tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/sydney-writers-festival-10459/articlesSydney Writers' Festival – The Conversation2016-05-20T04:26:06Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/597352016-05-20T04:26:06Z2016-05-20T04:26:06ZReview: Jane Austen’s women have been done a disservice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123298/original/image-20160520-4463-p5f2tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rebecca Vaughn brings to life 14 of Jane Austen's characters over the space of an hour. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dyad Productions</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Austen’s Women – a dizzying one-woman show by Rebecca Vaughn fabricated almost entirely of words taken from Jane Austen’s novels – features, in its opening monologues, an extract from <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2156.Persuasion">Persuasion</a>, containing one of the most explicit feminist protests found in Austen’s work.</p>
<p>Like many of Austen’s more overt protests, it centres on a conversation about literature. In the novel, it reads like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy … But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.</p>
<p>Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is an apt opening for a play that is devoted entirely to Austen’s female characters, minus the men.</p>
<p>Performed at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, following a sell-out season at the Edinburgh Fringe, it features Vaughn, with very little in the way of props or costume to support her, carrying an astonishing 14 characters in the space of a single hour.</p>
<p>It includes the voices of Mrs Elton and Harriet Smith from <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6969.Emma?from_search=true&search_version=service">Emma</a>, Marianne Dashwood and Fanny – that is, Mrs John Dashwood – from <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14935.Sense_and_Sensibility?from_search=true&search_version=service">Sense and Sensibility</a>, Mrs Norris from <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45032.Mansfield_Park?from_search=true&search_version=service">Mansfield Park</a>, and, inevitably, of course, Elizabeth Bennet, the crowd pleaser who bookends the show. </p>
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<p>It also features lesser known characters such as Mary Stanhope from The <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25133845-the-three-sisters?from_search=true&search_version=service">Three Sisters</a>, as she equivocates about an offer of marriage, and Diana Parker from <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5509247-sanditon?from_search=true&search_version=service">Sanditon</a>, Austen’s unfinished work.</p>
<p>But it’s a problem in this theatrical production that the avaricious and downright silly characters invariably upstage the rest, while the graver, nuanced and more complicated characters fail to materialise.</p>
<p>Hence, the mindless money-grasping behaviour of Fanny – that is, Mrs John Dashwood – comes brilliantly to life, as she harries her wealthy husband to betray the solemn promise that he made his father on his deathbed, leaving his stepmother and sisters to eke out their existence in “genteel poverty”. (“As to your giving them more it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give you something.”)</p>
<p>Also stealing the show is the deadly unpleasantness of Mrs Norris, as she tells Fanny – that is, Fanny Price from Mansfield Park – to stop “putting yourself forward” and not be “talking” or “giving your opinion”. (“That will never do”. For Fanny, wherever she is, “must be the lowest and last”.)</p>
<p>It is one of the delights of Austen that there is no unified rule that designates good and bad behaviour. Rather, she asks her readers to think in nuanced and sophisticated ways about the morality of her society, with a weather eye to the economic precariousness of women’s lives in the early 19th century.</p>
<p>“Where does discretion end and avarice begin?” Elizabeth Bennett asks.</p>
<p>This line, delivered in Austen’s Women, is taken from a conversation between Elizabeth Bennet and her Aunt Gardiner. In the novel, it refers to an heiress hunting adventure of Mr Wickham. But in Austen’s Women, the line is passed like an indictment against the lengthy parade of Austen’s allegedly money-grasping female characters.</p>
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<span class="caption">A Jane Austen festival at the city of Bath in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daz Smith/flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>There are many disconcerting moments in this production when Austen’s women are shown little mercy. Miss Bates, from Emma, “who stood in the very worst predicament in the world” – which was, as always in Austen, “to make a very small income go as far as possible” – but who was always “happy”, is ridiculed without reproof.</p>
<p>By way of contrast, the turning point that precipitates the climax in Austen’s novel revolves around the understanding that such ridicule is cruel beyond measure. (“It was badly done,” says Mr Knightly.)</p>
<p>Nor is there any sense of the doubled-edged irony of Austen’s voice to complicate the action. The line, “They say every body is in love once in their lives, and I shall have been let off easily,” delivered by Emma, may be good for a laugh in this production. But it lacks depth when it is torn loose from the fact of Frank Churchill’s duplicity in misleading Emma, and what the far less happy consequences could so easily have been.</p>
<p>Austen’s Women also misses the sense of the desperate sadness that underpins characters such as Catherine Moorland (“her mind about as ignorant and uninformed as a female mind at seventeen usually is”) or Harriet Smith. (“She had been talked her into love, but alas! She was not so easily to be talk out of it.”)</p>
<p>In the novels, it is this sense of sad deprivation that prevents the reader from dismissing their predicaments as merely trivial or silly.</p>
<p>Vaughn does present sadness, but only the extreme and exaggerated sadness of Marianne Dashwood (“Willoughby, where was your heart when you wrote those words?”) Here the theatricality of the emotion, instead of striking a balance, strikes the audience as absurd.</p>
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<p>Mary Wollstonecraft’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/224387.A_Vindication_of_the_Rights_of_Woman?ac=1&from_search=true">A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</a> was published two decades before Jane Austen first went to print. But to talk about feminism is to talk about a qualitatively different attitude than anything that was contemplated in the society in which Austen lived.</p>
<p>In Austen’s time, social or economic independence was simply not a possibility for young women of the “gentry” or middle class. The majority of these women – politically and socially disempowered – could not get money except by marrying or inheriting it.</p>
<p>Austen’s Women – that is, women minus the men – is in this sense anachronistic because it presents the audience with a colourful parade of misguided, downtrodden, ignorant and misshapen female characters who begin to visibly unravel once they have been torn loose from the social system that oppressed them.</p>
<p>But there is also something else that’s wrong. Much of the beauty of Austen’s work resides in the fact that she was a stern, albeit endearingly comic moralist. </p>
<p>Her satirising of ignorance and arrogance is always interleaved with a portrayal of more the understated Austenian virtues such as, for example, “civility”, “propriety” and “integrity” – that is, the balance of qualities – that make for a complete character.</p>
<p>The problem with this production is that too much is devoted to the show of “ignorance” and “avarice”, and too little to “discretion”, “prudence” or indeed “affection”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59735/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Camilla Nelson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fourteen of Jane Austen’s female characters – witty or ridiculous, selfish or avaricious – are presented in the astonishing show, Austen’s Women. But her graver, more nuanced creations and stern but comic moralism fail to materialise.Camilla Nelson, Senior Lecturer in Writing, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/594492016-05-16T05:08:06Z2016-05-16T05:08:06ZReading for moral self-improvement or therapy can occasionally feel a little grim<p>This week’s Sydney Writers’ Festival not only celebrates the art of writing, but the art of reading. Of course, it is difficult not to worry that this might be because the art of reading – that is, deep, critical, transformative reading – has been so radically transformed in the age of big data and Internet skimming that – along with ink and paper – it might be considered to be endangered, too.</p>
