Julie Thorndyke, Mrs Rickaby’s lullaby (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 43 Comments

Book coverQuaint title, eh? I really didn’t know what to expect when I accepted this book for review, but accept I did because the publisher is a quality little press and because the author, Julie Thorndyke, although unknown to me, has a track record as a writer, particularly of tanka. Mrs Rickaby’s lullaby, however, is her first novel.

In addition, I was intrigued by the advance description of the protagonist as a “semi-retired botanical illustrator … with a penchant for Mozart”. Well, I love botanical illustrations and I’m a fan of Mozart. Who isn’t? And finally, there was the fact that the novel is set in a “peaceful retirement village”. Being of an age that is eligible for retirement village living, that was a bit of a drawcard too.

So far so good, but what sort of book is it? Well, the back cover blurb provides a hint when it says that Mrs Rickaby’s “tranquility is disturbed when close friend and neighbour brings home a twice-widowed younger man of dubious character, and introduces him as her future husband. Petty theft, vandalism and violence disrupt the peaceful retirement village. How can Mrs Rickaby protect her friend from this con-man lover?”

Now we are getting closer. I think the best way to describe this novel is “cosy crime”, which Wikipedia describes as “a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community.” This is not really my genre, any more than any crime is, but Mrs Rickaby’s lullaby turned out to be a light enjoyable read.

The story is told in Mrs Rickaby’s first person voice. She is in her early 70s and had moved to the retirement village after losing her much loved husband. She has two children who, at the start of the novel, are both living overseas, so her most important social contacts are her friends at the village, particularly her neighbour Irene, plus her cat Missy.

It’s a curious book, because it doesn’t, I’d say, perfectly conform to the “cosy crime” genre. Much of it reads like a story about contemporary life, and the challenges of ageing, of losing your partner and having to make a new life for yourself. All this Mrs Rickaby does. Her days are occupied by spending time with Missy, by her involvement in the local Orchid Society, by her free-lance botanical illustration commissions, and by socialising with her friends in the village. It’s only gradually that the crime aspect comes into view as her early suspicions about Irene’s new man, Ralph, start to seem valid. Gradually, the mystery aspect hots up as Mrs Rickaby and another friend from the village, Annette, start nosing around about Ralph in their effort to protect Irene from making a bad, and potentially dangerous, mistake.

I enjoyed reading about Mrs Rickaby’s relationships with family and friends, albeit they were generally easier relationships than those in Charlotte Wood’s The weekend (my review). This is not surprising, perhaps, as most of Mrs Rickaby’s friends are new, and thus free of the years of baggage carried by Wood’s friends who are, coincidentally, in the same early 70s age range. My only demur regarding the characters concerns Irene, “a skilled surgeon” who was still volunteering for Doctors Without Borders”. Could such a person be taken in by such a con man? My initial reaction was not, but perhaps I’m naive? Anyhow …

The narrative is framed by Mrs Rickaby’s love of music. The ten chapters all have musical titles, like Nocturne, Misterioso, Counterpoint, Agitato, and Danse macabre. You can see, by these, how the chapter titles might reflect their content. Threading through all this is one particular song, a favourite of Mrs Rickaby’s, the lullaby “Weigenleid”, which is also the title of the final chapter. Once ascribed to Mozart modern research now suggests otherwise. It is a piece of music that is at once calming and melancholic, making it suited, Mrs Rickaby suggests, to contemplating the end of one’s life …

As you would expect with the “cosy” style, the novel has a light humorous touch. It also has some reflections worth pondering, such as this on loneliness:

It is quite amazing to me how easily habits, both good ones and bad, are formed. The single glass of chardonnay in the evening can easily become a bottle, and then two; one spoon of tiramisu becomes a bowlful; an attentive man becomes a lover to a lonely woman, then her husband, whether or not she wanted or needed one, in her rational mind. But loneliness does odd things to one, and even the simplest of pleasures can become a habit, a need, a necessity.

And this on life from Annette who reassesses her realisation in her forties that “life is short” to:

“Well, now I realise that it’s actually too long … too long and too lonely. The evenings,” she whispers. “Just too many and too long.”

And, this important one:

Investments in friendship are the most vulnerable and irredeemable of assets.

Mrs Rickaby’s lullaby is probably not a book for everyone – then again, what is – but is perfectly suited to those looking for something gentle and reflective, but spiced-up with just a little page-turning twist as well.

Challenge logoJulie Thorndyke
Mrs Rickaby’s lullaby
Port Adelaide: Ginninderra Press, 2019
183pp.
ISBN: 9781760417093

(Review copy courtesy the author)

Stella Prize 2020 Winner announced

/ Whispering Gums / 34 Comments

Well, a very different announcement “party” for the announcement of the 2020 Stella Prize winner but one that was exciting for those of us not in Melbourne, because we could attend!

It was a beautifully conceived and smoothly produced program, with words from each of the shortlisted writers and each of the judges, plus a powerful “keynote” address by Julia Gillard. Stella executive director Jaclyn Booton provided the necessary official overview and emcee/presenter Patricia Karvelas held it all together in her isolated studio!

I enjoyed seeing (and hearing) the passion for the role literature can play in our lives, with some speakers specifically referring to our current pandemic times. For example:

  • Caro Llewellyn spoke of how books can enable us “to dig deep and really explore what’s happened … show us the joy in the world”
  • Tara June Winch hoped people would pick up her book and “not be ashamed to look at our collective past”; she saw her book as one of hope, saying “in the horror there is ultimately the truth, and the truth is a beautiful thing”
  • Charlotte Wood talked, among other things, of turning “to writers to help us stay calm in terrible times”.
  • Ex-Prime Minister Julia Gillard said how these pandemic times “bolstered the power of literature”, including that literature can offer both ”escape” and “comfort”. But, and this relates to a question I asked in a recent post, she also said that we will rely on writers and artists in the future to distil the deeper truths of what we are experiencing now.

