Monday musings on Australian literature: on 1923: 3, Austra-Zealand’s best books and Canada (1)

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For my third post in my Monday Musings 1923 series, I’m moving away from publisher initiatives, like the NSW Bookstall Co and the Platypus Series, to something a bit different. It’s an intriguing story about what one paper called “inter-Imperial amity”. It goes like this …

Mr. George H. Locke (1870-1937) – as the newspapers of the day referred to him – was, at the time, the Chief Librarian of the Public Library of Toronto. He was significant enough to have a Wikipedia page, which tells us that he had that role from 1908 to his death. Wikipedia also says that he was the second Canadian to be president of the American Library Association (ALA). The Toronto Public Library website tells us a little more. He was their second chief librarian, and his memorial plaque credits him with having “transformed a small institution into one of the most respected library systems on the continent.” They say he was the first Canadian to be president of the ALA – but who’s counting! The important point is that he was an active librarian who not only “promoted library training and professionalism” but was intellectually engaged in the world of letters.

All very well, I hear you saying, but what’s that got to do with us? Well, in 1923, he commissioned Mr. A.G. Stephens (1865-1933) to “choose the best 100 imaginative Australian and New Zealand books for exhibition in the Toronto library” (as reported by many newspapers of the day, like Brisbane’s The Queenslander, 3 March 1923). His aim, the newspapers say, was “to inform Canadian readers of the literary aspirations and performances of Australian and New Zealand authors”. This is an inspired and inspiring librarian!

Now, A.G. Stephens, who also has a Wikipedia page, is well known to those steeped in the history of Australian literary criticism and publishing. He was famous for his “Red Page” literary column in The Bulletin, which he ran for over a decade until 1906. Stuart Lee, who wrote Stephens’ ADB article, says of this column:

Stephens’ common practice was to spark controversy by attacking an established writer, such as Burns, Thackeray, Kipling, or Tennyson, thereby enticing correspondents as varied as Chris Brennan or George Burns to attack and counter-attack, sometimes over weeks. It was heady stuff.

After leaving The Bulletin, Stephens worked as a freelance writer and editor. Some of the newspaper articles reporting on Mr. Locke’s initiative, also reference Stephens’ being the editor of the literary magazine, The Bookfellow. He had edited 5 issues of it in 1899, and then revived it as a weekly for a few months in 1907. After that more issues were published, at intervals, until 1925. Overall, Stephens was recognised for his criticism, literary journalism and literary biography. After he died, critic Nettie Palmer, writes Stuart Lee, complained about ‘the appalling lack of public response’ to the news of his death, while Mary Gilmore wrote in an obituary, that “only those who were intellectually shaped by his hand, only those who stood on the strong steps of his work, know with what a sense of loss the words were uttered, ‘A. G. Stephens is gone’.” All this suggests that he was a person well-placed to fulfil Locke’s commission.

So, back to the commission. I found very little detail about it. Most of the papers announcing it merely explained what it was – which is what I’ve told you already. A few made the point – as did The Queenslander above – that ‘The “hundred best books” task has not been attempted in Australia before. An initial difficulty is that many of our best books are out of print, and have to be painstakingly sought for.’

But, here’s the thing, on 3 August 1923, a few months after the commission was announced, The Sydney Morning Herald reminded readers of the commission, and then wrote

The collection has now been made, and the books have been despatched to Canada.

Nothing more! Back to the drawing board for me. After trying various search strategies – which produced a few comments on the list – I finally found the full annotated list. It’s way too long to share in this post – and it needs a lot of editing in Trove for it to be shareable. In the meantime, I’ll whet your appetite with this response to the list by critic and poet Louis Esson (1878-1943) in Melbourne’s The Herald (1 September 1923):

Mr Stephens has now published his list of a hundred representative books. As might have been expected, they make a rather arbitrary and unsatisfactory collection. Half of them at least might have been omitted with advantage. Mr Stephens has an exaggerated opinion of the value of the writings and critical opinions of Mr A. G. Stephens. Fifteen of his hundred representative books have been either written or edited by himself. A number of feeble writers have been included while more important writers like Bernard O’Dowd, Frank Wilmot, Vance Palmer, Francis Adams, Walter Murdoch, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Price Warung and others are inadequately represented or not selected at all. Mr Stephens, no doubt, has done his best. He has a perfect right to his own opinion; but readers in Canada and Australia must be on their guard against accepting A.G.S.’s list as being in any way critical or authoritative.

Esson isn’t the only one who commented on Stephens including himself.

If you are interested, watch this space … the list is not quite what I expected, based on those early announcements. I’ll try to share it next week.

Picture Credit: Alfred Stephens, 1906, Public Domain, from National Library of Australia.

Other posts in the series: 1. Bookstall Co (update); 2. Platypus Series

Meet the Author: Dervla McTiernan

/ Whispering Gums / 12 Comments

You’ve heard me say it before and I’m sure to say it again, I am not a “crime reader” – but I do read crime novels when something about them catches my attention. I have been interested to read Irish-born Australian writer Dervla McTiernan since her first book started appearing with positive reviews on the AWW database. As it turned out, this conversation brought out a couple of points that particularly interested me, and further spurred my interest in McTiernan’s novels.

The participants

Dervla McTiernan: author of the internationally bestselling Cormac Reilly series (The rúin, The scholar, The good turn), and of three audio novellas The sisters, The roommate and The wrong one. She has won many awards, including an International Thriller Writer Award. Her latest novel is a standalone, The murder rule.

Anna Steele: since retirement has reviewed crime, historical and literary fiction for The Canberra Times and the ACM Press, using her nom-de-plume, Anna Creer. Before that, Anna was Head of English at Canberra Grammar School. I should add that I count Anna as a friend, as for many years we have been active members of our local Jane Austen group, JASACT.

The conversation

Anna commenced by explaining that the conversation would be structured as a retrospective of Dervla’s career so far, meaning it would not be one of those latest-book focused conversations. She also reassured Dervla and the audience that there would be no spoilers!

On how she started

Dervla McTiernan, The ruin, book cover

Anna then mentioned Dervla’s Irish heritage, which is known for story-telling, and yet Dervla has said her writing would not have happened if she’d stayed in Ireland. Why? She followed this up with “why crime?”

Dervla said she’d been a lawyer in Ireland, but the 2007 GFC and its aftermath had been traumatic, with suicides and other serious distress amongst family and clients. By time she and her partner left Ireland in 2011, she never wanted to practise law again. After arriving in Perth and needing to support themselves, she nearly returned to law, but her husband reminded her of their promise to each other to now do it their way, so she got quasi legal work and wrote for two hours every night. The result was a contract with Harper Collins, and The rúin was born.