<p>Much of the program seems focused on the special kind of paying attention that reading demands – and its pay off in intangible commodities such as curiosity, wonder and awe. It features events that are dedicated not just to the new, but to the enduring influence of the old, in which writers have been asked to talk less about their own work, and more about the works of others that inspired them.</p>
<p>Deborah Adelaide talks about <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27259509-the-women-s-pages">The Women’s Pages</a> (2015), but also about her lifelong fascination with Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights that inspired it. Frank Moorhouse talks about reading that Victorian marvel George Eliot, and the debt that his own capacious volumes featuring <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1016871.Grand_Days">Edith Campbell Berry</a> might owe to it.</p>
<p>Gail Jones talks about the strange excitement of reading Nabokov. Don Watson, in conversation Delia Falconer, discusses the wondrous works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Tegan Bennett Daylight brings the spotlight to bear on the wry, self-deprecating humour of the mid-twentieth century American short-form author JS Perelmen, who may well be new to festival audiences. Jonathan Franzen, in conversation with Daylight, not only talks about <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23754479-purity">Purity</a> (2015), his latest book, but also his vociferous reading life, encompassing the works of obscure and dazzling authors who are seldom read today, including, no doubt, Franzen’s long-standing infatuation with the scathing social satires of the early twentieth-century Austrian writer, Karl Kraus.</p>
<p>There are many different kinds of reading. The festival concentrates on the sort that brings art and life together. Artistic Director Jemma Birrell says, “A good festival, like a good book, should bring real-life benefits.” Consequently, the program bristles with panels on the Books that Made Me, the Books that Changed Me, and <a href="http://swf.org.au/program/swf2016/swf-gala-the-book-that-saved-me-151">the Books that Saved Me</a>. It features a <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/program/swf2016/the-literary-healing-room-110">Literary Healing Room</a> tended by bibliotherapists – that is, book doctors – who administer small doses of book buying as remedy and solace in an alienated world. (You can find these curious doctors at the School of Life in Sydney, Melbourne, and London, where they can be consulted in person or via Skype, at all hours.)</p>
<p>Marcel Proust, with his unsparing insight into human passions and illusions, recognised that there are “pathological circumstances” in which reading can become a sort of “curative discipline”. </p>
<p>But there’s something a little disquieting in the therapeutic cure. I find it odd, for example, that you can also purchase a “philosopher’s jumper” made of trendy black wool from the School of Life’s online shop – a touch overpriced at A$258.94 – in the hope that it will bestow wisdom or insight whenever you wear it. (It’s advertised as modelled on one that belonged to Martin Heidegger, which also seems an odd choice, given Heidegger was a Nazi.)</p>
<p>Also at the festival, philosopher Damon Young talks about the “ethics of reading” and the “virtues” that he claims reading engenders. In an era of clickbait, when articles have transformed into listicles, in which many of us struggle to read a text more than 140 characters long – and more are happy to outsource our critical capacities to a data algorithm known as Google – reading a book certainly demands something that is increasingly harder to find. </p>
<p>According to Young, reading has the capacity to teach us curiosity, patience, courage, pride, temperance and justice, to gloss the chapters of his recent book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28929340-the-art-of-reading">The Art of Reading</a> (2016).</p>
<p>In Young’s model of reading, it is not the book but the reader who bring these virtues into being. He argues – as, indeed, literary scholars have argued for several decades – that it may not be the reader who writes the book, but it is the reader who completes its meaning.</p>
<p>It is the imagination of the reader that brings the book into existence. Without a reader, a book is just a strange pattern of black marks on a page.</p>
<p>It is not that Young confuses art and life. He argues,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ordinary life has a hazy atmosphere to it, whereas language illuminates brightly and sharply.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Life, in short, is much harder to navigate.</p>
<p>Young’s model of reading for moral self-improvement, like the bibliotherapists’ model of reading for therapy, or the current Sydney festival’s model of reading for life, can occasionally feel a little grim and prescriptive, because they skip over the idea of reading for pleasure or plain fun.</p>
<p>It is often a mistake to go straight for what is said, ignoring how it is said. However tempting it may be to feel that novels contain a world complete, novelistic characters are, as Samuel Beckett unkindly said of Balzac, mere “clockwork cabbages” in comparison to real people.</p>
<p>Books bring solace because they provide meaning when life does not. They do this because they are aesthetically patterned in a way that the real world is not.</p>
<p>Sometimes it is just the happy syntax of a sentence – the way it unwinds and surprises and satisfies. In this, books can also be deceptive. The fact is, how something is said is more often than not the thing that makes the reader feel what they do.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59449/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This week’s Sydney Writers’ Festival not only celebrates the art of writing, but the art of reading. Of course, it is difficult not to worry that this might be because the art of reading – that is, deep…Camilla Nelson, Senior Lecturer in Writing, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/423992015-05-27T20:04:28Z2015-05-27T20:04:28ZThe ‘magic of moments’: Ben Okri on slow reading and his new novel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83069/original/image-20150527-25053-1igatib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C226%2C1387%2C1075&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ben Okri’s The Age of Magic expresses dissatisfaction with the careless bustle of our everyday lives.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Metsavend</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nigerian writer Ben Okri is the author of eight novels and numerous volumes of short stories, essays and poetry. He was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction for his acclaimed novel <a href="http://www.readings.com.au/products/3168535/the-famished-road">The Famished Road</a> in 1991, at the age of 32. Until Eleanor Catton’s win two years ago, he was the youngest ever recipient of this prestigious prize. </p>
<p>His other literary honours include the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction. He has been awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) and his work has been translated into 26 languages.</p>
<p>But despite what we might expect from a writer who has achieved so much, what Okri really wants is for everyone to slow down. I spoke to him at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival, where he was a guest. </p>
<p>In the age of smartphones, tablets, hyperconnectivity, social media and constant distractions — in which many of us seem to spend our lives constantly rushing about, switching between one screen and another — Okri calls for a moment of quiet: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>To hint at ways in which we can get people to slow down and sense something of the magic of moments, these invisible things that constitute our lives, I think is a special thing and a piece of good fortune to be able to do.</p>
</blockquote>
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<span class="caption">Ben Okri’s The Age of Magic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Harper Collins</span></span>
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<p>He deploys this gentle “hint” in his latest novel, <a href="http://www.readings.com.au/products/18556241/the-age-of-magic">The Age of Magic</a> (2014), a book that brings a group of weary travellers, a documentary film crew, to a small hotel by a lake in the Swiss Alps.</p>