Julia Gillard spoke at length, and eloquently as you’d expect, about gender equity, about the need to accelerate the rate of change, but she also made clear that the issue is complex and multi-layered. She also spoke specifically about literature, saying that it is crucial to address gender bias in the literary world. She, herself, she said, had lived a different life than she may have because of books she’d read when young, like Margaret Atwood’s The handmaid’s tale and Anne Summers’ Damned whores and God’s police. These books shaped her, she said, rather like Germaine Greer’s The female eunuch, in particular, shaped me.

Finally, though, the point she made that particularly interested me concerned the fact that the Stella Count had shown improvement in many of the areas counted, such as the percentage of books written by women reviewed in significant papers and journals. What interested me was that her point was not so much about the improvement itself, but that the improvement shows that “targets work”, that “what we choose to count matters”. That’s an important message I think because it’s hard to change things if you don’t have the data.

Before I announce the winner, which most of you will have heard by now anyhow, here is a quick recap:

  • the longlist was announced on 6 February; and
  • the shortlist was announced on 6 March (not International Women’s Day as has been tradition for some years): Jess Hill’s See what you made me do (nonfiction); Caro Llewellyn’s Diving into glass (memoir); Favel Parrett’s There was still love (novel); Josephine Rowe’s Here until August (short stories); Tara June Winch’s The yield (novel); Charlotte Wood’s The weekend (novel).

Jess Hill See What You Made Me DoAnd the winner, from around 170 books submitted, is Jess Hill’s See what you made me do: Power, control and domestic abuse. It is the fourth non-fiction book to win the award in eight years, confirming yet again Stella’s aim to be broad in the forms it encompasses. The previous three were Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s The erratics (2019, my review), Alexis Wright’s collective biography, Tracker (2017), and Clare Wright’s history The forgotten rebels of Eureka (2014, my review).

Jess Hill making her Stella Prize Winner's speechJess Hill’s winner’s speech was articulate, convincing, engaging and oh so passionate about her subject and the book. Commissioned by Aviva Tuffield, it was some four years or so in the making, and was clearly (and not surprisingly) a very demanding book to write. Although I’m interested in its subject, I had not necessarily planned to read the book, but now I feel I must!

The winner receives $50,000, and each long and shortlisted author also receive monetary prizes.

If you have any comments on the winner, please share them with us.

Monday musings on Australian literature: Armchair travelling

/ Whispering Gums / 25 Comments

Over at The Resident Judge of Port Phillip, Janine is publishing a series of travel posts on My non-trip in the year of coronavirus. You see, as she writes in her first post, published on April 3, she would, that day, have been “folding up the laptop, packing my case and taking up my passport all ready for a trip to Peru” that evening. She was grumpy, as other people I know, about the missed trip, the lost payments, and so on – but she found a silver lining: she could armchair travel, so she is posting each day on what she might, or would, have been doing on those days.

We are all, of course, wondering about what our post-COVID-19 world is going to look like. Will we – the lucky we who can afford it that is – jump back into overseas travel as soon as countries open up again, or will we be a little more cautious. Will we stick to home for a while? It is regarding this latter, that I’m writing today’s post – with, of course, “home” for me being Australia. I have written several posts on travel writing. Not all are about Australian travel, and some are about historical travellers, but if you are interested, my travel writing tag will take you to them.

Two of the posts so tagged are Monday Musings: Some Australian travel writing, which includes Australians writing about places other than Australia, but also Robyn Davidson’s classic Tracks, and Travel writers on Australia, which includes non-Australians writing about Australia, like Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines and Bill Bryson’s Down Under aka In a sunburnt country.

And now, having scoured the Internet, leaving no Google search unturned, I bring you the following random and uncurated selection of travel-related books about Australia published this century. Please note that these are not tour guides (though Marcia Langton’s book probably comes close) but writing about places and travel.

  • City Series published by NewSouth: Alice Springs by Eleanor Hogan; Adelaide by Kerryn Goldsworthy; Brisbane by Matthew Condon; Canberra by Paul Daley; Darwin by Tessa Lea; Hobart by Peter Timms; Melbourne by Sophie Cunningham; Perth by David Whish-Wilson; Sydney by Delia Falconer. Here is what Philippa McGuinness, from NewSouth Publishing, says:

I wanted to ask some of our best novelists and writers to write non-fiction about the cities they lived in – or have adopted – in a way that would evoke intense sense memories for people who are familiar with them and give those who aren’t a sense of what it’s like to live in Brisbane or Adelaide or wherever.

There are some other well-known series where famous writers have tackled Paris or Prague, but they’re usually not locals. They’re temporary visitors. I wanted writers who have a stake in a city to write about it, which is why we first billed them as ‘travel books where no one leaves home’.

  • Bill King, King of the Outback, CoverBill King, King of the Outback: Tales from an off-road adventurer (2012): stories from the founder of AAT Kings tour company.
  • Marcia Langton, Welcome to country (2018): “a curated guidebook to Indigenous Australia and the Torres Strait Islands. Author Professor Marcia Langton offers fascinating insights into Indigenous languages and customs, history, native title, art and dance, storytelling, and cultural awareness and etiquette for visitors.”
  • Michael McGirr, Bypass: The story of a road (2004): the story of the Hume Highway, the main road thoroughfare from Sydney to Melbourne.
  • Evan McHugh, Birdsville: My year in the Back of Beyond (2010): Penguin quotes a review from The Age:

McHugh is a clever mixture of curious outsider and eager participant… Written in a simple but elegant style where honesty and thoughtfulness build an accurate picture of the richness of life in one of Australia’s most famous outback towns.

