tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/australian-literature-3049/articlesAustralian literature – The Conversation2024-03-21T19:07:26Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2242612024-03-21T19:07:26Z2024-03-21T19:07:26ZFriday essay: ‘A prisoner on the rack’ – how 19th-century Australian women wrote about marital rape<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582671/original/file-20240318-26-1ttfu0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Edgar Degas, Interior, 1868 or 1869.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edgar_Degas_-_Interior_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In late 19th-century Australia, a husband could legally rape his wife. Officially, he was still allowed to do so, in some Australian jurisdictions, until as late as 1994. Legal traditions inherited from the British Empire included <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/coverture">coverture</a>, the notion that a wife lost her legal identity upon marriage – and thus her ability to consent to sex.</p>
<p>Yet over a century before <a href="https://www.auswhn.com.au/blog/marital-rape/#:%7E:text=Queensland%20was%20the%20last%20state,and%20every%20act%20of%20sex.">it was criminalised</a>, two key groups of women – colonial writers and suffrage agitators – began to criticise a husband’s legal right to rape his wife.</p>
<p>These criticisms took many different forms, ranging from self-published feminist journals to novels, short stories, serial fiction and poetry. <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cambridge-ada-3145">Ada Cambridge</a>’s poem, A Wife’s Protest, was one such example, with lines such as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I lay me down upon my bed,<br>
A prisoner on the rack,<br>
And suffer dumbly, as I must,<br>
Till the kind day comes back<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This poem was published in Cambridge’s 1887 poetry collection <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?printsec=frontcover&vid=ISBN0731700481&redir_esc=y">Unspoken Thoughts</a>. The title was a misnomer, for such thoughts weren’t unspoken. In fact, they formed part of a wider discussion about marital rape, consent, domestic violence and women’s bodily autonomy taking place in the pages of colonial women’s writings.</p>
<p>Feminist writers such as Cambridge, the wife of a clergyman in regional Victoria, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lawson-louisa-7121">Louisa Lawson</a>, an inventor, poet, and newspaper proprietor, and Queensland-born <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/praed-rosa-caroline-8095">Rosa Praed</a>, linked marital rape to other forms of domestic violence, such as physical violence, <a href="https://theconversation.com/revealed-the-hidden-problem-of-economic-abuse-in-australia-73764">economic abuse</a>, and what we would now term <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-its-so-hard-to-prosecute-cases-of-coercive-or-controlling-behaviour-66108">coercive control</a>. </p>
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<span class="caption">Ada Cambridge, date unknown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Cambridge#/media/File:Ada-Cambridge.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>For Cambridge and Lawson, exploiting the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction">Gothic genre</a> in their writings allowed them to depict marital rape, while avoiding censorship from their publishers. Horror-inducing imagery and references to torture and torture devices (such as “the rack”) enabled them to paint marital rape in a graphic light, capitalising on public appetites for Gothic stories.</p>
<p>In Cambridge’s novel <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Sisters.html?id=woP-tjLsGqcC&redir_esc=y">Sisters</a> (1904), for example, one of the four titular sisters, Mary Pennycuick, attempts to drown herself after receiving a marriage proposal, perceiving marriage itself as “a means to commit suicide without violating the law”.</p>
<p>She is “saved” by the village parson, who uses his chivalrous act as a bargaining tool to coerce Mary into marrying him instead. In an explicitly Gothic moment, “the white frock which she had tried to drown herself” in is “dried and ironed to make her bridal robe”. </p>
<p>On her wedding night, as she is led to the marital bedchamber by her husband, Mary shrinks “back from it with a shriek”, clinging to her sister-in-law: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Save me! Save me!’ was what the desperate clutch meant, but what the paralysed tongue could not articulate. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>After the wedding, Mary is described as “a prisoner for life, bound hand and foot, more pitiable than she would have been as a dead body fished out of the dam”. With this sentence, Cambridge implies that, throughout the course of the marriage, Mary endures marital rape.</p>
<p>In Cambridge’s earlier serialised newspaper story <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/143017958?searchTerm=dinah">Dinah</a> (1880), the character of Dinah remarks after her husband’s death “now she will have a little peace”. The “wretchedness she had” with him had left her in bed many times, “prostrate […] with slow tears trickling down her cheeks”. </p>
<p>Widely-read serials, such as Dinah, made Cambridge a household name before she burst onto the international market in the 1890s. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-long-history-of-gender-violence-in-australia-and-why-it-matters-today-119927">The long history of gender violence in Australia, and why it matters today</a>
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<p>For Lawson, who ran The Dawn, <a href="https://dangerouswomenproject.org/2017/03/06/louisa-lawson/">the longest running feminist journal in Australia</a>, marital rape was a constant focus of her writing. Her outspokenness – partly facilitated by her ability to self-publish her journal – made her an outlier among her suffragist sisters.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582709/original/file-20240319-20-luz8ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582709/original/file-20240319-20-luz8ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582709/original/file-20240319-20-luz8ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582709/original/file-20240319-20-luz8ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582709/original/file-20240319-20-luz8ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582709/original/file-20240319-20-luz8ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582709/original/file-20240319-20-luz8ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582709/original/file-20240319-20-luz8ly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Portrait of Louisa Lawson, ca. 1885, gelatin silver print, State Library of New South Wales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisa_Lawson#/media/File:Louisa_Lawson_V1-FL3303627.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>In a July 1890 article titled <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/76420124?searchTerm=the%20legal%20link">The Legal Link</a>, Lawson criticised the laws permitting husbands to commit “abominations known to women but which must not here be named”. </p>
<p>Her frankest description of marital rape appeared in one of her <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/7541911">editorials earlier that year</a>, in which she advocated for divorce law reform, drawing on the experiences of the “sad-eyed women who used to come in and tell tales of violent husbands and dreary homes”. In the article, she described how a husband could approach “his lawful wife’s chamber” and “proceed to make the night hideous for her”. Marital rape was a “horrid ordeal” that wives were “expected to endure nightly”.</p>
<p>Lawson represented marital rape as wives’ inescapable “fate” under marriage laws that denied them bodily autonomy. She never used the word “rape” to describe this act. But her use of Gothic tropes, describing the marital bedroom as a “chamber of horrors”, made her meaning unmistakable.</p>
<p>It is difficult to quantify how widespread martial rape was at this time – there is minimal historical research on the subject – but the fact that these women wrote about it widely suggests it was commonplace.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-gothic-from-hanging-rock-to-nick-cave-and-kylie-this-genre-explores-our-dark-side-111742">Australian Gothic: from Hanging Rock to Nick Cave and Kylie, this genre explores our dark side</a>
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<h2>Censoring criticisms</h2>
<p>Rosa Praed, who became something of a literary celebrity when she moved to London, wrote in the romance and domestic realist genres, and was known for her depictions of the brutalities of marriage.</p>
<p>In her stories <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/An_Australian_Heroine.html?id=5XfPAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">An Australian Heroine</a> (1880), which some have described as semi-autobiographical, and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/December_Roses.html?id=9aE4AQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">December Roses</a> (1892), Praed framed marital rape in moral terms. She differentiated between physical violence and “immoral” violence – the latter being coded language used to convey the idea of sexual violence while escaping her publishers’ censorship. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582720/original/file-20240319-30-xv7v5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582720/original/file-20240319-30-xv7v5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582720/original/file-20240319-30-xv7v5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582720/original/file-20240319-30-xv7v5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582720/original/file-20240319-30-xv7v5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582720/original/file-20240319-30-xv7v5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582720/original/file-20240319-30-xv7v5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582720/original/file-20240319-30-xv7v5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=996&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rosa Praed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Campbell_Praed">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>In An Australian Heroine, the antagonist George Brand justifies his sexual abuse of his wife Esther by telling her: “you are mine now, remember, and I may do what I like with you”. </p>
<p>Esther subsequently understands her marriage as “nothing but a degrading prostitution from which she could not escape”, which has “upon her the effect of a slow moral suicide”.</p>
<p>Unlike Cambridge or Lawson, Praed’s depictions of marital rape attracted criticism and censorship. Her 1881 novel <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Policy_and_Passion.html?id=1a50PwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Policy and Passion</a> originally featured a chapter in which a fiancé attempts to rape his soon-to-be wife. Although Praed wanted to call “a spade a spade” and depict this sexual coercion and violence, her publishers declared it “too realistic” and “repugnant”. She was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08164649.2024.2318750?src=exp-la">told</a> to “tone down” and avoid “the suggestion of any undignified scuffle or of any actual brutality”.</p>
<p>Not only did her publishers object to any discussion of marital rape, they particularly objected to these discussions coming from a female author. They told her: “One has to remember that it has your name on the title page, and that you cannot so well say what [a] Mr Praed may”. </p>
<p>In the end, the chapter was cut entirely, and replaced with a short scene where the fiancé merely attempts to kiss his wife-to-be, which she manages to avoid. </p>
<h2>Citizenship versus consent</h2>
<p>Other women discussing marital rape – namely suffrage agitators such as <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/scott-rose-8370">Rose Scott</a> and <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/anderson-maybanke-susannah-5018">Maybanke Anderson</a> – thought about the problem in a completely different way. </p>
<p>To achieve their goals of suffrage and political citizenship for women, they evoked women’s rights as mothers rather than as individuals. For these women, a wife’s ability to choose whether or not she had children and the consequences of her lack of choice for the children themselves were the problem, not the lack of consent. </p>
<p>Cambridge’s poem An Answer, for instance, featured a wife railing against “the yoke of servitude” and complaining about surrendering “soul and flesh that should be mine, and free” to her husband. But in Scott’s annotated copy of the book containing An Answer, she wrote in the margin: “this poem is the one [I am] sorry is in this book”.</p>
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<span class="caption">Maybanke Anderson circa 1893.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maybanke_Anderson#/media/File:Maybanke_Anderson_c.1893.png">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>Sydney-based Anderson, a foundational member and later president of the Womanhood Suffrage League, established her own feminist journal Woman’s Voice in opposition to The Dawn. She framed her criticism of marital rape around its effects on wives’ and children’s health, calling for women to realise “the dangers that beset them”.</p>
<p>Some of the discussion of marital rape in Woman’s Voice was concerned with wives’ bodily autonomy (or lack thereof). One article criticised the “laws [which] do not recognise the right of the wife to her own body”. The focus always returned to what Anderson described as “the mother’s right to choose”.</p>
<p>These concerns around marital rape and the “animal nature” of husbands, framed around concerns for both mother and child, were graphic. As Anderson wrote in one editorial:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is by no means the exception, but rather the rule, that during pregnancy the wife must yield to the demand of the husband’s lust, not occasionally but constantly – as often as there are nights in the month; and not unfrequently must she give herself up to this awful harlotry before her baby is two weeks old.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In their desire to fulfil the role of wife, women’s “ruin [was] practically compulsory”. </p>
<h2>Domestic violence</h2>
<p>For suffrage agitators, not only was marital rape an entirely separate issue to that of domestic violence, but domestic violence was not deemed worthy of their focus. In a letter to the editor published in Woman’s Voice in 1895, Mary Sanger Evans, a prominent member of the Womanhood Suffrage League in Sydney, went so far as to declare: “The reign of brute force is rapidly on the wane”.</p>
<p>Both Evans and Anderson had benefited from the recently amended NSW divorce act, which enabled them to divorce their husbands on the grounds of physical violence/cruelty and economic violence/desertion respectively.</p>
<p>For Cambridge, Lawson and Praed, however, marital rape could not be disentangled from other forms of domestic violence. The husband who turns the marital bedroom into a “chamber of horrors” in Lawson’s editorial, also bruises his wife’s flesh “and perhaps breaks her bones”. </p>
<p>In Cambridge’s Dinah, the husband subjects his wife to a regime of humiliation, economic control and psychological abuse, while in another of her serialised stories, Against the Rules, marital rape is paired with physical abuse. Cambridge depicts marital rape as the worst form of a broader system of domestic violence that ensnared colonial women. “There were worse things than blows”, the wife declares in this story.</p>
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<p>Cambridge and Praed continued to address marital rape in their fiction up until the start of the first world war, when both women began to wind up their literary careers. Throughout the mid-20th century, other female writers would tackle the topic, including Eleanor Dark, in her novel <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mvlMAAAAIAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions">Waterway</a> (1938), Katherine Susannah Prichard in <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Roaring_Nineties.html?id=rzE3AAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Roaring Nineties</a> (1946) and Ruth Park in <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Witch_s_Thorn.html?id=ZxF3OwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Witch’s Thorn</a> (1951). </p>
<p>Yet despite this continued literary attention, social, cultural and legal attitudes towards marital rape were <a href="https://www.auswhn.com.au/blog/marital-rape/">inconsistent</a> for many decades.</p>
<p>Not that Cambridge, Lawson and Praed were preaching to an empty choir. From the 1890s, in the wake of these women’s writings, some women used their divorce petitions to assert their right to consent. They described their husbands’ sexual cruelty as rape – “against their will” and “against their consent” – revealing a burgeoning feminist consciousness among wives.</p>
<p>In making this sexual violence public, such women laid the foundation for those who would finally be freed nearly a century later, when, in the 1970s, South Australia began to lead the charge in criminalising marital rape.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224261/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoe Smith receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Domestic Scholarship.</span></em></p>At a time when women had limited rights, writers found ways to raise the issues of coercion and control.Zoe Smith, PhD Candidate, School of History, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2227512024-03-13T22:28:39Z2024-03-13T22:28:39ZHow do you write a ‘Vietnamese’ poem? Nam Le’s defiantly cerebral verses shuffle the deck of identity, belonging and being<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581500/original/file-20240313-28-dismmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C10%2C2293%2C2341&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nam Le.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon & Schuster</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Flying in the face of much contemporary poetry, Nam Le’s first collection <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/36-Ways-of-Writing-a-Vietnamese-Poem/Nam-Le/9781761423369">36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem</a> is defiantly cerebral, relishing the polysyllabic, the latinate and the esoteric. This is not to say that there aren’t notes of utter beauty and great feeling, just that Le is not afraid of being difficult. The difficulty is part of the collection’s aesthetic. </p>
<p>In an interview, Le said that he dreamed his work could sustain a “cold read” as easily as an “academic assault”. These are severe yardsticks for a poet to write by, so it is little wonder that his poems are exacting, sometimes peremptory in tone. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: 36 Ways to Write a Vietnamese Poem – Nam Le (Simon & Schuster)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Underlying even the most comic or lyrical of moments in the book is a seriousness and a woundedness that tips into anger and sorrow. Because the poetry is meticulous and skilled – the work of a poet who has lived with poetry for the longest time – the anger, the woundedness and the sorrow are directed and purposeful, not confessional, not easily sincere or authentic.</p>
<p>With poem titles including [16. Violence: Autologous], [18. Inter-Analectional] and [30. Asymptotic], there is no quick or easy reading. The square brackets suggest domains outside of poetry – linguistics, coding, mathematics – but brackets also embed a phrase or idea more deeply within a sentence or an already parenthetical idea. </p>
<p>The effect is of a <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100201557">mise en abyme</a> – an infinite regression – that resists the impulse to classify and order. The bracketed and numbered titles make the process of referencing a poem from the collection, whether in a review or elsewhere, more laborious and exacting. This is a kind of play – serious play, but play nonetheless. </p>
<p>That each title is adjectival is a reminder that each poem refers outwards. It is not an end, but a “way” to a larger poem – perhaps but not necessarily the elusive, impossible Vietnamese poem of the title.</p>
<h2>Imagination, emotion, intellect</h2>
<p>Nam Le has won prestigious and lucrative prizes. He studied at Harvard, where he was fiction editor of the Harvard Review, and has published <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/david-malouf">a book on David Malouf</a> as part of Black Inc.’s “writers on writers” series. </p>
<p>But he is best known as the author of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-boat-9780143009610">The Boat</a>, a collection of short stories that includes the award-winning eponymous story about Mai, a young girl who is smuggled out of Vietnam. </p>
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<p>The story was written beautifully and viscerally enough to find itself on reading lists of universities and schools, nationally and overseas. In its scope and language, The Boat drew something mythic from the short story form. Perhaps this had something to do with Le’s disregard for length – at 40 pages, it’s a long short story – or perhaps it was because his driving narrative prose dipped into the rhythms and imagery of poetry. </p>
<p>The Boat was a story that captured the imagination, harnessing the historical and the political, but ultimately rendering these realities secondary to the work that art does. If transcendence is too vexed a term, then Le’s story might be said to transform the reader, at least temporarily, into a being concerned with existence, with the business of being human in a fallen world. </p>
<p>In pitting the frail singularity of a child against the forces of war and border politics, The Boat appeals to the emotions. 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem, with its insistence on the constructedness and the materiality of language – both as sound and writing – appeals to the intellect. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/andre-daos-brilliant-debut-novel-explores-his-grandfathers-ten-year-detention-without-trial-by-the-vietnamese-government-201570">André Dao's brilliant debut novel explores his grandfather's ten-year detention without trial by the Vietnamese government</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Ways and means</h2>
<p>To ask whether this book is a collection of poems or a single long “Vietnamese” poem is to step through the looking glass, where an entity called “You” looms large, and meanings and associations become slippery. </p>
<p>Read as a book-length poem, 36 Ways to Write a Vietnamese Poem has an almost overdetermined chronological structure. Narratively speaking, it starts at the beginning and ends at the end. </p>
<p>The first poem, [1. Diasporic], is too stylised to be read as straightforwardly autobiographical. But when Le posits it as the first “way” to write a Vietnamese poem, he plays on his origins and the “dynamic borderline” (as Jacques Derrida puts it in <a href="https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska-paperback/9780803265752/">The Ear of the Other</a>), between a writer’s life and their work. </p>
<p>The book ends with a 37th poem, implying that one poem in the collection does not constitute a “way”. [37. Post-racial/-glacial] is ecopoetic. It is an exercise in speculative futurism that imagines a post-racial world – something that may be the furthest thing now imaginable. The “glacier” is the addressee, but it is also an image, symbol and metaphor – of climate catastrophe, geological timeframes, and the “sediments” of page and self. </p>
<p>[1. Diasporic] opens with parody, a deep-throated burlesque: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In English, mind You.<br>
You dink I writee Yiknamee?<br>
Shame on You.<br>
It was Your violence dumbed me.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The forceful use of deictic markers – the “you"s and "me"s and "here"s and "now"s – moves the reader about the poem as effectively as game controls. Second person is always a bit abrasive, but the capital letter makes "You” an affront to the reader, and deliberately so. </p>
<p>The parody of migrant English – “dink” – is cringeworthy, but it is also the perfect set-up for the wordplay that follows when Le breaks “displacement” up into “dis place ment”. The effect is poignant, the punning almost Beckettian (this place meant). The final line of the poem, the line that propels the reader on their “way” through the collection, is: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What’s Vietnamese in me<br>
Could fit in a poem.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The simplicity of the statement has the beauty and affecting quality of the confessional. But to draw the easy parallel between the life of the poet and the line of the poem would be to miss the art. The effect of the stripped back eloquence is heightened by the movement away from the crass, parodic, cruel opening. </p>
<p>Le has almost written a manifesto for art in a post-truth world. Throughout the collection, he displays a passion for the truths that emerge from art, which is not the kind of truth that relies on the fidelity between a poet’s biography and their work. </p>
<p>Sincerity is challenged and reconstituted in [13. Eastern-epistemological] / (NINE WHITE MASTERS SITTING IN A TREE). In this poem, Ezra Pound and Seamus Heaney – white patriarchs of poetry – are targeted with “sitting in a tree” nursery-rhyme mockery. But by the end of the poem, Le does something else with Pound. Remembering Pound’s complicity with Mussolini, but also his support of the poetry of the Jewish-American <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/objectivist-poets">Objectivist poets</a>, such as <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/louis-zukofsky">Louis Zukofsky</a> (“Zukofsky about sincerity”), Le elevates the “word”. Pound ends up entangled in the complicated grammar of something beautiful: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>singing sunrise through an ideogram tree<br></p>
<p>Its shade lanced sunlight down to just the<br>
Spot where word’s made perfect, and the<br>
Word’s – the word is, that – the word<br>
Is “sincerity”.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the opposite of polarising hate-discourses. Nuances, paradoxes and antinomies arise in and through the difficulty – from the need to apply intellect and learning. The complex deck of cards that produce identity, belonging and being is shuffled. </p>
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<p>Many of the poems use avant garde techniques: fragments, quotations, collage, lists. There is the typographic play of footnotes, grey shading and the blacking out of lines. [26. Erasive] takes bureaucratic violence to task, semi-obliterating official reports, leaving only a trickle of letters to be pieced together in the tradition of Blackout Poetry.</p>
<p>Le is as concerned with visual appearance as with semantics. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that he is serious about the way form produces meaning, and is often complicit in political violence and oppression. </p>
<p>Lines are often dense – wordy mouthfuls where syntax is distorted, broken up or down. Words are chosen as much for their sound and percussive qualities as their meanings. This concern with materiality of language means that in the most turgid of lines, or lines where diction teeters towards bombast, even outright bathes in it, there is a reward in the sounds of “smashed-together consonants” and the “tonguing” required for articulation.</p>
<p>Reminiscent of the <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/language-poetry"><em>L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E</em> poets</a> and Mallarmé’s <a href="https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/French/MallarmeUnCoupdeDes.php"><em>Un Coup de Dés</em></a>, [31. Nautical] is the most experimental of Le’s poems. Typographic symbols are arranged down the page, organised around the capitalised and bolded word “<strong>ARCHIPELAGO</strong>”. The layout invites alternate thought-routes and encounters, presenting the poem as much as a visual artefact as a semantic packet. </p>
<p>It is important to note that not all of Le’s poems are difficult or highbrow. Idiomatic speech and profanity are important parts of his arsenal. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mother country mother tongue<br>
motherfuckers on the run<br>
eat their words and white bread, son<br>
earn your white man’s tongue.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>These lines are from [19. Oral-metaphorical], where bathos and vulgarity abound. As Le riffs on the concepts of mouth and tongue, an alternative anatomy of speech emerges. The mouth is described not only as the apparatus of speech, ingestion and eroticism, but “the true / soul’s window”.</p>
<p>Lines and words of Vietnamese are sparingly and strategically placed throughout. They are integral to the experience of the book, as they redraw the boundaries and territories of English with forms and words and concepts that make the language strange and new to itself. </p>
<p>Le takes English to task as a language of empire and capitalism. He challenges its grammar, its generative racism and inherited prejudices. Latin, untranslated, is as present as Vietnamese – even more so. It serves as a reminder of how idiotic it is to think in terms of purity of language, and who speaks what.</p>
<p>This is especially the case in [15. Dire-critical], where English’s lack of tonal variation is foregrounded as poverty. Diacritics signalling the rise and fall of voice are essential to Vietnamese (and so many languages). They are figured here as both endangered and precious. </p>
<p>In a superb final stanza, a Vietnamese body burned by napalm compounds pregnant grief and intergenerational trauma into a single, loaded, “future-tensed … dot”.</p>
<p>In [5. Violence: Taxonomic], racist taxonomies and translations are formally flipped. The first half of poem runs through the Latin of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_nomenclature">Linnaeas’s binomial system</a>, ending strategically with the infamous “<em>varietas</em>” of humans classified by colour of skin. </p>
<p>The second part of the poem hinges on the motto “<em>Nosce te ipsum</em>” – “know yourself”. Every skin colour Linnaeus identifies is fed back to him, as though he were the specimen, from his “yellowish” sallowness to blood irrigated by “black bile”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-david-maloufs-an-imaginary-life-28201">The case for David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Difficulty and artistic sovereignty</h2>
<p>Part of the point of making poems difficult is that they don’t talk to everyone. The difficulty resists a populism that devalues expertise. At at time when people seem increasingly unable to read in any way other than literally, satire and irony are also risky. 36 Ways to Write a Vietnamese Poem shows that Le is not risk-adverse.</p>
<p>Difficulty slows the reading down. It makes the reader either accept a partial understanding or inspires them to work harder to decode and understand. It resists simple causal readings – the kind of readings that would see an event in the writer’s life as the explanation for an event in a poem or a book.</p>
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<p>Artistic sovereignty is something Le admires in the work of David Malouf. In an essay in Granta titled <a href="https://granta.com/a-great-lake/">A Great Lake</a>, he argues that Malouf’s writing has refused to follow a particular trajectory. It has not followed the trajectory of Malouf’s life, nor has it stuck to a few recognisably “Maloufian” themes or topics. Cutting his own artistic path, irrespective of market demands or literary trends or publishing expectations, Malouf “seems to have preserved – with natural lightness of touch – this personal, artistic sovereignty for himself”. </p>