<p>The novel is replete with musings on our conception of time and the complex relationship between time and selfhood: “Are we made of habits, compressed by time, like layered rocks?” the main character asks. </p>
<p>But Okri’s novel best expresses its dissatisfaction with the careless bustle of our everyday lives not just through its content, but through its unusual form.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programitem/pg0JGO0lJ6?play=true">conversation</a> with Michael Cathcart at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, Okri said he wanted people to read his book very slowly, with plenty of gaps in the reading process. </p>
<p>As veteran readers of Okri will know, his narratives frequently slow down almost to the point of stillness, during which the forward thrust of the story pauses while the narration explores the intricacies of the moment of consciousness. Okri’s is a narrative style that rejoices in the moment. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[Traditionally] a novel on the whole, in its old form, sets us racing through texts, sets us turning the pages, wanting to find out what happens. But I actually want to do the opposite. I want people to stop. There are moments in the book where I want the mind to stop, to stop thinking, to stop trying to make sense of — just to stop, for a moment. </p>
<p>We live too much in a kind of event-driven world. And I think to try and hint at the opposite might actually be something of value.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If one is looking for a novel with a strongly sequenced plot and a sense of forward propulsion — things we habitually look for in a book — The Age of Magic won’t be it. </p>
<p>The strength of this novel, as in much of Okri’s fiction, is its luminous, ruminative quality and its ability to manipulate the reader’s understanding and experience of time through its unorthodox narrative structure. </p>
<p>“I think the form, the highest achieved form, of a novel expressing a period actually gives us a way to order and understand that period,” he explains.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And I think the really highest artists are constantly trying to find the form through which that which they try to express in their age can come through quite naturally.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Okri’s own novelistic form, which forces the reader into the prolonged exploration of a continuous present, can be said to be training us as readers — encouraging us to engage with the moments of our everyday lives in a more considered and meaningful way.</p>
<p>With this in mind, I ask him about art’s ability to help us resist what we might consider to be our modern tendency towards inattentiveness. Is it art’s prerogative to force us to stop and take proper notice, as opposed to the distracted half glance we often bestow upon objects in our lives? “Yes,” he says.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Art teaches us that. You go to an art gallery, you go to see an exhibition — say of the paintings of Paul Klee or Kandinsky, or even Picasso — and you have to slow down. You stand before each canvas and you have to slow down. You have to even slow down your breathing. </p>
<p>You have to stand in front of them for a long time. You have to be still in front of them. Because if you’re not, all you’ll see is what you brought with you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The characters in The Age of Magic are searching for Arcadia — a kind of utopian dream whose meaning, Okri is quick to remind me, has changed over the centuries. So what is this place (or state of being) that his characters seek? “Arcadia orientates us,” he explains. “It says there is an enduring dream inside us.” </p>
<p>Okri sees the concept’s value as aspirational: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We need something by which to judge, by which to navigate our journey through the stars, which is to say our journey through time. And I think the value of it [Arcadia] is that it becomes a repository of some of our best hopes. And we need that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much of the novel takes place in an idyllic village in the Swiss Alps. There are no technological distractions. Okri’s characters are able to find serenity in the purity of their environment.</p>
<p>But what does this mean for the rest of us, caught in the urban humdrum of our daily lives and away from the sublime majesty of nature? “It doesn’t depend on the sublime at all,” he says.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In fact, if anything, it depends upon something approaching a sublime state of mind, a sublime state of consciousness. I think Arcadia comes into existence when there is a conjunction of mind and thing, or mind and place.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So it seems that if we consciously slow down and follow the lessons of reading The Age of Magic, whether or not we live in the Swiss Alps, we may all uncover what Okri terms our “secret Arcadias”.</p>
<p>And how will we know if we’ve arrived there?</p>
<p>“Some things,” as he writes mysteriously at the beginning of the novel, “only become clear much later”.</p>
<p><br>
<em>If you missed Ben Okri at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, you can listen to his conversation with Michael Cathcart <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programitem/pg0JGO0lJ6?play=true">here</a> on RN.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42399/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeleine Wilson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>“We need something by which to judge, by which to navigate our journey through the stars, which is to say our journey through time.” Ben Okri discusses his new novel The Age of Magic and our busy lives.Madeleine Wilson, PhD candidate in contemporary African literatures, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/395672015-03-31T19:04:30Z2015-03-31T19:04:30ZOn interviewing Evie Wyld, my literary crush<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76673/original/image-20150331-1274-j00wm9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Evie Wyld, author of All The Birds, Singing, is one of the guests at this year's Sydney Writers' Festival.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>How often do you read a book and get a bit emotional? Not because it’s heart-breaking, not because it’s nostalgic – but because it’s written so well. </p>
<p>Okay, I didn’t actually weep wet and woeful tears but I felt intense admiration, wonder and awe when I read this particular book. </p>
<p>Then, to make things worse, what if the situation expands and you are asked to keep secret the fact that the author of this amazing novel is coming to Australia and <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,4715/task,view_detail/">speaking at the University of NSW</a> as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival and the information is embargoed for months to come? More tortuous emotions! </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76543/original/image-20150331-1253-4nycj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76543/original/image-20150331-1253-4nycj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76543/original/image-20150331-1253-4nycj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76543/original/image-20150331-1253-4nycj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76543/original/image-20150331-1253-4nycj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76543/original/image-20150331-1253-4nycj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76543/original/image-20150331-1253-4nycj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">All the Birds Singing, winner of the 2014 Miles Franklin Award.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Under this enforced silence, I bought 15 copies of Evie Wyld’s All the Birds, Singing, which won the Miles Franklin Award in 2014. I gave them to friends, colleagues and family (I accidentally gave my mother a copy, twice, in my excitement), and spoke quietly about Wyld’s writing craft and characterisation, without revealing she was shortly heading to our shores.</p>
<p>Evie Wyld is not the only great talent represented in the <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/">Sydney Writers’ Festival</a> this May 18-24. </p>
<p>Under the 2015 theme of How to Live, David Mitchell will talk about his speculative masterpiece The Bone Clocks. Mohsin Hamid, will deliver the opening address Life in the Time of Permawar. Ben Okri of The Famished Road is on his way too. Then there is the Australian line-up we all know: Helen Garner, David Malouf, Richard Flanagan, Kate Grenville, Robert Dessaix.</p>
<p>Despite the impressive selection, I am chewing my fingernails in anticipation to hear Evie Wyld. </p>