  • David Marks, Australian photographic gallery: Road trips (2015): a coffee table book containing “offbeat” images taken with a Polaroid and Diana camera.
  • David Mason, Walk across Australia: The first solo crossing (2014): a memoir of Mason’s 4,000+km walk in 1998 from Australia’s eastern-most town, Byron Bay, to the western most point near Shark Bay, Western Australia.
  • Graham Seal, Great Australian journeys (2018): a collection of some of Australia’s most dramatic journeys from the 19th and early 20th century collected by Seal who is Professor of Folklore at Curtin University.
  • Nicholas Shakespeare, In Tasmania: Adventures at the end of the world (2005): The Guardian’s review describes this as “a mixture of history, genealogy, travelogue and journalism”. The book was apparently inspired by Shakespeare’s distant relation Anthony Fenn Kemp, whom the reviewer describes as “cruel, pompous and unpleasant bootlegger”! Hmm…

Marcia Langton, Welcome to country, CoverThese books range from the popular to the serious. I’ve only heard of a few of them, and only have a couple in my TBR pile, Paul Daley’s Canberra and Marcia Langton’s Welcome to country.

I note though that, with the exception of the City series and Marcia Langton’s Welcome to country, all these authors are male (white male, I presume). And this brings me to an article (or blog post) in Overland titled “A short history of the dangers of travel writing”. It’s worth a read for its discussion of what travel literature encompasses and the limited voices we are seeing.

Anyhow, you know what I’m going to ask. Do you have any favourite works of travel literature that you can recommend to the rest of us for some armchair travelling in this time of COVID-19?

Living under COVID-19 (2)

/ Whispering Gums / 48 Comments

Just checking in to see what’s up with everyone in their neck of the woods. How are you coping with your COVID-19 restrictions? Are you getting stuck into those projects that have been hanging around forever? One of our friends is finally sewing clothes out of fabrics she bought on overseas trips years ago, another is starting to scan old photos, while yet another is decluttering one item a day. (Now that’s a goal I could probably meet!)

I haven’t quite been able to get seriously stuck into those sorts of projects yet, but we are gradually rearranging our lives, COVID-19 style. Here are some of the ways …

Exercise stuff

Anyone with any sort of social media account can’t help but come across programs/sites/apps offering to help you stay fit. As a ballet lover, I am particularly seeing programs coming out of ballet companies. My favourite, which I first saw on Instagram but which is also available on YouTube (and perhaps elsewhere), is Dancing with David (that is David McAllister, Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet). The first one is  How to do a plié:

But, he is adding other ballet exercises, including, to date, calf rises and port de bras. These are exercises you can easily do at home. They also introduce those who have never done ballet to some of the fundamentals, while for those who have, like me, they offer such a fun trip down memory lane – made even better by McAllister’s delightful personality. He makes me smile, and that is the best thing of all in thee difficult times.

Of course, we also do some walking, as I mentioned in my first post, and I have continued doing something I’ve been doing for years, Yoga with Adriene (who is also on YouTube, like David, though I have subscribed to her app.)

Finally, last week, our Tai Chi teacher test-drove a Zoom Tai Chi class with our group. It worked – well, enough anyhow – so we have that to look forward to next term.

Social stuff

Gradually, we are increasing our online social life with friends and family, matching the technology to the group – from simple email discussion times with older groups, through WhatsApp for those let’s-keep-in-touch groups, to all sort of Zoom events from committee meetings to classes to Happy Hours! (Almost anyone who is anyone is now a Zoom-pert it seems, though I’m not always sure why other free technologies like Skype and FaceTime aren’t used more! Anyone? For the record, we use FaceTime for our hookups with our Melbourne family members.)

Literary and other cultural stuff

Again, like exercise, opportunities to engage in literary (or other arts) culture abound, so I’ll just share a couple with you here that I’ve had time to check out (or plan to check out).

  • Living in Solitude: Donna Ward & Donata Carrazza: A Zoom conversation inspired Donna Ward’s new book She I dare not name, and focusing on “what it means to live alone during this new era of social distancing”. This was a free event promoted via Facebook, and took place on Thursday 2 April at 7pm. I attended a small part of it, but it was a difficult time for me so I wasn’t able to listen to it all. However, it did work as a good proof-of-concept.
  • Newtown Review of Books started a new series of Friday book extracts, which is intended, I understand, to help promote new books which are missing out on all those launches and Festival appearances the authors were expecting. First up was Kirsten Krauth’s Almost a mirror (April 3) followed by Chris Hammer’s Silver (April 10). It’s a shame they’ve not “tagged” the series so readers can locate them easily.
  • Heather Rose Reads is an initiative by Australian author Heather Rose (see my review of her novel The museum of modern love) in which she … well, I’ll let her explain it:

Book coverDear parents of primary age children! Monday April 6th at 4pm Australian EST its time for Heather Rose Reads. We’ll begin with the first book in the acclaimed children’s series I co-author under the pen name Angelica Banks. Book 1 is Finding Serendipity for children aged 8 – 12 (grades 3 -6). If you have primary school children this is my way of helping you have a break for a little while on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I’ll also post the readings on YouTube if you’re in a different time zone. See you and your children here on Facebook Live 4pm this Monday April 6th … it’s going to be fun.

As you can see, it started last week, but she is posting them on YouTube too. Her Angelica Banks co-author is Danielle Wood (whose Mothers Grimm I’ve reviewed). What a lovely idea.

  • This is History: The National Library of Australia has produced a video conversation between ACT-based historians Dr Chris Wallace and Professor Frank Bongiorno on “why it’s so important to document everyday life during irregular times” like our current COVID-19 pandemic. They talk about what citizens can do now to help historians of the future document and interpret the life we are living. We often don’t realise we’re living through a major historical moment until the time has passed, but we surely do this particular time. Anyhow, this 20-minute conversation is a lovely introduction to the work of historians and the importance of everyday lives to the study of history.
  • Nigel Featherstone, Bodies of menWriting War: A Panel Discussion: Still upcoming – Monday 20 April – but I’m sharing it now in case any of you are interested in attending. It features Nigel Featherstone (whose Bodies of men I’ve reviewed), Melanie Meyers (whose Meet me at Lennon’s I’ve reviewed), and Simon Cleary (whose The war artist Lisa has reviewed) moderated by author Cass Moriarty. This event is not free, costing a whopping $5! To book tickets check this link.