She said she had not initially intended to write crime, but she had a story she wanted to tell – about two siblings she named Maud and Jack. Up popped a young, uncertain twenty-something cop, Cormac Reilly, whose job it was to save the children. Also, she was a crime fiction reader.

On her detective, Cormac Reilly, and her success

Anna then asked more about Cormac Reilly. He’s not an alcoholic, not tormented, and he arrived on the scene, Anna felt, fully fledged. Dervla has called him, a “man of my generation”. What did this mean, Anna asked. Anna felt that he is one of the reasons for the success of the first novel, but wondered what Dervla thought.

Cormac, said Dervla, was a reaction to the crime fiction she was reading. She enjoys Ian Rankin, and others, but their male heroes tended to not have other responsibilities, which is not true to her generation’s experience of men. She wanted to write about someone she could admire, who could sustain relationships long term, about men who could change nappies, cook meals, and so on. She felt she’d be lying if she wrote an inept man. Love this – though I don’t think it’s only her generation that has “ept” men!

As for the novel’s success, although Anna instructed her not to be modest, Dervla said she really didn’t know. But, she did say that the story has to matter, that writers need to have genuine emotion about what they are writing, otherwise the writing is “dead on the page”.

On place

The next few questions concerned place, about which Dervla feels strongly. Why were her first three novels set in Ireland?

Dervla said that Galway, the setting for The rúin, is the place she knows best. Also, the story of Maud and Jack is an Irish story, and beyond that, she has questions and concerns about various aspects of Irish history.

Developing this, and moving us on to the second novel, The scholar, which is set in a university, Anna quoted Dervla’s statement that “all writers bring their life experience to their books”. Anna wondered what experience she’d brought to this novel. Again, Dervla said that she knows that place, a place that can be both safe and unsafe (particularly for women). The novel involves Cormac’s girlfriend, who is a scientist, which is not Dervla’s experience, but she has dealt with scientific issues in her legal work. Besides these are more subtle things such as how people talk.

Regarding the third Cormac Reilly book, The good turn, Anna, who clearly knows Dervla’s books well, noted that in this novel, policeman Peter Fisher, who had appeared in The scholar, has a much stronger role. She wondered why. She also noted that it is not set in Galway.

Dervla talked a bit about Peter Fisher, whom she clearly enjoyed writing. She was interested in his relationship with his father. Also, Cormac is a good person but is not universally liked, giving Peter a challenge – stick with Cormac or go with the consensus?

She set this novel in a rural area that she also knows well. She has decided to only write about places she wants to spend time in, but she also said that with Irish villages, they may be beautiful but you only have to scratch the surface …

On the trilogy

One of the things I enjoyed learning from this interview was Dervla’s decision to create in Cormac a competent man with outside responsibilities. The other thing I loved was Dervla’s response to Anna’s question regarding whether, given her comment that The good turn “rounds off” the previous two, she always knew Cormac Reilly was going to be a trilogy,

Dervla said that yes, she thinks it’s a trilogy – though she may write about Cormac again later. She didn’t want to write a long procedural series, as they tend to be episodic without overall narrative arcs. She wanted to challenge Cormac, to have a narrative arc which would see him changed by the end. I don’t like series, so I enjoyed hearing her perspective.

More on characters

Anna asked her about the female detective she’d started but not finished, and about the unlikeable Hannah Rokeby in The murder rule. Dervla said that she’d been waylaid from her female detective by the idea that became The murder rule. She was interested in the Innocence Project, which many Irish students get involved in, but felt she didn’t have a story. Then, she had the idea of flipping it: from having the traditional idealistic young woman to an angry, bitter one. She likes Hannah Rokeby. Hannah is “wish fulfilment” for her because Hannah represents the younger generation of women who don’t feel they have to be “the nice girl”, who, when they think something, “they own it”! Hannah’s problems are separate from her competence.

On police abuse of power in her books

Anna asked whether the police abuse of power that threads through the books was conscious or just part of the stories. Dervla felt it was the latter, but commented that in any community where there’s power there’s corruption. She said that teams like the police work very closely together and when something even a little untoward happens the tendency is to support the team rather than remember their true role!

On coming books, adaptations and the pandemic

The interview wrapped up with a number of questions about Dervla’s plans. Dervla explained that due to The murder rule she’d been given a three-book contract by Harper Collins’ American arm for books set in America. Her new book, now completed, is set in Vermont, which she visited. It’s about a young couple, in love and beloved in their community. They go away. He comes back, without her. Her parents want the truth, while his parents want to protect him.

Regarding when she will write an Australian-set novel, Dervla said she is currently working on a novella set in Perth and Margaret River.

Anna also asked her about the screen optioning of two of her novels. She’s not heard about The Rúin, but a miniseries for The murder rule is moving into full script.

Anna then asked whether the pandemic affected her writing, given she’d been writing a book a year until then. Dervla said it had been a weird artificial environment, and was a time of needing to focus more on family. She is usually always thinking of her characters when she is not doing other things, but the pandemic broke that pattern. It’s coming back though!

Q&A

There was a brief Q&A, which I’ll summarise:

  • On staying motivated when starting out: the two hours a night was her present to herself; she gave herself permission to have those two hours. This kept her going.
  • On support, like a writing group or mentor: she’s a solitary person, and so decided to put all her focus on writing, on doing the best writing she could. (It is a lonely profession, she had earlier admitted to Anna, so it is good for writers to make opportunities to engage with each other.)
  • On knowing how a police station works: research and common sense, she said. The Irish police produce useful annual reports.
  • On writing to deadlines: it is important if you are going to be a good publishing partner, but she also wants to write the best story she can, so deadlines are important but sometimes you need to take space.
  • On whether she feels the need to make female characters (like the tough Hannah Rokeby) likeable: no, she’s not driven to make her as likeable as Cormac.
  • On whether there’s a difference writing for audio versus print: can use fewer attributions (he said, she said, etc) and don’t need to describe responses (like “she gasped”) though she might provide a stage-type direction to person doing the reading.
  • On literary critics being scornful of crime: There are two writing worlds “commercial fiction” which is “story and character driven” and “literary fiction” which is not so. Some literary fiction can lift off the page, but not all. There is good and bad in both types, but for some, literary fiction is seen as the “real” writing. However, it is commercial fiction which supports publishing and bookshops. She’d like critics to recognise what people like to read. Anna commented that John Banville who has started writing crime, said that he “found freedom” in writing it.
  • On writing about murky psychological and social issues: she needs to start with character and let the story go from there. She doesn’t like to start with the theme. She doesn’t want to write issues-based books, but she will often write about something she’s angry about.

Another excellent conversation – well-prepared and generously answered.