<p>Sovereignty comes with the power to name, to call the shots – to decide what is war, what is terrorism, who is beautiful, who isn’t, who speaks, who doesn’t, who belongs, what matters, whose stories dominate.</p>
<p>The moments in 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem that appear unguarded are few, but they are also sovereign. Like the small knapsack of cut diamonds in the collection’s 32nd poem, they are unexpected, worked for – and the work matters – and designed to give old ways new currency.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Hamadache 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>To ask whether 36 Ways to Write a Vietnamese Poem is a collection of poems or a single long poem is to step through the looking glass.Michelle Hamadache, Lecturer, Literature and Creative Writing, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2229802024-02-28T04:38:20Z2024-02-28T04:38:20ZGail Jones’ One Another explores the life of Joseph Conrad and the transformative potential of reading<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578466/original/file-20240228-26-wuvfsk.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C4000%2C2988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Otago (1884).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StateLibQld_1_53436_Otago_(ship).jpg">State Library of Queensland. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), the famous Polish-born author of <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/219/219-h/219-h.htm">Heart of Darkness</a>, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5658/5658-h/5658-h.htm">Lord Jim</a> and <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/974/974-h/974-h.htm">The Secret Agent</a>, among many other novels and short stories, is not a writer usually associated with Australia. Yet lying just off the banks of the River Derwent near Hobart there remains a haunting reminder of his presence – the partially submerged wreck of the Otago, a sailing ship he once captained when he was a roaming seafarer serving in the British merchant navy. </p>
<p>As a mariner, Conrad visited Australia numerous times (though, ironically, not Tasmania). The Otago, as with other ships on which he served, became the subject of many of the works he wrote in England when his sailing career ended. </p>
<p>A fictionalised version of Conrad, the man and the writer, forms half of Gail Jones’s new novel <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/one-another">One Another</a>. Significantly, Jones wrote the novel in Hobart, while taking up a writing fellowship at the University of Tasmania. </p>
<p>The Otago wreck is a pivotal image in the book, providing a symbolic meeting-space between the novel’s two main characters and marking a place where the past intrudes, in a bodily way, into the present.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-conrads-imperial-horror-story-heart-of-darkness-resonates-with-our-globalised-times-94723">How Conrad’s imperial horror story Heart of Darkness resonates with our globalised times</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A tale of two lives</h2>
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<p>One Another interleaves the life of the celebrated writer (born Jósef Teodor Konrad Korseniowski) with that of Helen Ross, a young Australian postgraduate student of literature, who is writing her PhD thesis at Cambridge University on “Cryptomodernism and Empire” in the works of Joseph Conrad. </p>
<p>The narrative moves between them, reconstructing fragments of Conrad’s life and works, while narrating Helen’s attempts to write her thesis in the middle of her increasingly toxic relationship with Justin, a psychologically damaged fellow Australian. </p>
<p>Although these two lives are separated by time and distance, the narrative gradually and non-chronologically reveals parallels and crossings between them. The motif of journeying and outsider status is shared by both. </p>
<p>The orphaned Joseph is helped by his Uncle Tadeusz to leave Poland on the death of his father. He embarks on his peripatetic life, first in the French and then the British merchant navy. Later, he becomes a British subject.</p>
<p>Helen leaves what she sees as the constriction of Hobart to study in England, the colonial centre, in 1992. Although the text only occasionally draws attention to specific dates, the year is significant. While overseas, Helen hears of the Australian High Court’s Mabo decision, something that she recognises as “momentous”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577777/original/file-20240225-18-er43pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photo of Gail Jones" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577777/original/file-20240225-18-er43pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577777/original/file-20240225-18-er43pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577777/original/file-20240225-18-er43pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577777/original/file-20240225-18-er43pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577777/original/file-20240225-18-er43pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577777/original/file-20240225-18-er43pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577777/original/file-20240225-18-er43pd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Gail Jones.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Heike Steinweg/Text Publishing</span></span>
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<p>This underlines another common thread between the two characters: their awareness of the violence of colonialism. Each has been complicit, however tangentially, in imperial and colonial practices. Conrad witnessed the “historical cruelty” in the Belgian Congo in his role as a steamboat captain on the Congo River. Helen is a settler-colonial Australian from Tasmania, a site of violent dispossession of its Indigenous peoples. </p>
<p>As dislocated “foreigners” in Britain, Joseph and Helen both experience British culture as unfriendly. Joseph never loses his Eastern European accent and is self-conscious about his “broken English”; Helen’s Australian accent is regarded as “uncouth”. </p>
<p>Both characters are writers, and both lose a crucial manuscript – a traumatic loss that has apparently afflicted a number of other authors listed in the text. Joseph leaves the only copy of his first book, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/720/720-h/720-h.htm">Almayer’s Folly</a>, in a café in Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse train station; Helen leaves her thesis on a train. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-j-m-coetzees-latest-story-collection-questions-of-the-soul-become-urgent-as-the-body-becomes-frail-206406">In J.M. Coetzee's latest story collection, questions of the soul become urgent as the body becomes frail</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Reading as encounter</h2>
<p>Helen’s “profound attachment” to Conrad has its childhood beginning when her father takes her on an unexpected road trip to show her the wreck of the Otago. But Helen does not attribute her interest in the writer to this sighting of the sunken ship. It is not an “epiphanic moment” or a “neat or mythic beginning”. Rather, as Jones writes: “What began was a kind of dreaming towards this emptied body, the boat.” </p>
<p>Helen’s absorption of Conrad’s life and work is indicated towards the end of the novel when she mirrors his language of the sea, alluding to a dream she has had as </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the dark shipwreck that she has been caught in. No shape here: just her own mind tossed and unsettled. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This oceanic language of global and personal flow is a feature of the novel. In less skilful hands, it could become somewhat predictable, but Jones’s poetic way with words and imagery keeps it fresh and relevant.</p>
<p>To read a Gail Jones novel is to become absorbed in narrative patterns of looping time, often cinematic imagery, and interrelated literary allusions. The motif of immersion is particularly apt in this novel, not only for its connection to Joseph’s ocean voyaging and the references to a number of drownings and near-drownings. </p>
<p>The immersive experience of reading itself is a strong thematic thread, as it is in much of Jones’ work. It is evoked as an intimate aesthetic and philosophical encounter between reader and writer, or reader and text – and is perhaps another implication of the “one another” of the title. </p>
<p>The novel gradually introduces the reader to the complex pasts of its two main characters and, in the case of Joseph, his literary works. One Another includes some wonderfully perceptive and often intriguing short analyses of Conrad’s novels and short stories. These interpretations draw out the thematic connections between the stories of Joseph and Helen: loss, loneliness, friendship, violence. </p>
<p>There is one section that simply lists, in order, all the words from Heart of Darkness that have the negative prefixes “in-”, “im-” and “un-”. Other sections enumerate details of Conrad’s life and world under headings such as “Illnesses he suffers”, “The body” and “Accidents”. </p>
<p>These snippets can be read as extracts from the handwritten index cards that Helen has compiled for her thesis. Early on, she describes her lost manuscript as “fragments of a life intersected by literary-critical notations” – an accurate description of parts of the novel we are reading. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577787/original/file-20240226-31-zet7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5687%2C3779&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photograph of the wreck of the Otago, Derwent River, Hobart." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577787/original/file-20240226-31-zet7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5687%2C3779&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577787/original/file-20240226-31-zet7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577787/original/file-20240226-31-zet7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577787/original/file-20240226-31-zet7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577787/original/file-20240226-31-zet7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577787/original/file-20240226-31-zet7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577787/original/file-20240226-31-zet7wz.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>
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<span class="caption">The wreck of the Otago, Derwent River, Hobart.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steve Lovegrove/Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/time-is-arrested-in-gail-jones-beautiful-new-novel-of-war-and-art-salonika-burning-195187">Time is arrested in Gail Jones' beautiful new novel of war and art, Salonika Burning</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Creative biography</h2>
<p>In many ways, then, One Another is a novel about the transformative potential of reading. It expresses the sense of intimate connection poetically, describing Helen’s “conjuring” of Conrad as “a flow into fiction’s otherness that welcomed and accommodated her”.</p>
<p>Jones has based the events in Joseph’s life on Conrad’s autobiographical writings in <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/687/687-h/687-h.htm">A Personal Record</a>, his published letters, and numerous biographies and works of literary criticism. But the novel is an imaginative reconstruction of significant moments in Conrad’s world, not a historical study. </p>
<p>The genre of biofiction is one in which Jones has particular skill. Her early short-story collection <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C259431">Fetish Lives</a> (1997) reimagines in fictional form the lives and deaths of famous writers and artists. In her recent novel, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/salonika-burning">Salonika Burning</a> (2022), she rewrites the World War I experiences of four real-life characters, including Australian writer <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/franklin-stella-maria-sarah-miles-6235">Stella Miles Franklin</a>, as a fictional thought experiment. But as she writes in the author’s note, Salonika Burning “takes many liberties and is not intended to be read as history”.</p>
<p>In One Another, Jones is similarly inspired by historical events and people to write her own version of their interior lives – their thoughts and emotions, as well as of their bodily being. </p>
<p>The novel begins, for example, with Joseph’s dream of his parents, “the unquiet dead”, and ends with a moving imagining of his dying thoughts, as he “sinks as he has always wanted to sink, washed by kind waves, closed over by sway, hearing no language at all but that of the ocean”.</p>
<p>Unlike a conventional biography, One Another suggests that “for both Joseph and his biographers, there will always be the element of the hidden”. And as Helen comes to realise, the life of another is always only partially accessible: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Seeing in fragments. That was how she now thought of it. Seeing one’s own life, and another’s […] those forms of shaped meaning that might found the merest understanding. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This fractured vision – referenced in the text’s approximation of T.S. Eliot’s line in <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land">The Waste Land</a> about fragments “shored against ruins” – implies a modernist sensibility, whereby fragmentation can create its own “forms of shaped meaning”.</p>
<p>Once again, Jones has written a richly evocative novel that warrants attention, both for its fascinating subject-matter and for its outstanding writerly qualities. One Another adds to her already impressive, diverse and highly-regarded oeuvre. Importantly, too, it is also a novel that adds to our understanding of the processes of writing and reading the lives of others – and one that situates Australian literature within a globalised world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222980/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Kossew 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>Gail Jones has written a richly evocative novel that warrants attention, both for its fascinating subject-matter and for its outstanding writerly qualities.Sue Kossew, Emeritus Professor of Literary Studies at School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2240122024-02-21T00:40:40Z2024-02-21T00:40:40ZMarion Halligan was a woman of great warmth and generosity, and a consummate novelist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576910/original/file-20240220-18-9e7zxe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=428%2C10%2C1974%2C1257&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Marion Halligan (1940-2024).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy8O58a1AQA">YouTube</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A13513">Marion Halligan</a>, who died on February 19 at the age of 83, was one of Australia’s finest authors. She has more than 20 books to her credit, including novels, short story collections and non-fiction. Her novels are compulsively readable and full of ideas. </p>
<p>Halligan was born and raised in Newcastle, but for most of her life she lived in and wrote about Canberra. She conveyed a strong sense of the place, with Lake Burley Griffin at the centre, “cool and severe and beautiful” as she described it in her 2003 novel <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Marion-Halligan-Point-9781741143720">The Point</a>. </p>
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<p>I <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41957332">interviewed</a> Halligan about The Point for Radio Adelaide and later published the interview in Antipodes. She was audibly taken aback when I likened her work to that of the great British novelist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Iris-Murdoch">Iris Murdoch</a>. Although she admitted being an admirer of Murdoch, she had not thought of her as an influence. </p>
<p>But for me the resemblance was striking. What I saw was not imitation, but a shared attitude to the capacity of novels to explore the big questions of life, without sacrificing their readability. In our interview, Halligan said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It seems to me that novels are very much about this question of how shall we live, not answering it but asking it, and what novelists do is look at people who live different sorts of lives, and often people who live rather badly are a good way of asking the question. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another attribute Halligan shared with Murdoch was the richness of her web of allusions. In Halligan’s case, this was formed from the multitude of cultures and histories that make up Australian life in the 21st century. Her characters are embedded in their worlds. She said that she believed in giving her readers </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a whole lot of concrete things to hang on to. […] Lakes and trees and food and maybe buildings. […] Then when you’ve done that you can come in with the ideas and abstract things, the unconcrete things, the emotions, and people will trust you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Halligan never wrote the same novel twice. The Point is particularly Murdochian in its structure and tone. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovers%27_Knots">Lovers’ Knots</a> (1992) is a historical novel, covering a century of family stories. <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Marion-Halligan-Apricot-Colonel-9781741147667">The Apricot Colonel</a> (2006) and its sequel <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Marion-Halligan-Murder-on-the-Apricot-Coast-9781741753844">Murder on the Apricot Coast</a> (2008) are witty novels in the “whodunit” vein, playing with the familiar formula in clever ways. </p>
<p>Unlike many novelists, Halligan also wrote excellent short stories, publishing five collections. Intriguing and mordant, always intelligent, the stories in collections such as The Hanged Man in the Garden (1989) and Shooting the Fox (2011) are well worth revisiting.</p>
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<p>Halligan suffered much heartache in her personal life and wrote about it directly in fiction and memoir. Her novel <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Marion-Halligan-Fog-Garden-9781865087696">The Fog Garden</a> (2001) was written after the death of her first husband. It is a moving tribute to a beloved partner, and a searching and honest account of adjusting to life without him. </p>
<p>I recall her telling me that it was a novel she needed to write, so she put her other projects on hold until it was done.</p>
<p>Halligan’s last book, <a href="https://thamesandhudson.com.au/product/words-for-lucy-a-story-of-love-loss-and-the-celebration-of-life/">Words for Lucy</a>, published in 2022, was written for her daughter, who died in 2004. </p>
<h2>A unique contribution</h2>
<p>A consummate novelist and a brilliant wordsmith, Halligan was also a woman of great warmth and generosity. I met her several times. I visited her home in Canberra and partook of her hospitality. That she was an advocate for “slow food” – not necessarily complicated food, but “food with attention paid” – was obvious. </p>
<p>Her kitchen was large and welcoming, replete with wonderful aromas. Her non-fiction book <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/9781741154443">The Taste of Memory</a> (2004) celebrated food and its part in our lives and networks of love and memory.</p>
<p>Reviewing <a href="https://fac.flinders.edu.au/dspace/api/core/bitstreams/5bf9d07c-7700-4f0c-b7ed-85383a469107/content">The Apricot Colonel</a> in 2006, I wrote that “in Marion Halligan’s world, a male character who bottles apricots, chargrills vegetables, and speculates about the derivation of the word ‘idyll’ is never going to be a villain”. </p>
<p>There are not many generalisations that could be made about her, but I stand by this one.</p>
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<p>Marion Halligan was a unique contributor to Australian literature and culture.
She served as chair of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and received numerous awards for her writing, including the ACT Book of the Year, which she won three times. In 2022, the ACT Writers Centre was renamed <a href="https://marion.ink/">Marion</a> in recognition of her literary achievements and active support of local writers.</p>
<p>She was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2006 “for service to literature as an author, to the promotion of Australian writers and to support for literary events and professional organisations”, Halligan has nevertheless not yet been the subject of a book-length study, unlike many novelists of her generation. </p>
<p>I commented in our interview that readability seems somewhat disreputable among literary scholars, and we agreed that was strange – and regrettable. </p>
<p>Halligan wrote movingly about death and dying, about loving and losing. She suffered the loss that we now suffer, losing her. She will be missed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224012/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gillian Dooley 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>Marion Halligan wrote novels that are compulsively readable and full of ideas.Gillian Dooley, Adjunct Associate in English, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2227602024-02-19T03:49:58Z2024-02-19T03:49:58Z‘The future has a way of finding you’: Georgia Blain’s haunting final stories reveal the fragile moments that shape us<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574887/original/file-20240212-21-d186g8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C32%2C1202%2C768&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Georgia Blain.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scribe Publications</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I first met Georgia Blain at The Basement. This was back in the 1990s, when the iconic underground jazz venue near Sydney’s Circular Quay still drew a vibrant, edgy crowd. We were young, in our late 20s, and had been invited to read for an event hosted by the Sydney Writers’ Festival; there to be the “bright young things”.</p>
<p>I look back and cringe at my awkward younger self, but I can see Georgia very clearly. Her pixie hairdo; her skin luminous in the semi-darkness. Georgia had a way of talking to you that was totally focused in the moment. </p>
<p>She read from her first novel, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Georgia-Blain-Closed-for-Winter-9781743313374">Closed for Winter</a> – a fictional exploration of her grief at <a href="https://theconversation.com/belvoirs-tell-me-im-here-looks-at-the-impact-of-mental-illness-on-the-whole-family-it-is-a-wrenching-and-beautiful-work-188432">the loss of her brother to schizophrenia and drug addiction</a> at an early age. It was “material”, an emotional fabric, that Georgia would be drawn back to, again and again.</p>
<p>I can’t seem to find the passage in the book, but I remember how the words felt. There’s a kind of stillness at the centre of Georgia’s writing; a grief, an absence around which the characters swirl – in scenes always shapely, poised, sharply observed and elegantly suspenseful. </p>
<p>And so, it was with a small shock that I picked up and read the posthumously published <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/we-all-lived-in-bondi-then-9781761380730">We All Lived in Bondi Then</a>, the “new” collection of short stories Georgia wrote between 2012 and 2015, before her death from cancer in December 2016. </p>
<p>The voice is familiar, elegiac, but clear-eyed. There was never any artifice, melodrama or sentimentality in Georgia or her work. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/goodbye-georgia-blain-a-brave-and-true-chronicler-of-life-70329">Goodbye Georgia Blain: a brave and true chronicler of life</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<hr>
<h2>Familiar preoccupations</h2>
<p>The opening story, Australia Square, is frankly magnificent, weaving together Georgia’s familiar themes and preoccupations. A baby boy goes missing, then mysteriously reappears. Years later, his sister looks back on a childish mistake – the dropping of a stuffed toy – and is gripped by the idea that if just this one thing could be corrected, then perhaps the devastating aftermath, the loss of the baby, her parents’ divorce, the breakdown of her family, her brother’s psychotic episodes, would not have followed. </p>
<p>The thought is all the more poignant because the reader suspects the future has a way of finding you, regardless.</p>
<p>In Dear Professor Brewster, a daughter grapples with the onset and inexorable progress of her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. The daughter’s finely wrought anguish is punctuated by the letters she writes to her mother’s treating doctor, who – bound by a code of medical ethics – sends only inscrutable, perfunctory replies. </p>
<p>Among the haunting stories in the collection, Ship to Shore features a mother paralysed with grief following the death of her four-year-old son. She embarks on a desperate journey down south, her visceral pain exquisitely rendered by the boom of artillery fire, as gunships practise manoeuvres on a nearby naval base. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574831/original/file-20240212-23-vc8vu3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The cover of We All Lived in Bondi Then" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574831/original/file-20240212-23-vc8vu3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574831/original/file-20240212-23-vc8vu3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574831/original/file-20240212-23-vc8vu3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574831/original/file-20240212-23-vc8vu3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574831/original/file-20240212-23-vc8vu3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574831/original/file-20240212-23-vc8vu3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574831/original/file-20240212-23-vc8vu3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goodreads</span></span>
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<p>The stories in the collection are mostly written from the vantage of middle age, looking back on a life that seems to turn on some impossibly fragile occurrence, a chance encounter, or small mistake. </p>
<p>The characters that flit through the pages – the would-be actors, artists and photographers, young and ageing singers, and environmental campaigners who represent the flotsam and jetsam of inner-city Sydney life – form a familiar generational milieu. </p>
<p>The characters live in Bondi flats “two up, two down”, or dark Marrickville semis, filled with salvaged street furniture, “sagging club lounges” and “glass-topped deco coffee tables”. They dress in op shop suits with shot-silk shirts, and other recycled discoveries.</p>
<p>It’s hard not to see the ghosts of real traumas here: the death of Georgia’s brother, her mother’s Alzheimer’s, their complicated family relationships. But as Georgia’s friend the novelist Charlotte Wood writes in her exquisite introduction to the work, there’s a world of difference between writing “close to home” and “writing memoir”. These nuanced stories contain revelations for everyone.</p>
<p>This is something Georgia’s friend the writer James Bradley, quoted in the introduction, identified in Georgia’s most powerful works – from <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/births-deaths-marriages-9780143790693">Births, Deaths and Marriages</a> to <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/between-a-wolf-and-a-dog-9781761380778">Between a Wolf and a Dog</a> – as a sense of being “simultaneously more personal and more expansive”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/belvoirs-tell-me-im-here-looks-at-the-impact-of-mental-illness-on-the-whole-family-it-is-a-wrenching-and-beautiful-work-188432">Belvoir's Tell Me I'm Here looks at the impact of mental illness on the whole family. It is a wrenching and beautiful work</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>When dreams were huge</h2>
<p>Some stories in the collection seem to strike a note of nostalgia, evoking shimmering visions of younger selves at a time when dreams were huge and life felt unlimited – always up ahead, as the narrator in Still Breathing says, “the self that I was to become beckoning, waiting”.</p>
<p>But these compassionately observed stories also show the reader that there is a sort of desperate awfulness that comes from being young, what Wood, in her introduction, calls the “brutal clumsiness of youth”. This is us before life throws up its damage, and knocks us flat, or takes the edges off.</p>
<p>Characters constantly try to outrun the damage, like the mother in Last Days, whose fear that she has lost herself in the wake of motherhood, materialises as an extended suburban electrical blackout. At the end of the story, she gets into a car, and drives, trying to locate the edge of the darkness. “Just one more street,” the narrator tells herself. But the streets fly by, and “the blackness stretches forever”.</p>
<p>The edge of the darkness, rather like the metaphor of the line in Still Breathing, is an illusion. As the narrator in Still Breathing says,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is strange how often we long for life to move forward; <em>I just have to get through this</em>, we think, as though the past, with all its fears and fuck-ups and anxieties, can be completely left behind, neat, contained, never spilling over the line we imagine is waiting for us. And yet the past is always there, hovering at the edge, teasing us, reappearing when we least expect it … </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I had been a little scared of picking up this “new” collection, almost eight years after Georgia’s death. Like the narrator in Still Breathing, I could sense the memories, with all their “fears and fuck-ups and anxieties”, that might be waiting. But I was wrong.</p>
<p>What Georgia’s work offers the reader is a clear-eyed, calm compassion, a capacity to live with, and alongside, damage, trauma and unspeakable loss, and a way of staying human.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222760/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>Georgia Blain’s final, posthumous collection offers clear-eyed, calm compassion – and a capacity to live with, and alongside, damage, trauma and unspeakable loss, and a way of staying human.Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2221642024-01-30T06:34:20Z2024-01-30T06:34:20ZA Victorian bookshop owner has called for ‘a substantial shift’ in ‘woke’ Australian publishing – but we still need diverse books<p>The owner of independent Victorian bookshop chain Robinsons has come under fire for a series of (since deleted) social media posts on X, including a list of “books we don’t need”.</p>
<p>“What’s missing from our bookshelves in store? Positive male lead characters of any age, any traditional nuclear white family stories, kids picture books with just white kids on the cover, and no wheelchair, rainbow or indigenous [sic] art, non indig [sic] aus history,” read one post from Robinsons’ chief executive Susanne Horman.</p>
<p>Horman’s list of books we don’t need includes “hate against white Australians, socialist agenda, equity over equality, diversity and inclusion (READ AS anti-white exclusion), left wing govt propaganda”. She called this “the woke agenda that divides people”.</p>