Final thought

“What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.” (Albert Camus, The plague)

Wouldn’t that be lovely!

Meanwhile, how are you faring?

Tara June Winch, The yield (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 33 Comments

Book coverTara June Winch’s novel, The yield, follows her impressive – and David Unaipon award-winning – debut novel Swallow the air (my review). Ten years in the making, The yield could be described as her “passion project”. It makes a powerful plea for Indigenous agency and culture.

I wrote about The yield’s genesis last year, but will repeat it here. It was inspired by a short course Winch did in Wiradjuri language run by Uncle Stan Grant Sr (father of Stan Grant whom I’ve reviewed here a couple of times). Discovering language was, she said, transformative, but turning her passion into a book proved tricky. She started with too broad a canvas, until her mentor, Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, encouraged her to focus on 500 acres of land, telling her she could tell her story through that lens. So, she found her 500 acres on the Murrumbidgee, created fictional places – the Murrumby River, and the towns, Massacre Plains and Broken – and her novel started to take shape.

“that unhandsome truth”

But my, what a shape it takes. It has three, roughly alternating, narrative strands, each quite different in style but each reflecting or enhancing the other two. They are:

  • Poppy Albert Gondiwindi, dictionary writer, first person narrator. He is dying but is also a time-traveller, so, Winch said, his story has elements of magical realism. It’s told through the words in his dictionary, starting at the end of the alphabet, “a nod to the backwards whitefella world I grew up in”. “The dictionary”, Poppy says, “is not just words – there are little stories in those pages too.” There sure are. Through them Poppy tells the story of his and his people’s lives; he passes on as much of their culture as he has learnt and can tell; and he shares his hopes and values:

respect – yindyamarra I think I’ve come to realise that with some things, you cannot receive them unless you give them too. Unless you’ve even got the opportunity to give and receive. Only equals can share respect, otherwise it’s a game of masters and slaves – someone always has the upper hand when they are demanding respect. But yindyamarra is another thing too, it’s a way of life – a life of kindness, gentleness and respect at once. That seems like a good thing to share, our yindyamarra.

  • August Gondiwindi, Poppy’s grand-daughter, third person voice. She tells a contemporary story of the 500 acres where the Gondiwindis live, and the challenges faced, including from mining and river degradation. Her story is about finding her place after living overseas for ten years. It’s a quest story, in a way, a little like that of Swallow the air’s protagonist. We meet her in Chapter 2 as she hears of the death of Poppy:

She knew that she had once known the beloved land where the sun slapped the barren earth with an open palm and knew too that she would return for the funeral … go back and try to find all the things she couldn’t find so many thousands of kilometres away.

(“Where the sun slapped the barren earth with an open palm”. Winch’s language throughout is gorgeous.)

  • Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf, Lutheran missionary, first person voice. Winch created him, she said, to “round” out the story. He’s her villain, but she gives some balance, humanity, to him by sharing his own experience of loss of home and mother tongue. His story is told through the letter he writes in 1915 to Dr George Cross of the British Society of Ethnography about his experiences running a mission from the 1880s. The first instalment ends with why he is writing it:

To tell how wrongs became accepted as rights. … I will tell that unhandsome truth, even if it will amount to last words. The circumstances and the times demand it.

His story is the most problematic for readers because he, with good intentions, established the ironically named mission, Prosperous House, near the non-ironically named town of Massacre Plains. Indeed, Poppy writes in his dictionary that the Reverend was “the only good white gudyi” he’d known, gudyi meaning medicine man, priest, conjuror. Greenleaf’s heart is in the right place – having seen the “the vile inhumanity practised by the white-skinned Christian on his dark-skinned brother in order to obtain land and residence, for ‘peaceful acquisition'” – but of course he is a man of his times and his paternalistic actions have their own consequences. August sees the paradox in his “trying to protect those ancestors at the same time as punishing them”, while her aunt Missy takes a harsher stance.

These three stories span over 100 years from the late nineteenth century to the present, with Poppy Albert’s dictionary providing the novel’s backbone, spiritually, culturally, and plot-wise. August’s story, on the other hand, provides its emotional heart, while Greenleaf’s provides important historical context.

The stories don’t, then, just meander along side by side for their own sakes. Each contributes to an overall plot which concerns a proposed mine, and efforts to stop it – a story that is broadly reminiscent of non-Indigenous Australian author Madelaine Dickie’s Red can origami (my review). In both stories the Indigenous people need to invoke Native Title if they are to have a chance of stopping the mine, and in both stories competing interests and loyalties, not to mention a helping of skulduggery, work to prevent the Indigenous owners from progressing their claim.

In Winch’s story, Poppy’s dictionary, which documents not only language but his people’s ongoing connection to the land, together with a collection of artefacts that had been donated to a museum by local rich landowners, and the information in Reverend Greenleaf’s letter, are critical to the Native Title claim. August and her family’s challenge is to realise the relevance of and/or discover and locate these “proofs”, while others try to foil them. It’s the oft-repeated story across Australia when traditional owners, protestors and landowners, with competing or criss-crossing interests, confront development, particularly mines.

Threading through all this is the novel’s heart, August’s journey to find herself and her place of belonging, as she navigates her people’s painful history of being “torn apart”, of massacres and dispossession, of racism, of incarceration, and of abuse from both within and without her culture. These are stories we’ve heard before. However, Winch keeps them fresh and urgent by engaging with contemporary thought (concerning, for example, Indigenous agricultural practice and the idea of slavery) and by creating characters who feel real and authentic, who are complicated like those in Melissa Lucashenko’s Too much lip (my review), rather than simple mouthpieces for ideology.