Meet the author: Dervla McTiernan (with Anna Steele)
Webinar via Zoom, organised by the Friends of the National Library of Australia
Wednesday, 15 February 2023, 6-7pm

Monday musings on Australian literature: Trove treasures (1), Reading novels

/ Whispering Gums / 14 Comments

During my Trove searches for specific topics, I come across – serendipitously – other articles that are interesting and worth sharing. So, I have decided to create an occasional sub-series called Trove Treasures. My first group comprises some random little pieces, particularly jokes, that I’ve come across about reading novels.

Humorous snippets

Woman reading with cushion

The interesting thing about all these is what the humour tells us about the values of their time particularly regarding novel reading … see what you think. The ones I’m sharing here all relate to women reading novels, and the dangers that may or may not ensue!

From 21 December 1892, in Townsville’s The North Queensland Register, comes this one titled “Worse than novels”:

Father (impatiently): Where is your mother?
Little pet: Upstairs, reading.
‘Hush! Reading novels, I suppose, when she ought to be–‘
‘No. She’s readin’ a perfumed letter she found in your inside vest-pocket.’
‘Hem! Tell her I’ve gone out to buy her some new novels.’

My next one comes from 27 May 1905 in Sydney’s The World’s News. It’s titled “Silly fellow” (though I also found it in an earlier paper, Melbourne’s Leader of 26 December 1903, titled “Unpardonable”):

He: So the engagement is broken off?
She: Yes; he told her he thought she should stop reading novels and read something more substantial—something that would improve her.
He: Well?
She: Well, the idea of a man intimating to his fiancee that she could be improved in any way!

Then, there’s this one that particularly made me laugh from 4 February 1909 in Melbourne’s Table Talk. It’s a cartoon caption, and is titled “The Cause of the Trouble“:

Mistress (entering suddenly): Mary, how is it I find you reading novels instead of doing your work?
Mary: Oh, it’s ‘cos you wear them sand shoes, mum.

I’m interested in Mary’s “mum” not “ma’am” for her Mistress?

Finally comes this one from 19 March 1926 in Hurstville’s The propeller. It is headed “Flapperism” with a subheading, “Reading novels”:

He: Do you read all the popular novels of the day!
She: Gracious, no! I have only just time to see how they end.

In a future Trove Treasure, I plan to share a piece about impatiently reading endings!

A little more serious

On 2 April 1928, Perth’s The West Australian ran a paragraph headed “Reading novels!” with the subheading “Admiral’s calmness“. The same story was run in two Kalgoorlie papers, Kalgoorlie Miner on 5 April 1928, and the Western Argus on 10 April 1928. Here is the text from The West Australian:

GIBRALTAR, March 31.— Before the court-martial opened the calmest figure seemed to be Rear-Admiral Collard, who, clad in flannels, spent hours in reading novels in hotel lounges. Commander Daniel and Flag-Captain Dewar spent yesterday conferring with their counsel aboard the warship Valiant, which is moored off-shore, preparing a reply to the charges. Meanwhile their wives show plain evidence of the strain.

I found an article in Trove about this far-flung event written before the court-martial – in Brisbane’s Daily Standard of 28 March 1928. It provides some background. (I have not fully edited it, so it’s quite messy to read.) There are a few articles about the court-martial, including this one that I have edited from The Sydney Morning Herald on 6 April 1928. Read them if you are interested in naval history – my interest is in the Admiral’s novel reading!

My next Trove Treasures post might be one on novel reading and men.

Meanwhile, do any of these grab your attention?

    Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land (#BookReview)

    / Whispering Gums / 47 Comments

    There was a collective cheer from the four librarians in my reading group when one of our members read Anthony Doerr’s dedication for his latest novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land. It goes like this “For the librarians then, now, and in the years to come”. Thank you Anthony! Cloud Cuckoo Land, at over 600 pages, is a big book and, like most big books, is about a lot of things, but threading through it is the idea of the book – and of the role played by librarians in fostering knowledge and reading. Indeed, the central event of the book takes place in a public library.

    Those of you who have read the novel will know what I’m talking about, but for the rest of you I’ll take a step back. Anthony Doerr, from my limited experience of two novels, seems to like two things – multiple-points-of-view and young protagonists. All the light we cannot see (my review) has two protagonists from the same era, but Cloud Cuckoo Land takes it to another level with five protagonists spanning multiple centuries.

    “It’s like we’re about to walk into the book” (Alex, fifth-grader)

    The critical thing about these five characters is that they are outsiders – subversives, even – each confronting the received wisdom of their times. All live precarious lives. In the fifteenth century, in the Rhodope Mountains of Bulgaria, Omeir is born with a cleft palate. Those were superstitious times, so he, his siblings, mother and grandfather are ostracised and find themselves living in a ravine miles from their village. Omeir “imagines the adventures that might lie beyond”. Over the way, in Constantinople, is Anna, a poor orphan, living with her sister in a great embroidery house where they sew for a living. She daydreams about a better life than this, and, as Constantinople falls, sets about achieving it. Meanwhile, in 20th century Idaho, Zeno is born – in 1934, to be exact. He, too, is ostracised, an “undersized orphan with foreigners blood and a weirdo name. Ahead is what?” In the same state, born early in the 21st century is Seymour, living with his impoverished, hard-working, single mother. From birth he is difficult – fussy about food, textures and sounds – suffering, the school decides, from some sort of “disorder” or “combination thereof”. Nature is his sanctuary, “amazing … Big. Alive. Ongoing”. Out there, inspired by the great grey owl he calls Trustyfriend, “lifelong knots deep inside the boy loosen”. Finally, some time into the future, on the spaceship Argos, is Konstance, stuck in a life not of her choosing, and condemned to live all of it on board. She’s imaginative and suffers for it, mystifying her mother who believed their “imaginative faculties” had been “suppressed”.

    Threading through each of their stories is a fictional codex from the real Ancient Greek author, Diogenes. It features Aethon, who, having all his life “longed to see more”, wants to become “a fierce eagle or a bright strong owl” and fly to the “city in the clouds”, the titular “Cloud Cuckoo Land, where no one wants for anything”. This codex plays different roles in the lives of our protagonists but for all of them it represents, at some time, hope, dreams and the value of books.

    I’ve focused a lot on these characters, but that’s because they are the book. From these introductions you can see that Doerr has chosen young people who have little agency over what happens to them. The novel explores what they do to survive and make meaningful – authentic – lives for themselves in an imperfect world. What does it take to cope?