<p>Robinsons has since <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/robinsons-bookshop-owner-apologises-amid-backlash-over-white-kids-comments-20240128-p5f0mh.html">made an official apology</a>, claiming <a href="https://www.facebook.com/robinsonsbooks/posts/pfbid0joKEX5X68CFzQL4vFUsQ7o8z3ZB9E11pCBooC3uqN5C7aNfKr6EaYZEoJ8sUjtNbl">Horman’s comments had been</a> “taken out of context” and “misrepresented”. Horman’s X account has been deleted. Horman later told The Age her bookshops “fully support and encourage stories from diverse voices, minorities, and we are most definitely stocking these important topics and the authors that write them”.</p>
<p>Ironically, her earlier call on social media for <em>less</em> diversity comes as many librarians are calling for <a href="https://www.scisdata.com/connections/issue-122/the-need-for-diverse-book-collections/">more diverse books</a> in Australian bookshops and libraries. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-20-years-of-award-winning-picture-books-non-white-people-made-up-just-12-of-main-characters-147026">In 20 years of award-winning picture books, non-white people made up just 12% of main characters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Last year, a <a href="https://www.vu.edu.au/about-vu/news-events/news/research-confirms-lack-of-cultural-diversity-in-published-literature">study</a>, looking at the cultural identity of the authors of 1,531 books published here in 2018, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/fewer-than-1-in-10-aussie-books-published-by-people-of-colour-report-finds-20221013-p5bpj4.html">found</a> authors of colour were “dramatically underrepresented” in Australia. Books by Indigenous authors accounted for 3%. (3.2% of Australians identified as Indigenous in the 2021 census.) </p>
<p>Only 7% of books were written by non-Indigenous people of colour (defined as non-European backgrounds). In 2021, nearly a quarter of Australians (22.8%) <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/cultural-diversity-australia">reported using</a> a language other than English at home. Of the 284 picture books in the sample, eight were by First Nations authors and eight were by people of colour. </p>
<p>Horman had complained of “way too many indigneous [sic] books coming out. Remember you need to publish for the other 97% and listen to those who said no to the #Voice.”</p>
<p>Yet a <a href="https://creative.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/readers_survey_summary_final_v-592cf39be2c34-1.pdf">major survey of Australian readers</a> in 2017 found 63% believed “books written by Indigenous Australians are important for Australian culture” and 42% were interested in books and writing about Indigenous Australia.</p>
<p>In relation to positive male lead characters, in April 2019, I examined <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-looked-at-100-best-selling-picture-books-female-protagonists-were-largely-invisible-115843">the 100 bestselling picture books at Australian book retailer Dymocks</a>. In their bestsellers list, 46% of books had male protagonists, while only 17% had female ones (32% had no lead character). There were only seven female-led books in the top 50, compared to 26 male-led books.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-looked-at-100-best-selling-picture-books-female-protagonists-were-largely-invisible-115843">I looked at 100 best-selling picture books: female protagonists were largely invisible</a>
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<p>Last year, Natalie Kon-yu, chief investigator on the project researching the cultural identity of authors, known as the First Nations and People of Colour Count, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/fewer-than-1-in-10-aussie-books-published-by-people-of-colour-report-finds-20221013-p5bpj4.html">told The Age</a> she suspects there’s been a positive shift towards diversity and inclusion since 2018. “There’s certainly an awareness that there’s a problem and I think people are acting in that way, which is good”. </p>
<h2>‘Traditional nuclear white family stories’</h2>
<p>While Horman claimed “traditional nuclear white family stories” were “missing” from Robinsons’ bookshelves, such households are commonly portrayed in Australian picture books. (Yes, more family types are now being explored, but white, two-parent families are far from missing.) </p>
<p>When I conducted a study at my local library in 2018, I found that of the children’s picture books with families in them, 78% of their collection showcased “traditional” families, while 22% were diverse in structure (not nuclear).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572084/original/file-20240130-19-1x1ork.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two mums with a baby on a couch" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572084/original/file-20240130-19-1x1ork.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572084/original/file-20240130-19-1x1ork.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572084/original/file-20240130-19-1x1ork.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572084/original/file-20240130-19-1x1ork.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572084/original/file-20240130-19-1x1ork.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572084/original/file-20240130-19-1x1ork.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572084/original/file-20240130-19-1x1ork.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">Diverse families are not the norm in children’s picture books.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-family-looking-at-the-screen-of-a-mobile-phone-7078832/">Kampus Production/Pexels</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Approximately <a href="https://theconversation.com/mum-dad-and-two-kids-no-longer-the-norm-in-the-changing-australian-family-88014">1.1 million Australian children</a> live with only one biological parent; approximately <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en/pride-month-2023-9-of-adults-identify-as-lgbt">2.3 million Australians</a> identify as LGBTQ+; and <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples">167 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages</a> are spoken in homes. </p>
<p>Australian booksellers’ peak industry body, Book People, <a href="https://twitter.com/bookpeopleau/status/1751810547400810777">posted on X</a> yesterday: “We stand with bookshops that celebrate inclusivity”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/empathy-starts-early-5-australian-picture-books-that-celebrate-diversity-153629">Empathy starts early: 5 Australian picture books that celebrate diversity</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Not ‘missing from the mix’</h2>
<p>Robinsons is a chain of seven bookshops across suburban Melbourne. In another of Horman’s now-deleted posts, she wrote: “I am advocating for a substantial shift in the focus of Australian publishers to be in line with public opinion and requests for books and for what is GOOD!” </p>
<p>Its subsequent apology, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=robinsons%20bookshop">posted on Facebook</a>, said in part:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While some genres are overflowing on the shelves, others are noticeably bare. Positive stories with men and boys as the hero are almost missing from the mix. Neither Susanne Horman, nor Robinsons Bookshop are making a value judgement on this observation. Susanne apologises if people have taken this comment as a negative reflection on an excellent range of diverse books.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ironically, Robinsons’ list of current new releases on its website does not seem to corroborate this, nor Horman’s claims of white exclusion. </p>
<p>In all of Robinsons’ new release categories for January 2024 (children’s, young adult, fiction, non-fiction), white characters outnumbered people of colour. Likewise, while <a href="https://robinsonsbooks.wordpress.com/2024/01/19/january-new-release-picture-books-kids-fiction/">picture book and children’s novel</a> releases did not have much in the way of human representation, there were still an equal number of male and female characters on the covers. </p>
<p>Only Robinsons’ young adult releases had all-female leads (with one male co-protagonist) featured on the covers and this is in keeping with the genre. Young adult books are the only genre of children’s literature where female protagonists are more common than male ones. (Girls <a href="https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/items/31f97bd8-db3e-4643-a286-f9050c23e7a4">are far more likely than boys</a> to read a variety of books, crossing perceived gender boundaries.)</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/white-female-and-high-rates-of-mental-illness-new-diversity-research-offers-a-snapshot-of-the-publishing-industry-189679">White, female, and high rates of mental illness: new diversity research offers a snapshot of the publishing industry</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>Is the industry changing?</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572087/original/file-20240130-15-tckrdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572087/original/file-20240130-15-tckrdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572087/original/file-20240130-15-tckrdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572087/original/file-20240130-15-tckrdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572087/original/file-20240130-15-tckrdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572087/original/file-20240130-15-tckrdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572087/original/file-20240130-15-tckrdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572087/original/file-20240130-15-tckrdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Natalie Kon-yu says awareness of diversity and inclusion in Australian publishing is ‘good’.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There have certainly been recent shifts in diversifying characters in our stories, and highlighting women’s experiences and authors of colour. However, the Australian publishing industry is a long way off equitable representation. Its workers remain <a href="https://theconversation.com/white-female-and-high-rates-of-mental-illness-new-diversity-research-offers-a-snapshot-of-the-publishing-industry-189679">“largely white”</a>, which is reflected in its publishing output.</p>
<p>Australian picture books, for example, remain predominately white in representation, with people of colour making up approximately <a href="https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/social-affairs/20-years-award-winning-picture-books-non-white-people-made-just-12-main#:%7E:text=Overall%2C%20human%20characters%20appear%20in,census%20data%20(from%202016).">12%</a> of characters.</p>
<p>Unlike Horman, I view this as a problem. It is lack of diversity, not the inclusion of it, that creates “divisiveness” in Australia. As First Nations author <a href="https://www.wheelercentre.com/wlr-articles/we-need-diverse-books-because-an-indigenous-perspective-on-diversity-in-young-adult-and-children-s-literature-in-australia/">Ambelin Kwaymullina</a> has written:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We need diverse books because a lack of diversity is a failure of our humanity. Literature without diversity presents a false image of what it is to be human. It masks – and therefore contributes to – the continuation of existing inequities, and it widens the gulfs of understanding that are already swallowing our compassion for each other.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222164/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Mokrzycki 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>The owner of Robinsons Bookshop has listed several kinds of books ‘missing’ from its shelves, including ‘kids picture books with just white kids on the cover’.Sarah Mokrzycki, Sessional Academic, children's literature and creative writing, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2108912024-01-25T20:45:36Z2024-01-25T20:45:36ZJ.M. Coetzee’s provocative first book turns 50 this year – and his most controversial turns 25<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571104/original/file-20240124-27-p6w3fe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C11%2C1859%2C985&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J._M._Coetzee_Nov_2023.jpg">Photo of J.M. Coetzee: Laterthanyouthink, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>J.M. Coetzee, one of the leading novelists of our age, turns 84 this year. Last year, he published <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-pole-and-other-stories">The Pole and Other Stories</a>, his 18th book (excluding volumes of criticism, commentary, letters and translations). Its flowering of mature style confirms that this writer remains at the top of his game. </p>
<p>Coetzee celebrates another milestone this year: 50 years of publishing serious, provocative fiction. His work is always formally daring, brave in its social critique and its refusal to play by the rules.</p>
<h2>Dusklands</h2>
<p>Coetzee’s first book, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/dusklands">Dusklands</a>, appeared in April 1974. It was published by a small press in Johannesburg called Ravan, which had built a modest reputation for oppositional writing under apartheid. Coetzee’s debut was a slim volume with an unassuming – even deliberately dull – cover that belied the incendiary force of the two stories it contained.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569202/original/file-20240114-29-eik4qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569202/original/file-20240114-29-eik4qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569202/original/file-20240114-29-eik4qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569202/original/file-20240114-29-eik4qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569202/original/file-20240114-29-eik4qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569202/original/file-20240114-29-eik4qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569202/original/file-20240114-29-eik4qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569202/original/file-20240114-29-eik4qp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The first edition of J.M. Coetzee’s Dusklands (1974).</span>
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<p>Its first part, The Vietnam Project, is set in the United States during the early 1970s. Its narrator, Eugene Dawn, meditates on his work as propaganda-warfare analyst for the US military’s operations in Vietnam. </p>
<p>“I have an exploring temperament,” he declares. “Had I lived two hundred years ago I would have had a continent to […] open to colonization.”</p>
<p>Eugene Dawn’s dreams of “total air-war” precipitate his decline. He holes up in a motel with Patrick White’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/voss-9781742756882">Voss</a> and Saul Bellow’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/herzog-9780141184876">Herzog</a> – novels concerned with the decline of overreaching rational minds.</p>
<p>The drive to explore and dominate also compels the protagonist of the book’s second part, The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee. The story is presented as as a translation, with parodic scholarly apparatus, of a record by a (real) 18th-century explorer. Jacobus Coetzee describes expeditions into the interior of what is now the Western and Northern Cape provinces of South Africa. </p>
<p>“I am a hunter,” he states, “a domesticator of the wilderness, a hero of enumeration.”</p>
<p>He recounts how, in 1760-61, he encounters the indigenous Khoisan people in the hinterlands of the Dutch settlement. He regards them as “completely disposable” and treats them like animals, seeing them as “game”. Their murder by the increasingly unhinged frontiersman is narrated with stomach-turning glee, as Jacobus Coetzee appears to descend into a madness born of megalomania. </p>
<p>“I am a tool in the hands of history,” he declares. “I have other things to think about.” </p>
<p>Each part of this bracing debut, then, offered an implicitly satirical engagement with the excesses of colonial adventuring. The book was formally daring, too. Was this a novel or two novellas, its first readers wondered. How was one to interpret the 18th-century “narrative” that presented itself as a historical document? </p>
<p>The juxtaposition of two widely divergent settings drew attention to what the narratives shared. It connected the narrators’ self-satisfied posturings as missionaries of “civilization” in a bravura indictment of Western Enlightenment discourses.</p>
<p>The boldness and novelty of approach led Jonathan Crewe – the book’s first South African reviewer – to herald of the arrival of the modern novel in the country. Some of the more avant-garde and oppositional Afrikaans writers of the previous decade would no doubt have demurred. But Crewe’s comparison of Dusklands with Joseph Conrad’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Heart-of-Darkness">Heart of Darkness</a> remains apt. </p>
<p>Both books feature the “journey of the Western consciousness out of the polity and into the void,” Crewe wrote. Both cast that journey as critique rather than celebration of Western attitudes.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-conrads-imperial-horror-story-heart-of-darkness-resonates-with-our-globalised-times-94723">How Conrad’s imperial horror story Heart of Darkness resonates with our globalised times</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A revolutionary text</h2>
<p>Rita Barnard, a South African-born academic at the University of Pennsylvania who has taught Dusklands for many years, has observed that her students increasingly baulk at the book’s violence. They resent that they are being asked to occupy the subject position of the white perpetrator. </p>
<p>Barnard has some sympathy with this response. “After all,” she muses, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>revelations about colonial discourse that Dusklands stunned us with in the 1970s are no longer new; my students were already trained to look for silences, racist misrepresentations, and epistemic violence in a text.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet Dusklands was undoubtedly revolutionary for its moment. Nelson Mandela was eight years into his life sentence. The Soweto Rising and the death of Steve Biko in police custody had not yet galvanised internal opposition. Overtly anti-apartheid works were routinely repressed. The formal end of apartheid was still 20 years away. </p>
<p>In this context, it is difficult to conceive of a bolder attack on the ideas of apartheid’s ideologues. No other work had dared to link apartheid’s originary narratives (as the explorer accounts undoubtedly are) to Kissinger-era <em>realpolitik</em>.</p>
<p>For all our laudable attention to trigger warnings, we should welcome fiction that unsettles our complacent sense that philosophical opposition to colonial violence and its legacies might be sufficient absolution. Dusklands forces the reader into uncomfortable cohabitation with characters who are implicated in genocide, but convinced of their moral rectitude. </p>
<p>One hardly need elaborate the ongoing lesson this holds for readers in the present.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-j-m-coetzees-latest-story-collection-questions-of-the-soul-become-urgent-as-the-body-becomes-frail-206406">In J.M. Coetzee's latest story collection, questions of the soul become urgent as the body becomes frail</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Disgrace</h2>
<p>As arbitrarily neat temporal markers would have it, this year is also a significant anniversary for another of Coetzee’s most provocative works. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/disgrace">Disgrace</a> was published in August 1999, five years into the “new” South Africa, and against the backdrop of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the country’s great experiment in truth-telling. It won Coetzee his second Booker Prize, making him the first author so celebrated. </p>
<p>Set in a recognisable present, Disgrace is Coetzee’s most deceptively straightforward realist narrative. Its university setting, similar to the University of Cape Town, generated all manner of misguided speculations about whether it was a <em>roman à clef</em>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571099/original/file-20240124-29-aevpnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571099/original/file-20240124-29-aevpnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571099/original/file-20240124-29-aevpnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571099/original/file-20240124-29-aevpnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571099/original/file-20240124-29-aevpnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571099/original/file-20240124-29-aevpnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571099/original/file-20240124-29-aevpnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571099/original/file-20240124-29-aevpnj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Disgrace is a novel that interrogates the transparency of language, more specifically English. Its protagonist, David Lurie, is an academic whose research interest is the poetry of the Romantics. He wonders at one point whether English is a fit medium for communication in post-apartheid South Africa. It appears “tired”, he reflects. </p>
<p>Early in the novel, Lurie goes to see a play called Sunset at the Globe Salon, a farce that offers ironic commentary on his intellectual identifications. The play is set neither in Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, nor in an 18th-century salon, but in a hairdressers’ parlour, where the melodrama unfolds in gloriously creolising English. The sun is going down on an “old” South Africa – and Lurie appears stranded.</p>
<p>Like Dusklands, Disgrace does not shy away from violence – in this case, a violent gang rape of Lurie’s daughter Lucy by three black men. </p>
<p>Lucy is a model “new” South African. She is a lesbian who runs a boarding kennel in the rural heartland, having turned her back on self-satisfied metropolitan social circles. She is attempting to live ethically, with a social conscience. </p>
<p>The country’s ruling party, the African National Congress, took umbrage. In a submission to the country’s Human Rights Commission, they condemned Disgrace as an instance of white racism lingering in media and the arts. Specifically, they objected to the novel’s key moment of crisis – the rape – and Lucy’s suggestion that such sexual violence might be the “the price one has to pay for staying on”.</p>
<p>Coetzee, they averred, “represents as brutally as he can the white people’s perception of the post-apartheid black man”.</p>
<p>What the ANC failed to note was that the rape is not represented. <em>Disgrace</em> might appear to be a realist novel with an omniscient narrator, but it is, in fact, entirely focalised through its white male protagonist, who is in denial about his complicity with prejudice and violence. </p>
<p>Indeed, David Lurie is himself a rapist. Lucy’s rape is mirrored by Lurie’s rape of one of his students, Melanie Isaacs, who is coded as mixed race (a detail readers often miss). He justifies his exploitation of a student as “not rape, not quite that, but undesired … to the core”. </p>
<p>David’s punishment is a retreat into forms of self-abnegation and “service” that the novel invites us to read as ultimately narcissistic.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/patrick-white-was-the-first-australian-writer-to-win-the-nobel-prize-in-literature-50-years-later-is-he-still-being-read-214724">Patrick White was the first Australian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature – 50 years later, is he still being read?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Problems with language</h2>
<p>One of the striking aspects of Dusklands – and part of its boldness – is its insistence on the global connections between oppression and injustice. It insists, too, on addressing a global audience, in a style that refuses to be marked as parochial or nationalist. Its form refuses to endorse any single speaking position. </p>
<p>Barnard puts this eloquently. Dusklands, she writes, “opens up a speaking place that is global, rather than national, or even strictly monolingual or monogeneric”.</p>
<p>These moves have characterised Coetzee’s subsequent work. His novels incorporate apparent contradictions, undermine occasions of narration, and frame narratives as the speech acts of characters who are obviously compromised and unreliable. They undermine the premises of canonical texts and stage outrageous metafictional interventions – as when the writer-protagonist of one Coetzee novel, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/elizabeth-costello">Elizabeth Costello</a> (2003), shows up part-way through the next, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/slow-man">Slow Man</a> (2005), and proceeds to direct the plot.</p>
<p>Language makes worlds, and Coetzee’s work has from the outset interrogated the presumption that this is a straightforward operation without ideological implications. Language is never transparent, never innocent of the designs of those who claim to police forms of expression. </p>
<p>Coetzee was regarded by some of his peers as insufficiently engaged with the emergency in South Africa – notably Nadine Gordimer in a <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1984/02/02/the-idea-of-gardening/">famously puzzled review</a> of his Booker Prize-winning novel <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/life-times-of-michael-k">Life & Times of Michael K</a> (1983). But the difficulty of taking positions, when those positions are already taken by people determined to force compliance with one view of historical events or another, is a recurring dilemma for Coetzee. </p>
<p>Only fiction, his 50-year career continues to insist, offers a writer the means to intervene in the world in ways that have relevance beyond immediate contexts. It places the author at a remove from the political demand that we speak, for such speaking is inevitably only ventriloquism.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/summertime">Summertime</a> (2009), the final instalment in a trilogy of memoirs that challenge readers’ presumptions about the genre (it features a biographer interviewing significant figures in the life of the deceased author John Coetzee), a former lover of the author speculates that Dusklands was not only “a book about cruelty, an exposé of the cruelty involved in various forms of conquest”, but also “a project in self-administered therapy”. </p>
<p>This is a joke of sorts. But it is also insightful, in that it acknowledges the part-autobiographical nature of any writer’s work. </p>
<p>Coetzee has been ahead of his readers from the outset. He is implicated in the “translation” of The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee (a distant relative, if not a direct antecedent). And Eugene Dawn’s demanding supervisor at the sinister RAND-like corporation he serves is named “Coetzee”. </p>
<p>All of Coetzee’s works are a self-recriminating interrogations. They address the complicity of writers in events that are too easily dismissed as beyond their capacity to influence. They examine privileges inherited at the expense of others in ways that remain profoundly important. Their honesty and power to discomfort makes them as necessary today as when they first appeared.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210891/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Coetzee is both Honorary Graduate and holds an Honorary Research affiliation at the University that employs me, but there is no direct benefit to either of us, or to the University, of a reflection on the anniversaries of significant publications independently recognised as worthy of note.</span></em></p>The fiction of J.M. Coetzee is always formally daring, brave in its social critique and its refusal to play by the rules.Andrew van der Vlies, Professor, School of Humanities, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2202172024-01-16T19:14:52Z2024-01-16T19:14:52ZYumna Kassab’s impressionistic novel Politica considers moral dilemmas and harsh choices in a time of war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568543/original/file-20240110-29-x5jf1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=126%2C0%2C5862%2C3989&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mosaic, al-Aqsa mosque, Jerusalem.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Salajean/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://ultimopress.com.au/products/politica">Politica</a> is the fourth novel by Yumna Kassab, who has made a significant impact on the Australian literary scene since the publication of her debut novel <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/the-house-of-youssef/">The House of Youssef</a> in 2019. </p>
<p>Politica is written in Kassab’s now signature polyphonic style. A variety of abruptly introduced characters (“Um Kareem came here with tears in her eyes”) ponder their possibilities, drift in and out of relationships, and seek personal solace in the midst of a prolonged and violent conflict. </p>
<p>Set in a small community, the novel is sparsely written, with minimal description of character, place or historical moment. It does not let readers anchor themselves in an evolving narrative arc. Instead, it asks them to immerse themselves in aperçus of a bewildered and suffering community. </p>
<p>In this unnamed town or village, the past is ever present, and the present is barely tolerable in the absence of a hopeful future. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Politica – Yumna Kassab (Ultimo Press)</em></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568499/original/file-20240109-23-trsk66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568499/original/file-20240109-23-trsk66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568499/original/file-20240109-23-trsk66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568499/original/file-20240109-23-trsk66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568499/original/file-20240109-23-trsk66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568499/original/file-20240109-23-trsk66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568499/original/file-20240109-23-trsk66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568499/original/file-20240109-23-trsk66.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Politica achieves its impressionistic effects through quirky vignettes, poetry, fable, gnomic aphorisms, and arguments between conservative forces and those seeking to redefine their values. World building is at a minimum. We focus on the larger question of how a society copes with a state of endless war, when politics saturates every dimension of life. </p>
<p>Some of the characters are resistance leaders and their heirs; others are ordinary people with everyday aspirations. But they all face urgent questions. Fight or flight? Resist or accommodate? Accept the political as the only authentic option or seek the consolations of private life? </p>
<p>Politica has allegorical ambitions, so these dilemmas cannot be resolved by referring to a describable geopolitical reality. The novel spans decades, yet no particular enemy or threat can be consistently identified, nor does it identify the nation in which it is set. We are somewhere in the Middle East. The war has something to do with the legacy of European hegemony. It may be a civil war initiated by an insurgency, but there are also striking references to a colonial invasion and the potentially genocidal destruction of a culture:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Miss tell me what remains of us once […] our existence has been wiped from the Earth?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The pressing question of the use and abuse of power is posed repeatedly. In particular, the reader is asked to think about the ends that justify violence. What are the injuries to the soul that result from the brutal murders, the betrayals, the fetishising of violence? Abdullah, the original spiritual leader of the cause, muses that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is a dirty business. We don’t want to end up dirtier still. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The novel uses early flash forwards to remind us that idealism is always in conflict with political realities. Politics is depicted as a realm of contingency, reversals of fortune and unhoped for outcomes. </p>