For all the anger and sadness in the book, it is also a positive – perhaps even hopeful – one. Early on, Poppy’s wife and August’s grandmother, Elsie, tells her, “Please don’t be a victim”. This is, I’d say, Winch’s plea to her people, and is reinforced by Poppy’s dictionary words at the end in which he says the time for shame is over. It is time, in other words, to heal, to be proud, to embrace country with confidence.

The yield is a rewarding read. Its three very different voices challenge our minds to think carefully about what we are reading, while its plot and characters engage our hearts. I would be happy to see it win the Stella Prize next week.

Challenge logoLisa (ANZLitLovers) also loved the book and includes examples from Poppy’s dictionary.

Tara June Winch
The yield
Hamish Hamilton, 2019
344pp.
ISBN: 9780143785750

Monday musings on Australian literature: Spanish flu

/ Whispering Gums / 53 Comments

COVID-19, history tells us, is a one in 100 year event, the last such event being the Spanish flu of 1918 to 1920. This week, I thought I’d share some references to the Spanish flu from Trove – not news reports about the course of the flu itself, but some random references that indicate the flu’s legacy in various ways over the succeeding decade.

Jokes at the time …

Just like we are seeing now. Here is one from the Fitzroy City Press of 3 January 1920:

GETTING EVEN.

It was in the Spanish ‘flu period, and old Oppigar lay at death’s door. The priest came and told him he must forgive his enemies. Oppigar promised to do so with the single exception of Peter Svingen, against whom he had a very special grudge. But the priest insisted that even Peter must be forgiven. “All right then,” said Oppigar, ” I will forgive Peter also – but if I get well I’ll have it out with the old scoundrel!”

References in the following years …

In 1925, Perth’s Sunday Times of 31 May 1925 ran a story about the new cross-word craze that was sweeping the world, even reaching places like France and Italy. The article, ascribed to Twilight, is titled “The cross-word flu”. It takes the form of a conversation between a cynic, a cynosure (how many newspaper readers today would know that word), and others about the cross-word craze. The cynic starts it off:

“It was hardly to be expected,” re-marked our cynic, “that France would embrace the cross-word puzzle. France has suffered too many cross-purposes, double-crosses, and heard too many cross-words because she cannot forget the myriad crosses that dot, like forests, her fair provinces, to become enamored of a game whose name re-minds her of the bitterest things.”

To which the cynosure replies:

“True,” replied the cynosure, “France has puzzles enough at home, and the crosses that everywhere make memorial of her infinite sacrifice in the cause of the world’s liberty are at the same time mute warnings of what lurks threatening at her northern border; and further north in the land of the Bear. The marriage of the Bear with the Monkey has provided too big and perturbing a problem, without the importation of play puzzles from America.”

And here the cynic refers to the Spanish flu:

“As dangerous as Spanish ‘flu,” re-joined the cynic, “is the label French journalists have tagged to ‘cross-words.’ They warn the people to keep away from the new trans-Atlantic craze. One paper reminds its readers of a Frenchman who, before he died in a lunatic asylum, used to carry a paper, and pencil in his pocket and at parties would say, “Help me, my dear. I have lost my appetite and sleep because I cannot solve this problem.'”

I love the idea of cross-words being so popular, so engrossing, they were “as dangerous as the Spanish ‘flu“. The article goes on at some length discussing the craze. “A big tea-room proprietor” suggests “that nowadays all of us had mental worries enough without manufacturing new ones and calling them games”. It’s an entertaining piece – but interesting too with its references to the political situation, to the just-finished war, and also for its discussion about whether cross-words improve your mind or are just fun! Sounds exactly like current discussions about whether doing cross-words and sudokus ward off dementia, or just make you better at doing them!

As the years wore on, other references were made to the ‘flu, including by Canadian-American humorist and poet Walt Mason, whose pieces were published in Australian papers. On 24 April 1927, Brisbane’s Sunday Mail ran a piece of his called “No certainty”,

No man can with safety wager that the luck he knows to-day,
be it minor luck or major will not wilt and blow away.
None can say with show of reason that disease will pass him by,
that he won’t be, for a season, on a sick bed high and dry.
None can say what passing motor may assault and knock him flat,
flatter than a Yarmouth bloater, ruining his Sunday hat.
When we’re feeling strong and nifty, fit to struggle and to win,
it seems folly to be thrifty; better blow the money in.
We feel sure the future’s holding every blessing we desire,
and the wise man’s constant scolding only fills our breasts with ire.
But, behold, we faint and sicken as our labors we pursue,
and our pulses throb and quicken, and we’re down with Spanish flu.
Or perchance an auto climbs us where the hoaking lizzies fly,
and an undertaker times us, figuring on when we’ll die.
Then for weeks we loll and languish, wearing plasters night and day,
thinking in the deepest anguish of the bills we cannot pay.
While the torment racks and rages we resolve, if we get well,
we will listen to the sages and the shining truths they tell.

I’ve quoted the lot because Mason died in 1939 which I believe puts this out of copyright.

Walter Reed Hospital Flu Ward, 1918-19, Harris & Ewing photographers, via Library of Congress, Public Domain

Two years later, and about a decade after the flu, The Port Macquarie News and Hastings River Advocate published another piece by Walt Mason called “After the ‘flu” (21 September 1929). I found this also-rhyming piece in multiple Australian papers. Only some were attributed to Mason; others had no attribution at all.

The piece starts:

I had nine kinds of Spanish ‘flu, with sundry German brands thrown in; all day I coughed and said, ‘Ker-choo!’, all night I coughed and sneezed like sin.

The doctor said, as at my side he mixed up pills to feed my face, ‘The wonder is you have not died! I never saw so bad a case. I’ve seen a hundred taken down, I’ve seen them like the ripe grain fall; a thousand men are sick in town, but you are sicker than them all. It is a feather in my cap that I have pulled you through the strife; that you still loiter on the map, and breathe the well-known breath of life.’