<p>Why so obsessed? How has this brain-crush become so irrepressible? </p>
<p>Well, mostly, because it is rare to come across writing talent that sings. As a teacher of creative writing at university I read a lot of fiction, poetry and essays. My bed is surrounded by high stacks of books. My car is littered with books. My university desk is neck-high with books; some are crammed beneath my desk, warming my feet. Yet, rarely am I truly intellectually moved. </p>
<p>I interviewed Evie Wyld via email recently and told her that I thought her book was “unforgiving”. She replied:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s an interesting word - the whole book is kind of about not forgiving yourself, so I’d say you’re about right. Many people find it very dark and relentless, some people (my mother included) find it funny. Some people see a real hint at lightness at the end and others feel it stops dead in its tracks. All totally valid.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wyld’s book astonished me because she managed to tell her tale in two time frames, but with an interesting twist. The sections set in the present were written in the past tense and the sections set in the past were written in the present tense. Please excuse the pun but the result was tense. </p>
<p>Secondly her narrative voice is one I have never heard before. </p>
<p>I mean it. Jake, her narrator, is new. I like her. She is strong and reserved. She is damaged but competent. She is treated both badly and well, loved and despised. She perseveres … but without pathos, without martyrdom and without sentimentality. </p>
<p>All writers know this is the most difficult quality to master: to create characters that excite pathos without being pathetic. Wyld told me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a tendency to idolise or vilify characters and I find that uninteresting and untruthful. We’ve all done things in our lives that we’re not hugely proud of, but for the most part we try and work them into the narrative of our lives the idea that we are somehow blameless, somehow forgiven. With Jake I wanted her to have nowhere to go with this. Rather she was unthinking, and most of us are guilty of that to some degree.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are oppressive scenes when Jake lives with a mean and sinister farmer Otto, who won’t let her leave the property. There is a Darwin scene where Jake works as a prostitute and is turfed out of a ute without payment once the client Kenneth sees the scars on her back and thinks she has AIDS. Wyld does not abdicate. </p>
<p>Wyld also manages to create a manifestation of Jake’s fears as a dark, scuttling animal-like form. This Gothic-style creation is also difficult to achieve without falling into the realm of the formulaic. In her own words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m an atheist, but I do believe that people see ghosts, that the brain is an unexplored country and that it can pop things in front of you that you either want very badly to see, or gather things from your emotional state and translate it into something visual. So in that way I felt very comfortable writing about these fictional things as reality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The final quality of All the Birds, Singing that left me breathless with “writer respect” was that the author left several of the narrative threads unfinished or unresolved. There are many stranded story fragments and yet the book left me completely satisfied. </p>
<p>Perhaps this irresolution is a symptom of the author living in the UK while harbouring a deep curiosity for her mother’s place of birth. She says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have dual nationality – my mother was born and brought up in Sydney, and as a kid especially I felt a very strong connection with the place. We’d come out at Christmas and I’d just soak it up. The land has something more traumatic to it than England’s gently melancholic landscape. Those films of the 70s, like Picnic at Hanging Rock and Walkabout, left a mark on me as a kid, that great big feeling of not belonging, of being a parasite the land is trying to spit up. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>You won’t want to “spit up” this novel. You will want to read it again and give it to friends to gauge their response. The desire to share a new book is surely the greatest sign of respect.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Evie Wyld will speak at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on May 19. Details <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,4715/task,view_detail/">here</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Prudence Gibson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Evie Wyld will be a guest at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival. Here, she speaks with a passionate reader about the success of her award-winning book, All The Birds, Singing.Prudence Gibson, Art writer and Teaching Fellow (creative writing), UNSW, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/270542014-05-22T20:20:35Z2014-05-22T20:20:35ZChoose Trainspotting: Welsh’s debut was and is a great novel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49205/original/n4sgsy48-1400723735.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Irvine Welsh's book represents the cry of the unvoiced in any cultural place or age.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">hélène veilleux</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s been 21 years since the publication of Irvine Welsh’s groundbreaking and controversial novel, Trainspotting. Since then, it has been widely praised and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/aug/15/scotland-trainspotting-generation-dying-fact">criticised</a>, rejected by a mainstream audience and embraced as a cult read. So where might it sit between those extremes?</p>
<p>For those who haven’t had the pleasure, the book follows the fate of four Edinburgh junkies and their decidedly non-junkie (but serially aggressive) pal, Begbie. Finding the money to score becomes all-important, to the detriment of everyone around them and – as main character Renton discovers – breaking free from this peer group is almost as difficult as kicking heroin.</p>
<p>The book has been <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=d5OwSkMI-mkC&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=Sarah+Hemming+%22a+series+of+unrelated+episodes%22&source=bl&ots=njvzwiOFgf&sig=bUmw-8RWYvQMz6f_iL9PlLGpfwY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3Ux9U6-fDcLz8QW714CwCQ&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Sarah%20Hemming%20%22a%20series%20of%20unrelated%20episodes%22&f=false">variously described</a> as “a collection of short stories”, “a series of unrelated episodes”, a work “broken up into fragments” – with the result that it’s “hard to call it a novel”. Its original imprint ran <a href="http://www.irvinewelsh.net/biography/item.asp?id=20&t=Esquire-Spain-Interview">a quote</a> by writer Kevin Williamson suggesting it deserved to sell more copies than the Bible.</p>
<p>So, from a distance of two decades, what can be made of this tale of “<a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wideo">wideos</a>” in Scotland’s – and latterly London’s – housing schemes? </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sl6O7sad9hI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Trainspotting, the film.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his 2005 <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Irvine_Welsh.html?id=FSGt6VoSh28C&redir_esc=y">book</a> on Trainspotting, University of Edinburgh lecturer <a href="http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/staff/academic?person_id=154&cw_xml=publications.php">Dr Aaron Kelly</a> writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… mainstream metropolitan criticism often mistakes as a failed or underdeveloped version of itself a writing that is actually the site of radical difference. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In writing this, Kelly pinpoints the reason for both the novel’s rejection and acclamation. Great novels can be said to challenge the status quo, any status quo, in a manner that also carries some kind of investigation into the human condition, any human condition, anywhere. </p>