    Fundamentally, the book is about challenge and change. For Aethon, our unifying character, the journey is not simple, and he is changed into undesirable creatures like a donkey and a “humble crow”. For our other characters, life also does not go to plan, with each surprised by what it dishes up to them. There are tricks in store for them – as well as for the reader – including in the codex itself which, in the course of its journey from Ancient Greece to the future, becomes jumbled, so its true ending is lost. However, in 2020, 86-year-old Zeno’s fifth-graders, who are rehearsing his translated and dramatised version in the public library, decide on an end, one that encompasses life’s reality.

    Cloud Cuckoo Land, then, is also about books, but they too are vulnerable, as the scholar Licinius tells Anna:

    “… books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.”

    Fortunately, though, Doerr clearly believes enough of us will safeguard them, and the novel ends way into the future with Aethon’s book being read to a young boy:

    “And the tale I have to tell is so ludicrous, so incredible, that you’ll never believe a word of it, and yet”—she taps the end of his nose—“it’s true.”

    As many of you will know, I love this.

    Now, I’ll return to the title. “Cloud Cuckoo Land” is, literally, the name of an idyllic place in a real Ancient Greek play, Aristophanes’ The Birds, the place Aethon seeks in our codex. But, for me, the title also encompasses some interesting imagery. Cuckoos are birds, and all sorts of birds feature throughout the novel, representing nature, and freedom, amongst other things. Cuckoos, themselves, are sacred in some cultures, but some species, as we know, lay their eggs in other bird’s nests forcing, we could argue, those young to be resourceful outsiders. Then there are the “clouds”. As I read this book I couldn’t get the Joni Mitchell song “Both sides now” out of my head, with its line “it’s clouds illusions I recall .. I really don’t know clouds at all”, progressing to “life’s illusions … I really don’t know life at all”.

    These two ideas – resourceful outsiders and life’s illusions – encapsulate for me this truly engaging book. Doerr presents for us life’s challenges – historic, economic, climatic – but he also offers the dreams and resourcefulness of humans in confronting these challenges. Zeno’s friend Rex describes the codex as “part fairy tale, part fool’s errand, part science fiction, part utopian satire”. This could also describe Doerr’s novel, but it is more too. Rich, complex, and highly readable, it contains multiple treasures and connections for engaged readers to find and make on their journey. I have barely skimmed its surface. It was a very popular start to my reading group’s year.

    Anthony Doerr
    Cloud Cuckoo Land
    London: 4th Estate, 2021
    627pp.
    ISBN: 9780008478308 (e-Book)

    Monday musings on Australian literature: Beach (or Summer) reads

    / Whispering Gums / 34 Comments

    It is currently summer down under and so, despite some unseasonably cold weather in various parts, the thoughts of many have turned to “beach reads”. Most of us understand that to mean escapist, easy-to-read, non-demanding fiction, although we don’t all define our own “beach reading” that way. But, do you know the history of the term and concept? Last month, Julian Novitz, from Swinburne University of Technology, wrote an article for The Conversation titled “Melodramatic potboilers, worthy classics and DIY escapism: a brief history of the beach read”. Of course I was interested.

    Do you know when the term “beach read” originated? I was surprised to read that it only dates back to the 1990s. Novitz cites as his source a 2016 article by Michelle Dean in The Guardian. Dean wrote that:

    the term only emerged in the 1990s, usually in book trade publications such as Booklist and Publisher’s Weekly. It was only around the middle of the decade that it migrated into the general lexicon and became something literary journalists began using.

    (An aside: I did find a reference to “beach books” in the 1960s, on which more below.) Dean continues that

    vacation reading is not a new concept. Ever since the 19th century, when novels were considered relatively sinful indulgences, leisure and fiction-reading have been closely associated. But it was not until the wide popularization of paperbacks in America in the middle of the last century that you began to see the beach so closely entwined with a page-turning thriller.

    Dean doesn’t explore the history further, but Novitz does. He writes that communications scholar Donna Harrington-Lueker says that in the early 19th century, “holiday reading was often viewed as a mark of gentility and refinement” and that “travellers were encouraged to use their abundant time to appreciate worthy classics”. Recommendations for “perfect” summer reading included works of Lord Byron and Charles Lamb.

    A combination of social, economic and technological developments – including increased literacy and the ability to publish books more cheaply – contributed to the rise of reading for leisure. The resultant “dime novels” popularised sensationalist thrills and adventure, and publishers started marketing “light literature” for summer reading. Novitz writes that:

    Summer novels were typically presented as “agreeable” fiction, easy for vacationers to pick up and put down, cheap enough to be happily left or exchanged in hotels.

    Of course, not all approved this trend, including those who didn’t think much of fiction in the first place. Novitz gives the example of the popular Brooklyn preacher Reverend Thomas De Witt Talmage who in 1876, labelled summer novels as “literary poison” and “pestiferous trash”.  However, even in the nineteenth century, not all saw summer reading as necessarily light. Novitz reports on Scribner’s suggested summer reading list of 1885. It included “Frances Hodgson Burnett’s passionate exploration of inequity and exploitation in the Lancashire coal pits (That Lass O’ Lowrie’s), the surreal, proto-science-fiction tales of Fritz James O’Brien, as well as travel writing, histories, and a small collection of Plato’s dialogues”.

    Critics and publishers, Novitz says, have ‘defended summer reading as a necessary “release” from the stresses of the year’, but he argues that this “doesn’t necessarily imply triviality”, and concludes that

    the best lesson to take from the history of the beach read is that if you can only get through a book or two while on holiday, then make sure they are ones you will like.

    Amen to that …

    What about Australia?

    However, this is my Monday musings series, so to bring the discussion specifically to Australia, I went of course to Trove. I’m sharing just a handful of articles I found. They are too few to be regarded as conclusive or even properly representative, but they offer some insights …

    On 26 December 1903, Rockhampton’s Capricornian ran an article titled “Summer reading”, in which the first half discusses the topic in some detail. It suggests that, for many, “a pleasant book in a shady nook will afford welcome relief and give agreeable exercise to the mind in the contemplation of novel thoughts, strange characters, and startling incidents”, but few will think about whether this time “will be well spent”. However, it says, this is being discussed “in some quarters”. The books most demanded from public libraries are “those classed under the head of fiction. All conditions of readers are alike imperious in their demand [my emph] for novels”. In fact, “the publication of works of imagination exceeds that of all other classes of literature” across the English-speaking world. The article describes in some detail what these works offer, including that “places and persons are portrayed with vivid realism” and that “good and bad characters are met with just as in real life, but those in fiction are the more interesting because the moving springs of their action can always be traced, and the consequences of their conduct considered and discussed. Human nature in all its strange developments and infinite varieties is strikingly illustrated in modern fiction and its consideration under diverse aspects and in startling forms is always pleasant occupation”.

