current popularity of Christos Tsiolkas’ The slap, seems very apposite. She writes this in 1815 about a young boy of her acquaintance: “we thought him a very fine boy, but in terrible want of Discipline – I hope he gets a wholesome thump, or two, whenever it is necessary”. If Jane thinks it’s a good idea, who are we to argue?

Aravind Adiga, The Sultan’s Battery

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Adiga’s next book, after his very successful, The white tiger, is a collection of short stories titled Between the assassinations. It has already been published in India, and apparently refers to that period in India between the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv. An abridged version of one of its stories, The Sultan’s Battery, has been published in various newspapers around the world.

It’s an intriguing little story. It’s about a man, Ratna, who sells, among other things, fake cures for venereal diseases (STDs) because this is the only way he can raise money for dowries for his three daughters. Quack doctors and “sexologists” are apparently prevalent in India, as this article explains. Anyhow, the first suitor to come forward turns out, ironically, to be inflicted with a venereal disease. From this point the story takes a turn that one might not expect from such a set-up.

The irony, fairly quiet though it is, is one of the appealing things about this story: the man who sells fake “cures” ends up caring for someone who is sick of the very thing he sells his “cures” for; the Sultan’s Battery which is a major tourist attraction is a place of fakery and misery; and the Dargah behind which Ratna sells his fake wares is a shrine built over the grave of a revered religious figure.

The story is told in third person, and the language is simple and direct, but a careful reading will see an equally careful use of words. Ratna’s sign is written in “golden words” and he arranges his wares with “grave ceremony”. The young men surrounding Ratna are described: “the crowd of young men had now taken on the look of a human Stonehenge; some with their hands folded on a friend’s shoulder, some standing alone; and a few crouched on the ground, like fallen boulders”. Hmm. Stonehenge  conjures something strong and enduring but he quickly undermines that with those final words of the paragraph.

An interesting comment, which draws our attention to the title of the collection, is made late in the story when a passing character says:

Everything’s been falling apart in this country since Mrs Gandhi got shot … Buses are coming late. Trains are coming late. Everything’s falling apart. We’ll have to hand this country back to the British or the Muslims or the Russians or someone, I tell you. We’re not meant to be masters of our own fate.

Adiga here, as in The white tiger, is not impressed by India’s ability to manage itself for the good of its citizens, but is going back the answer? Is this suggestion the ultimate irony?

The story has a somewhat open ending – but, given that it is an abridged version of the one in the book, we’ll have to wait for publication (late June 2009 in Australia, by Penguin) to see whether more information is provided in the book version. From this little taster, I’m willing to read more.

Steve Toltz, A fraction of the whole

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I reckon the voters for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards inaugural People’s Choice Award got it right when they chose Toltz’s A fraction of the whole as the first winner. Not necessarily because it is the best book of the year, because I’m not sure that it is, but because it is such a life-writ-large book. It is funny – belly-laugh, sometimes, and quiet chuckle, other times – but serious at the same time. Just when you think you have grasped what it is about, it dives off on another tangent and your brain has to start working all over again.

I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s basically a father-son story, told in first person by the son, Jasper. However, Jasper inserts into his story three long sections in his father’s voice: Martin’s life-story (to the age of 22) as he tells it to Jasper in a seventeen hour stint, entries from Martin’s journal describing his relationship with Jasper’s mother, and Martin’s unfinished autobiography. These add some texture to the novel and allow us to know things that Jasper couldn’t know.

Created by Tinette, Wikipedia, under GNU Free Documentation Licence

Created by Tinette for Wikipedia under GNU Free Documentation Licence

The characters are intriguing, with Martin being centre-stage. At my bookgroup’s discussion of the book one of the members wondered whether there could be a bit of yin-yang between Martin and his brother Terry, and she could have a point. Jasper quotes the following from his father’s journal:

No symbolic journey can take place in an apartment. There’s nothing metaphorical about a trip to the kitchen. There’s nothing to ascend! Nothing to descend! No space! No verticality! No cosmicity! … The essential important idea that will shift me from Thinking Man to Doing Man is impossible to apply here. … I am a halfway man …

But, while he tries, Martin never really does move from a Thinking Man, while his brother remains the Doing Man. Jasper seems caught in the middle. Martin’s trouble is that he has “thought himself into a corner”, one where he is so distrustful  of humanity, and so fearful of death, that he can’t trust the ideas that could get him out. As Martin says: “If men are constantly manufacturing meaning in order to deny death, then how can I know I didn’t manufacture that experience myself?”. This corner, this distrust, is to bring tragedy to his life near the end of the novel.

It’s a very funny book, with the comedy being both verbal and situational. It is at different times absurd, ironic or satiric. The satire is aimed at pretty much anything you could imagine – education, politics, media (journalists in particular), philosophy, death and, indeed, humanity. Almost any page you open will provide either a laugh or a description that makes you go “aha” – on many pages you will find both.

So what is it actually about? It is about father-son relationships, and about sons who don’t want to replicate their fathers. It is about Australia (“our demented country”) and Australians – and is not too complimentary about our willingness to put others down, our lack of compassion for those who need our help. It is about the paradoxes that make up our lives and thus humanity and much of the book is expressed in terms of these paradoxes – the good and bad, life and death, pessimism (Martin) versus optimism (Jasper), sanity and insanity, forgiveness and unforgiveness, and so on.

There is so much to write about this book that I think it’s best I end here with, fittingly, a paradoxical statement made by Martin two-thirds through the novel. “Fiction”, he says in his unfinished autobiography, “has a habit of making the real world seem made-up”. Toltz has produced in his novel a world that seems both real and made-up. It is up to us to decide which is which…and act accordingly!