Essays

Monday musings on Australian literature: Short Australian nonfiction

/ Whispering Gums / 18 Comments

There’s been a little discussion going on during this Novella November month concerning nonfiction novellas. I contend – yes, I’m putting myself out there – that a “novella” is fiction, and that you can no more have a nonfiction novella than, well, fly. However, I am not going to get into this debate now, because, fundamentally, it doesn’t really matter, does it? What matters is that we read good writing, regardless of what it is, what we call it, or how we categorise it.

Instead, I’m going to do a quick post sharing some short Australian nonfiction. I have written Monday Musings posts about short books before – on little books and on small books. This post covers a bit of the same ground, but it also extends and so complements those two.

In some ways, nonfiction is ideal content for short or little books. Essays are a prime example. They can be commissioned and published in small form or can be extracted from previous publications (books, journals, websites) and published separately in short form. There are many examples of both, and some I have discussed before. Short Blacks, published by Black Inc, epitomises the latter, with some having originally been published in Black Inc’s journal, Quarterly Essays. And here I should say that the Quarterly Essays themselves are another example of short nonfiction, given each issue primarily comprises one essay of up to 25,000 words, plus correspondence relating to the previous essay.

However, Black Inc has also got into commissioning short nonfiction to publish in book form, with its recent Writers on Writers series. I have read two, and have more on my TBR. They are great reads for those of us interested in hearing what one writer has to say about another writer’s work. The next one I have up is Nam Le on David Malouf.

Dorothy Porter, On passion

Then there’s the On series … Little Books on Big Ideas. You can find them most easily at Booktopia online bookseller, because the publisher, Hachette, does not seem to list them separately as a series on their website, which is a shame. I have reviewed Dorothy Porter’s On passion and Stan Grant’s On identity. They were published by Melbourne University Press, but it seems that the series has been taken over by Hachette Australia. These are commissioned (I believe) essays by some of Australia’s best-known fiction and nonfiction writers on issues they wanted (or were happy to?) to explore.

All these little books make great reading, if you enjoy essays like I do. Most are under 100 pages.

FL Smalls 7: Carmel Bird's Fair Game

But are there other examples of short nonfiction published in Australia? Any histories, or memoirs, for example? Finlay Lloyd‘s FL Smalls, which I’ve discussed before, is an example. as this series includes memoirs (like Philip Stamatellis’ Growing up café: A short memoir) and creative nonfiction (like Carmel Bird’s Fair game). Great reads, but they are still little books. What about books that are a bit bigger, but still short, books between 100 and 200 pages?

There are, apparently, some short memoirs, but I don’t know many. Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s Stella Prize winning The erratics (my review) is close, at 217 pages.

But, what I’m really wondering about are the books we are looking for that will increase our understanding of contemporary issues. Some of these could benefit by being short. Many of us want to read something a bit more longform about the issues important to us, but not that long! Tim Flannery’s The climate cure, which I mentioned in my Ask the expert post, is described as 224 pages, but the actual text ends at around page 190.

First Nations rights is another area where brevity might attract more readers. It’s hard to find, but My tidda, my sister, which was published in 2020, comes in under 200 pages. It shares the experiences of Indigenous women and girls, and was compiled by podcaster Marlee Silva. Readings Bookshop describes this book as “a celebration of the Indigenous female experience through truth-telling”.

Bruce Pasco, Dark emu

A slightly older book raising awareness about First Nations cultures, but now surely a “classic”, is Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 book, Dark emu (my review). It’s around 175 pages.

On another subject, Annabel Crabb’s 2020 book, Men at work: Australia’s parenthood trap, is 160 pages. It apparently argues that true gender equity “cannot be achieved until men are as free to leave the workplace (when their lives demand it) as women are to enter it”. Hmmm … This is not the only thing needed, I’d say, but it is part of the picture.

Finally, I thought I’d share something pandemic-related. It comes from prolific, award-winning journalist-author, Gideon Haigh. He has tackled the impact of the pandemic on the workplace, in The momentous, uneventful day: A requiem for the office. Published in December 2020, it’s just 144 pages. Readings says “Enlivened by copious citations from literature, film, memoir, and corporate history, and interspersed with relevant images, The momentous, uneventful day is the ideal companion for a lively current debate about the post-pandemic office”. The pandemic is surely going spawn books for decades to come!

I have no idea whether this post will interest anyone, whether any of you care about the idea of short nonfiction, but I’ve enjoyed thinking about it. That said it’s been a challenge to research because, well, there is no equivalent word to fiction’s novella for short nonfiction!

Now, over to you. Do you like short nonfiction? Or is length irrelevant to you? Why or why not? And do you have any favourites?

Horne Prize – the “political correctness” controversy

/ Whispering Gums / 36 Comments

Help Books Clker.com

(Courtesy OCAL, via clker.com)

Dare I step into the breach? I think I will. Let me start by saying I’m a strong supporter of political correctness, though I hate the term itself and the way it is bandied about with little thought or nuance. To me, political correctness fundamentally means respect for and sensitivity to the feelings and place or position of others – of others, that is, who are less powerful, have less agency and status than the prevailing majority. It means, essentially, in our culture, not privileging the western white straight abled male perspective in the way we speak and write, and in who gets to speak and write.