And on it goes, describing what a wonder it is that he survived. Pronounced cured, he wants to brag to his friends:

There is no sense in being ill unless it gives you an excuse to talk about the doctor’s bill, and boast of pain to beat the deuce.

But they show no interest, calling his sickness fake, or telling him

You have your gall to talk of pain! A tin-horn ailment like the ‘flu. Your talk is frivolous and vain. Just wait until you have the gout, your toe swelled bigger than a brick! Then you may prance around, old scout, and claim that you really have been sick!

Our poor narrator concludes:

Alas, no matter what I do, my friends will never let me brag; in vain I hoped my siege of ‘flu would give a chance to chew the rag.

Simple humour by today’s standards, but interesting to see the lighthearted – but gently moralising – take on what was a terrible scourge at the time. Some describe Mason as a poet-philosopher.

Will we be writing about COVID-19 in similar tones over the next decade?

Six degrees of separation, FROM Stasiland TO …

/ Whispering Gums / 45 Comments

It’s April and finally the first starting book for 2020’s Six Degrees of Separation that I’ve read. If you are new to blogging and don’t know this meme and how it works, please check out meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

Anna Funder's Stasiland bookcoverNow to April’s starting book, the critically acclaimed, multi-translated, award-winning nonfiction book by Australia’s Anna Funder – Stasiland (my review). Have you read it? If you haven’t do consider it because it’s not the sort of book to go out of date.

Janette Turner Hospital, Orpheus lostStasiland tells the stories of Stasi officers and collaborators and of those who suffered at the hands of the Stasi in the then East Germany. Largely because of this book, Mr Gums and I made a point of going to Leipzig in 2013 and visiting the Stasi’s Runde Ecke headquarters there. Anyhow, in announcing this book, Kate described it as a “classic on tyranny and resistance”. There are so many books that can link from that, so I’ll be interested to see what my co-meme-players do. I’ve decided to choose a related aspect, surveillance, which was fundamental to the Stasi’s tyrannical practices, and link to Janette Turner Hospital’s Orpheus lost (my review).Book cover

From here, I could take a cheery turn and link on, music, say, or the classics, but I’m going to stick with serious themes. Orpheus lost is partly about how terrorism leads to fear, surveillance and the loss of freedoms. Hospital was interested, she said, in the trading of civil liberties for safety in the post-9/11 world. However, I don’t want to spend all this post on this issue, so I’m making a cheeky jump to David Brooks’ The grass library (my review). It’s an animal rights focused memoir in which one of the main “characters” is Orpheus the lamb!

Bidda Jones and Julian Davies, BacklashFrom here it’s a very simple jump to another animal rights book, this one about the live export business, Bidda Jones and Julian Davies’ Backlash: Australia’s conflict of values over live exports (my review). I remember that when he sent the book to me, co-author and publisher Julian Davies described it as the most important book they’d published.

Book coverSo, I’m going to stick now with Julian Davies, or, at least, with his publishing company Finlay Lloyd, and link to the latest book of theirs published, John Clanchy’s In whom we trust (my review). One of the commenters on my post – someone who knows the author – described it as “an origin story” for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It is about child abuse, but is also about, as commenter David wrote, “the institutional tension between the Brother’s and Clergy power structure within the Church”. It’s a powerful, but deeply human read.

Rebecca Skloot, The immortal life of Henrietta LacksTrust, as Clanchy shows, is in short supply between powerful institutions and those who have no power and who, by rights, should be able to trust those who are not only able to but who morally should protect and support them. Rebecca Skloot had to work very hard to gain the trust of African-American Henrietta Lacks’ poverty-stricken family to write her scientific biography The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks (my review). This book is both a fascinating story of scientific discovery and a horrifying story of the abuse of people’s trust and, in fact, their rights.

Elliot Perlman, The street sweeperI am going to stay in America for last book, albeit the author is Australian, Elliot Perlman. The street sweeper (my review) is about many things, but the titular character is street sweeper Lamont Williams, an African-American, who has just started work as a janitor at a cancer hospital in a pilot program for ex-convicts. He is innocent of the crime that put him in jail but his colour and poverty meant he didn’t have a chance. This book which links the Holocaust to Civil Rights in America is fundamentally about moral responsibility – which, of course, is not what the Stasi practised at all!

I have stuck with politically charged books this month – and why not given the important role writers play in keeping us honest. So, I am going to conclude with Orwell from his essay, “Why I write”:

What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience.

PS I wrote and scheduled this before COVID-19 restrictions took hold internationally. I decided not to rethink my post in the light of that but to leave you with what initially inspired me! However, I’ll add that I wonder what writers will make of COVID-19. When will the first COVID-19 novel appear? From where and from whom will it come, and what will be the take?

Anyhow, now the usual: Have you read Stasiland? And, regardless, what would you link to? 

Rick Morton, One hundred years of dirt (#BookReview)

/ Whispering Gums / 14 Comments

Book coverWay back in the early 1970s when I was an undergraduate university student, I did some sociology, and one of our set books was The myth of equality by Tom Roper. It, and the courses around it, have informed ever since my understanding of how our society operates. Morton’s book One hundred years of dirt would have been perfect recommended reading for these studies. At the end of his first chapter he says this:

the single experience of my sister’s road to this point detonates the argument that equality of opportunity is stitched into our nationhood.

One hundred years of dirt, in other words, is not a simple memoir, as it might initially appear, but is, rather, a cry to Australians to see that the ideas, the myths we hold dear, are just that, myths.