<p>Abdullah’s daughter Yasmeen, who sacrifices a comfortable future in order to assume political leadership, later recognises herself ruefully as a mere prop. She appears in a photoshoot with an enemy president – an act that generates feelings of self-loathing, and perhaps leads to her assassination. The incident and its ominous outcome, a media-driven event, have echoes of Yasser Arafat’s visit to Camp David during the Oslo Accords in 2000 and the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981.</p>
<p>Yet in its early sections the novel is not fatalistic about what is politically achievable. The wise Abdullah probes the ethics of a just war and wants to educate his disciples: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I wish to teach as I wish to teach my child […] I do not wish to trivialise the value or meaning of a human’s life whether on our side or on theirs. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>When normal channels of social mobility are shut down, the question of how to educate and uplift oneself, one’s family and one’s community arises. In the character of Yasmeen, the novel offers a rewarding variation on male-dominated narratives of anti-colonial resistance. </p>
<p>Yasmeen is Abdullah’s elective successor. She resists her mother’s calls for a more conventional domestic existence and seeks to train herself as a future political leader, stubbornly attending meetings with her father from a young age. The story of her education has elements of a Bildungsroman, as she pursues an adventurous life path in the face of adversity. </p>
<p>Yet from there the novel’s desire to capture the dolorous essence of politics begins to overwhelm any interest in character development. A gallery of figures typical of prolonged warfare emerges for the reader to contemplate. There is the bully who loves power, domination and fighting for its own sake. There is the cunning “rat” looking for the main chance. Cultures of martyrdom are scrutinised, as we witness the pointless demise of a suicide bomber. The humanist Abdullah reminds us not to </p>
<blockquote>
<p>idolise death over life […] Such is the tendency of one who has not yet learned to live. </p>
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568541/original/file-20240110-17-myosut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568541/original/file-20240110-17-myosut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568541/original/file-20240110-17-myosut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568541/original/file-20240110-17-myosut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568541/original/file-20240110-17-myosut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568541/original/file-20240110-17-myosut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568541/original/file-20240110-17-myosut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568541/original/file-20240110-17-myosut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Yumna Kassab.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tiger Webb/Giramondo Publishing</span></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/colonial-and-nationalist-myths-are-recast-in-yumna-kassabs-australiana-178881">Colonial and nationalist myths are recast in Yumna Kassab's Australiana</a>
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</em>
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<hr>
<h2>A moral project</h2>
<p>Maks Sipowicz has written about Kassab’s “<a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/kassab-australiana/">moral project</a>”. In Politica, we can recognise a desire to humanise the protagonists of Middle Eastern conflicts. This is of crucial importance when Arab and Muslim political movements, including that of the Palestinians, are relentlessly delegitimised and dehumanised. </p>
<p>Politica wants to show what a resistance movement might look like from the side of the oppressed. The novel questions the total warfare the West now excuses as a drive for security. Indeed, it is hard not to think of Gaza when Kassab names a chapter “Exile no right of return” or when an innocent child beseeches </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I thought you said they wouldn’t touch the ruins. My family were sheltering there.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet there is always a danger that a novel seeking to say something about politics will begin to moralise. The tendency becomes more prevalent in the second half of Politica. A war that began with noble ideals comes to resemble a plague laying waste to all who experience it. The novel’s early interest in difficult choices and humane conduct gives way to generalities about the futility and hypocrisy of politics: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Politics is all words. Remember, the truth is somewhere else. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the third section, the conventional Gothic trope of a well that preserves the memories of the dead and witnesses the confessions of the living feels somewhat hackneyed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There is a presence here. She feels it close to the well. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Telling begins to predominate over showing, as sententious nostrums badger the reader:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There may be no witness in the living but the record is always kept. The weight of history is layers, and it does not disappear, no matter how oblivious is humanity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A once energetic character called Salma, now mature and disappointed, sits vigilantly facing a doorway as a rather heavy-handed signifier of trauma, anxiety and compulsion. </p>
<p>I will admit that I found myself questioning the continuing narrative interest of a community at a standstill. I wanted to understand the cause of the distress and fatigue of characters who are briefly introduced. Is it the corrupt neo-colonial state, the occupying forces, the legacy of Euro-American hegemony?</p>
<p>I think Politica bears comparison with the literary tradition of “civic realism” identified by <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/brenn032">Timothy Brennan</a>, which wants its readers to recognise and then oppose a bad reality. That recognition can also be achieved through allegory and magic-realism. Mohsin Hamid’s intricate fable <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/exit-west-9780241979068">Exit West</a> (2017), about migration as a human right, has demonstrated the vitality of indirect narrative techniques. </p>
<p>Yet Politica seems nervous about the enormity of contemporary geopolitics. It prefers bathos in a minor key to the ambitious scope of historical fiction, now an abundant postcolonial genre. </p>
<p>To its credit, Kassab’s novel retains a sense that the political can generate realignments of gender roles, and that small players and working people can become prophetic voices. But it has little to say about the promise of politics, which is also about a much needed transformation in the cause of justice and the human efforts needed to achieve it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220217/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ned Curthoys 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>Politica is set in an unnamed town where past is ever present, and the present is barely tolerable in the absence of a hopeful future.Ned Curthoys, Senior Lecturer in English and Literary Studies, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2177812024-01-11T19:10:08Z2024-01-11T19:10:08ZSara M. Saleh’s memorable tales of exile, prejudice and resistance reflect the Palestinian experience<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566749/original/file-20231219-19-xrh4eu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C6221%2C4147&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nayef Hammouri/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.saramsaleh.com/">Sara M. Saleh</a> is a writer and human rights lawyer. She has won two of Australia’s most prestigious poetry prizes: Overland’s <a href="https://overland.org.au/prizes/overland-judith-wright-poetry-prize-for-new-and-emerging-poets/">Judith Wright Poetry Prize</a> in 2020 and Australian Book Review’s <a href="https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/prizes-programs/peter-porter-poetry-prize/2024-peter-porter-poetry-prize/47-competitionsandprograms/9227-2023-peter-porter-poetry-prize">Peter Porter Poetry Prize </a> in 2021. She has published extensively in literary and poetry journals, and co-edited <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781760785017/">Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity</a> with Randa Abdel-Fattah. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Songs for the Dead and the Living – Sara M. Saleh (Affirm Press) & The Flirtations of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat – Sara M. Saleh (University of Queensland Press)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Saleh has recently published her second full-length collection of poems, <a href="https://www.uqp.com.au/books/the-flirtation-of-girls-ghazal-el-banat">The Flirtations of Girls/<em>Ghazal el-Banat</em></a> (she self-published <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Wasting_the_Milk_in_the_Summer.html?id=tYtBvgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Wasting the Milk in Summer</a> in 2016), and her first novel, <a href="https://affirmpress.com.au/browse/book/Sara-M-Saleh-Songs-for-the-Dead-and-the-Living-9781922848536/">Songs for the Dead and the Living</a>. </p>
<p>The Flirtations of Girls/<em>Ghazal el-Banat</em> is a rich collection filled with anger, sorrow, beauty, attitude, wit and humour. Songs for the Dead and the Living is a coming-of-age story, kaleidoscopic in its formal and tonal variation, about a young girl named Jamilah Husseini and her family, spanning three countries: Lebanon, Egypt and Australia. </p>
<p>Palestine is ever-present in both books, which are marked by the enduring effects of the <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/#:%7E:text=The%20Nakba%2C%20which%20means%20%E2%80%9Ccatastrophe,ethnic%20and%20multi%2Dcultural%20society."><em>Nakba</em></a> of 1948, the continued struggle to exist in the shadow of Israel, and the impact of exile and prejudice on Palestinian people forced to flee their homeland. </p>
<p>Saleh’s gaze is unflinching. In her prose and her poetry, she renders unique and memorable the ways people resist, transcend, adapt, make the best of things, compromise, endure, lose hope and faith – and sometimes become something other than they might have been. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nakba-how-the-palestinians-were-expelled-from-israel-205151">The Nakba: how the Palestinians were expelled from Israel</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Poetics of exile</h2>
<p>In The Flirtations of Girls/<em>Ghazal el-Banat</em>, Saleh depicts bodies and places as sites of division, violence, plurality, opportunity and negation. Her poetics are attuned to the price paid by migrants for leaving their homelands. The final lines of her poem You, An Effigy are:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nobody told you<br>
the cost of entering was losing your way back.<br> </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like many of Saleh’s poems, You, An Effigy is formally inventive, assured and subversive. The “effigy” of the title – a woman who must figuratively burn – desires a home. Sensual and sexual, she wants to be held. But she is ultimately isolated on a shabby, sterile street not hard to recognise as Sydney. The poem transforms the woman from an object of sexual violence to an abrasive speaking subject who defies expectations.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566734/original/file-20231219-15-898zyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566734/original/file-20231219-15-898zyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566734/original/file-20231219-15-898zyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566734/original/file-20231219-15-898zyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566734/original/file-20231219-15-898zyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566734/original/file-20231219-15-898zyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566734/original/file-20231219-15-898zyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566734/original/file-20231219-15-898zyt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1157&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The title of Flirtation of Girls/<em>Ghazal el-Banat</em> refers to an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flirtation_of_Girls">Egyptian film of the same name from 1949</a>, but in Lebanon <em>Ghazal el-Banat</em> can also mean fairy floss. The double-meaning is an indication of the vitality of Saleh’s poetry. </p>
<p>Resolute in her willingness to confront violence head-on, she retains the wit and the playfulness intrinsic to good poetry. Her poems are funny and perfectly improper. They describe the ways women and girls negotiate gender and sexuality, inside and outside of Islam, inside and outside of a broader societal misogyny and patriarchy. </p>
<p>The playfulness is also serious. Saleh’s commitment to poetry as political action is bound up with an aesthetic commitment to art. She deploys poetic forms such as the <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ghazal">ghazal</a> – a challenging form that originated in Persian poetry – with the same assuredness as she experiments with free verse and concrete poems. </p>
<p>Her writing makes evident the porousness of language, territory and history – and the way borders are policed. Arabic and Australian English are enmeshed. Lebanon, Egypt and Australia are overlaid. Histories and mythologies are interwoven. </p>
<p>English is defamiliarised by the inclusion of the many different “God have mercies”, from <em>alhamdullilah</em> to <em>hasbiyallah</em> to <em>inshallah</em>. Saleh also makes use of common Arabic words like <em>banat</em> (girls) and <em>bint</em> (girl/daughter) and phonetic spellings like “HANDRED BERCENT” (100%). </p>
<p>In this way, English is made to feel capacious. As the third most spoken language at home in Australia, Arabic speaks directly to a lot of people, but Saleh uses the Roman alphabet, so the Arabic words are accessible, either as a phonetic experience or via Google for translation. </p>
<p>Saleh’s prize-winning poem <a href="https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-242/poetry-judith-wright-poetry-prize-border-control-mediations/">Border Control: Meditations</a> subverts the usual identity questions asked at borders, in this case the King Hussein Border Terminal between Israel and Jordan. The questions in this poem are intimate, tender, searing and ultimately heartbreaking. The interrogative is replaced with the personal, evoking a human rather than a number or a problem. </p>
<p>In Reading Darwish at Qalandia Checkpoint, the violence of a checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem is paralleled with Australian racial violence against </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cassius Turvey, fifteen-year-old Indigenous boy<br>
who was punched and stabbed for being Black.<br></p>
<p><s>The evidence</s> — REDACTED<br>
<s>His rights</s> — REDACTED<br>
<s>This childhood</s> — REDACTED<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The poems Punctuation as Organised Violence and CAPITAL deconstruct bureaucracy and grammar, drawing attention to the arbitrary fictions that determine </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Visa. Policy. Border.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Orientalism, Edward Said writes of the “uniquely punishing destiny” of Palestinian people, who confront a “web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanizing ideology”. Saleh’s poem Headlines provides examples of the prejudice Arabs and Muslims encounter in Australia:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘caliphate cutie’ / ‘towelhead’ / ‘sand n*gger’ / ‘stone thrower’<br>
On the bus, in class, at the movies<br>
‘they should sterilise you’ / ‘the only good Muslim is an ex-Muslim,<br>
or a dead one’/ ‘don’t blow yourself up’<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In places, perhaps as only a lawyer can, Saleh writes with the precise awareness of someone who understands that the law is founded on a mythic violence, both arbitrary and exclusionary, but that it is also sometimes capable of delivering justice. </p>
<p>Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and Australia figure in her poems as homelands and homes, as prisons and traps, as political and cultural realities. They are states of being and of mind – imagined and imaginary. </p>
<p>Cities are an important part of Saleh’s poetics. They are repositories of hopes and dreams, grief and loss. The various laws and languages, foods and streetscapes of Sydney, Cairo, Beirut and Nablus give form to memory. </p>
<p>Saleh’s vision and poetic sensibility is attuned to suffering and precarity. Her poems are about women, Palestinian fathers, a Noongar Yamatji boy, Ethiopian women trapped in the kafala system. She makes visible the suffering of those who pay a price for being something other, something more, than a citizen. </p>
<p>In this way, she is a diasporic writer, challenging the limitations and anachronisms of national borders and identities, which are neither adequate models nor accurate reflections of a world under global capitalism and a planet on the brink of climate catastrophe.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/orientalism-edward-saids-groundbreaking-book-explained-197429">Orientalism: Edward Said's groundbreaking book explained</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Displacement and dispossession</h2>
<p>Saleh is keenly aware of the double bind of people dispossessed – expelled from Palestine, yet never fully welcomed anywhere else. Home is political, the body is political, and the experiences of displacement and dispossession are understood as forms of material and existential violence.</p>
<p>This awareness is as much part of Saleh’s fiction as her poetry. Spanning generations and continents, Songs for the Dead and the Living incorporates the stories of multiple lives. The novel is divided into three parts: Beit Samra (1977-82), Cairo (1982-85) and Sydney (1984-86), with a short prologue and epilogue. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566246/original/file-20231218-15-z4cen1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566246/original/file-20231218-15-z4cen1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566246/original/file-20231218-15-z4cen1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566246/original/file-20231218-15-z4cen1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566246/original/file-20231218-15-z4cen1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566246/original/file-20231218-15-z4cen1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566246/original/file-20231218-15-z4cen1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566246/original/file-20231218-15-z4cen1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Saleh draws on the historical, political and cultural contexts of Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt to tell the story of Jamilah, the daughter of a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother, her sisters, her paternal grandmother Aishah, and Lobna, an adopted orphaned cousin. </p>
<p>The novel follows the family as they flee their home in Lebanon for Egypt to escape the escalating violence of the <a href="https://www.worldhistoryblog.com/Lebanese-Civil-War.html">Lebanese Civil War</a>. The final part of the novel, set in Sydney, sees Jamilah married and learning to make her life as a migrant while her family remains in Egypt. </p>
<p>Saleh uses a traditional narrative form to write against the grain of history, and against the political and cultural context of a world determined to stereotype Muslims and erase Arab suffering. She covers a lot of territory and includes a lot of characters. </p>
<p>Here is a moment to consider the particular formal challenges the novel presents to a writer moving from poetry to prose. How many characters can be rendered effectively in a relatively short novel? What techniques best achieve the goal of capturing rich and storied lives? A more sustained development of Jamilah’s perspective would have strengthened the depiction of the multiple minor characters.</p>
<p>The novel opens with the family at home in Beit Samra, a town on the hills outside of Beirut, where the family comes closest to belonging. They have a house with a garden. Their father is building a business. Jamilah and Lobna attend school. And Jamilah has a first love – a boy with a Russian mother and Lebanese father. </p>
<p>Despite the fact that Jamilah’s mother is Lebanese and her father was born in Lebanon, the family remain Palestinian in the eyes of many Lebanese, who think of them as “a liability”, or more brutally as “bottom-feeders … ruining the country”. They face discrimination. The father is unable to pursue studies because of laws preventing Palestinians from holding certain offices. Even schooling is restricted for children with Palestinian parents, regardless of whether or not they were born in Lebanon. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-wretched-of-the-earth-9780141186542">The Wretched of the Earth</a>, Frantz Fanon identifies this kind of discrimination and inequity as “geographical compartmentalisation”, where depending on race or ethnicity, the same space is experienced differently. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quotes-from-frantz-fanons-wretched-of-the-earth-that-resonate-60-years-later-173108">Quotes from Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth that resonate 60 years later</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>When Jamilah’s family are forced to flee, the discrimination continues. Their position is precarious. The possibility of hospitality is conditional. The novel is aware of the way time in narrative is connected to mortality and measured in bodies: it is only when Aishah is on her deathbed that the family learn of her experience of displacement during the <em>Nakba</em> of 1948. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We had a home, and then we didn’t.” That’s how Teta Aishah started it, as though it was some riddle they were supposed to solve. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A young newlywed in the early months of her first pregnancy, Aishah is woken in the night by an extremist militia, which had earlier gunned down seven people in the coffee house of her village. She flees on foot through the prickly pear trees that surround her house and joins a group of refugees to walk the miles to Lebanon, a country with its own history of colonisation, having only “prised itself out of France’s clutches a few years before”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ghassan-hage-is-one-of-australias-most-significant-intellectuals-hes-still-on-a-quest-for-a-multicultural-society-that-hopes-and-cares-206753">Ghassan Hage is one of Australia's most significant intellectuals. He's still on a quest for a multicultural society that hopes and cares</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Let it be a tale’</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://meanjin.com.au/essays/borders-identity-literature/">2020 article in Meanjin</a>, Jumana Bayeh asks “what is missing when we read literature as a reflection of national boundaries?” The question seems particularly pertinent to Saleh’s writing. </p>
<p>She dedicates her novel “To the people of ‘<em>kan yama kan</em>’” – the Arabic equivalent of “once upon a time”. The dedication is an invitation to think beyond nationality to what is shared: the telling of stories. Saleh’s literary influences are diverse, from Vladimir Nabokov to Mahmoud Darwish, Ocean Vuong to Anne Carson. The friendship Jamilah strikes up with a bookseller in Cairo leads her to Naguib Mahfouz. </p>
<p>The importance of literary antecedents is paramount; reading is to be eclectic. Language is political, but porous. French, Arabic, slang, profanity, phatic and poetic language are brought together through a universal grammar.</p>
<p>As I was finishing this review, Palestinian writer and academic Dr Refaat Alareer was killed in an Israeli strike. Only a month before, he had posted a poem on social media that concludes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I die<br>
Let it bring hope<br>
Let it be a tale<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The epigraph to Songs for the Dead and the Living is from Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s poem <a href="https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/and-we-have-countries/">And We Have Countries</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… The exile tells himself: “If I were a bird<br>
I would burn my wings.”<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Between the universal human trait of telling tales – the once upon a time – and the burning of wings lies all the debris of history, with its wars, invasions, injustices and erasures. </p>
<p>In one of her more sorrowful, circumspect poems, City, Sitti of Grief, Saleh writes that in Arabic the word for human shares its root with the word for forgetting. But the recourse to the tale, to the story – the desire to produce a story that endures – is intrinsic to literature. It is all the more pressing for those who feel the precarity of existence daily, perhaps minute by minute. Saleh’s poetry and prose are urgent tributes to remembering.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Hamadache 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>In her prose and her poetry, Sara M. Saleh renders unique the ways people resist, transcend, adapt, make the best of things, compromise, endure, and lose hope and faith.Michelle Hamadache, Lecturer, Literature and Creative Writing, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2188012024-01-08T19:16:18Z2024-01-08T19:16:18Z‘Cli-fi’ might not save the world, but writing it could help with your eco-anxiety<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564752/original/file-20231211-17-uxgzy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5961%2C3097&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Morpheus Szeto/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The consequences of climate change weigh on all of us, especially as we face an El Niño summer, with floods and fires already making themselves felt in the Australian environment.</p>
<p>But even outside of being directly affected, there is evidence that mere awareness of climate change can be <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/19/7836">detrimental to your mental health and wellbeing</a>. Terms such as “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266727822300010X">climate change anxiety</a>”, “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667278221000444">eco-anxiety</a>” and “<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18027145/">solastalgia</a>” are regularly used to describe the negative emotional states created by thinking and worrying about climate change and environmental destruction.</p>
<p>If just knowing about climate change is emotionally difficult, what is it like spending years focusing on and writing about the topic? Research has looked at the emotional impact close engagement with climate change can have on groups such as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1755458617301251">climate scientists</a> <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-11741-2_12">and</a> <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1103308818817603">climate activists</a>. </p>
<p>But little time has been given to writers of climate fiction, or “cli-fi” – a relatively new genre of fiction focused on climate change.</p>
<h2>What can a genre do?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/36205.Cli_Fi_Climate_Change_Fiction">Cli-fi</a> has been touted as one of the ways to help save the world, with an emphasis on how imagining our future might make us reconsider our relationship to the natural world. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566213/original/file-20231218-29-4u09q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566213/original/file-20231218-29-4u09q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566213/original/file-20231218-29-4u09q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566213/original/file-20231218-29-4u09q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566213/original/file-20231218-29-4u09q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566213/original/file-20231218-29-4u09q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566213/original/file-20231218-29-4u09q7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1154&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566213/original/file-20231218-29-4u09q7.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"></a>
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<p>Fictions in this genre have primarily imagined <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/we-don-t-need-more-dystopian-stories-despair-is-stopping-us-from-acting-20220905-p5bfjg.html">dystopian worlds</a> where the very worst has happened and humanity is (often barely) surviving in flooded or desolate wastelands. These apocalyptic visions are meant to serve as warnings, to galvanise us to action, making sure this bleak future doesn’t happen.</p>
<p>This seems a good idea in theory, but do dystopian fictions help us engage with the climate crisis? An empirical study of the <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/environmental-humanities/article/10/2/473/136689/The-Influence-of-Climate-FictionAn-Empirical">effects of climate fiction on readers’ attitudes or actions</a> found little evidence that those who read cli-fi have a stronger engagement with environmental concerns.</p>
<p>There has been some discussion of the <a href="https://www.energyhumanities.ca/news/why-read-fiction-while-the-planet-is-in-crisis-reflections-on-cli-fi-book-clubs">influence of these books on readers</a>. But perhaps the value is not in the reading, but in the writing? Might writing provide emotionally supportive strategies for all of us? Can the act of writing itself counter “eco-anxiety”?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-cli-fi-actually-make-a-difference-a-climate-scientists-perspective-83033">Can 'cli-fi' actually make a difference? A climate scientist's perspective</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>Waking in the night</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566212/original/file-20231218-21-axyuut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566212/original/file-20231218-21-axyuut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566212/original/file-20231218-21-axyuut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566212/original/file-20231218-21-axyuut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566212/original/file-20231218-21-axyuut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566212/original/file-20231218-21-axyuut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566212/original/file-20231218-21-axyuut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566212/original/file-20231218-21-axyuut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>We talked to <a href="https://textjournal.scholasticahq.com/article/90091">16 Australian and New Zealand authors of “cli-fi”</a> , including <a href="https://cityoftongues.com/">James Bradley</a>, <a href="http://www.mireillejuchau.com/">Mireille Juchau</a> and <a href="https://jennifermills.net.au/">Jennifer Mills</a>. Their responses made it clear that writing about a climate-changed future does more than bring up the anticipated negative emotions.</p>