Having this fundamental view means that I (generally) support indigenous Australians’ call for non-indigenous writers not to write in the voice of indigenous characters. I say “generally” because I’m not a believer in black-and-white rules when it comes to art. I also say it because I think that non-indigenous writers should be able to include indigenous characters in their books where relevant. Otherwise, the risk is that oppression and invisibility is being perpetuated by their absence. There’s a fine line here between oppression-through-absence and oppression-through-appropriation. This line needs to be trodden carefully and must be in consultation with relevant indigenous people. Not all indigenous people agree with this approach, but some do I believe. This opinion of mine is set in jelly not concrete – as I have no wish to continue oppression – but it’s my intellectual position on the issue.

So, the Horne Prize. Named for the late public intellectual Donald Horne who wrote on Australian culture and identity, the Horne Prize was established in 2014 by Aesop and The Saturday Paper. It is “for an essay of up to 3000 words, addressing some part of the theme ‘Australian life’ – shining light on a particular aspect of who we are, from a contemporary perspective.” It’s probably not well known in general circles, but it came to the fore on the weekend when two judges – writer Anna Funder (whom I’ve reviewed here) and journalist/public intellectual David Marr – resigned from the panel when they discovered that some restrictions had been added to this year’s submission guidelines.

David Marr explains it in The Guardian:

But, without warning the judges, Jensen [The Saturday Paper editor] decided to radically narrow the rules and issued a list of what the Horne prize was “not seeking or accepting” this year: “Essays by non-Indigenous writers about the experiences of First Nations Australians. Essays about the LGBTQI community written by people without direct experience of this community. Any other writing that purports to represent the experiences of those in any minority community of which the writer is not a member*.”

Marr continues in this article that on seeing this, he immediately contacted Jensen expressing his disagreement with such restrictions and advising that he could not be on the panel as a result. To his credit, Jensen immediately emailed the other judges – Funder, indigenous Australian academic Marcia Langton, and a representative of Aesop – explaining his reasons:

The guidelines attempted to reduce the number of essays we received that offered chauvinistic or condescending accounts of particular groups of Australians, especially First Australians.

Funder withdrew because she felt that much of her own work would not be approved under the guidelines, while Marr reports this of Langton:

Langton told me: “I don’t think you should completely rubbish Erik’s attempt to get rid of the rubbish.” She views the new guidelines as: “Probably a mistake because it’s not the done thing. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for what he’s trying to achieve but it crosses the line on censorship and free speech.”

Another article in The Guardian by Calla Wahlquist quotes some who agree with Jensen’s new conditions: Kerryn Goldsworthy who thought they were “absolutely fair enough”, Anna Spargo-Ryan (whose The paper house I’ve reviewed here) who “wished guidelines restricting writers from venturing outside their own experience and authority weren’t necessary, but that the negative reaction to the entry criteria proved they still were”, and two indigenous Australian writers, Nayuka Gorrie and Jack Latimore. Wahlquist writes this of Latimore:

Latimore said it was part of a broader global push to ensure people from minority groups retained control over and any benefit that stemmed from the telling of their stories.

“If you want to get a deeper or richer Aboriginal story, an Aboriginal journalist is going to be the one who gets that more than anyone else,” he said.

Now, my opinion is – and I think it is similar to Marr’s – that no such “rule” should be needed because good, sensitive, intuitive judges should be capable of identifying essays which are chauvinistic, condescending or worse. Such works should not make the first cut. My belief is that the “best” works on marginalised or dispossessed peoples, on “other” – and of course not all essays will be on these subjects – will, almost by definition, be by people who have the appropriate lived experience. (But, perhaps, I am naive to believe all this?)

The critical thing, then, in regards to general awards like this (ie not those targeted to specific groups like The Stella Prize for women or the David Unaipon for indigenous Australians) may be less about who can write what, but who should judge (an issue I discussed recently in fact). This panel seems diverse: it includes a white woman (Funder), a gay white man (Marr), and an indigenous woman (Langton). Knowing these three, I’d (if anyone asked me) say that they are knowledgeable and skilled enough, are thoughtful and sensitive to prevailing community values and attitudes, to make a good decision. (Yen-Rong Wong, though, may disagree.)

And the end result? Jensen has withdrawn these additional conditions and the deadline for the prize has been extended by a month. Nice to see someone willing to change his mind publicly eh?

I feel a little nervous writing this – but I’d like to think we can discuss this issue from a fundamental basis of respect for all, with the understanding that there is in fact no right or wrong but a multiplicity of opinions which are best shared rather than buried under the carpet.

* None of the discussion here, or that I read, addresses the tricky issue of labelling and identification, of how you prove you are part of the valid community for your topic.