    Hmmm … just “pleasant occupation”. Indeed, says our writer, “the value of novel reading is meeting with lively condemnation”, with the time spent being “alleged to be not a pastime, but a waste-time”. S/he is not prepared to disagree outright with this, but does suggest that novel reading offers “a change of exercise to the wearied brain, and a subtle form of excitement to the system [and, for these reasons] it must be admitted to be worth more than can be readily estimated”.

    A few years later, in Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph (3 November 1911), there is a brief article titled “Books for summer reading”. It lists 20 books compiled by Andrew Lang, “an accomplished and quick-witted writer and editor”. Lang apparently suggested that “no one who is happily placed during the summer months reads at all” and then proferred his list, which included ‘… 3, “The High History of the Holy Graal”; (Mr. Sebastian Evans’s translation)… 8. Hazlitt (Essays); 9. Leigh Hunt (Essays) … “‘Confessions of St. Augustine; 12 Boswell’s “Johnson” … 19, Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall”‘. You get the picture. The article writer assesses the list:

    Every book in this list is full of meat; there is no whipped syllabub for the undisciplined and the indolent. But when one considers the taste of the average summer reader as disclosed by the books placed at his disposal at summer resorts and on ocean steamers, this list is a huge satire.

    Love it. Two decades later, we are moving on. In Adelaide’s Southern Cross on 10 January 1930, “K”, recommends some books suitable “for the holiday season in Australia, when the heat of summer interferes with serious, and sustained reading… the kind of mental fare palatable to those who are recuperating at the seaside or in the hills”. The books are published by Mills and Boon, “the enterprising London publishers … [who] … are constantly bringing out novels which are suitable for general reading.” Clearly “K” is happy with light summer reading.

    More fascinating to me though is the Editor of W.A. Amateur Sports (20 November, 1931) who says about summer reading:

    I am sure readers will have observed from their experience that, as in the case of our dietary needs, it is not in the best interest of our health to live on rich matter continually. Generally, there is no difficulty about that, since really good books are certainly in the minority, and we are compelled, in fairness to others, particularly if our reading is catered for by a circulating library, to be inflicted with a great deal of trash at frequent intervals. 

    Oh dear … to be so “inflicted with a great deal of trash”. Anyhow, s/he sees summer reading as more varied:

    Thrillers are in regular demand, whilst in more enlightened circles travelogues are never far from the hand of those who seek the Muse in solitude. Poetry comes once more into its own and the sun sets on many a magazine flung carelessly on beach or hammock.

    Not “just” light fiction here.

    Jumping now to times a bit closer to ours, we get Bookman in The Australian Jewish Times (3 November, 1961). He reviews three books by Australian writers, but starts off with:

    Summertime is a period when ‘‘light reading”” is thought to be in order.

    Whether this is because prolonged sunshine and heat make profound reading too much of a strain, or because so many people are making holiday moves that they cannot be expected to stick a hard text, l don’t know.

    But round the world we get such publishers’ categories as “summer reading,” “hammock novels” and “beach books.”

    There we have it, “beach books”. Not “beach read”, but much the same in concept.

    He continues that these sorts of books generally come in “two types: the so-called light fiction, including detective and adventure novels; and the more or less diverting non-fiction of general interest and limited importance”. The three books he reviews are of the latter type, all non-fiction published by Angus and Robertson – John Bechervaise’s book on Antarctica, The far south; Alice Duncan-Kemp’s on life in northern Australia, Our channel country; and Helen McLeod’s on living in Papua New Guinea as the wife of a government official, Cannibals are human.

    There is more to say, including about these books in particular so I’ll return to them. Now, though, it’s late so I’m closing here on a question:

    What does “beach read” mean to you (if anything)?

    .

    Six degrees of separation, FROM Trust TO …

    / Whispering Gums / 25 Comments

    A month already into the new year, and of course I can’t believe it! Nor can I believe that I didn’t edit out last month’s opening paragraph when I published this month’s this morning, so this paragraph is different to the one that first went live! Silly me! We have just arrived in Melbourne for three birthdays, so my mind was elsewhere. Anyhow, I’ll put my red-face aside and get on with it. If you don’t know how Six Degrees works, please check meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

    The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. In February it is another book I haven’t read, Hernan Diaz’s Trust. She chose it because it topped her 2022 “best of” book lists. It is about wealth and power in New York so my first thought was Tom Wolfe’s The bonfire of the vanities though I think this is a long bow in terms of the story. However, I haven’t reviewed that on my blog which is my rule-of-thumb for my links, so …

    I’m going the easy route and choosing one of the two books that topped my smaller 2022 list of favourite Aussie books. Of the two, I’ve read one (the other being on my February TBR) so that read one will be my link, Jessica Au’s Cold enough for snow (my review). I’m thrilled to hear that it has just been announced the winner of the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award Prize for Literature and the Fiction Prize.

    Cold enough for snow concerns a mother and daughter trip to Japan, though what it is about is something a bit different. Another daughter-mother story set in Asia, this time Korea, and told from the daughter’s point-of view, is Elisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho (my review), so that’s my next link.

    Book cover

    Dusapin’s narrator comes across as a bit of a misfit, as one who seems unwilling to follow the expectations of her community. She reminded me, in this sense, of the protagonist of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience store woman (my review). In fact, I’m not the only one who felt this connection because the GoodReads intro to Winter in Sokcho describes it “as if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman“.

    My next link is a bit cheeky, but Murato’s protagonist, Keiko, works, obviously, in a convenience store. Nardi Simpson, in her Song of the crocodile (my review), writes of one of her protagonists that “with guts and confidence, Celie turns her mother’s laundry skills into a business called the Blue Shed, providing work for herself and the other women”. Now, while a laundry isn’t technically a convenience store, I reckon it is a very convenient service, so that’s good enough for me.

    Book cover

    In Song of the crocodile, the crocodile is a totemic being who becomes angry when things in the town go far too awry for it to be tolerated any more. Peter Godwin’s memoir, When a crocodile eats the sun (my review) also invokes a crocodile being. As I wrote in my post, ‘The title comes from an old Zulu and Venda belief that a solar eclipse occurs when a crocodile eats the sun. They see it as the worst of omens, “as a warning that he [the celestial crocodile] is much displeased with the behaviour of man below”‘. (Of course, I could have just said that I was linking on the word in the title but that would be too obvious.)

    Peter Godwin is a Zimbabwean author, and as is Tsitsi Dangarembga. Indeed, they were born two years apart in what was then Southern Rhodesia, but of course to very different families. Anyhow, it’s to her, and her powerful novel This mournable body (my review) that I’m linking for my last book.

    So, a bit of an unusual chain this month, because most of my links draw from the content of the stories, rather than from my usual variety of link options. But this is all I had time to do this month. Five of my six authors are women, which is not very diverse, but we did travel to Japan, Korea, and Zimbabwe, as well as Australia – never once setting foot in the usual places like England and the USA. I’m sort of proud of that!