<p>It’s hardly surprising, in retrospect, that when the book was published, many critics refused to acknowledge it as a novel. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0388076/">John Hodge</a>, who rewrote Trainspotting as screenplay for the Danny Boyle 1996 film version, describes it as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a collection of loosely related short stories about several different characters. Only towards the end does it take on a continuous narrative form.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Kelly points out, such readings of the novel fail to meet the reader’s own expectations of a novel’s form and function rather than considering whether it’s those very expectations that fail Trainspotting. As Welsh himself noted in a 1995 interview published in the Guardian: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This medium, literary fiction, is a middle-class plaything, so you’re analysed, dissected and defined by people who have come from a certain cultural viewpoint. They are looking into a world that they don’t have direct first-hand experience of so they rely on intuitive views and prejudices which may or may not be appropriate. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49186/original/25y6qhcs-1400719318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/49186/original/25y6qhcs-1400719318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49186/original/25y6qhcs-1400719318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49186/original/25y6qhcs-1400719318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49186/original/25y6qhcs-1400719318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49186/original/25y6qhcs-1400719318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/49186/original/25y6qhcs-1400719318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Irvine Welsh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alejandro Garcia/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The novel-or-not-a-novel debate distracts somewhat from the key fact of the language that Welsh represents in the book, that signposts the serious intent or basis of the book: its cry of the unvoiced in post-Thatcher Britain, representing the cry of any unvoiced in any cultural place or age: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Society invents a spurious convoluted logic tae absorb and change people whae’s behaviour is outside its mainstream. Suppose that ah ken aw the pros and cons, know that ah’m gaunnae huv a short life, am ah sound mind, ectetera, ectetera, but still want tae use smack? They won’t let ye dae it. They won’t let ye dae it, because it’s seen as a sign ay thir ain failure. The fact that ye jist simply choose tae reject whut they huv tae offer. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Surely “giving voice” in this way is a significant function of art, of literary fiction, and whether it complies with previous modes or not is irrelevant except for the sake of those trained to read it within the rigid boundaries of their training. </p>
<p>Welsh is transgressing, consciously and deliberately, the ideology represented by Standard English that, according to Kelly:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>not only denotes a supposedly standardised language that is equitably accessible to all but also one that sets the standard, so that any other speech or discourse is, by definition, substandard, deviant and inferior.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Australia we have examples of this that slip by mainstream attention more than likely for the same reasons, for the same Standard Australian-English that prevails. One need only think of the poetry of <a href="http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/18993/15/Lionel-Fogarty">Lionel Fogarty</a>, of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_O">Pi O</a>, particularly his epic book-length verse-novel <a href="http://cordite.org.au/essays/ulysses-in-fitzroy/">24 Hours</a>. Perhaps we might also add <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dennis-clarence-michael-james-5957">C. J. Dennis</a> and his book Sentimental Bloke.</p>
<p>Trainspotting, for the reasons outlined above, should be considered on a par with Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605), Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman 1759-67, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866) and Franz Kafka’s The Castle (1926).</p>
<p>To paraphrase the author’s own words in the novel: it chooses life, and succeeds.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>Irvine Welsh will be talking at the <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,4010/task,view_detail/">Sydney Writers Festival</a> on May 25.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27054/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grant Caldwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s been 21 years since the publication of Irvine Welsh’s groundbreaking and controversial novel, Trainspotting. Since then, it has been widely praised and criticised, rejected by a mainstream audience…Grant Caldwell, Senior lecturer and head of the Creative Writing program, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/269112014-05-22T20:20:23Z2014-05-22T20:20:23ZDoes evil exist and, if so, are some people just plain evil?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48848/original/c4k8b8r8-1400476679.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Plenty of extreme wrongs are performed by comparatively ordinary people.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Danny O'Connor</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You would have to be naïve to believe that evil exists, right? If you were asked to come up with examples of evil villains, you might think of the Emperor from Star Wars, Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, or even Dr Evil from the Austen Powers films. Evil characters belong in horror movies, fantasy fiction and perhaps also in religious texts, but surely not in the real world.</p>
<p>This kind of scepticism about evil also crops up in serious disagreements over morality. When US President George W. Bush denounced the September 11 terrorists as evildoers, many people rolled their eyes and dismissed his claim as simple-minded and out-of-date. The philosopher <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Myth_of_Evil.html?id=3VwaEmkd2aMC&redir_esc=y">Phillip Cole</a>, the psychologist <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-baroncohen/science-of-evil_b_2831311.html">Simon Baron-Cohen</a> and the historian <a href="http://www.australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/clendinnen/interview12.html">Inga Clendinnen</a> have suggested that we ought to drop the concept of evil. </p>
<p>These thinkers are not sceptical about morality as a whole. They are not suggesting “it is all relative”, or that morality is some kind of sham or illusion. Their scepticism is focused on the category of evil in particular. Are they right to say that there is no such thing as evil?</p>
<h2>What do we mean by evil?</h2>
<p>In answering this question we must survey the claims people make about evil, and ask what these people take evil to be. While it is true that the word “evil” can be used to refer to a malevolent supernatural force, many of us use “evil” without intending it to have any supernatural connotations.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48852/original/j79cz627-1400477075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48852/original/j79cz627-1400477075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48852/original/j79cz627-1400477075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48852/original/j79cz627-1400477075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48852/original/j79cz627-1400477075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48852/original/j79cz627-1400477075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48852/original/j79cz627-1400477075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48852/original/j79cz627-1400477075.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">wstera2</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We might say the sadistic torture carried out by members of the US military at Abu Ghraib was not merely wrong but evil, and that serial killers such as Dennis Rader and Ted Bundy are not merely morally flawed or corrupt, but are evil. Hannah Arendt <a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7278.htm">famously declared</a> that the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann revealed the banality of evil. While there is some disagreement about what Arendt meant by this, no-one thinks she was suggesting that Eichmann was possessed by a banal demon.</p>
<p>In judging that something is evil, we are making a distinctive kind of moral judgement, rather than committing ourselves to a contentious supernaturalistic worldview. Believing in the reality of evil is like believing in the reality of greed. </p>
<p>When we say that greed exists, we don’t think there must be some free-floating force called greed that can enter someone’s body and control his or her actions. If there are any greedy actions or greedy persons, then greed is real. Similarly, if there are any evil actions or evil persons, then evil is real.</p>