<p>Of course, sitting with the climate crisis is challenging. It demands we wrestle with guilt, shame, responsibility, rage and despair. Writers of climate fiction are often drawn to the genre because they are already thinking about the climate and feeling anxious.</p>
<p>Clare Moleta said her climate anxiety was “a bit more concentrated” while writing her novel <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Unsheltered/Clare-Moleta/9781761104886">Unsheltered</a>, but also that the manifestations of this anxiety were familiar to her: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I had waking patches in the night over that time, where I’d be very intensely imagining something and grieving it […] But to be fair, I do that anyway.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But many of the writers spoke of the writing process as helping, not exacerbating, their anxiety. For some, writing about climate change gave them a sense of purpose. Jennifer Mills, whose cli-fi novel <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781760558604/">Dyschronia</a> was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2019, stated that “having a book to write gives you something to do. [It] makes you feel like you have some power over the events that are happening around you.”</p>
<p>Climate fiction can be a method of transforming anxiety into something useful. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Allinson">Miles Allinson</a> says that “writing about my own fear put that fear to use, in a way that was, if not comforting, then at least energising”. He argues for the therapeutic aspect of imagining and writing one’s worst fears: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sometimes when you turn towards something and start to live it, with all its difficulties and mystery, then something changes […] It’s actually not as hard as you sometimes think it will be. It’s sometimes more terrifying to close your eyes, I have found.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>James Bradley, author of several works of speculative fiction, including <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/clade-9781926428659">Clade</a> and <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/ghost-species-9781926428666">Ghost Species</a>, observed that the</p>
<blockquote>
<p>process of imagining demands you to think about what happens next […] To imagine the complexity of the lived experience of what lies ahead, and to insist that life will go on and history will keep happening.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While peering into our climate-changed future can be emotionally difficult, <a href="https://katemildenhall.com/">Kate Mildenhall</a> said it can help prepare us for what is to come: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have to imagine ten years in the future and we have to imagine 50 years in the future. And if we do that, we are forearmed and we also begin to make small changes immediately, we don’t even know we’re making them, just to move towards or away from that future.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Imagining our future lives can offer a sense of hope. We are currently living with bushfires, floods, pandemics and the extreme challenges of the climate crisis; the future is our present and the ways we think about it will dictate the ways we act and cope.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566215/original/file-20231218-19-ezhufw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566215/original/file-20231218-19-ezhufw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566215/original/file-20231218-19-ezhufw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566215/original/file-20231218-19-ezhufw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566215/original/file-20231218-19-ezhufw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566215/original/file-20231218-19-ezhufw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566215/original/file-20231218-19-ezhufw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566215/original/file-20231218-19-ezhufw.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>
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<span class="caption">Bushfires near Stacks Bluff, Tasmania.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Matt Palmer/Unsplash</span></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/writing-can-improve-mental-health-heres-how-162205">Writing can improve mental health – here's how</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Theraputic benefits</h2>
<p>Approaching writing about climate change as a process, rather than thinking about writing as a product produced by professional authors, is a new method for alleviating climate anxiety.</p>
<p>The mental health and wellbeing benefits of creative writing have been established. Studies have explored how writing can <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212420919313172">reduce anxiety in those affected by natural disasters</a>. Much of the research in this area focuses on expressive writing or other similar therapeutic-focused techniques that produce quickly written and usually insular work, not intended for an audience. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566211/original/file-20231218-31-a398jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566211/original/file-20231218-31-a398jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566211/original/file-20231218-31-a398jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566211/original/file-20231218-31-a398jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566211/original/file-20231218-31-a398jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566211/original/file-20231218-31-a398jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566211/original/file-20231218-31-a398jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566211/original/file-20231218-31-a398jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>This is different from the experiences of the writers interviewed here. Yet, as the writers quoted here have shown, the imaginative process of crafting fictional narratives about difficult topics comes with its own benefits.</p>
<p>In discussing their findings from one of the few studies to focus on the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/capr.12435">wellbeing effect of writing fictional narratives</a>, Catherine Deveney and Patrick Lawson state: “it is in the craft of writing, the combination of technique and emotional catharsis, that some of the therapeutic benefits of writing can be found”.</p>
<p>We tend to think of writing as a professional activity, but it is an art form practised by amateurs as well as professionals. The 2022 <a href="https://creative.gov.au/advocacy-and-research/creating-value/">National Arts Participation Survey</a> found that one in seven Australians engage in creative writing. The value of such writing is more than its end product.</p>
<p>We need to shift from worrying about the effects of cli-fi texts to thinking about the <a href="https://textjournal.scholasticahq.com/article/35289-creating-new-climate-stories-posthuman-collaborative-hope-and-optimism">benefits of writing creatively as we imagine our possible futures</a>. As Mireille Juchau observes, the sense of control when writing on a difficult topic </p>
<blockquote>
<p>helps to manage anxiety […] Whether it’s climate change, or something else, when I’m preoccupied, writing helps put some order into the chaos.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218801/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research receives funding from Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Cothren and Amy T Matthews do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research suggests the act of creative writing can have therapeutic benefits.Rachel Hennessy, Lecturer in Creative Writing, The University of MelbourneAlex Cothren, Associate Lecturer, Creative Writing, Flinders UniversityAmy T Matthews, Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2177802023-12-11T19:01:43Z2023-12-11T19:01:43ZIn A Kind of Confession, Alex Miller drops the ‘mask of fiction’ to reveal the intricate depths of a writing life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564699/original/file-20231210-27-o5ekb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C20%2C6823%2C4808&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sunrise near Winton, Central Queensland.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Trevor McKinnon/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alex Miller’s <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Alex-Miller-A-Kind-of-Confession-9781761470769/">A Kind of Confession</a> is subtitled “the writer’s private world”. It is comprised of excerpts from his notebooks, diaries and selected letters. Spanning 1961 to 2023, these documents sit at a small but decisive distance from the author, having been curated by his wife, Stephanie Miller. </p>
<p>I was wary, at first, of “confession” and “private world”. These words seemed to task the reader with divining Miller’s private life. But the book’s James Baldwin epigraph – “All art is a kind of confession” – disrupted this notion. Gentle teasing is by no means inconsistent with Miller’s fiction, where all is not as it seems. </p>
<p>Stephanie Miller claims the book provides “a direct and intimate narrative without ‘the mask of fiction’”. But readers of Miller will likely know there is no access to the writer’s “private world” that is not already mediated by artful stories. </p>
<p>I will come back to that key phrase, “the mask of fiction”. </p>
<p>Reservations aside, I found myself drawn into the book’s lively, often thought-provoking exchanges with family, friends and readers. Its recurring preoccupations range from the domestic and homely to the worldly and philosophical. Many details resonate with and illuminate Miller’s other writings.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: A Kind of Confession – Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Author of 16 books to date – mostly fictional, but also non-fictional – Alex Miller is a man of humble origins, adventurous journeys, and a slow-burning but ultimately impressive literary career. </p>
<p>Aged 15, he left his home and family on a South London housing estate to labour on a farm in Somerset. A year later, inspired by images of the “outback”, Miller migrated alone to Australia. </p>
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<p>The boy made his way from Sydney to Central Queensland, where he worked for five years as a ringer. He then moved to Melbourne for work, a first marriage (that ended in about 1970), and study at Melbourne University. For a time, he lived and wrote in seclusion in the New South Wales valley of Araluen. </p>
<p>After his long writing apprenticeship, Miller published his many acclaimed novels from 1988 onwards. A major milestone was <a href="http://alexmiller.com.au/bk_ancestorgame.html">The Ancestor Game</a> (1992), an accomplished work greeted at the time as postmodernist, which won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Ten years later, <a href="http://alexmiller.com.au/bk_stonecountry.html">Journey to the Stone Country</a> (2002), drawn from Miller’s Central Queensland years and his vital friendships with First Nations people, secured a second Miles Franklin win. </p>
<p>Since then, Alex and Stephanie have lived in Castlemaine, Victoria, raising family, writing and travelling, and corresponding with friends. </p>
<h2>The shape of a confession</h2>
<p>Printed books can evoke specific shapes or even landscapes. A Kind of Confession forms, in my mind, as an upside-down cone. The book’s early sections, furthest back in time, are slight as well as remote. They are from notebooks or diaries, interspersed with occasional letters. </p>
<p>The first few decades are represented by brief fragments that are by turns aphoristic, poetic, dispirited and determined. As Stephanie Miller’s introduction reminds us, gaps may be bridged with the help of <a href="http://alexmiller.com.au/bk_simplestwords.html">The Simplest Words</a> (2015), which samples Miller’s fictional and non-fictional prose. </p>
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<p>In A Kind of Confession, the closer we move to the present, the greater the mass of material. This inverted cone mirrors a gradual shift in orientation. Letters overtake the solitary notebook. Connection and community spring from myriad exchanges with friends and readers, longstanding and new. Eventually, email becomes the primary mode for correspondence, accommodating frequent exchanges between the mature, established writer and his widening network of correspondents.</p>
<p>It isn’t surprising that Miller’s letters and email exchanges vary in tone and intimacy. We witness the slightly tentative, even guarded relation between the writer and academic literary critics. Miller’s letters to such readers are courteous, even friendly, though often tinged with formality. One exception is his esteem for Robert Dixon, whose book <a href="https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/products/78884">Alex Miller: The Ruin of Time</a> (2014) occasioned much correspondence.</p>
<p>Letters to particular recipients and close friends are, by contrast, open and relaxed. Correspondents include philosopher Raimond Gaita, academic Robert Manne, US academic Ronald A. Sharp, historian Tom Griffiths, artist and neighbour John Wolseley, poet Ouyang Yu and writer Sylvia Martin, among many others. These letters are by turns entertaining and warm, thoughtful and compelling. </p>
<p>We get a brief, tantalising glimpse of Miller’s friendship with the late Hazel Rowley. His admiring letter about her biography of the Roosevelts, <a href="https://hazelrowley.com/books/book-1/">Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage</a> (2012), holds retrospective interest in light of his later biographical work <a href="http://alexmiller.com.au/bk_max.html">Max</a> (2020), in which Miller writes of his journey to uncover the hidden history of his friend and mentor Max Blatt.</p>
<p>Whether frank or formal, the letters in A Kind of Confession testify to Robert Dixon’s claim that the gift – gift exchange – is central to Miller’s imaginative project. When they refer to key figures, such as Blatt, the poet Barrett Reid or Miller’s mother, the letters often contemplate debts owed and the repayment of debts through the long-delayed reciprocating gift of story. </p>
<p>A Kind of Confession revisits other questions too. What does it mean to have been an English migrant to Australia? How has this positioned Miller with respect to the settler Australian establishment and First Nations people? Miller’s thoughts about home and belonging intersect with these themes in his fiction. To fellow novelist Pico Iyer he writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We all wonder what home might be. We are all strangers in this world and yet indigenous to it. The enigma of home is in all of us. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet Miller also recognises that the freedom he enjoys has been afforded by his (partly) outsider status, by his severing of “ancestral ties” and by his choice not to belong to “the establishment”. That he has actively protected this freedom is evident from his 2021 letter to Ian McPhee detailing his reasons for declining an Order of Australia. </p>
<p>And yet, as Miller says, Australia is a beloved land, the place where he feels most at home. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unhappy-unfaithful-women-middle-aged-growth-replaces-self-absorption-in-alex-millers-a-brief-affair-192509">'Unhappy, unfaithful women': middle-aged growth replaces self-absorption in Alex Miller's A Brief Affair</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>An accidental scratch</h2>
<p>Miller’s Central Queensland novels, as his letters confirm, are profoundly shaped by his close friendship with elders of the Jangga and Barada Barna peoples – notably Colin McLennan and Frank Budby. Again to Pico Iyer, Miller writes of ancient sites he was permitted to visit: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>at 84 I know I’ve barely left more than an accidental scratch on this rock. The real work has yet to be even looked at. I have seen the Playgrounds of the Old People and know my writings to be of no consequence in the place where they have their meaning. It is not mine and never shall be. And this is to know something about myself and the European invader culture from which I come.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These words go to the heart of Miller’s Central Queensland novels. To Tom Griffiths, he writes that what he most cares about in Journey to the Stone Country is </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the realisation that the province of Western science has a boundary in relation to the sacred in other cultures […] History surely shows that the more we understand the more we destroy on our way to the heart of the matter. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Western will to know is decisively curbed in that novel’s moral turning point. Yet, in fiction, restraint paradoxically fosters other ways of knowing. There are other means of opening what Tom Griffiths calls “vast spaces of reflection”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/564714/original/file-20231211-19-zvzcs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>It is clear that Stephanie Miller is central to her husband’s writing life. She is also a former academic and an astute reader of his writing. Her introduction offers the insightful observation that this material illuminates the “thinking behind the writing and publication of his books, much of which he had forgotten and had re-written into his own concocted history”. </p>
<p>I am struck by the phrase “concocted history”. It suggests a personal history that is thoroughly fictionalised, even to the point of self-mythologisation. For Miller, the true quarry is the self, and the self’s elusiveness necessitates the mask of fiction. </p>
<p>Recalling Flaubert’s famous “Madame Bovary, c'est moi”, Miller often adopts the mask of a female protagonist. He explains to Sylvia Martin: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the business of fiction for me is a strange place where self and other begin to meld in mysterious ways, again, not in the combining of facts but in the combining of the sense of someone who is me is not me. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This pattern is repeated in Miller’s recent novel <a href="http://alexmiller.com.au/bk_abriefaffair.html">A Brief Affair</a> (2022). This late work reprises, in distilled form, situations and themes familiar to his readers. Its protagonist Fran is a kind of self-portrait. Like its predecessors, A Brief Affair unearths, in Stephanie Miller’s words, “material from his earlier life”. </p>
<p>At the same time, Miller’s fiction engages with landscapes, social life and ideas, presenting “our interior lives within the artful carapace of story”. </p>
<p>“Nothing is really new,” he writes to novelist Githa Hariharan in 1994. “It’s all the old stuff finding a voice.” </p>
<p>Miller emerges as a writer less interested in stylistic experiment than in achieving, as he puts it to Hazel Rowley, “a limpid simplicity through which the depths are visible, are present to us, but are not obscure in the sense that complexity is often rendered”. </p>
<p>From this perspective, complex depths don’t become visible through confession. Rather, they are yielded by artful simplicity and the indirect means of “the mask of fiction”. Time and again, Miller returns to places, people and situations formative of the ever-elusive, ever-insistent self.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217780/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brigid Rooney 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>Alex Miller is a man of humble origins, adventurous journeys, and a slow-burning but ultimately impressive literary career.Brigid Rooney, Associate Professor (Affiliate), Australian Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2144562023-11-29T19:17:29Z2023-11-29T19:17:29Z‘How is the Great Australian Novel going?’ Not too bad, thanks<p>“How is The Great Australian Novel going?” asks a character in Thea Astley’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well_Dressed_Explorer">The Well Dressed Explorer</a>, a Miles Franklin Literary Award winner in 1962. </p>
<p>When the weighty <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-the-australian-novel/C6792F09CEC145A73C054BC907384517">Cambridge History of THE AUSTRALIAN NOVEL</a> (as the title reads on its gold cover) landed on my doorstep I wondered if I would find out. Its editor, David Carter, first among equals as scholar-critic of Australian literature, has assembled 39 essays by leaders in the field, himself included, to chart the journey of the Australian version of this shape-shifting form. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel – edited by David Carter (Cambridge University Press)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>I have read a lot of Australian novels in my time, and written a few. I decided that if I sat down and read the history from cover to cover with open-minded curiosity, I might see what patterns emerged. </p>
<p>Probably no other reader would do this. The chapters on particular topics within a flexible chronology are designed for standalone use by teachers and students. This is a modular and recursive history, in which the past is revisited through a contemporary lens, with an eye on the future. A master narrative is not desired.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558559/original/file-20231109-20-kojsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558559/original/file-20231109-20-kojsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558559/original/file-20231109-20-kojsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558559/original/file-20231109-20-kojsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558559/original/file-20231109-20-kojsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558559/original/file-20231109-20-kojsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558559/original/file-20231109-20-kojsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558559/original/file-20231109-20-kojsc4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1142&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The book has the hallmarks of Carter’s status as respected collaborator, mentor and assessor, and a literary critic grounded in the cultural and material contexts of book production. Most of the contributors are academics in literary studies. Their approaches reflect the trends of the academy in recent years. </p>
<p>Often they draw on research funded by the Australian Research Council, and the work shows those preferences too. For Australian literary studies, that means a turn to digital humanities, notably the collection and analysis of data to develop infrastructure of national significance, such as the AustLit and Trove databases. </p>
<p>It means a concern with “print culture” and the wider environment in which literary works are produced and received. It includes “the transnational turn” – how international perspectives complicate national frameworks – as well as a countermanding focus on locatedness, particularly in relation to climate change. And it means paying heed to First Nations voices in work that passes the “national interest” test. </p>
<p>This is a history shaped, or reshaped, by the glorious advent of literary fiction by Australian Indigenous authors, heralded by Kim Scott’s <a href="https://fremantlepress.com.au/books/true-country/">True Country</a> (1993) and flourishing now. As Iva Polak writes from Zagreb in her essay on “Indigenous Futurism”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006) […] as we know, has changed Australia’s literary landscape. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I was reading my way through this book on either side of the Voice referendum and I could sense the hope as the chapters moved towards the present, culminating in Eugenia Flynn’s remarkable essay “A (Sovereign) Body of Work: Australian Indigenous Literary Culture and the Literary Fiction Novel”. Flynn writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>an established canon of Australian Indigenous literary fiction can now be affirmed […] that speaks out to the rest of the majority non-Indigenous literary sector, disrupting Australian literary hegemony. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a current development, this poses a challenge to writing its history. The optimistic wave crashed in the world outside the book as I was reading – more like a tsunami – and settler-colonialism reasserted itself with a No. </p>
<p>Time can be a curveball.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/enraged-tragic-and-hopeful-alexis-wrights-new-novel-praiseworthy-explores-aboriginal-sovereignty-in-the-shadow-of-the-anthropocene-202827">Enraged, tragic and hopeful: Alexis Wright's new novel Praiseworthy explores Aboriginal sovereignty in the shadow of the anthropocene</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559503/original/file-20231115-19-9kr4la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559503/original/file-20231115-19-9kr4la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559503/original/file-20231115-19-9kr4la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559503/original/file-20231115-19-9kr4la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559503/original/file-20231115-19-9kr4la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=892&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559503/original/file-20231115-19-9kr4la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559503/original/file-20231115-19-9kr4la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559503/original/file-20231115-19-9kr4la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1121&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<h2>An elusive literary beast</h2>
<p>The first third of the book takes us from the colonial period to mid-20th-century fiction. At the halfway mark, there is a good-humoured chapter by Paul Sharrad called “From Bunyip to Boom”, which summarises Australian Fiction from 1955 to 1975. Sharrad concludes that the Great Australian Novel (GAN) had by then “become an unstable narrative […] an elusive literary beast”. </p>
<p>Two-thirds of the way through we reach fiction beyond the Mabo decision of 1992, “when the assumptions non-Aboriginal people […] held about their rights to ownership seemed no longer to be watertight”. With Andrew McGahan’s <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Andrew-McGahan-White-Earth-9781741146127/">The White Earth</a> (2004), the discussion moves to work published in the 21st century. </p>
<p>The present is folded into a bending chronology that looks back in order to project to what is only just coming. In “Uncertain Futures: Climate Fiction in Australian Literature”, Jessica White adopts the term “future anterior”, a verb tense, as a mode for imagining near-future scenarios of catastrophe and post-catastrophe. </p>
<p>In other chapters, unexpected juxtapositions reveal persistence across time. Brigid Rooney’s “Unsettling Archive: Suburbs in Australian Fiction”, for example, places Fiona McGregor’s <a href="http://fionakmcgregor.com/words/indelible-ink">Indelible Ink</a> (2010) alongside Jessica Anderson’s <a href="https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/products/123851">The Impersonators</a> (1980) in an overlapping map of Sydney. Paul Giles cites Alexander Harris’s <a href="https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks19/1900401h.html">Settlers and Convicts</a> (1847) as an early case of settler unsettlement, while Lynda Ng takes up the same theme in her concluding chapter on J.M. Coetzee, Behrouz Boochani and “the disquiet generated historically” by both Aboriginal people and non-Anglo migrants “in settler Australian culture”. </p>
<p>A tense sense of “future anterior” runs through this collective history, as writers identify trends in the present that may or may not prefigure an alternative potential ahead. In his introduction, Carter refers to “the imagining into being an antipodean world we will also have to name ‘Australia’.” </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-classical-espionage-novel-with-shades-of-le-carre-the-idealist-explores-the-tumultuous-path-to-east-timorese-independence-213970">A classical espionage novel with shades of Le Carré, The Idealist explores the tumultuous path to East Timorese independence</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Canon formation and critique</h2>
<p>Carter discusses canon formation and canon critique in his chapter on Australian literary historiography, noting “the ascendancy of academic critics above the men and women of letters dominant” before the 1950s. That situation pertains today. Few of the contributors are creative practitioners or teachers in the cognate discipline of creative writing. </p>
<p>All of the essays are interesting. Some are anxious. Some have flashes of warmth and appreciation, although “great”, as in Great Australian Novel, is pretty much an impossibility. Aesthetic judgements are largely resisted. </p>
<p>A formula emerges, familiar to anyone who has peer-assessed journal articles or research grant applications: fly a theoretical or methodological kite at the start, preferably with an international tail; explore a few carefully chosen case studies as the basis for an argument; conclude briskly with a future-directed uptick. The aim – in key words of approbation – is to “expand” or “recentre” the field. </p>
<p>Carter has argued that Australian literature is as much the creation of Australian readers as it is of Australian writers. Our literature is the totality of the literature we experience, including imports and outside influences, high and low. </p>
<p>It is a powerful idea that I first encountered in the essay “Publishing, Patronage and Cultural Politics”, which Carter contributed to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-australian-literature/9E8EC78E77B68B1EE019884118DDF03E">The Cambridge History of Australian Literature</a> edited by the late Peter Pierce in 2009. It manifests here in an interest in all aspects of book production and literary circulation, including sales and accounts.</p>
<p>This history is many-faceted and holistic. In a chapter on publishing, Roger Osborne quotes Carter describing the Australian novel as a “commodity, industry, professional or aesthetic practice, ethical or pedagogical technology, leisure, entertainment, policy object and national space”. </p>
<p>This catch-all conception boils down to a grand definition: the novel in Australia is “a central cultural technology” that “insists on its storytelling power for a wide range of ethical, political and cultural issues, even where written within the bounds of a popular genre form”. </p>
<p>The description recognises the prestige of the novel, whether as bestseller or rarefied prizewinner, while implicitly accepting that everyone has a novel in them and anyone can write one. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-red-witch-how-communist-writer-intellectual-and-activist-katharine-susannah-prichard-helped-shape-australia-182412">'The Red Witch': how communist writer, intellectual and activist Katharine Susannah Prichard helped shape Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Katherine Bode contributes to a chapter on how the meaning of the Australian novel is changed by the information now available in the <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/">AustLit</a> database and <a href="https://readallaboutit.com.au/">To be continued: The Australian Newspaper Fiction Database</a>. Her research shows we need “to look beyond the book” to media such as the periodical press that generated novels in episodic, ephemeral form to understand the grassroots development of fiction in 19th-century Australia. </p>