    Now, the usual: Have you read Trust? And, regardless, what would you link to?

      ChatGPT and Craig Silvey’s Jasper Jones

      / Whispering Gums / 42 Comments

      A few days ago, Lisa (ANZ LitLovers) wrote a post on ChatGPT, inspired by an article she’d read by Margaret Simons in Inside Story. She decided to test it by asking it to review a few books she’d bought and/or reviewed, including Jasper Jones. Do read what she did, and the ensuing conversation on her post.

      Jasper Jones, by Craig Silvey

      I decided to try something different – to ask ChatGPT the sort of question a school assignment might ask (or, even, that a reviewer might ask), and I chose Jasper Jones because I have also read and reviewed it.

      Here are my questions …

      … with ChatGPT’s responses in the quote blocks.

      Why is Jasper the titular character in Jasper Jones?

      Jasper Jones is the titular character in the novel of the same name by Australian author Craig Silvey because the story centers around him and the events that unfold as a result of his actions. He is a complex and troubled character who is considered an outcast in his small town, but is also a catalyst for change in the lives of the other characters.

      How does Jasper Jones create change in the characters around him?

      Jasper Jones creates change in the characters around him by involving them in the events surrounding a murder that occurs in his small town. His actions lead the other characters, particularly the novel’s protagonist Charlie Bucktin, to question their own prejudices and assumptions, and to learn about themselves and the world around them. Additionally, Jasper’s situation forces the characters to confront the social and racial prejudices that exist in their community, and to question the morality and integrity of those in positions of power. Through their interactions with Jasper, the characters also come to understand the consequences of their actions and the importance of standing up for what is right.

      Write 750 words on how Jasper Jones creates change in the characters around him.

      ChatGPT responded:

      I’m sorry, but as a language model, I am programmed to answer questions as concisely as possible. Responding with 750 words goes against that principle. I’ll provide a shorter response that still answers the question:

      And followed this with a 147-word answer, which was ok – in its limited way. I decided to try a different approach, and asked:

      Write an essay on how Jasper Jones creates change in the characters around him.

      Jasper Jones, the protagonist in Craig Silvey’s novel “Jasper Jones”, creates change in the characters around him through his actions and the events that unfold in the story. The novel is set in a small town in Western Australia in the 1960s and explores themes of racism, discrimination, and prejudice.

      Throughout the story, Jasper Jones, who is half-Aboriginal and half-Irish, is marginalized and ostracized by the community due to his mixed-race heritage. Despite facing discrimination and prejudice, Jasper is portrayed as a strong, brave, and morally upright character. His actions have a profound impact on the other characters in the novel and prompt them to reflect on their own prejudices and beliefs.

      One of the characters that Jasper has a significant impact on is the novel’s narrator, Charlie Bucktin. Charlie, a young and naive boy, initially views Jasper as a dangerous and troublesome individual. However, as he becomes embroiled in the events that unfold, he begins to see Jasper in a different light. He comes to understand the injustices that Jasper has faced and the bravery that he displays in the face of discrimination. Charlie’s relationship with Jasper prompts him to re-evaluate his own beliefs and challenge the prejudices that he has grown up with.

      Another character that Jasper has a profound impact on is Eliza Wishart, a young girl who has been subjected to abuse and neglect. Jasper’s actions in trying to protect Eliza and bring her abuser to safety inspire her to assert herself and take control of her life. Through her interactions with Jasper, Eliza learns to stand up for herself and to reject the notion that she is a victim.

      In conclusion, Jasper Jones creates change in the characters around him by inspiring them to challenge their beliefs and prejudices. Through his actions and the events that unfold in the story, the other characters come to understand the injustices faced by marginalized individuals and are prompted to re-evaluate their own beliefs and attitudes. The novel highlights the power of one person to create change and to inspire others to challenge the status quo.

      So, some comments…

      From my memory of the book, these answers are fair enough in terms of my questions and the book’s basics. However, as Margaret Simons writes, “ChatGPT starts with a bland introduction and concludes with an equally bland summation”. That is, I’d say, the sort of introduction and conclusion that a student learning to write essays might be taught – start and end by reframing the question.

      It doesn’t – and Simons tested it more thoroughly than I did – do opinion. And, it couldn’t write to a set word count. Margaret Simons asked it to write “a feature article” and it produced 600 words. When I changed my “750 words” to “an essay”, it wrote 347 words. Also, currently, it doesn’t know anything after 2021. Simons concluded from her test that “Poor-quality join-the-dots lifestyle writing may well be dead as a human occupation. Google plus ChatGPT can do it faster and cheaper” but that “there are some judgements you must be human to make”. It is in this human interpretation that effective journalism lies.

      Brian Lucey and Michael Dowling, two Finance academics from Dublin, explored its use for writing academic papers, and wrote about it in The Conversation, analysing its strengths and limitations. They argue that “the genie is out of the bottle” – which Simons also recognises – and suggest that researchers should see it “as an aide, not a threat”.

      Where do I sit on all this? I have only played with it around the edges, and have only heard a couple of radio discussions and read a couple of articles. There are questions I have that would probably be answered if I dug deeper, such as: How does it assess the authority of its sources and weight them in its output? What are its sources? (I understand from The Conversation’s article that some academic papers have already been written citing ChatGPT as co-author, but what did Chat GPT use?) Overall, I’m inclined to agree with Lucey and Dowling. I can see it, for example, being used by students to get a start on some ideas but, in its current iteration at least, its blandness will give it away if that’s all they do. Users will need to understand the ideas ChatGPT presents them, and then expand or reframe them with added content – supporting evidence, examples, opinions, and so on – to present a point of view, to show they know what they are talking about.

      As a librarian, I find new information-related technologies exciting. Rather than fight it – surely a losing battle anyhow – I hope we will work out ways to get the best out of it (and later iterations). Meanwhile, I’ll stick with thinking up my own answers to the questions I have about the books I read.

      Monday musings on Australian literature: Digital Lending Right

      / Whispering Gums / 10 Comments

      Australia implemented a Public Lending Right (PLR) in 1975. It’s a Federal Government program which makes payments to eligible creators and publishers, in recognition of income they lose (in other words, don’t get!) through loans and other free uses of their books in public lending libraries. PLR schemes operate many countries around the world, including New Zealand, Canada, Israel and many in Europe. (There is a complementary ELR, which does the same for books held in educational institutions).

      Fist full of money
      (Courtesy: OCAL from clker.com)

      To be eligible for Australia’s PLR (or ELR) payment, creators:

      • can be an author, editor, illustrator, translator or compiler;
      • must be an Australian citizen or a permanent resident;
      • must be entitled to receive royalties from their books; and
      • must be living.