<p>You might grant this point, but remain sceptical nonetheless. You could claim that when people judge that something is evil, they make moral assumptions that are not only mistaken but dangerous. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48854/original/qm9zmsx2-1400477217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48854/original/qm9zmsx2-1400477217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48854/original/qm9zmsx2-1400477217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48854/original/qm9zmsx2-1400477217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48854/original/qm9zmsx2-1400477217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=830&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48854/original/qm9zmsx2-1400477217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48854/original/qm9zmsx2-1400477217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48854/original/qm9zmsx2-1400477217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1043&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ted Bundy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While there is clear evidence that some actions and some persons are greedy, there is no evidence that anything or anyone is evil, or so the argument goes. But what exactly do we assume when we judge that sadistic torture is evil, or that Ted Bundy is evil?</p>
<p>Many contemporary philosophers agree that if an action is evil it must be morally extreme. It is morally wrong to shoplift, or to tell a lie to avoid jury duty, but to call those actions evil would be hyperbolic. Moreover, philosophers agree that if an action is evil the person who performed that action should not have done so, and is responsible and blameworthy for having done so. </p>
<p>There are interesting disputes to be had over whether violent psychopaths are morally responsible for their actions, or whether they are mentally ill and hence not blameworthy for what they do. If psychopaths aren’t responsible for their actions, then they are not evildoers. But, even if we agreed that psychopathy counts as an excuse, this would not give us grounds to deny the existence of evil actions. </p>
<p>Plenty of extreme wrongs, including atrocities committed during war, are performed by comparatively ordinary people rather than by psychopaths. Since there are many examples of inexcusable extreme wrongs, we ought to conclude there are many evil actions. In this sense, evil is real.</p>
<h2>Encountering evil in person</h2>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48849/original/229wn994-1400476758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48849/original/229wn994-1400476758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48849/original/229wn994-1400476758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48849/original/229wn994-1400476758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48849/original/229wn994-1400476758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48849/original/229wn994-1400476758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48849/original/229wn994-1400476758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48849/original/229wn994-1400476758.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Recuerdos de Pandora</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The question of whether anyone counts as an evil person is more difficult to answer. Consider an analogy: not everyone who performs an honest action counts as an honest person.</p>
<p>If someone is an honest person, honesty is part of his or her character. He or she can be relied upon to be honest when it counts. Someone who tells the truth on some occasions might nonetheless be a characteristically dishonest person. </p>
<p>Similarly, not everyone who performs an evil action counts as an evil person. In judging that Hitler was not only an evildoer but an evil person, we assume that evil was part of his character. That’s is not to say we assume he was innately evil, nor that he had no choice but to do evil. Rather, it is to say he came to be strongly disposed to choose to perform evil actions.</p>
<p>In calling Hitler an evil person, we suggest that he could not be fixed, or made into a good person. Once someone has become an evil person, he or she is a moral write-off. That’s why some philosophers are sceptical of the idea that any actual person is evil. If everyone can be redeemed and made good, then no-one is evil.</p>
<p>I think it’s overly optimistic to think that we could have fixed Hitler, or Ted Bundy, or Dennis Rader, so I conclude that evil persons, as well as evil actions, are real.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>Luke Russell’s book <a href="http://www.oup.com.au/titles/academic/philosophy/philosophy/9780198712480">Evil: A Philosophical Investigation</a> is published by Oxford University Press in June. He is <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,4034/task,view_detail/">speaking at the Sydney Writers’ Festival</a> on the topic of evil on Saturday, May 24.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luke Russell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>You would have to be naïve to believe that evil exists, right? If you were asked to come up with examples of evil villains, you might think of the Emperor from Star Wars, Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter…Luke Russell, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/269772014-05-21T20:20:39Z2014-05-21T20:20:39ZAustralia is still fighting a land war and it’s the country’s great divide<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48976/original/nqskyd2g-1400566361.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An illness sits on the nation’s psychological and social landscape.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Karen Michelmore</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>on the shore we wait<br>
for the tide to turn<br>
in nights light it recedes<br>
and the fish are gone</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Australia there are many different views about the historical and current role of Aboriginal people in the national landscape.</p>
<p>This view fluctuates. The successes that Aboriginal people have achieved recently are easily embraced. Australians celebrated the success of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1673697/">The Sapphires</a> movie, the success of <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/the-swan-book/">Alexis Wright</a> in the Miles Franklin literary awards, which <a href="http://www.milesfranklin.com.au/pastwinners/year_2007">she won in 2007</a> and has been <a href="http://www.milesfranklin.com.au/news">shortlisted for</a> again this year, and <a href="http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/honour-roll/?view=fullView&recipientID=1144">Adam Goodes</a> as Australian of the Year. </p>
<p>Yes, <em>Australians all let us rejoice, For we are young and free</em> is the catch cry when everyone celebrates our progress. We can enjoy the feeling of a carefree happiness. It brings a united pride to the fore.</p>
<p>The diversity of Aboriginal people is an achievement we could all be proud of. From the traditional ways to the modern we now boast doctors and lawyers, nurses and teachers, builders and designers, and actors, authors, film makers, musicians of world class standards. We can even celebrate opera singers!</p>
<p>Most Aboriginal people work to give back to our community. We work to improve all aspects of life for our children and grandchildren, and to promote a better understanding of our cultural values. We work endlessly to cross the divide. And for us, culture is the key.</p>
<p>Of course there are some people who are not community focused, as in any society. From my personal experience, I can only calculate that this minority comprises those who have rejected culture. This is as confusing for Aboriginal people as it is for mainstream. But I reiterate, this is a minority of our mob.</p>
<p>However, the less enticing stories such as racism in sport, educational failures, and the refusal to include the Aboriginal historical wars in the Australian War Memorial quickly show a divide between black and white Australia. This is The Great Divide we need to address. This is “<a href="https://www.oxfam.org.au/explore/indigenous-australia/close-the-gap/">closing the gap</a>” on a national psychological and social agenda.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48975/original/ctpvtddt-1400565916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48975/original/ctpvtddt-1400565916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48975/original/ctpvtddt-1400565916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48975/original/ctpvtddt-1400565916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48975/original/ctpvtddt-1400565916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48975/original/ctpvtddt-1400565916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48975/original/ctpvtddt-1400565916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48975/original/ctpvtddt-1400565916.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">davidfntau</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So how does The Great Divide sit on our landscape? It is important to always remember that many Aboriginal people’s lives are still governed by bureaucracy, and for many of us, the decision-making process has been removed from our lives. </p>