<p>We need to look beyond the cities for literary communities too, as Emily Potter and Brigid Magner argue in their chapter on the “regional novel”: they recognise that “the region as it creatively emerges is a co-production of writer and reader”.</p>
<h2>Missing pieces of the puzzle</h2>
<p>Yet something like a canon lingers, to judge by the clusters of respectful mentions. After a handful of 19th-century novels, there are Henry Handel Richardson, Christina Stead, Patrick White, Randolph Stow, David Malouf and, soaring above them with nearly double the number of references in the index, the long-time-comer Alexis Wright. </p>
<p>There are omissions, including some of the best novels and novelists in my opinion. But that’s what happens. A puzzling virtual omission is Helen Garner, who has produced a string of successful novels in a career that has been a constant argument with fiction. Is she anathema to the academy? Or can no one find anything interesting to say about Australia’s great precursor of the autofiction that has swept the world? </p>
<p>At the other end of the time frame, Henry Lawson looks like another diminished figure, as Paul Eggert recalibrates the “nationalist myth of the 1890s”. There is not much place for short fiction in this history. Short story writers, from <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A27388">Mena Abdullah</a> to <a href="http://www.namleonline.com/">Nam Le</a>, don’t appear.</p>
<p>Among my highlights are Philip Mead on mining trilogies, including <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/8391700">The Fortunes of Richard Mahony</a> (1917-29); Nicole Moore’s radical recovery of postwar realism, including Ralph de Boissière’s <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/705373">Crown Jewel</a> (1956), set in Trinidad; the attention Meg Brayshaw pays to M. Barnard Eldershaw’s <a href="https://blogs.slv.vic.gov.au/our-stories/ask-a-librarian/tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow-a-lost-masterpiece/">Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow</a> (1947); Elizabeth McMahon on Randolph Stow’s <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/8266093">To the Islands</a> (1958); Brigid Rooney’s spotting of the “purple theme” of “the little sarsaparilla vine” that emerges “from the darker undertones” in Patrick White’s <a href="https://patrickwhitecatalogue.com/novels/tree/">The Tree of Man</a> (1955); and Jessica White on <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781760558604/">Dyschronia</a> (2018) by Jennifer Mills. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-the-fortunes-of-richard-mahony-by-henry-handel-richardson-24474">The case for The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561244/original/file-20231123-15-oi5fh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561244/original/file-20231123-15-oi5fh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561244/original/file-20231123-15-oi5fh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561244/original/file-20231123-15-oi5fh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561244/original/file-20231123-15-oi5fh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=847&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561244/original/file-20231123-15-oi5fh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561244/original/file-20231123-15-oi5fh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561244/original/file-20231123-15-oi5fh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry Handel Richardson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Handel_Richardson,_author,_ca._1920-1935,_photographers_Elliott_%26_Fry_(6963289973).jpg">State Library of New South Wales, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Emmett Stinson does a compare-and-contrast of David Malouf and Gerald Murnane, finding that “Malouf’s success is in no small part linked to the way in which educational institutions have assigned his works over the years”. And in “The Novel Road to the Global South”, Sascha Morrell takes a scalpel to celebrated works by Peter Carey and Richard Flanagan to diagnose an Australian condition: “a peculiar, backward-looking nostalgia for Australia’s accustomed ‘underdog’ status”. </p>
<p>Elsewhere the issue of “inherent racism” is noted in passing in Australia’s bestselling invasion narrative for Young Adults, <a href="https://johnmarsden.com.au/">John Marsden’s Tomorrow series</a> (1993-99).</p>
<h2>Multilingual writing?</h2>
<p>Emily Yu Zong writes in “The Making of the Asian Australian Novel” that the recent translation into English of Wong Shee Ping’s <a href="https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/products/108833">The Poison of Polygamy</a> – a novel serialised in Melbourne’s Chinese Times from 1909 – “has unveiled the earliest Chinese Australian novel and a neglected multilingual lineage of Australian literature”. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561778/original/file-20231127-21-xpm7i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561778/original/file-20231127-21-xpm7i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561778/original/file-20231127-21-xpm7i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561778/original/file-20231127-21-xpm7i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561778/original/file-20231127-21-xpm7i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1095&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561778/original/file-20231127-21-xpm7i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1095&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561778/original/file-20231127-21-xpm7i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1095&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>The question of translation comes up in discussion of <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/legendary-tales-of-the-australian-aborigines-paperback-softback">Legendary Tales of the Australian Aborigines</a> (1930) by Ngarrindjeri man David Unaipon, in Jumana Bayeh’s consideration of diasporic writing in “The Arab Australian Novel”, and in relation to Behrouz Boochani’s hybrid work <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-behrouz-boochanis-unsparing-look-at-the-brutality-of-manus-island-101520">No Friend but the Mountains</a>, originally written in Farsi. </p>
<p>Otherwise fiction in languages other than English barely breaks the surface. That limitation occludes Iwaki Kei’s remarkable novel <a href="https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2019/winter/farewell-my-orange-iwaki-kei">Farewell, My Orange</a> (2013) about African migrants to country Australia, which has been translated from Japanese by Meredith McKinney. Multilingual writing seems to be one part of the “future anterior” that we are not quite ready for.</p>
<p>Literary history can take many forms. I missed the most basic of those: biography. While writers are identity-checked where possible (“Christos Tsiolkas, a second-generation gay Greek Australian man”), few contributors are interested in explaining a writer’s career path. </p>
<p>Top marks then to Beth Driscoll and Kim Wilkins, whose chapter on fantasy, crime and romance fiction provides empirical information on how such stars as Kerry Greenwood and Peter Temple did what they did, and names those, including agents, editors and publishers, who were part of the process. They shout out to the short story as crucial to the networks that underpin the success of Australian fantasy. Fiction is also a form of sociability.</p>
<p>What are novels for? One answer would be that they are for academics to find interest in and make researchable and teachable. They are a means to an important end: part of how “contemporary Australian culture is valued and assessed”, in the words of Imelda Whelehan and Claire McCarthy in a chapter on screen adaptations. David Carter and his team have done a great job of showing how it’s done.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Jose has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>A major new history of the Australian novel is shaped by the recent renaissance in Indigenous writing, but there are some notable omissions.Nicholas Jose, Professor of English and Creative Writing, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2116682023-11-19T18:59:16Z2023-11-19T18:59:16ZWhy are we obsessed with renovation? Amanda Lohrey explores the promise and limits of transforming our environment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557614/original/file-20231105-17-5b0zvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C0%2C5955%2C3988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dalal Nizam/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The cover of <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-conversion">The Conversion</a> is an image of two yellow-tailed black cockatoos ascending against a pale sky, their horizontal outstretched wings crossed by the vertical lines that run from their beaks to their tail feathers.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557196/original/file-20231102-23-6ouuj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557196/original/file-20231102-23-6ouuj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557196/original/file-20231102-23-6ouuj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557196/original/file-20231102-23-6ouuj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557196/original/file-20231102-23-6ouuj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557196/original/file-20231102-23-6ouuj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557196/original/file-20231102-23-6ouuj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557196/original/file-20231102-23-6ouuj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Black cockatoos turn up on page three of the novel. Nick Whitelaw and Zoe North are walking the grounds of a deconsecrated church. Nick is keen to buy the church; his wife, Zoe, is “less upbeat”. She is not convinced a church can be converted into a home. Zoe hears the screech of cockatoos and turns to see “their black bodies outlined against the blue of the sky”. </p>
<p>For Nick, the black cockatoos are a good omen, but he overlooks what might be a bad omen: a snake that lies “coiled and sleeping on the worn sandstone steps” of the church. His buoyant tendency to emphasise good signs over bad and his optimistic belief in remaking things will have negative consequences. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Conversion – Amanda Lohrey (Text Publishing)</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Novel ideas</h2>
<p>Literary critic <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/lohrey-paperback-softback">Julieanne Lamond</a> has observed that Lohrey “takes up a common way of doing, saying or thinking about something and baldly asks: why?” </p>
<p>The question Lohrey’s ninth novel asks is: why do we constantly seek to renew our environment? What are the possibilities and limits of such attempted transformations? </p>
<p>The Conversion is set in a fictional town named Crannock. Like the real town of Cessnock in the Hunter Valley, Crannock is an old coal-mining town. The grazing land for which it was also known has been subdivided and converted into vineyards.</p>
<p>The novel’s first section, The Windows, switches between past and present. The flashbacks depict events leading up to Nick’s sudden death. We learn that, in addition to his fascination with converting buildings, he was a therapist with some unorthodox methods.</p>
<p>Events in the present involve the widowed Zoe’s decision to buy the church. She had persuaded Nick to wait a year before committing to the purchase. Returning to Crannock alone after his death, she steps inside the church and admires how the stained glass windows made “soft mosaic patterns of colour on the wooden floor”. The old pulpit, the stone altar, the nave and a large wooden screen (called a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reredos">reredos</a>) are intimidating, but the “vertical space” and light impress her. </p>
<p>“How would you fill it?” she wonders before signing the contract and moving into the church. </p>
<p>Nick’s interest in the church was about neither money nor status, but ideas of conversion. He had expressed his belief to Zoe and their friend Neville Glass that “we become attached to certain places and go on inhabiting them mentally long after we leave them behind physically”. </p>
<p>But Nick’s firmly held beliefs contain contradictions. He told Zoe and Neville that it’s “what you make of the thing” that matters. Yet, in his life he wilfully pursued paths that brought difficulty and personal disaster. His premature death results from circumstances that are, at least in part, of his own making. </p>
<p>Zoe’s decision to take on the church-conversion project is paradoxical. She is haunted by the ghosts of Nick and a troubled young patient who had come into their lives in the year before he died. She wants to exorcise these ghosts, but she encounters other ghosts in the process. </p>
<p>What she fears most is “being stuck with a jaded feeling of the past, a lingering effect of grandiosity combined with an air of melancholy abandonment”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/intellectual-fearlessness-politics-and-the-spiritual-impulse-the-remarkable-career-of-amanda-lohrey-187354">Intellectual fearlessness, politics and the spiritual impulse: the remarkable career of Amanda Lohrey</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Orders of conversion</h2>
<p>In her book <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Renovation-Nation-Our-obsession-home/dp/0868408786">Renovation Nation</a>, Fiona Allon describes how the Australian dream of home ownership has become an obsessive nightmare involving market gaming, prestige homes and profit maximisation. Such renovation practices are noted when Zoe’s friend Helen mentions the gutting of a “worker’s cottage” in order to install a “plunge pool”.</p>
<p>This real-estate obsession gives an ironic cast to Zoe’s renovation, given that her church is named after St Martin, a Roman soldier who converted to Christianity, and was sainted for cutting his cloak in half and sharing it with a stranger in need. </p>
<p>The national fetish for conversion even extends to the former reverend of Zoe’s church, who now lives in a “concrete box with floor-to-ceiling glass walls” that overlook fields planted with garlic. His house is “so different from the church and its lancet windows with their pointed arch”, thinks Zoe.</p>
<p>Ideas of transformation are extended in the second part of the novel, which considers the rewards and costs of religious, psychological, artistic and architectural conversions. Each of the novel’s characters becomes involved in one conversion or another. </p>
<p>Zoe employs Mick Hanlon and his son Travis to remove the font (a receptacle used for baptism ceremonies) from the church using their Genie lift. While Mick would like his son to be involved in the earth-moving business he dreams of starting, Travis has other ideas. His hidden talents surface when he performs the lead part in August Strindberg’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dream_Play">A Dream Play</a>, directed by schoolteacher Melanie and staged within the walls of the church. Teacher and students temporarily transform the church interior into a stage and auditorium. </p>
<p>The transformative destruction brought by early settlers is touched upon when Zoe reflects on whether she and others “were intruders, always bending something out of its natural shape”. The catastrophic changes brought by colonisation are also alluded to by Zoe’s new neighbour Berenice Hanlon, who mentions that certain ancestors of Crannock residents had been complicit in the massacre of Indigenous people. </p>
<p>Conversion is associated in the novel with attempts to silence the past. Neville expresses this idea when he likens conversion to “cancel culture”. It is a way of cancelling the “old naysayers, the sermonisers, the ones who told you not to have sex before marriage”. </p>
<p>But Zoe remains uncertain as to how she can put her “stamp” on the church. It is not as if “she could sweep in and cancel the history of a building with a few knick-knacks”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557624/original/file-20231106-17-g25r82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557624/original/file-20231106-17-g25r82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557624/original/file-20231106-17-g25r82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557624/original/file-20231106-17-g25r82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557624/original/file-20231106-17-g25r82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557624/original/file-20231106-17-g25r82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557624/original/file-20231106-17-g25r82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557624/original/file-20231106-17-g25r82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=744&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 Charity of Saint Martin – Louis Anselme Longa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_Anselme_Longa,_La_charit%C3%A9_de_saint_Martin.jpg">Abmg, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/big-picture-thinking-in-the-bell-of-the-world-gregory-day-listens-to-the-music-of-common-things-197616">Big-picture thinking: in The Bell of the World, Gregory Day listens to the music of common things</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Vertical light and resistance to conversion</h2>
<p>Zoe opposes the effects created by the vertical lines of the church to those created by the horizontal design of the Reverend’s house. She also harks back to talks with Nick about the architectural “unity” resulting from the “harmony” of vertical and horizontal lines. </p>
<p>The meaning of these lines strikes her after the church’s font is removed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[…] she sees that the unity of the whole has been tilted out of balance. The church had been a body, and now it had lost a limb. The buyer of a church must impose their own dream, which means they can only live in it if all trace of its original purpose is camouflaged or destroyed: As much as possible, vertical space (heaven) must be rendered horizontal (earth). </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These evocative lines resonate in passages where Zoe observes light filtering to the floor via the high stained-glass windows above. On the one hand, the novel associates this verticality with the authority of priests who “communicated the sacred language” from the pulpit. On the other hand, it reminds us that such priests stood in front of windows whose stained glass stories communicated to the “illiterate”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558263/original/file-20231108-21-2s137x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558263/original/file-20231108-21-2s137x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558263/original/file-20231108-21-2s137x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558263/original/file-20231108-21-2s137x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558263/original/file-20231108-21-2s137x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558263/original/file-20231108-21-2s137x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558263/original/file-20231108-21-2s137x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558263/original/file-20231108-21-2s137x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">August Strindberg (1886).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Sweden, via Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I find intriguing this idea that stained glass windows once spoke directly to illiterate church-goers, and I admire very much the novel’s ambitious reach, though sometimes I wondered whether certain characters are vehicles for these ideas. Such non-realistic treatment may be Lohrey’s nod to Strindberg and his deliberate creation of “symbolic” characters for his Dream Play. </p>
<p>Plausibility of plot and character development are occasionally sacrificed in the service of Lohrey’s pursuit of the question of renewal from different angles. But this weakness is also a strength, as The Conversion delves into what it means to change one thing into another thing, exploring ideas of conversion that range from everyday renovation to the allure of religious cults and the meaning of our ever-updating culture. </p>
<p>Mentions of “cancel culture” and Zoe’s trawling of Pinterest remind readers of the internet, raising questions about the fate of the contemporary novel within a technological environment. Do novels continue to deliver truths from within this restless space? Or has the novel – like the colonial Victorian church – been changed? </p>
<p>St Martin’s church may have lost its “mystique” once its font, pulpit, nave and sacristy are removed, but it remains recognisable as a church. The Conversion may not deliver the kinds of characters we meet in a Victorian novel, yet it poses questions that matter to how we read, write and live now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211668/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monique Rooney 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>Amanda Lohrey’s new novel, The Conversion, poses questions that matter to how we read, write and live now – through a couple’s renovation of a church into a home.Monique Rooney, Senior lecturer in literature, film and new media, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2111022023-11-13T01:44:53Z2023-11-13T01:44:53ZEyewash, irreverence and a Bruce Springsteen concert: on the road with a pioneering performance poet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551991/original/file-20231004-17-3upb68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C6491%2C4337&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/white-bus-driving-on-road-towards-552011011">Sondem/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/pi-o-the-tour/">The Tour</a> is Pi O’s verse diary about a small group of Australian poets who take their wares on the road in North America in the mid-1980s, sponsored by the Literature Board and the Guggenheim Foundation. This came to be known as “The Dirty T-Shirt Tour”, because Pi O’s dress and personal hygiene were questioned by the other members of the group, including the tour organiser. </p>
<p>According to Pi O’s account, the motivating factors in this singling out were race and snobbery, or race-snobbery – compounded by a sneering attitude towards performance poetry, of which Pi O was a pioneer. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Tour – Pi O (Giramondo)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Even before leaving Australia, Pi O is conflicted: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>so</strong> what’s a nice Anarchist Greek Poet like me doing (going<br>
to the States) on Guggenheim money????<br> </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s a question that needed asking.</p>
<blockquote>
<p> When i told Jas about it,<br>
he said it was a two-prong problem: If you…. don’t<br>
make it, all you’re doing, is <strong>catering to</strong> an Elite i.e. Bohemians… etc<br>
an’ if you do, then you’ve SOLD OUT! <strong>Damned</strong> if you do<br>
and <strong>damned</strong> if you don’t.<br></p>
<p> AMERICA: You’re becoming a headache!<br>
Hope Ronald Reagan dies before i get there!<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is not Pi O’s only pre-tour concern. He needs to apply for a passport, which, when it arrives, does so in an envelope that contains </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a pamphlet from the Australian Tourist Commission<br>
entitled: MAKING FRIENDS FOR AUSTRALIA.<br> </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I don’t think The Tour nominates the year of the tour for which it is named, but the pamphlet and its contents are straight out of 1984. The propaganda is astonishing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… it listed all the things i could tell the Americans<br>
e.g. the kinds of facts one absolutely ((((((needs)))))) to know;<br>
that there are 136 million sheep in Australia and 95 million head of<br>
cattle; And on the touchy Question of our 1.2% of<br>
the population (that just happen to be BLACK) i was to say (assuming<br>
anyone was listening) that the “transition from Tribal past<br>
to political and social equality was accelerating”.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Following the result of the Voice referendum on October 15, one suspects that offering such self-appraisals while overseas will be met with derision. The notion that Australians should ((((((trumpet)))))) untruthfulness remains offensive. </p>
<p>To misquote a line from Seinfeld: “that eyewash just ain’t making it”.</p>
<h2>Page and stage</h2>
<p>Pi O is also worried about the exchange rate. The Australian dollar, floated in 1983, is performing badly against the greenback (it drops “to an all-time low … from 67.45c to 64.1)”, a circumstance with which those travelling from Australia to the United States in 2023 will be familiar. </p>
<p>There are other striking historical coincidences between then and now. Before leaving his beloved Melbourne, first for Sydney and Wellington, and then onwards to Los Angeles, Pi O attends a Bruce Springsteen concert, coming to the realisation that</p>
<blockquote>
<p> Ronald Reagan<br>
may have sent Bruce & the Boys over to placate us (over<br>
New Zealand’s anti-Uranium policy and our resistance to the MX<br>
missile project) – Who knows?! – (I wouldn’t put it<br>
past ‘em!)<br></p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551332/original/file-20231002-23-55pavu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551332/original/file-20231002-23-55pavu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551332/original/file-20231002-23-55pavu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551332/original/file-20231002-23-55pavu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551332/original/file-20231002-23-55pavu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551332/original/file-20231002-23-55pavu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551332/original/file-20231002-23-55pavu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551332/original/file-20231002-23-55pavu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>Bruce Springsteen is rumoured to be touring Australia soon. Will he be here as an emissary of Joe Biden’s, sent to placate us over AUKUS? It seems unlikely, ridiculous even, but, as we are all aware, conspiracy theories trip easily from the tongue. </p>
<p>In that vein, I’d like to know what Pi O thinks of Taylor Swift’s impending tour, or if not thinks exactly, then what fun and truth he could make of it. It’s a question of soft power, certainly, but also of Pi O’s catapulting energy.</p>
<p>Which brings me to “page” and “stage” poetry, and the extent to which a distinction might obtain, or be thought to persist. </p>
<p>It’s clear that for Pi O, the “page” poets with whom he was on tour in the mid-1980s are largely bores. Their poetry is “lousy”, he tells us. On more than one occasion, he is called upon to “wake up” their unfortunate audiences with one of his “magic” performances. Rather cartoonishly, Pi O comes on and saves the day. </p>
<p>But the portrayal of the other poets is unsatisfactory. Not knowing their identity allows Pi O to position them as privileged Anglo-Australians. They are not just bores and boring poets, it is being asserted, but casual and even overt racists. Strong accusations, but done rather weakly. Why not tell us who they are?</p>
<p>Claims of boring poetry prove ironic given how much dull, lineated prose The Tour contains. The following is representative:</p>
<blockquote>
<p> On the wharf, there were<br>
lots of street stalls, selling bags, beads, chic<br>
paintings, and SAN FRANCISCO T-shirts.<br>
I bought some badges with pictures of “cats” on them<br>
to send back to Olga, in Melbourne (Karen’s friend).<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are many sections like this one and they contrast poorly with quotations from Pi O’s “actual” poems – that is, the ones we’re told he reads at the readings.</p>
<blockquote>
<p> <strong>Ockers</strong><br>
Australia<br>
[in the 1970s] had the<br>
“Libido” of a gang-bang<br>
the<br>
brains of a “Bunyip”<br>
&<br>
“the finesse of a rugby-team<br>
booze Up”<br>
it<br>
lived on:<br>
tomato sauce,<br>
the “Sporting Globe”, terrace houses,<br>
galvanized-iron<br>
bushfires<br>
&<br>
a cyclone.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here Pi O’s wit, talent and spiky irreverence are obvious. “Ockers” works on the page, just as surely as it would in performance. The poem is rich with the more conventional qualities of poetry – sound patterning, rhythm, compression, enjambment – and its visual arrangement on the page teaches us how to read, which is to say, “hear” it. In short, the formal qualities of the poem carry the sardonic commentary; it’s a triumph. </p>
<p>On the basis of these quoted poems and fragments, one hopes for another Selected Poems, preferably with an accompanying record. (Pi O spends much time and money while on the tour buying poetry records; I’d buy his.)</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AWONaKt6vlo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/poetry-goes-nuclear-3-recent-books-delve-into-present-anxieties-finding-beauty-amid-the-terror-203899">Poetry goes nuclear: 3 recent books delve into present anxieties, finding beauty amid the terror</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Happenings</h2>
<p>Pi O’s self-acclaim is amusing, but not unserious. For instance, when he hands out his “Famous Poet” cards, which read </p>
<blockquote>
<p>i wish to hell<br>
i was born 100 years<br>
from now<br>
to read myself <br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>we assume that he means it, but mostly doesn’t. There are few occasions to laugh out loud when reading poetry, but this is one. </p>
<p>Pi O establishes himself as entertainer, raconteur, performer, of which the anarchism and reflexive anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism are part and parcel. He is “ogre” and “villain” to his fellow touring poets, he suggests, but a hero to those who “get it”. </p>
<p>It’s a simplistic, binary world: whose side are you on? Are you down with it, man? Such bromides are commonplace in our adversarial political system, but when poetry goes there without its formal qualities, it gets dull rather quickly. </p>
<p>Guess what, it says to readers who are already converted to the cause: racism is bad! Poorly read poems are … also bad. Naughty naughty capitalism! It isn’t that these sentiments are wrong, but one senses they are being prosecuted in an insulated cell; their urgency is elsewhere.</p>
<p>Australia “has her madness and her weather still”, as Auden writes of Ireland in his great poem, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”. The poem continues with these famous lines:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives<br>
In the valley of its making where executives<br>
Would never want to tamper, flows on south<br>
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,<br>
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,<br>
A way of happening, a mouth.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>That seems right, and it seems to validate Pi O’s commitment to poetry’s oral traditions. Poetry readings, book launches, slam poetry, performance poetry: events are happening all around us, in small and larger venues, affording opportunities to work on our snobbery. Mine remains a work in progress. (“My name is Craig Billingham, and I’m a page poet. Boring? How very dare you.”)</p>
<p>If you know an executive, and preferably an executive with children, or in fact any person whom you suspect has not recently or ever engaged with poetry, why not make arrangements to go along? </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Correction: an earlier version of this article mistakenly said Bruce Springsteen had toured Australia earlier this year.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211102/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Billingham has previously received funding from The Literature Board of the Australia Council for The Arts.