But now, back to the beginning. Rick Morton, a thirty-something journalist, grew up tough. Born on a remote outback cattle station to a family of violent men, he experienced more than his share of trauma. Besides the intergenerational violence, he saw, when he was 7 years old, his older brother nearly burn to death and then, while his mother was away with that brother in hospital, saw his father carry on an affair with the governess. Not surprisingly, this caused a family breakdown, resulting in his mother leaving with her three children and no financial support. Poverty was theirs from then on. Morton speaks eloquently of the struggle to make ends meet, making it clear that families like theirs have no time to consider issues of the day, like climate change, when even a mooted $7 Medicare co-payment “could be the difference between eating or not for a person on the poverty line.”

Time, in fact, is an interesting issue – and one that resonated with me, too, as a feminist. Time is a commodity and how we choose to spend it – or are able to spend it – is political. Like hours at the hairdresser for example. (I know I am treading on sensitive toes here, but so be it.) Anyhow, as Morton says, “only some people have the time” to be “woke”. Just “living for so many people in Australia is exhausting“.

So, on the surface, One hundred years of dirt could be seen as your standard misery memoir: Boy from poor and violent background struggles against the odds to make it good as a journalist and successful author, with the help of a loving mother. It is that, superficially, but it’s much more too.

There is a general chronological movement to the story. It starts in the present, when that point quoted above about “equality of opportunity” is made. It then flashes back to the family’s origins on huge cattle properties in southwest Queensland, focusing particularly on grandfather George Morton and his hard, violent ways. From here, Morton moves more or less chronologically through his life, but each chapter is framed around a theme, so the chronology is not exact. The chapters, in fact, could be read as individual essays on their specific topic, such as drug (ice) addiction, mental health, being gay, class, and otherness or outsiderness. For some readers – as some in my bookgroup found I think – this departure from a more typical narrative flow may make the book feel disjointed. However, for me, the clear heralding in the first chapter that One hundred years of dirt was about more than one life had me engaged and ready, perhaps, for anything!

That anything turned out to be a personal exploration of how inequality plays out in contemporary Australia, supported by smatterings of socioeconomic data. Morton is, after all, a journalist, and so he brings his journalistic nose for facts to bear on his and his family’s personal experiences. In doing so, he provides example after example of how out of touch the knowledge class or “commentariat” is with the lives of those at the bottom end of the income stream. He discusses, for example, unpaid internships and the incomprehension that there are people who just can’t afford to take advantage of them. Journalism, which is rife with unpaid internships as a pathway in, has become one of “the most exclusive middle-class professions of the 21st century”. Morton describes the complete ignorance many in the middle-class have about their privilege:

There are those who have had the good fortune to never have felt other than the silkiness of privilege, their bubbles so perfect they cannot feel the gravel underneath.

He also writes:

As a nation, we have convinced ourselves that all of us has the same standing start, but this is neither true for the working class whites from broken families nor for those with black or brown skin. It’s not true for those without a proper education nor for those who were abused.

However, this book is not just bitter medicine. It has a spoonful of sugar. There are some genuinely funny moments – some of them black of course – and there are Morton’s wonderful turns of phrase which illustrate his meaning beautifully. He talks, for example, about working in a workplace surrounded by colleagues from “moderately wealthy and upper class families”:

… my colleagues [whom he did see as “dear friends”] could not fathom the life I had led. There were frequent attempts at empathy but it sounded a lot like people who were reading pre-prepared lines. Imagine a fish turning up to discover her psychologist is a Very Concerned sea eagle.

Love the fish analogy, but ouch, really, ouch! I feel I have a good understanding of inequality of opportunity and the ways in which it underpins disadvantage in Australia, but finding the right language in face-to-face encounters is not easy.

I have probably made this book sound like a sociological thesis or polemic. There is that, but it is still, at heart, a memoir. It’s simply that I have focused on what I see as the book’s main message. However, this message is wrapped up in a story about human beings, and particularly about Rick and his dearly loved mother Deb. He describes her as “the hero of this piece”, the mother who

sees boy as special, tells him he was sent here from that big night sky by beings unknown to report back on what he sees. She invented the aliens because she couldn’t see herself as the protagonist. She outsourced the explanation for her own success as a mother to the aliens out there.

Lovely Deb; thoughtful, provocative Rick. This is a powerful read.

Rick Morton
One hundred years of dirt
Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2018
191pp.
ISBN: 9780522873153

Monday musings on Australian literature: Authors respond to COVID-19

/ Whispering Gums / 18 Comments

In last week’s Monday Musings I wrote more generally about COVID-19 and its impact on the Arts. Like that post, this one is not aiming to be a formal comprehensive one either; news and ideas are coming far too quickly. And, anyhow, as I also said last week, most if not all of you are well enough connected to be receiving news and notifications yourselves. You just need to be social-media-connected in some way to your favourite arts organisation, bookshops, publishers, and so on, to see a whole range of ideas and initiatives popping up to keep authors in our field of view.

To give just one example of what formal or organised culture is doing, the National Library of Australia held its first Digital Book Launch on 27 March, featuring our lovely local author Karen Viggers in conversation with Felicity Volk to launch Volk’s new book Desire lines.

The NLA is not, of course, the only organisation finding ways of keeping culture alive. From social media, I see that digital launches, in particular, using a variety of platforms, are quickly becoming popular.

However, what I want to do today is something a bit different, which is share three recent social media posts by individual authors, in which they respond – in their own way – to COVID-19. They are different authors at different stages in their lives and careers, so their response and/or needs are also different. Oh, and it’s coincidental that they are all women writers.

Sara Dowse has appeared in my blog several times, including a reference to her memoir piece about the time she spent as a child with Ava Gardner, which was included in The invisible thread anthology. Since 15 March, she has been daily posting on Facebook an excerpt from her unpublished memoir. She figures she’s never going to bring it to publication, so why not share it for people to read now, when so many of us are at home. Dowse is a thoughtful and intelligent writer, so having access to this is quite a treat for us, I’d say. At the end of the first except, the American-born Dowse introduces her memoir by pondering her complicated family background and falling in love with an Australian:

Was my infatuation an escape from this? It’s frightening to admit that it might have been so, just as it is to contemplate that escaping from difficult situations I hadn’t the sense not to get into in the first place was to become an indelible facet of my nature. An admirable capacity for survival, or a shameful weakness? Perhaps it’s the Hollywood influence that makes me think that you can shift the meaning of almost any story simply by changing the angle of the lens.”