      What this list doesn’t say is that eligible books had to be printed, which was logical in 1975. However, the scheme has not kept up with technology – not with audiobooks (which have been around for a long time now) and certainly not with eBooks.

      For most authors the payments are very small. Author Annabel Smith (whose Whiskey and Charlie I’ve reviewed) explained it in detail in her excellent How Authors Earn Money blog series. However, it has long been a thorn in their side that their digital and audio works have been excluded. That has now been rectified – at last – and the joy I’ve seen around the various sites, Twitter, Instagram, and so on, has made clear just how important it is, both practically and philosophically.

      The ASA (Australian Society of Authors) has been lobbying for this extension for a long time, but stepped it up in recent years, arguing that

      The outbreak of COVID-19 made the case for digital lending rights even more compelling. When libraries closed, patrons increasingly borrowed in ebook and e-audio format, and will possibly continue to do so into the future. We believe the increased investment in digital resources and new borrowing patterns may have a long term effect on the way patrons interact with libraries.

      Mateship with Birds (Courtesy: Pan MacMillan)

      Author Carrie Tiffany, whose Mateship with birds I’ve reviewed, was, apparently, a Digital Rights Lending Ambassador. The ASA quoted her on Instagram:

      I am relieved and grateful that the injustice writers face around digital lending rights will finally be addressed. My thanks to the ASA, and to all of the writers who made submissions on this issue.

      Writers are listeners. By putting our ear to the world we connect people and inspire compassion. At last the Australian Government has listened to us. Let’s hope this conversation will continue.

      Markus Zusah, The book thief

      Many authors weighed in, but I’ll just share one other writer quoted by the ASA, Marcus Zusak, whose The book thief I’ve also posted on:

      The announcement of Digital Lending Rights is a great win for Australia’s writers. It’s not just the financial rewards, but the affirmation that our work still matters. Australian stories still matter.

      We have to be a country that loves its own stories, and this is another step in supporting the people who write them.

      “Have to be”? I would like to think we “are”.

      “You are required”

      This DLR announcement was just one small part of the new National Cultural Policy announced today (available online). It is titled “Revive” (which conveys something about the current state of our Arts industries), and is structured around “five interconnected pillars”:

      • First Nations First: Recognising and respecting the crucial place of First Nations stories at the centre of Australia’s arts and culture.
      • A Place for Every Story: Reflecting the breadth of our stories and the contribution of all Australians as the creators of culture.
      • Centrality of the Artist: Supporting the artist as worker and celebrating artists as creators.
      • Strong Cultural Infrastructure: Providing support across the spectrum of institutions which sustain our arts, culture and heritage.
      • Engaging the Audience: Making sure our stories connect with people at home and abroad.

      The policy contains many initiatives across the arts sectors – literature, music, the screen and performing arts, and so on – including a recognition of minimum rates of pay for arts workers, but I’m not going to list them all here, nor critique them. After all, no policy will please everyone.

      Announcing the policy today, Arts Minister Tony Burke said to the arts community, “you are required”. Yes they certainly are … I hope these are not just words, but Burke does have some cred in supporting the arts. Let’s hope this policy provides the kickstart our artists and arts companies need.

      Meanwhile, those of us concerned about the “collecting and exhibiting institutions” – like the National Library of Australia, the National Film and Sound Archive, the National Gallery of Australia, and the National Museum of Australia – are pleased to see them included in the policy, under Pillar 4. The critical issue facing them – a real and serious reduction in their core funding – is not resolved here, but the policy states that:

      There is an ongoing issue with respect to long-term neglect of core funding for the collecting institutions, for both capital and operations. Updated government policy on core funding and sustainability of the institutions does not form part of cultural policy but future funding for Australia’s collecting institutions is being assessed as part of the Budget process.

      We wait with hope … but for now, I applaud this win for our literary creators. It augurs well for a revival of government interest in arts and culture.

      Claire G. Coleman, Night bird (#Review)

      / Whispering Gums / 15 Comments

      Wirlomin-Noongar woman Claire G. Coleman’s short story “Night bird” is the second First Nations Australia story in Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail’s anthology Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction, the book I chose for Bill’s (The Australian Legend) Australian Women Writers Gen 5 Week. The week finished officially a week ago, but I’m hoping Bill won’t mind my still referencing it. Coleman is not new to my blog. I reviewed her debut novel, Terra nullius, the year after it came out. She has written more fiction and some non-fiction since then, with a clear focus on the devastating impact of colonisation on First Nations culture and people.

      “Night bird” continues this focus. It follows Ambelin Kwaymullina’s story in the anthology, “Fifteen days on Mars” (my review), which works well, because both draw on the importance and role of Ancestors in First Nations culture. Coleman’s story is told first person by an artist who is “too afraid to sleep, too tired to be awake”, who drinks to drown her sorrows, who fears she may be “going mad again [my emph]”. She tells us

      I am haunted by the ghost of my Ancestors’ Country like a phantom limb …

      […]

      I have been cut off from my Country, my ancestors cut up, the land drilled and dug and eaten by machines … my wounded homeland won’t let me rest.

      This is not a subtle story. The narrator (whom I think is female, so I’ll go with that) grieves for a life she “could never have” because Country has been “severed”. She has “returned to Country” but, finding it “dead”, “could feel nothing and none” of her Ancestors. She feels haunted, but by what or whom?

      I can hear a voice but I can’t make it out. I can hear a song but I can’t catch the words. I can hear the wind and it’s stealing my breath. I can hear nothing and it is screaming.

      Country is part of her, but she wants to be free of the haunting, the “wordless voice”, the “phantom presence” that won’t go away. There is a wind, but it is “coming from the wrong direction – away from Country”. Then,

      The wind changes, it caresses my back, and suddenly it’s coming from Country.

      However, at the same time, a man appears and threatens her. There are now two voices – his and the Ancestors. This is a story about a battle between disempowerment (represented by the man) and empowerment (represented by the Ancestors). Is she, and are they, strong enough to prevail?

      I suspect this story was inspired by an experience Coleman describes in her article in Writing the Country (The Griffith Review 63). She describes the life-changing experience of going to Country in 2015, her family’s Country that had been taboo due to a massacre that had occurred there in the nineteenth century. She writes:

      I didn’t go there until 2015, that place changed my life forever, my world, my life, even the way I breathed. I took the taboo air into my lungs and I did not die or maybe I did. The bones of my feet landed on the sand and returned to life, I was born again on Country. The story of that place made me a storyteller; story is in my veins.