<p>Many of my family live trapped inside a system that does not promote health and harmony. For those of us who do enjoy some freedoms, we are rarely asked to share our insights. The lack of proper consultations with Aboriginal people is a national shame. And even in my later years, when I am less able to travel for work, I will probably have to regress back to a system that does not value me, to die.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/social-justice-report-2007-chapter-3-northern-territory-emergency-response-intervention">Intervention</a> is one example of all of the above. This was a Federal Government initiative that was conceived in 2007 with little consultation with Aboriginal people, and no regard to our psychological or social welfare. </p>
<p>The National Emergency Response, as it is formally known, required an exemption from the <a href="http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2013C00013">Racial Discrimination Act</a> to allow its procession. I believe this law was passed in the middle of the night in Parliament by John Howard and a covert few, and had landed on our doorsteps before the newspapers had reached our front doors. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Little Children are Sacred report.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf">Northern Territory Government</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The justification was pinpointed to an inquiry into child abuse in 2007 titled <a href="http://www.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf">Little Children Are Sacred Report</a>. There are always concerns regarding child abuse in Aboriginal and mainstream Australia. Some 97 direct recommendations were made, stipulating the need for local based action to protect Aboriginal kids. Yet only two out of 97 recommendations were upheld. No-one agrees with child abuse, only the very depraved. If the governments were serious about this issue, surely more recommendations would have been forthcoming. </p>
<p>Similar reactions occurred following the Royal Commission into <a href="http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/F/1/6/%7BF163D8C1-79C4-48DE-BB14-0782100695B9%7Dti203.pdf">Aboriginal Deaths In Custody</a> in 1991 and the <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/bringing-them-home-stolen-children-report-1997">Bringing Then Home Report</a> in 1997, the national inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. </p>
<p>Both these reports were reputedly designed to reduce death and despair in Aboriginal society. Only three of 54 recommendations were undertaken to cater the needs of Stolen Generations people. Aboriginal families know that The Deaths In Custody issue continues, despite 339 recommendations; many that were never set in place.</p>
<p>Approximately 600 soldiers were used to deliver the “bad news” – that local Aboriginal Councils were to be disbanded, that wages and welfare would be quarantined, that all Aboriginal children were required to undergo medical checks by strangers to their community and community development employment projects (<a href="http://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/indigenous-australians/programs-services/communities-regions/community-development-employment-projects-cdep-program">CDEP</a>) reduced to a minimum. </p>
<p>At the time, I was living on the edge of the Simpson Desert and saw the arrival of the army with my own eyes. There was much confusion and fear, especially in remote communities where English is often the second language. At Titjikala no local interpreters were employed to lessen this fear and confusion.</p>
<p>Political arguments favour the Intervention, for welfare provision, law enforcement, and land tenure. For me, in my regular visits back to see family and friends in central Australia, I can only interpret welfare provisions equal lack of meaningful employment, law enforcement equals increased incarceration rates and land tenure equals continued theft of land for mining.</p>
<p>This is The Great Divide, this is the illness that sits on the nation’s psychological and social landscape. Despite all achievements in the past 220 years since the arrival of Captain Cook, it is still a Land War.</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>Ali Cobby Eckermann is an Aboriginal author and poet. She is currently the Artist in Residence at the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. She will be speaking with Henry Reynolds about the Northern Territory intervention at the <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/component/option,com_events/Itemid,124/agid,3955/task,view_detail/">Sydney Writers Festival</a> on May 23.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26977/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ali Cobby Eckermann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>on the shore we wait for the tide to turn in nights light it recedes and the fish are gone In Australia there are many different views about the historical and current role of Aboriginal people in the…Ali Cobby Eckermann, Artist in Residence, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/263032014-05-18T20:08:56Z2014-05-18T20:08:56ZBack in the USSR: my life as a ‘spy’ in the archives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47785/original/qj2df37k-1399262688.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C38%2C1511%2C1010&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What links the former Soviet Union to the Russia we know today?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rob Ketcherside</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Spies were a glamour news item in Western (and Soviet) press in the 1960s; it was the age of <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/boris-volodarsky/kim-philby-living-lie">Kim Philby</a>, British spymaster-cum-Soviet spy, and the endless media hunt for the “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/cambridgespies/7813.shtml">fifth man</a>” of the Cambridge Five. That’s the environment I entered in September 1966, when I went to Moscow as a British Council Exchange student. </p>
<p>It’s hard to convey how exotic and potentially perilous Moscow seemed to Westerners then. This was the height of the Cold War, when scarcely any foreigners could live for a year in Moscow alongside Soviet citizens, and we British students (I was actually an Australian, but it was a British exchange) were specially briefed by someone from MI6 about the dangers of making Soviet friends, since they would all be spies and assume the same of us. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48221/original/qgxsd2t5-1399859810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48221/original/qgxsd2t5-1399859810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48221/original/qgxsd2t5-1399859810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48221/original/qgxsd2t5-1399859810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48221/original/qgxsd2t5-1399859810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48221/original/qgxsd2t5-1399859810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48221/original/qgxsd2t5-1399859810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48221/original/qgxsd2t5-1399859810.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sheila at Kuznetskii bridge over Moscow river, 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author's image. </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Presumably there were some real spies in our British group; there certainly were in the Soviet group sent to Britain, since one of them ended up as No. 3 man in the KGB. I myself was not a spy, even though the place I was doing my Soviet history doctorate, St Antony’s in Oxford, was notorious in both the British and Soviet press as a “spy college”, having been founded after the war by ex-intelligence people. </p>
<p>But sometimes I felt like one, just because, from the Soviet standpoint, anyone who tried to find out things the Soviet Union didn’t want known about itself and its history qualified as a spy.</p>