Sulari Gentill, A fete right thinking men

Those who know me will know that I love this idea that you can shift the meaning of stories by changing the perspective.

Sulari Gentill, the historical crime fiction writer who lives in a rural area only a couple of hours from where I live, made me laugh with her homeschooling Instagram post. There was picture of her 14-year-old son reading her novel A few right thinking men. Her caption starts with:

Homeschooling … I’ve decided to cover English and History by making Atticus read my books. It may be the only time I have this power … And it means I can actually discuss both the literary and historical aspects of the novel with him sensibly, as well as be assured that his critiques will be robust (though perhaps a little blunt). It’s not exactly on the curriculum but we can deal with that later …

I loved this so much. You go Sulari! (I have written about a Canberra Writers Festival panel including Gentill, here.)

Debut crime author Karina Kilmore wrote (and tweeted) a blog post on the Sisters in Crime site. Her post is titled “Writing in the times of corona”. She talks about having her book tour and promotion activities cancelled. She talks of why she writes, which is to share her stories, but then ponders

But the reality for me as a writer has never seemed more stark. Those dystopian novels, those science fiction scenarios, those terrible crimes by people in desperate situations are no longer pure works of fiction. We have all seen the footage of people fighting each other in supermarkets, hoarders taking more than their fair share and people risking other peoples’ lives by not following the restrictions. This type of realistic crime makes writing my second novel harder.

She also says that while cancelling her book tour was the right decision, the impact is to “somehow” make her doubt herself. You can feel her uncertainty and pain.

(Kilmore’s book, Where the truth lies, is published by Simon and Schuster. It was shortlisted for the Unpublished Manuscript Award in the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.)

I hope you’ve enjoyed these little snippets.

Meanwhile, as I wrote last week, take care and be safe my blog friends.

Do you have any interesting author stories to share?

Living under COVID-19 (1)

/ Whispering Gums / 66 Comments

This may be the first of a regular, irregular or occasional series of posts about living under COVID-19 , probably occasional because I suspect that, once we settle in for however long it’s going to be, life will become same-same.

Like many bloggers – see Nancy in the Netherlands’ post, and Stargazer in London who said so on my blog – I am finding it hard to settle to reading and reviewing. I have one review half-written and another book read and not reviewed. They will be done, though – and next week, I hope.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d report on what the Gums have been doing.

People Stuff

Coincidentally with, but unrelated to, the start of the COVID-19 problem here in Australia, it became apparent that we would need to rejig my parents’ at-home care package to support their being able to continue to stay in their retirement village home. Using a division-of-labour approach Brother Gums took on negotiation of that care with Mr Gums and I doing the logistics needed to make that care work – all of course in close consultation with our nonagenarian parents who, while needing physical help, are perfectly able to discuss and articulate their needs. Indeed they will probably read this post, Father Gums having noted that my posts have been few lately! Anyhow, all this has made staying-at-home nigh impossible, but we’ve done our best to obey the spirit of the law. Things should be in place next week enabling us all to settle into more normal isolated living!

I just need to add here that Brother Gums has been an absolute Trojan, and we couldn’t have done it without him. Thanks Ian.

Otherwise, we have been keeping in touch with family, friends, neighbours and groups – including setting up new social messaging groups with neighbours and my reading group, and using existing ones with family.

Political stuff

I don’t like to engage much with politics here, as I am not keen to attract trolling or disrespectful commentary. I would just like to put on record that I am disappointed by our political leaders’ (on both sides) inability to be clear in their messaging. It’s impossible, I believe, to be completely consistent – unless, perhaps, you live in an autocratic, black-and-white world – but it is possible to be clear about your vision and priorities. This is exactly what, for example, I understand the Germans are being. Mr Gums, who watches the German news, translated for me that government’s very clear statement of priorities, and it is essentially this: 1. Get health care working well; 2. Look after the well-being of the people; 3. Consider the economy. Whether or not they achieve it, I like the aspiration!

Here is our Australian comedian Sammy J (who also appeared in my last Monday Musings) on the messaging we recently received in Oz:

Exercise Stuff

Social distance walking

We all know that exercise is important to our physical and mental health, but achieving that under these restrictions is difficult. My lovely little yoga class has had to suspend, and our Tai Chi venue was closed. However, Tai Chi can be done outside. So, on the understanding that the government’s rules allow outdoor physical training for groups of 10, with the proper spacing maintained, we have attended three outdoor Tai Chi classes in a public space (to the interest and amusement of occasional passers-by.) I’m not sure how long that can, or should, continue.

Otherwise, I, with Brother Gums and/or Mr Gums, have done a couple of walks in the section of the Canberra Nature Park across the road from our place, and I have continued my almost-daily at-home yoga practice.

Books and other cultural stuff

As I said, there’s not been much happening in this sphere, but what I have read will appear on the blog hopefully soon. Most of my TV watching has been news and current affairs to keep track of COVID-19 and what we need to know and do, with some light entertainment like Hard Quiz and Doc Martin thrown in.

However, with Ma Gums staying with us for the last week or so while the new care package is put in place, there have also been some Scrabble games, which I’d call cultural, wouldn’t you?

Next

As for how we plan to spend our social-isolation time from now on, well, we have tasks galore, including gardening, digital photo cataloguing, decluttering – as well as, of course, virtual socialising, more reading and listening to/watching favourite and back-logged shows, and doing what we can to support and loved businesses which are still operating (such as bookstores and cafes doing online orders and takeaway food.)