Defne Huzmeli, a past student at UNSW, works for WORD Travels and also hosts the West Side Poetry Slam in Parramatta. She tells Craig he should attend more events. He thinks she's probably right.</span></em></p>Pi O is known for his wit and irreverence. His anarchism, reflexive anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism are all part of the deal.Craig Billingham, Lecturer, Creative Writing, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2157012023-11-06T05:38:40Z2023-11-06T05:38:40ZThe atomic bomb and a near-death experience shadow Richard Flanagan’s autobiographical Question 7<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557050/original/file-20231101-27-9cax5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C7%2C4771%2C3183&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rapids on the Franklin River, Tasmania.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Taras Vyshnya/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The most astonishing and accomplished sequence in Richard Flanagan’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/question-7-9781761343452">Question 7</a> arrives near the book’s end, as he describes the near-death experience that inspired his first novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/death-of-a-river-guide-9781761048111">Death of a River Guide</a>, published in 1994. </p>
<p>It reads as if Flanagan has spent the book winding up, gathering the strength to find an angle of entry into that formative trauma. With propulsive confidence, he details the hours spent trapped under a kayak, being battered and pressed by the Franklin River’s tumultuous waters, brushing up against death, perhaps briefly succumbing, before being rescued and returned, transformed, to the world of the living. </p>
<p>The irony, however, of this sequence’s brilliance, is that it clarifies how certain aspects of the book that precedes it are oddly hesitant. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Question 7 – Richard Flanagan (Knopf)</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557023/original/file-20231101-21-ai73tr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&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>
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</figure>
<p>Question 7 begins with an epigraph from a review of Moby-Dick, printed in an 1851 edition of the Hobart Town Mercury, speculating about the generic ambiguity of Herman Melville’s masterwork. The reviewer is baffled as to whether they are reading “history, autobiography, gazetteer, tragedy, romance, almanac, melodrama or fantasy”.</p>
<p>The reader is thus introduced to the refusal of Question 7 to neatly inhabit a single genre, and its occasional efforts to trouble the distinction between truth and fabrication. </p>
<p>The formal experimentation appears to derive from Flanagan’s anxiety that autobiography is necessarily fictitious. The desire to document one’s life accurately, he suggests, is made foolish by the ephemerality of language, the unreliability of memory, and the unaccountable contingencies of history.</p>
<p>Notably, the narrator of Question 7 – who seems, despite the formal evasiveness, to be Richard Flanagan – refers to Death of a River Guide as “another novel”, suggesting this was the category he had in mind when writing Question 7. Much of the book is, however, essayistic and, for what it’s worth, it is categorised on the publisher’s website as “non-fiction prose”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-moby-dick-by-herman-melville-52000">Guide to the classics: Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Who loves longer?</h2>
<p>The question around which Question 7 orbits is taken from an early Chekhov story titled “Questions Posed by a Mad Mathematician” (Flanagan omits the title). </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557041/original/file-20231101-25-klhbi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Richard Flanagan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguin.com.au/authors/richard-flanagan">Penguin Random House</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Chekhov’s version, a description of a train travelling between stations at specified times, written in the style of a tricky question of arithmetic, ends instead with a metaphysical query: “Who is capable of loving longer, a man or a woman?” </p>
<p>Flanagan’s version, returned to throughout the book, is: “Who loves longer?” </p>
<p>In considering this question, Flanagan traces a path from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/H-G-Wells">H.G. Wells</a>’ affair with <a href="https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/author-biography/rebecca-west/">Rebecca West</a> to Wells’ 1914 novel <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1059/1059-h/1059-h.htm">The World Set Free</a>, the invention of the atomic bomb, and the bombing of Hiroshima, which brought about the end of his father’s internment in a Japanese prison camp. </p>
<p>Hungarian physicist <a href="https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/biographies/szilard.html">Leo Szilard</a>, a key figure in the bomb’s creation, reads Wells and, comprehending the potential destructive reality of such a weapon, conceives of its scientific possibility. Flanagan explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Without Rebecca West’s kiss H.G. Wells would not have run off to Switzerland to write a book in which everything burns, and without H.G. Wells’s book Leo Szilard would never have conceived of a nuclear chain reaction. Poetry may make nothing happen, but a novel destroyed Hiroshima and without Hiroshima there is no me and these words erase themselves and me with them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Flanagan thus intertwines his personal narrative with a kind of historical fiction. The impulse to understand how he is implicated in the broad sweep of historical catastrophe is understandable, but pays off inconsistently. In one instance, for example, he imagines Szilard taking a bath (Flanagan tells us Szilard was an inveterate bather) and contemplating the possibility of Wells’ apocalyptic fictions becoming reality: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As he lay back in his tub that autumnal London morning, Leo Szilard wondered why the forecasts of writers sometimes prove to be more accurate than those of scientists.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557045/original/file-20231101-21-xym2hd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leo Szilard c.1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leo_Szilard.jpg">U.S. Department of Energy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the acknowledgements, Flanagan admits Szilard’s bath is “pure fancy”. The problem is that it reads like fancy, more caricature than characterisation, adding nothing of substance. This is particularly evident when contrasted with Flanagan’s descriptions of members of his own family, whom he typically brings to striking, vivid life. </p>
<p>The bath sequence is followed by a passage in which Szilard is struck by the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction while watching traffic lights change in central London, a fact to which the physicist attested that is startling enough and needs no embellishment.</p>
<p>Similarly, a chapter in which Flanagan attempts to get inside the heads of West and Wells during their first encounter, which led to their affair and lifelong entanglement, feels fabricated and flimsy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And so as their monologues began duelling, dancing, fighting and playing together, tumbling like dangerous kittens, she began enjoying herself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And yet there are moments of startling historical insight. Fascinatingly, terrifyingly, Flanagan explains that the systematic genocide of Tasmania’s Aboriginal people by British colonists was the stimulus for Wells’ novel <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-War-of-the-Worlds-novel-by-Wells">The War of the Worlds</a>. Flanagan thus connects the nuclear destruction that terminated the war with Japan, where his Tasmanian father was imprisoned, to the systematic extermination of the first peoples in his native Tasmania. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-war-of-the-worlds-128453">Guide to the classics: The War of the Worlds</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Throughout all this, he continues to ask: “Who loves longer?” I was never sure what exactly this meant. Flanagan reads the question as being</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Like so much of what Chekhov wrote … about how the world from which we presume to derive meaning and purpose is not the true world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Undercutting this, the power Question 7 possesses is sourced almost entirely from those moments when Flanagan appears to be trying his hardest to tell the truth. It is an incomprehensible paradox, never quite reconciled, that Flanagan seems convinced of the insufficiency of language, yet equally convinced of a novel’s role in bringing us to the edge of apocalypse. </p>
<p>“All words,” he writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>are at best transitory and soon enough become archaic, ceasing to belong to language at all and instead becoming the property of data sets that after a further time return only dead URL links, so many 404 errors.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His conclusion? Writers are “no more than dancing shoes sliding between the dancer and the floor”.</p>
<p>There are several philosophical asides like this, expressing anxiety about the language’s failure to rightly communicate meaning. In this picture, there is a true world unavailable to us, and a false one determined by our words. Yet these conceptions of truth and falsity are also linguistically determined, so Flanagan’s notion of insufficiency, hanging on language, in the thrall of a commitment to some essential yet unavailable reality, undoes itself from the inside out.</p>
<p>The central oddness of the book is that the power of this generalised question, fictitiously posed by a mad mathematician, is far less potent than the urgency conjured by Flanagan’s humblest reminiscences. Recounting a cherished childhood memory of capturing and riding a Clydesdale bareback, experiencing the thrill of risking and resisting a fall, Flanagan writes, a touch awkwardly: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was a time of wonder and all things had the shape of miracles. And like a miracle, no evidence that it ever happened remains.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557052/original/file-20231101-25-bn23t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">H.G. Wells in 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:H.G._Wells_by_Beresford.jpg">George Charles Beresford, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite his doubts, Flanagan presents us with the evidence that it did in fact happen, the form of his testimony, his memory. If neither memory nor testimony is evidence of anything, then I’m not sure how we are to make sense of ourselves. Flanagan is presenting a binary view of the world, where the fallibility of memory and language throws our identities into utter crisis. </p>
<p>This is happily undermined by the vibrant energy with which Flanagan tells us of the people he has loved. </p>
<p>The most moving and intelligent parts of Question 7 are the least concerned with the grand fluctuations of world history. They describe Flanagan’s family: his ornery grandmother, known as Mate, regretfully outliving her husband and friends, “condemned to survive on her children’s charity”; his father, disgruntled by Flanagan’s mother’s culinary adventurousness in serving meat and four veg, requesting an end to this “modern food” and a return to meat and three. He recounts a trip to Japan where he meets his father’s erstwhile captors, and describes the death of his mother, the unbearable beauty of friends and family gathering around her in the final days. </p>
<p>Flanagan is at his least convincing when philosophising about the purpose and capacity of writing, as when he makes this baffling claim that the book itself does not bear out: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the only writing that can have any worth confounds time and stands outside of it, swims with it and flies with it and dives deep within it, seeking the answer to one insistent question: who loves longer?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A generous interpretation of this belief is that the best writing raises questions that are impossible to answer. But there are many types of productive ambiguity. Mightn’t there be other formulations, other dispositions, with which we can understand ourselves, others, and literature? </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/review-richard-flanagans-the-living-sea-of-waking-dreams-considers-griefs-big-and-small-147105">Review: Richard Flanagan's The Living Sea of Waking Dreams considers griefs big and small</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>That’s life</h2>
<p>Question 7 owes a particular debt to Kurt Vonnegut’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/slaughterhouse-5-9780099800200">Slaughterhouse Five</a>, another novel that forges a complex relationship with autobiography and contends with the legacies of destruction wrought by the Allies during the second world war. </p>
<p>As Vonnegut meditatively repeats “So it goes” whenever a death is mentioned in his novel, Flanagan repeats the decidedly less poetic “That’s life” a handful of times throughout the book when the spectre of death is conjured. </p>
<p>There are numerous repetitions of this kind – some effective, others less so. For instance, Flanagan twice writes unhelpfully that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Experience is but a moment. Making sense of that moment is life. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Repetition is used more elegantly to reckon with the shifting understanding of one’s parents that comes with ageing. Flanagan tells of his father returning from the unspeakable horrors of a wartime prison camp, taking a train trip around Tasmania:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Perhaps he wanted to see people and places he had thought he would never see again. Perhaps it was an immeasurable comfort to him to be allowed to sit in their homes, their kitchens, their lounges, their backyards and say little or nothing, warmed by the human goodness of others, to be astonished by the small everyday acts of kindness too easily dismissed as everyday.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Near the book’s end, Flanagan writes of his return to the ordinary world after his near-drowning, seeing places and people he thought he would never see again:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was such a comfort to be allowed to sit in their homes, I sat in their small kitchens, their tired lounges, their blighted backyards and said little or nothing, warmed by the immense human goodness of others. I was astonished by the small everyday acts of kindness too easily dismissed as everyday.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The repetition conveys the ways we follow and resist our parents, the ways we forever comprehend them anew as we grow towards and beyond the age they were when we were born. Through language, through writing, despite his reservations, Flanagan begins to understand and begins to be understood.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215701/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Dixon 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>In Question 7, Richard Flanagan writes of the contingencies of history, and troubles the distinction between truth and fabrication.Dan Dixon, Adjunct Lecturer, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2115002023-10-30T19:10:58Z2023-10-30T19:10:58ZIt’s only a book … it’s only a book! Australian horror writers confront the fears of the contemporary world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556463/original/file-20231029-30-aud836.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=194%2C411%2C4796%2C2911&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/witch-zombie-506633197">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Formative childhood experiences often explain our cultural tastes and tendencies as adults. My mature – or, some might say, immature – interest in the horror genre may very well be the result of the curiosity caused by the parental prohibition against watching a rented Betamax copy of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/">The Exorcist</a> when I was four or five years old and living in Iran, a prohibition that was ignored or withdrawn a few years later when I came to own copies of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075005/">The Omen</a> (dubbed) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082418/">Friday the 13th: Part 2</a> (in its original, incomprehensible English). </p>
<p>My late teenage years in Australia were marked by the miseries of poverty, culture shock, racism and loneliness – and the respite offered by watching <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103873/">Braindead</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103919/">Candyman</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093177/">Hellraiser</a> with a few other lonely lower-class kids, my first Australian friends. </p>
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<p>I hope starting this piece on a personal note does not appear self-indulgent. Upon deciding to become a writer in my 20s, I quickly realised that my interest in horror was to become private. If I were to have anything published here, I would have to write things expected of “different” folks blessed – or perhaps cursed – with an “identity”. Things such as a multicultural memoir. </p>
<p>The Australian cultural sphere was, and continues to be, one in which petite-bourgeois aesthetic moralism – which is to say, a preference for novels that promote an ideologically desirable or “positive” message about an issue of public interest – reigns supreme. It has little interest in blood-spewing zombies, debonair vampires, demonic spirits and chainsaw-wielding killers in leather masks. </p>
<p>Or at least that seems to be case. Notwithstanding a small allowance within the heavily monitored confines of the YA space, this country’s publishers and literary agents are likely to reject anything that smacks of the grotesque and the supernatural. </p>
<p>Crime fiction can and often does include macabre motifs, but these are entirely “safe” and subservient to the ethos and pathos of life-affirming crime-solvers. Our dystopias flirt with the horrific, but only to create the backdrops against which resilient protagonists survive and triumph over adversities. </p>
<p>What then are we to make of the strange fact that some of Australia’s best and most internationally successful films of recent times – <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416315/">Wolf Creek</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2321549/">The Babadook</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10638522/">Talk to Me</a> – are indisputably horror? Or that Australian-born or Australian-based horror writers continue to work in a genre that will bring them neither fame nor fortune in the Great Southern Land? </p>
<p>Or that I am writing this piece on three new antipodean horror fictions when I could instead be praising the latest winner of a Premier’s Literary Award or enthusing about a vigorously hyped book-club sensation? </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Bitters – Kaaron Warren (Cemetery Dance); Blackwater – Jacqueline Ross (Affirm Press); Bunny – S.E. Tolsen (Pan Macmillan)</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Bitters</h2>
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<p>The three books under consideration are in no need of my writing; they speak for themselves. They also speak of the desires and fears of the contemporary world. </p>
<p>They are gripping in a way only a scary story can be. And the basic fact of their existence, not to mention their literary qualities and artistic merits, signals the potential for the growth of the horror genre in a literary scene that appears hostile or, at best, indifferent to it. </p>
<p>One Australian author who seems unfazed by the genre’s domestic troubles is the Canberra-based Kaaron Warren. She has been publishing fiction since the early 1990s and <a href="https://www.cemeterydance.com/bitterswarren">Bitters</a>, her latest novella, is released through the US press Cemetery Dance, which seems to have become something of a home to many other Australian horror writers unsupported by local publishers. </p>
<p>Upon first encounter, Warren’s novella appears to be dystopian fiction. Its setting is an imaginary society where human corpses are interred in the gigantic metal statue of a man that transforms them into a drinkable commodity. The quality of this “disgusting” drink that smells “a bit like fermented fish paste”, the abundance of corpses, and the horrifically hidden ways in which humans are used as the ingredient for the pungent liquid, mark Bitters as a work of horror in addition to its dystopian and science-fiction dimensions.</p>
<p>Human consumption of the bodies of other humans is a time-honoured trope of speculative fiction. It is found in classics of the horror genre, such as Frankenstein and Dracula, as well as in some of the darker examples of science fiction, such as Harry Harrison’s novel <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/make-room-make-room-9780241507704">Make Room! Make Room!</a> (1966), which was adapted as the 1973 movie <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/">Soylent Green</a>. </p>
<p>More recently, Argentinian author Agustina Bazterrica’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tender_Is_the_Flesh">Cadáver exquisito</a> (2017), translated into English as Tender is the Flesh, became a favourite with horror fans for its grisly depictions of abattoirs, in which herds of humans are systematically butchered and processed as meat for other humans. </p>
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<p>It is tempting to interpret such works as allegorical. Bazterrica’s novel could easily be seen as a harsh critique of Argentina’s beef industry. Warren’s Bitters might also be viewed as a dark satire on Australia’s drinking culture: the book’s title, in addition to referring to herbal alcoholic preparations, could allude to the pale or bitter beers that have a pride of place in many an Australian pub. </p>
<p>But interpretations like these could ensnare a complex literary work within the confines of a didactic commentary on a social topic. They also miss the work’s more original and intriguing features. </p>
<p>The stupendously huge metal man of Bitters is one such feature. It immediately brings to mind <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talos">Talos</a>, the giant automaton of Greek myth, although its origin is entirely secular. The metal man, so huge that “three men, arms stretched, can only just touch fingers around one shin”, has been towering over the landscape of the novella’s fictional universe for an unquantifiable period, “well beyond living memory, more than a thousand years”. </p>
<p>Despite this mysterious history, the inanimate monster was not planted on Earth by aliens or divine agents. It was built by humans, “section by section, the workmanship so perfect that if you ran your fingers over the joins you could only feel a slight ridge”.</p>
<p>What are we to make of this thing with the grim mechanism that devours the dead and processes them into the potion that is accessed via taps in its enormous toes? Who were the humans who built it? Why was it built? Questions like these, occasioned by lacunae within the story, propel the reader to become engrossed and unnerved. Is the metal man an environmentally sound engine for recycling the dead? It is a means for extracting exchange-value from our bodies in a hyper-capitalist universe? Is it good or is it evil?</p>
<p>Bitters tells the story of a “carrier”, a middle-aged man named McNubbin, whose job is to bring corpses up the spiral stairs of the metal man and dispose of them in the giant’s permanently gaping mouth. </p>
<p>Although McNubbin is generally happy with “the urgency of his job, the importance of it”, he starts to question the ethics of his role. He becomes aware of the growing number of “broken” young women whose bodies bear the marks of brutal violence. These seem to be the victims of the society’s dominant class, the “professors”, who supervise the work of the carriers, among whom we find the sinister Orton, a childhood friend of McNubbin’s. </p>
<p>Orton has this exchange with McNubbin when asked about the questionable corpses:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There are more to come,” Orton said. “Your wife is already bitters, and so is your son. Your daughter. And the baby on the way. Already bitters.”</p>
<p>McNubbin said, “We will carry no more broken girls. We will not.”</p>
<p>“You will, or you will be bitters.”</p>
<p>“We are all bitters in the end,” McNubbin said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I like the note of pessimism in this exchange, and in the narrative as a whole. It is a note that resonates with our fear of the calamities of the world – environmental disasters, pandemics, gendered violence – but one that does not express an irrational fear of death. </p>
<p>That we will all die and our bodies will be disposed of in some form or shape is a given. What makes this terse and enigmatic work of fiction effective is its focus on the question of human agency. In a world dominated by systems or modes of production that predate and outlive us, systems operated by shady elites who expropriate our labour-power when we live and commodify our corpses after we die, what remains of our humanity, of our basic subjectivity, when we have no say in how we live and die?</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-book-that-haunts-me-seven-experts-on-the-scariest-thing-theyve-ever-read-211931">The book that haunts me – seven experts on the scariest thing they’ve ever read</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Blackwater</h2>
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<p>Another new Australian work of fiction, this one a debut novel, also conveys the fear of living in a setting with macabre, pre-existing coordinates. </p>
<p>Grace, the pregnant Melbournian protagonist of Jacqueline Ross’s <a href="https://affirmpress.com.au/browse/book/Jacqueline-Ross-Blackwater-9781922806789/">Blackwater</a>, slowly but surely comes to suspect that her doting husband’s inherited property in Tasmania may have a frightening history and that staying in the copiously gothic, exceedingly haunted dwelling could be very bad for her unborn child. Not unlike Warren’s corpse carrier, Grace struggles with a tenebrous order of existence that precedes her, although hers is the spectral world of a specifically Australian imaginary, bedevilled by the ghosts of colonial cruelty and injustice. </p>
<p>Blackwater is published by Melbourne’s Affirm Press, which I find interesting. Not only does it buck the trend of Australian publishers’ disdain for horror, but its publisher claims on its website to aspire to have “a positive impact on readers, cultures and the world”, a claim buttressed by such titles as Magic Kiss and How to Tackle Your Dreams. </p>
<p>Can a horror novel – one with a wonderfully “pulp” book design and the unabashedly ominous, horror-tinged tagline “a baby will never be born at … Blackwater” – suit this publisher’s rather earnest, upbeat agenda? </p>
<p>I won’t attempt to read the mind of the publisher, and I will leave it up to the readers of this very accomplished novel to decide whether Blackwater has its desired effect. Suffice to say, Ross’s novel does not have the kind of horrifying ending that characterises some of the classics of the haunted house genre, such as Shirley Jackson’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-haunting-of-hill-house-9780141191447">The Haunting of Hill House</a> (1959) and Robert Marasco’s <a href="https://www.valancourtbooks.com/burnt-offerings-1973.html">Burnt Offerings</a> (1973). </p>
<p>Indeed, the novel could be interpreted as an ultimately motivational story of a would-be mother’s encounter with the revenants of injustices faced by past women. Grace not only comes to accept but cherish and celebrate her impending maternity and her baby’s “beautiful wail”.</p>
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<p>But there is a good deal in this novel to amuse horror fans who may not be in the market for life-affirming messages about parenting. The aged, inherited edifice at the centre of the book, Hammond House, is terrifically ghoulish and described in strong, affective prose. Upon first entering the house, Grace tries to convince herself it may not be “as gloomy as it seemed”, but she starts to discover that it may in fact be much worse. </p>
<p>The house does malign, malicious things to its new owners. A mirror breaks out of its frame and hurls itself at Grace, one of its shards almost slashing a vein on her wrist. In the toilet, she innocently pulls an antique flush chain, only to be greeted by a flood of “chunky, thick brown water, wads of sodden toilet paper, a smell like [she’s] been plunged headfirst into a drain”. Not surprisingly, she immediately tells her husband: “Get me the fuck out of this house.”</p>
<p>Marxists will find much pleasure in a narrative that chronicles the misfortunes of ambitious middle-class characters who aspire to join the land-owning elites, putting their faith in the utterly faithless system of capitalism. Early in Ross’s novel, we discover that Grace is a small-business owner on the mainland. Her husband’s enticing inheritance augers social elevation. Tasmania is seen as a land of opportunity where investment in tourism could result in excellent profits for shrewd profiteers. </p>
<p>But could it, really? Blackwater evokes famous 1970s antecedents – Jay Anson’s <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Amityville-Horror/Jay-Anson/9781982138264">The Amityville Horror</a> (1977) and Anne Rivers Siddons’ <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-House-Next-Door/Anne-Rivers-Siddons/9781416553441">The House Next Door</a> (1978), among others – in which the commercial potential of seemingly desirable, seemingly upper-class “legacy” properties gives way to a horrific actuality, symbolised in demonic possession, territorial terrors and unbearable suffering.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if a critique of the fetishism and ideology of our current real estate market is one of the “positive impacts” that Blackwater’s publisher had in mind. But it is a pleasant surprise to see a well-written horror novel published by an Australian press. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556462/original/file-20231029-17-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4211%2C2801&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556462/original/file-20231029-17-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4211%2C2801&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556462/original/file-20231029-17-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556462/original/file-20231029-17-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556462/original/file-20231029-17-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556462/original/file-20231029-17-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556462/original/file-20231029-17-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556462/original/file-20231029-17-h130m6.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">In haunted house stories, the promise of upward mobility gives way to horrific actuality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-haunted-abandoned-house-1201011367">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-scary-tales-for-scary-times-181597">Friday essay: scary tales for scary times</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Bunny</h2>
<p>It is even more perplexing, and gratifying, to find the Australian arm of the international publishing giant Pan Macmillan publishing the final book I would like to discuss. <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781761265433/">Bunny</a> is a novel that, according to its back-cover writeup, is for “fans of Stephen King and Stranger Things”. Can it be that horror is finally being acknowledged as the popular, culturally significant genre that it is, here, in Australia?</p>
<p>I was not surprised to discover that the author of the utterly captivating and thrilling Bunny, S.E. Tolsen, is represented by a South African rather than an Australian agent. Tolsen has South African connections: it is the pen-name of a Brisbane-based husband and wife writing duo, made up of the Johannesburg-born Vere Tindale and the New Zealand-born Emma Olsen. </p>
<p>Their novel is not to be confused with another recent book, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/576726/bunny-by-mona-awad/9780735235908">Mona Awad’s horror-adjacent novel</a> with an identical title. Somewhat like the latter, Tolsen’s Bunny is occasionally concerned with the travails of being a writer, but it is focused on things far more terrifying than that. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554638/original/file-20231019-21-uqmezd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554638/original/file-20231019-21-uqmezd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554638/original/file-20231019-21-uqmezd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554638/original/file-20231019-21-uqmezd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554638/original/file-20231019-21-uqmezd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554638/original/file-20231019-21-uqmezd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554638/original/file-20231019-21-uqmezd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554638/original/file-20231019-21-uqmezd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&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>
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<p>Bunny’s tense opening ends with a jump-scary cliffhanger. A child called Silas is frightened by his increasingly drunk and threateningly weird babysitter – his youngish aunt, the eponymous Bunny. Silas hides under the dresser in his bedroom, but Bunny follows him. Her eyes “bore into him from across the room”. They are “not her eyes; they’re the same colour and shape, but they’re not her eyes”. Then, in the last sentence of this terrific prologue, “her hands clamp around his arms as she pulls him from under the dresser”.</p>
<p>Is Bunny demonically possessed, an alcoholic child-abuser, or maybe a combination of both? Could it be that Bunny is trying to protect her nephew from an evil greater than her own frightfulness? </p>
<p>In the next section, we find ourselves 24 years into the future, with an adult Silas and his partner Rose working on a film script they hope to sell to a Hollywood studio. The novel operates through shifts between the origins of Bunny’s malevolence and Silas’s current predicaments, as he and Rose – and their haplessly loyal dog, Goober – find it necessary to move temporarily into Silas’s mother’s house in rural New England. </p>
<p>Much to their horror, they discover they must share the house with aunt Bunny, who has become even more fearsome with age. </p>