<p>I spent three lonely months falling in love with Moscow but knowing almost nobody. Then I made Russian friends, as most of the British group did, who turned out to be friends for life. </p>
<p>The KGB was interested in our friends and lovers, up to a point, but what they really disapproved of was marriage between a Soviet citizen and a foreigner. </p>
<p>Although it was no longer against the law, it was hard to do, and harder still to export your spouse once you had married them. There were sad cases of foreigners who had married Russians and stayed in the Soviet Union, cast off by their embassies and under pressure from the Soviets to give up their British or American passports. Those passports were our most precious possession: they meant that, unlike Soviet citizens, we could leave the country.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47780/original/cy3ww2js-1399262070.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47780/original/cy3ww2js-1399262070.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47780/original/cy3ww2js-1399262070.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47780/original/cy3ww2js-1399262070.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47780/original/cy3ww2js-1399262070.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47780/original/cy3ww2js-1399262070.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47780/original/cy3ww2js-1399262070.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47780/original/cy3ww2js-1399262070.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soviet citizens in Moscow, 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rob Ketcherside</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The only thing as exciting as my new friendships were the archives. Foreigners were generally not allowed into archives of the Soviet period in case they found out “state secrets”, a Soviet obsession, but I had a relatively innocuous topic (Soviet education in the 1920s) and managed to gain limited access. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48219/original/bkgdy6zj-1399859517.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48219/original/bkgdy6zj-1399859517.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48219/original/bkgdy6zj-1399859517.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48219/original/bkgdy6zj-1399859517.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48219/original/bkgdy6zj-1399859517.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48219/original/bkgdy6zj-1399859517.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48219/original/bkgdy6zj-1399859517.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48219/original/bkgdy6zj-1399859517.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The State Archives – unchanged – in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author's image.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was a constant battle of wits with the archivists to get the material you wanted, particularly since the inventories of what they had were themselves state secrets, so you had to guess. Absolutely off limits were classified documents and because of the obsession with secrecy, many documents were classified. </p>
<p>But it turned out that, even with unclassified documents, you could find out a lot. That process felt so surreptitious that if they had arrested and interrogated me, I might have broken down and confessed to being a spy. But it wasn’t the Stalin period any more, so they weren’t going to arrest me as long as I was on the official British exchange. The worst thing they could do was to declare me <em>persona non grata</em> and throw me out of the country. </p>
<p>That happened to a handful of foreign students each year; and I might have been one of them, since at the end of my first year I was denounced in the newspaper Sovetskaia Rossiia as “next thing to a spy” for writing an allegedly defamatory article about Soviet history. But I was lucky: the article was published under my maiden name and nobody made the connection.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48222/original/q6dgbq9v-1399860019.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48222/original/q6dgbq9v-1399860019.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48222/original/q6dgbq9v-1399860019.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48222/original/q6dgbq9v-1399860019.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48222/original/q6dgbq9v-1399860019.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=786&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48222/original/q6dgbq9v-1399860019.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48222/original/q6dgbq9v-1399860019.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48222/original/q6dgbq9v-1399860019.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1968 article in newspaper Sovetskaia Rossiia denouncing the author as the “next thing to a spy”.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author's image</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I had been a Soviet historian, practising my trade in the United States, for more than 20 years when in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. No one expected it, least of all the Russian population, who watched in bewilderment as erstwhile Soviet officials pocketed whatever state asset they had their hands on when the music stopped, from real estate to whole republics.</p>
<p>For Russians, the great thing about the collapse was that the borders opened and they were able to travel abroad; the worst thing was that they lost all the “fraternal” republics and found out that at least some of their brothers thought they were imperialists. For historians, it was a wonderful time because we were suddenly able to read the classified part of the archives – in effect, dig up all the dirt. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48225/original/dtzn6rmh-1399860579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48225/original/dtzn6rmh-1399860579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48225/original/dtzn6rmh-1399860579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48225/original/dtzn6rmh-1399860579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48225/original/dtzn6rmh-1399860579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48225/original/dtzn6rmh-1399860579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48225/original/dtzn6rmh-1399860579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48225/original/dtzn6rmh-1399860579.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Moscow State University, 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rob Ketcherside</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Or nearly all: while the Communist Party’s archive opened because the formerly ruling party was now no longer in power, the KGB archive stayed closed, for the opposite reason. The KGB, renamed FSB, was one Soviet institution that survived the debacle more or less intact. It makes sense that the strongest and savviest of Russia’s post-Soviet leaders, Vladimir Putin, should have come from its ranks.</p>
<p>In the old Soviet Union, you didn’t joke about being a spy, any more than you would now joke at any international airport about being a terrorist with a bomb. I’d forgotten that when I wrote my Soviet memoir and called it A Spy in the Archives; or perhaps I thought it was no longer relevant, since the Soviet Union was dead. Russian friends quickly set me right: if you’re a foreigner and have any sense, you still don’t joke about being a spy. </p>
<p>And if you write about the second world war, you’d better be careful not to disrespect the Soviet war effort – you can get five years prison for that, according to a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/world/europe/russia-revisits-its-history-to-nail-down-its-future.html">Russian law passed this month</a>. </p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em>Sheila Fitzpatrick is author of <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/fitzpatrick-sheila/spy-in-the-archives-9780522861181.aspx">A Spy in the Archives</a> (Melbourne University Press, 2013) and many books on Soviet history. She will be <a href="http://sydney.edu.au/arts/sydney_writers_festival/our_experts/sheila_fitzpatrick.shtml">giving a Curiosity Lecture</a> on the Soviet Union at the <a href="http://www.swf.org.au/">Sydney Writers’ Festival</a> on May 24.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheila Fitzpatrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Spies were a glamour news item in Western (and Soviet) press in the 1960s; it was the age of Kim Philby, British spymaster-cum-Soviet spy, and the endless media hunt for the “fifth man” of the Cambridge…Sheila Fitzpatrick, Honorary Professor of History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.