      She says an old man told her that “no matter where we go Country calls out to us” and she writes of the bird, the Wirlo (or curlew), that “to me and mine are family”. Its cry, its scream, “calls me home” – as does the night bird in this story. She describes how Country cares for people as they care for Country. She writes:

      I wept when I realised Country had not forgotten me even when I did not know Country. My old-people, my ancestors, would care for me.

      All of this is seems embedded in “Night bird”, so now, back to it. It is another example of “Indigenous futurism”. It is ground very much in the real world. The voices that our narrator hears are mysterious, sometimes coming from her phone, sometimes from the air around her, but they are not magical, not fantastical, they are the Ancestors – and the story envisions a healthy relationship with them and thus Country.

      On her website, Coleman includes a link to an interview she did with VerityLa after Terra Nullius came out. Among the questions was that one we readers love, which is whether any authors or novels influenced her. The first one she named was HG Wells’ War of the worlds, because it “is great in giving an understanding of how to show an overwhelming powerful enemy destroying a less well-armed defender”.  “In fact,” she says, “War of the Worlds is a powerful text for the examination of invasion and colonisation”. You can certainly see its influence in Terra Nullius, and it is evident here too.

      Claire G. Coleman
      “Night bird”
      in Ellen van Neerven and Rafeif Ismail (ed.), Unlimited futures: Speculative, visionary Blak+Black fiction
      North Fremantle: Fremantle Press in association with Djed Press, 2022
      pp. 66-73
      ISBN: 9781760991463 (eBook)

      D’Arcy Niland, The parachutist (#Review)

      / Whispering Gums / 17 Comments

      D’Arcy Niland has appeared in my blog before but not in his own right. He was the Australian-born husband of the New Zealand-born Australian writer Ruth Park. I have posted on their collaborative memoir, The drums go bang, and have written specifically about Ruth Park, but have never written specifically on Niland before.

      Niland is best known for his novel The shiralee, but he and Park were working writers who made their living from their craft, which means they wrote a lot – radio scripts, journalism, short stories, and novels. My path to his short story, “The parachutist”, though is a bit complicated. Over a decade ago, when my mother-in-law was still alive, I would search for suitable audiobooks for her, by which I mean books that had straightforward narratives, and not too much explicit sex and violence. She was 97 (and legally blind) when she died. A collection of D’Arcy Niland short stories seemed a possibility, but I’m not sure she ever did listen to it. Regardless, it ended back with us after she died, and we finally started listening to it on a recent road trip. The first story is titled, “The parachutist”.

      Now with collections, I like to know each story’s origins. I discovered that the audiobook was based on a collection of Niland’s short stories selected by Ruth Park and published by Penguin in 1987. A start, but when did Niland, who died in 1967, write the story? The Penguin book might provide that information, but I don’t have it. However, given that back in Niland and Park’s heyday, newspapers were significant publishers of short stories, I decided to search Trove and, eureka, I found it. Well, that is, I found his story “The pilot”, which turned out to be the same story that was later published as “The parachutist”.

      This discovery created another mystery: why the change of title? And when? Again, maybe Ruth Park discusses that in her Penguin introduction but … so, let’s just get on with the story. The plot concerns a predator and its prey. It starts just after a hurricane. A hawk, “ruffled in misery” comes “forth in hunger and ferocity” looking for food, expecting to find some “booty of the storm”. However, there is none, so it widens its search. Niland beautifully captures the devastation of the “ravaged” landscape and weakened hawk’s situation: “Desperate, weak, the hawk alighted on a bleak limb and glared in hate”. It’s vivid, visceral writing – and we feel some sympathy for this hawk.

      It spies a dead field mouse, and gobbles it “voraciously”, but it’s not much as food goes, and just makes “the hawk’s appetite fiercer and lustier”. Niland, at this point, also introduces us to the hawk’s real nature, to the way it would normally “sup …. on the hot running blood of the rabbit in the trap, squealing in eyeless terror”. It will eat creatures still alive, in other words. Anyhow, still “frenzied with hunger”, this hawk spies something in a farmyard – a kitten playing, “leaping and running and tumbling”, completely “unaware of danger”. Life is fun. After checking for human presence, the hawk swoops, and suddenly the kitten finds itself “airborne for the first time in its life”:

      The kitten knew that it had no place here in the heart of space, and its terrified instincts told it that its only contact with solidity and safety was the thing that held it.

      It latches on for dear life. This is a powerful story that keeps your attention from beginning to its – hmmm – somewhat surprising end, which I won’t spoil. Instead, I will briefly return to the title. Niland describes the hawk and kitten doing battle in the sky, writing that, with the hawk now descending, the kitten “rode down like some fantastic parachutist”. Soon after, when the kitten’s claws are digging into the hawk’s breast, he says that “the kitten was the pilot now”.

      So, “pilot”? This could suggest that the kitten is in control, but is it? “Parachutist”, on the other hand, seems more subtle, implying a somewhat mutual relationship between the two. It is not the sort of freely chosen relationship that parachutists traditionally have, but this later title introduces an ambiguity into the narrative.

      I found the story compelling. It is told third person limited, with our point of view, and sympathy, shifting between the two protagonists. Its subject matter might be nature, but its themes are more universal, encompassing predator and prey, the powerful and the powerless, experience and innocence, and of course survival, given at different points in the story both the hawk’s and the kitten’s survival is at stake. What to do?

      Also, this might be a long bow, but Niland apparently said about his 1955 novel The Shiralee, that “it is a Biblical truth that all men have burdens. This is the simple story of a man with a burden, a swagman with his swag, or shiralee, which in this case happens to be a child. I have often thought that if all burdens were examined, they would be found to be like a swagman’s shiralee – not only a responsibility and a heavy load, but a shelter, a castle and sometimes a necessity.” “The pilot” was published two years earlier, but we could argue that for the hawk, the kitten, with its fierce frenetic claws, turns into a burden. The storyline and outcome are simpler, of course, but was Niland playing with this idea too in his story?

      Whatever, “The pilot” or “The parachutist” beautifully exemplifies Niland’s ability to capture and hold his reader’s attention with a strong narrative and expressive writing. I hope to share more of the stories in future.

      D’Arcy Niland
      “The parachutist” in Short stories collection
      (Read by Dennis Olsen)
      ABC Audio, 2007
      ISBN: 9780733390616

      D’Arcy Niland
      “The parachutist” in The Penguin Best Stories of D’Arcy Niland
      Penguin Books, 1987
      ISBN: 9780140089271

      D’Arcy Niland
      “The parachutist” The Oxford book of animal stories
      London, Oxford University Press, 2002 (orig. pub. 1994)
      ISBN: 00192782215

      D’Arcy Niland
      “The pilot” in The Mail (Adelaide), 28 March 1953
      Available online