<p>The authors’ decision to set Bunny in the United States may have been occasioned by the desire to appeal to an American readership. It may also be an homage to the work of <a href="https://www.hplovecraft.com/">H.P. Lovecraft</a>, the hugely influential US writer whose New England-based tales of encounters with unfathomably inhuman monstrosities are an obvious influence on Bunny. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556470/original/file-20231029-15-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556470/original/file-20231029-15-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556470/original/file-20231029-15-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556470/original/file-20231029-15-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556470/original/file-20231029-15-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556470/original/file-20231029-15-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556470/original/file-20231029-15-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556470/original/file-20231029-15-h130m6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">H.P. Lovecraft.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:H._P._Lovecraft,_June_1934.jpg">Lucius B. Truesdell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The novel does include one delightful connection to Australia, via a veterinary doctor called Eugene Demopolous, a “transplant from Australia” who is described, in a fleeting reference to “Antipodean vernacular”, as “a brick shithouse of a man”. </p>
<p>But can even this tough and capable Aussie be a match for the profound horror at the heart of Bunny’s deranged soul, a horror with eerie roots in the physical landscape, an evil that may engulf Silas and Rose’s dream of becoming successful writers and much worse?</p>
<p>I don’t want to give away any more of the plot than would be necessary to encourage readers to read this wonderful novel. The ending is entirely unpredictable and breathtakingly shocking, and it alone places Bunny among the best Anglophone horror novels of this century, alongside works by authors such as <a href="https://www.paultremblay.net/">Paul Tremblay</a>, <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/author/catrionaward">Catriona Ward</a>, <a href="https://ronaldmalfi.com/">Ronald Malfi</a>, <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Stephen-Graham-Jones/151691780">Stephen Graham Jones</a> and <a href="https://www.aniaahlborn.com/">Ania Ahlborn</a>. </p>
<p>But Bunny should also be read for its exquisitely monstrous moments and images. In one scene, a terrified adult Silas watches the disturbance on the surface of a nearby lake and sees “in the midst of the ripples, dark shapes rise to the surface”. These are black eels, and “swimming among them in the icy water” is Bunny’s “bare, skeletal figure that looks like the white unearthed roots of the pines on the shore behind her”. </p>
<p>In another scene, Rose is finishing her shower in the house when:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Bunny crawls on hands and feet into the bathroom. Her limbs bend at acute angles as her writhing jaw juts forward […] Bunny crawls closer. Rose can just make out her form in the near-darkness. Bunny’s jaw snaps as if dislocating. Rose’s eyes trace the prominent bumps on Bunny’s back – vertebrae, which look disturbingly close to slicing her anorexic back. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Scenes such as this would translate very well to the screen, and, not unlike the writing couple in their novel, Olsen and Tindale – whose surnames combined produce their <em>nom de plume</em> Tolsen – have cinematic aspirations. Bunny is apparently based on an earlier screenplay written by the couple, and I very much hope to see it made into a movie. I also hope Bunny will find the many readers it deserves. </p>
<p>Whether these readers will be in Australia, where most bookshops no longer have a horror section and the literati seem to have, well, a horror of the genre, remains to be seen. Let us note, finally, that our publishing industry’s disdain for horror is rather peculiar. One would have to be living in a cave – a cave without wifi and streaming services – to have missed that both big and small screens are currently overrun with horror films and series. </p>
<p>It would also not be so hard to see that horror publishing is enjoying something of a “golden age” – as seen in commentaries such as <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/ct-ent-horror-books-golden-age-20221026-jigiqxjyfngbxcil66yslh4m2a-story.html">this</a> or <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a44491190/new-golden-age-horror-fiction/">this</a> or <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/arts/the-rise-of-indigenous-horror-how-a-fiction-genre-is-confronting-a-monstrous-reality-1.5323428">this</a> or <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/culture/2023/05/02/why-indonesia-is-a-gold-mine-for-horror-fans.html">this</a>. </p>
<p>I hope that novels, such as Bunny, Bitters and Blackwater – with their uncannily alliterative titles – and the tenacity of organisations such as the <a href="https://australasianhorror.com/">Australasian Horror Writers Association</a> illustrate that Australian horror, despite its neglect, is alive and kicking – and crawling on the floor, frightfully howling at the moon, swimming with creepy serpents in a lake, and so on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211500/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ali Alizadeh 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>Despite its neglect, Australian horror is alive and kicking – and crawling on the floor, frightfully howling at the moon, and swimming with creepy serpents in a lake.Ali Alizadeh, Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies and Creative Writing, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2161622023-10-24T03:45:14Z2023-10-24T03:45:14ZA light touch, a feel for drama and a generous nature: author Alex Skovron wins the Patrick White Award<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555474/original/file-20231024-17-wk6ce7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alex Skovron, centre, and at a book launch at Collected Works on right. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Perpetual Group, author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you have ever been to the launch of a small-press poetry book at <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/poetry-bookshop-collected-works-reaches-its-final-stanza-20181019-h16ujt.html">Collected Works</a> bookshop (now defunct), or at one of the Readings bookstores, or at a bar or café in Melbourne, you may have seen a small, fit-looking, bespectacled man. He has a ready grin and eyes that invite you in – often to a conversation you’ll remember for its warmth, intelligence, wit and passion for literature. </p>
<p>You will have encountered Alex Skovron, who has this year won the Patrick White Literary Award for his achievements in poetry and prose and his lifelong support for writers and writing in Melbourne and beyond. </p>
<p>This prize is awarded to a writer who might not have received the recognition that is due when that writer’s full contributions and achievements are considered. Writers do belong to a community, even if it is fractured, fractious, garrulous and competitive at times. The community is best characterised, though, by acts of generosity towards each other, and Skovron has been a behind-the-scenes master of generosity towards other writers. </p>
<p>Author of seven books of poetry and three works of fiction, Skovron has previously won the Anne Elder and Mary Gilmore awards for a first book of poetry, the Wesley Michel Wright Prize for poetry (twice), John Shaw Neilson Poetry award (twice) and Australian Book Review (now Peter Porter) Prize for a single poem. His novella, The Poet, was co-winner of the Christina Stead Prize in 2005. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555477/original/file-20231024-23-5qzsz6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The cover of Skovron's book The Poet." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555477/original/file-20231024-23-5qzsz6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555477/original/file-20231024-23-5qzsz6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555477/original/file-20231024-23-5qzsz6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555477/original/file-20231024-23-5qzsz6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555477/original/file-20231024-23-5qzsz6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555477/original/file-20231024-23-5qzsz6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555477/original/file-20231024-23-5qzsz6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1163&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Skovron worked as an editor for two Australian encyclopedia projects during the 1970s, then from 1980 with publishers Macmillan, Hutchinson, Dent and finally, Houghton Mifflin. Alongside this work, his quiet and sustained impact on poets and poetry in Melbourne has been immense. </p>
<p>Hundreds of poets, especially the young and emerging, have been edited, mentored and encouraged by Skovron. It is common to pick up a new book of poetry in Melbourne and find his name there on the acknowledgements page. He has offered reliable and consistent support to others for decades. </p>
<p>Born in Poland in 1948 and arriving in Australia via Israel as a ten-year-old, Skovron’s cultural and intellectual reach has always been global. </p>
<p>His work has been translated into French, Chinese, Dutch, Polish, Spanish, Czech, Macedonian and German. He has worked with his Czech translator, Josef Tomáš on book-length translations into English of two 20th-century Czech poets and his latest book, <a href="https://puncherandwattmann.com/product/letters-from-the-periphery/">Letters from the Periphery</a>, includes his translation of the first canto of Dante’s Inferno. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-dantes-divine-comedy-84603">Guide to the Classics: Dante’s Divine Comedy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It is a shame poetry is not more widely read, enjoyed and appreciated in Australia. Skovron’s poetry has been wonderfully enriching, entertaining and provocative to its readers since his first published book, The Rearrangement, in 1988. His poems work attentively with shifts in tone and attitude, surprising line endings, pauses and rushes of thoughts and connections always towards an elegance toughened by life experience. </p>
<p>One poem, chosen almost at random, showcases these qualities: </p>
<p>For Light<br></p>
<blockquote>
<p>If one is to be awoken by a cliché <br>
the clatter of breakfast dishes is as good <br>
as any, or the aroma of coffee <br>
freshly brewed, or that uncanny mood <br>
of holiday immensity, when the world<br>
was twelve, or a summer’s garden when the world<br></p>
<p>was good. Worst is the midnight<br>
phonecall, or the way the disentangled mind<br>
can brood a black density into being – <br>
in the darknesses before seeing, lusting for light. <br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>(from <a href="https://puncherandwattmann.com/product/towards-the-equator-new-selected-poems/">Towards the Equator: New & Selected</a>)</p>
<p>His touch is light, his material is the experiences he knows and we do too and his feel for the drama lying in store for the most ordinary of us (living our clichéd lives) is somehow both seriously disturbing and finally settling. </p>
<p>He has been a poet who appreciates the largely unappreciated and passed-over aspects of workplaces, homes, marriages, streets and minds. So it is perhaps fitting he has now been recognised with a national award at 75. Perhaps at that moment in a life when a poet might think he has already passed unrecognised from most people’s view. </p>
<p>His poetry and his fiction surprisingly often turn to the Kafkaesque figure of an isolated everyman living slightly desperately but with an almost limitless potential for irony and humour. </p>
<p>One more poem offers a witty glimpse of this figure:</p>
<p>Homo Singularis </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He would drive his car on the wrong side<br>
of the seat, tried to obtain a licence to kill<br>
time, at work he displayed considerable skill<br>
at incompetence, at home he had to hide<br>
the dismissal notes under the mattress he screwed<br>
to the carpeted floor with nails. Rude<br></p>
<p>he was to a fault, nosey to boot,<br>
inconsiderate to snails, he locked himself into books<br>
of stamps and common prayer, funnelled his looks<br>
into singles bars and hardly ever stepped foot<br>
inside a song. Even his poems were too long. <br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>(from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-city-sonnetinas-Alex-Skovron/dp/0864185766">Infinite City: 100 Sonnetinas</a>) </p>
<p>To add to the detailed fun Skovron has with his compositions, we might notice the last line of this poem is its eleventh – in a book devoted to ten-line poems. </p>
<p>I would like to read, one day, Alex’s poem about this man receiving an award such as this.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216162/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin John Brophy 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>Melbourne writer Alex Skovron has been recognised with a national award at 75. Alongside his own work, Skovron’s quiet impact on poets and poetry in Melbourne has been immense.Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2139702023-10-23T01:01:10Z2023-10-23T01:01:10ZA classical espionage novel with shades of Le Carré, The Idealist explores the tumultuous path to East Timorese independence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553414/original/file-20231012-26-2qw88u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C13%2C4578%2C3416&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Baucau, Timor-Leste.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas Vuillemin/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/nicholas-jose-the-idealist/">The Idealist</a> is the eighth novel by respected Australian writer and academic <a href="https://nicholasjose.com.au/">Nick Jose</a>. Set in the turbulent period leading up to the referendum for East Timorese self-determination in 1999, the novel has the form of a political thriller, albeit one that remains restrained and meditative. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Idealist – Nick Jose (Giramondo).</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The “idealist” of the novel’s title is a former solider turned Defence analyst named Jake Treweek, who has been sent to Timor to provide intelligence on the evolving situation. Supplied with a false identity by the department, he poses as a plumber working for AUSAID. </p>
<p>The action takes place in the shadow of two dramatic ironies. The first, which is the condition of all historical fiction, is the irony that we – unlike the characters – know how this story turns out, at least in general terms. </p>
<p>The 1999 referendum was not without violence, but it did not yield the bloodbath that was feared, given the history of brutality since the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. In the period before the referendum, the presence of Australian-led UN troops INTERFET was crucial in quelling the violence that flared between rival militias and, in 2002, East Timor became officially independent.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553399/original/file-20231012-17-wrumrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553399/original/file-20231012-17-wrumrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553399/original/file-20231012-17-wrumrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553399/original/file-20231012-17-wrumrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553399/original/file-20231012-17-wrumrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553399/original/file-20231012-17-wrumrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553399/original/file-20231012-17-wrumrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553399/original/file-20231012-17-wrumrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The second dramatic irony comes directly from hardboiled detective fiction: we know from the outset that Jake is now dead. He died in an apparent suicide at his Washington DC apartment. His wife Anne found his body inside their car with the engine running and the exhaust funnelled into the interior. </p>
<p>The novel begins with Anne relating this story to their childhood friend, David, who is now a successful Sydney barrister. Jake, Anne and David had all grown up together in Adelaide, part of a circle of well-to-do families that also included Henry Hunt, who would go on to become Australia’s Foreign Minister.</p>
<p>Anne believes her husband’s death was suspicious and asks David to investigate. But the novel does not proceed in the form of an investigation. Instead, it shifts its focus back to Jake. The bulk of The Idealist, in particular the crucial East Timor segments, are narrated from his perspective. </p>
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<p>
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Read more:
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</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Espionage</h2>
<p>The Idealist is in many ways a classical espionage novel, replete with possible double agents, sultry expatriate hotels, Machiavellian politicians and exotic <em>femmes fatales</em>. That it all transpires in the very early days of the internet era, and before smart phones, gives that special charge to communication that made intelligence so alluring in this era. </p>
<p>Jake, though, is not quite the ice-cold agent that the genre has made familiar. He is a country boy and sometimes struggles to read the room. He falls in love with a beautiful Timorese woman and, though he is mindful of styling himself as a white saviour, this fantasy still captures him.</p>
<p>The drama of the story is generated by the fact that Jake is not supplying the version of events that his masters in Canberra want. When he is posted to Washington, he confides in his US counterpart, which proves embarrassing to Canberra and puts a target on his back.</p>
<p>The Idealist has some similarities with Jose’s earlier novels <a href="https://nicholasjose.com.au/the-red-thread/">The Red Thread</a> (2000) and <a href="https://nicholasjose.com.au/original-face/">Original Face</a> (2005), both of which have elements of the detective novel and the political thriller. It is not only a stylish addition to his oeuvre, but to the literature of Australian interactions with Indonesia.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554475/original/file-20231018-17-ccg6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554475/original/file-20231018-17-ccg6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554475/original/file-20231018-17-ccg6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554475/original/file-20231018-17-ccg6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554475/original/file-20231018-17-ccg6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554475/original/file-20231018-17-ccg6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554475/original/file-20231018-17-ccg6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554475/original/file-20231018-17-ccg6cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Any book about East Timor will revive, in Australian minds, the killing of five journalists covering the Indonesian invasion in the town of Balibo in 1975. But the book The Idealist will most likely call to mind is Christopher Koch’s classic novel <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9780732296483/the-year-of-living-dangerously/">The Year of Living Dangerously</a> (1978), which is set during the Indonesian political crisis of 1965 and follows a group of journalists who are covering the events from Jakarta. </p>
<p>While there are some resemblances to Koch’s novel in the plotting, texture and mise-en-scène of The Idealist, Jose’s heroes mostly eschew the braggadocio of the journalists in The Year of Living Dangerously. One of the novel’s interesting elements is that its central group of protagonists grew up together in the genteel environs of the Adelaide Hills. </p>
<p>In its early sections, which mostly follow the recently widowed Anne as she tries to make sense of the death of her husband, we are taken back to the formative years when she, Jake, David and Henry came together. We learn that Jake and Henry were schoolmates at a prestigious private school and that Jake, a scholarship kid from a poor farm on the Yorke Peninsula, was drawn into the orbit of Henry’s wealthy family. </p>
<p>Henry’s father was a federal Member of Parliament and it was widely understood that, in due course, Henry would succeed him in that seat. When we reach 1998, when most of the novel takes place, Henry has indeed succeeded his father and is now the Minister of Foreign Affairs faced with the complex situation in East Timor. </p>
<p>It is here that Jose’s fictional foreign minister must inevitably evoke his real-world counterpart, Alexander Downer. This historical parallel is an intriguing aspect of the novel, one that points to the fissure between its status as a fictional drama and its grounding in the real-world events of East Timor’s fight for independence.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553409/original/file-20231012-22-yovjf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553409/original/file-20231012-22-yovjf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553409/original/file-20231012-22-yovjf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553409/original/file-20231012-22-yovjf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553409/original/file-20231012-22-yovjf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553409/original/file-20231012-22-yovjf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553409/original/file-20231012-22-yovjf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/553409/original/file-20231012-22-yovjf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nick Jose.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://giramondopublishing.com/authors/nicholas-jose/">Roberto Finocchiaro/Giramondo</a></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
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</strong>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>The Idealist does not shy away from the problem of Australia’s motives. Indeed, a bibliography of sources and further reading is appended to the novel for the interested reader. Yet, while the question of Australia’s role is never fully answered, it is this uncertainty that drives the novel’s plot and provides the basic moral framework for the action.</p>
<p>Australia was deservedly commended for its role in securing East Timor’s independence. In the wake of Suharto’s downfall, the Howard government lobbied the new Indonesian leadership to hold a referendum to determine the people of East Timor’s preference. Prime Minister John Howard wrote directly to Suharto’s successor, President B.J. Habibie, proposing this as a way forward. The speed with which the suggestion was taken up came as something of a surprise to Australia.</p>
<p>Australia’s support for East Timorese independence was a dramatic change of position, reversing a quarter of a century of acquiescence to the violent seizure of the former Portuguese colony. The novel paints a picture of an Australian military and foreign affairs culture that had been more than happy with the status quo. Jake’s reports of abuses being committed in East Timor are generally minimised and recast within the preferred Indonesian narrative of domestic tensions.</p>
<p>The motives for the policy U-turn were no doubt complex, and the novel canvases a number of them. An important element was Australia’s interest in the subsea oil and gas reserves of the Timor Gap. Indeed, the persistence of East Timor in Australian consciousness is partly driven by the ongoing negotiations between the two nations regarding the ownership of this resource. The revelation that in 2004 Australia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93East_Timor_spying_scandal">planted listening devices in the offices of East Timorese negotiators</a> has led to a protracted dispute and the criminal prosecution of the Australian intelligence officer, known as Witness K, who blew the whistle.</p>
<p>The hard line Australia took in these negotiations with its tiny, impoverished neighbour sits uneasily with its support for independence. Why would Australia fight for East Timor’s political independence, then act so strongly against its economic independence? It lends some support to the suspicion that the oil and gas field was always in Australia’s sights and determining its policy stance. </p>
<p>In The Idealist, the significance of the energy asset in the Timor Gap becomes one of the sinister backdrops to what seems to be a story of liberation. Jose has spent time as a diplomat. He knows the language and psychology of these circles. He has written an intelligent and compelling political novel that draws its sensibility from the Cold War and has some of the stern elegance of John Le Carré. The Idealist captures the interplay of masculine rivalry and ambivalent patronage, animated by the peculiar eros that goes with work in “the field”, which seduces Jake and sends him on his fatal course.</p>
<p>The importance of ideals is one of the book’s key themes; it is what stops the geopolitics from remaining at the level of the Great Game. It is uncertain whether Jake’s ideals are ever clear to him. But in the end this is not quite as important as his intuition that decisions made by those in power can have dramatic effects on the lives of ordinary people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Hughes-d'Aeth 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>In The Idealist, the machinations of the Australian government become a sinister backdrop to what seems to be a story of liberation.Tony Hughes-d'Aeth, Professor, Chair of Australian Literature, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2129662023-10-19T02:13:47Z2023-10-19T02:13:47ZProperty woes and punk sensibilities define Paradise Estate, Max Easton’s witty new novel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549943/original/file-20230925-29-7lcla9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C3140%2C2093&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MPIX/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Max Easton’s novel <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/max-easton-paradise-estate/">Paradise Estate</a> offers a variation on the share-house drama epitomised by <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/monkey-grip">Monkey Grip</a> (1977), Helen Garner’s chronicle of communal living in Melbourne.</p>
<p>In contrast to the post-hippie lifestyle depicted in Garner’s novel, however, Paradise Estate engages with the difficulties of contemporary rental accommodation: skyrocketing prices, an overabundance of tenants and a dearth of potential abodes.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Paradise Estate – Max Easton (Giramondo)</em></p>
<hr>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549909/original/file-20230925-15-z6j3mj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549909/original/file-20230925-15-z6j3mj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549909/original/file-20230925-15-z6j3mj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549909/original/file-20230925-15-z6j3mj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549909/original/file-20230925-15-z6j3mj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549909/original/file-20230925-15-z6j3mj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549909/original/file-20230925-15-z6j3mj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549909/original/file-20230925-15-z6j3mj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>In the end, many of the generation depicted in Monkey Grip traded their communal flower-power ideals for individual gain by way of property investment. Young people today are faced with an economy that favours those already well established in the housing market. For many, long-term renting has become the norm and the idea of owning their own home is less a dream than an illusion.</p>
<p>But in Easton’s good-humoured novel there is little hint of bitterness toward those who have benefited from Australia’s housing market evolving into a Darwinian survival of the fittest. </p>
<h2>Concentrated living</h2>
<p>Although it acknowledges the grim truth that for many people home ownership is now out of reach, Easton’s novel is more concerned with the lives and histories of the “vibrant personalities” who reside in a rundown share house that the character Sunny dubs “Paradise Estate” – an allusion to a song by the British post-punk band <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Personalities">Television Personalities</a>. </p>
<p>The household dynamics are mediated by Helen, a character who also featured in Easton’s first book <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/the-magpie-wing/">The Magpie Wing</a> (2021). Helen moves in to Paradise Estate as a newly separated gay woman in her late thirties, her single status motivating her to find, and fill with tenants, a four-bedroom place in the Sydney suburb of Hurlstone Park. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551989/original/file-20231004-21-l3d04c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551989/original/file-20231004-21-l3d04c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551989/original/file-20231004-21-l3d04c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551989/original/file-20231004-21-l3d04c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551989/original/file-20231004-21-l3d04c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551989/original/file-20231004-21-l3d04c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551989/original/file-20231004-21-l3d04c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551989/original/file-20231004-21-l3d04c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>It is significant that Helen only secures the rental by pointing out its flaws to other prospective renters. In particular, it is drearily hemmed in by encircling apartments. Again and again, Easton’s novel highlights the tensions of a concentrated living that for many is no longer a temporary housing option, but a permanent circumstance.</p>
<p>The high-density living evokes the cinematic precedents of Alfred Hitchcock’s <a href="https://cinephiliabeyond.org/rear-window-hitchcocks-cinematic-exploration-voyeurism-disguised-top-notch-thriller/">Rear Window</a> (1954), a film that meditates on voyeurism via a protagonist who watches his neighbours through a telephoto lens, and Roman Polanski’s cult classic <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-tenant-1976">The Tenant</a> (1976), which dramatises a lodger’s paranoia – a condition intensified by the intrusive surveillance of his neighbours.</p>
<p>Paradise Estate is neither a Hitchcock thriller nor a Polanski horror, but it is keenly aware of the “stage-like” visibility of its central household. It is a novel where “seeing” is doubled: Easton’s characters are watched by their neighbours, who are scrutinised by us, as readers, overseeing the entirety of the drama. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-bon-and-lesley-shaun-prescott-has-written-an-australian-horror-story-of-uniquely-local-proportions-189134">In Bon and Lesley, Shaun Prescott has written an Australian horror story of uniquely local proportions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Humour and shared grief</h2>
<p>The lack of privacy becomes a source of humour when Sunny tries to entertain housemates and friends by performing a loud punk song in the exposed backyard:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Alice watched in horror as Sunny pulled back the drop sheet […] It revealed the drum kit Sunny promised not to use, and two amps that towered over the people sitting cross legged before them. The squealing of the guitar amp started at ten p.m. […] It drew neighbours to their balconies […] Four police marched down the side of the house.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sunny is a multifaceted character, who is referred to with the gender-neutral pronoun “they”. Easton neither declares nor heralds Sunny’s non-binary status. It is simply part of the fabric of the share house, and by extension a novel that foregrounds the manifold nature of identities and relationships.</p>
<p>The friendship between Sunny and Helen is particularly significant. Grief unites these central characters, both of whom are mourning the death of Helen’s brother Walt, who was once Sunny’s lover. </p>
<p>Sunny is motivated to preserve Walt’s revolutionary ideas — philosophies wedded to a now largely extinct punk sensibility. In fact, Sunny thinks so highly of Walt that they liken him to the late <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fisher">Mark Fisher</a>, a respected <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/mark-fishers-k-punk-and-the-futures-that-have-never-arrived">k-punk blogger</a>, whose <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-necessity-of-being-judgmental-on-k-punk-the-collected-and-unpublished-writings-of-mark-fisher/">analytical range</a> extended from politics to cultural criticism and music theory.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551994/original/file-20231004-25-y3hhl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551994/original/file-20231004-25-y3hhl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551994/original/file-20231004-25-y3hhl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551994/original/file-20231004-25-y3hhl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551994/original/file-20231004-25-y3hhl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551994/original/file-20231004-25-y3hhl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551994/original/file-20231004-25-y3hhl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551994/original/file-20231004-25-y3hhl1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mark Fisher.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_fisher.jpg">MACBA, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Easton’s prose is witty and sharp, and has an energising effect, but the commentary on music stretches the allusion to Fisher (one also made in the back-cover blurb). When the novel attempts to explore the politics of its characters through their aesthetic tastes, the passages lack Fisher’s philosophical complexity and can feel forced at times.</p>
<p>A crucial taped conversation between Sunny and Walt, for instance, records their discussion of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2017/11/16/16666306/taylor-swift-poptimism-2017">poptimism</a>, American rapper Cardi B, and punk rock. Walt suggests that in the late 1970s, the introduction of Top 40 music into rock clubs undermined the punk “underground”. Sunny quips: “That’s just a 2019 way of saying ‘Disco Sucks’.” </p>
<p>The term “disco sucks” has racist, sexist and homophobic connotations. As British music journalist Alex Petridis <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jul/19/disco-demolition-the-night-they-tried-to-crush-black-music">observes</a>, disco was “predominantly made by black artists, dominated by female stars and with a core audience that was, at least initially, largely gay”. Fisher would hardly have approved of this kind of blithe allusion to an ugly backlash against a crucial musical and social movement.</p>
<p>It is only after some quite confusing back-and-forth in the taped dialogue between Sunny and Walt – a minor readability flaw in the book – that a female character finally comes along and clearly articulates all that is wrong with a culture that has long had men at its centre. Sunny’s acerbic flatmate Beth, who has a unique ability to call out bullshit, points out that “hardcore punk” may be associated with “toxic masculinity”, but to her mind it’s “toxic <em>boyhood</em>”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551990/original/file-20231004-15-gnonhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551990/original/file-20231004-15-gnonhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551990/original/file-20231004-15-gnonhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551990/original/file-20231004-15-gnonhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551990/original/file-20231004-15-gnonhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551990/original/file-20231004-15-gnonhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551990/original/file-20231004-15-gnonhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551990/original/file-20231004-15-gnonhe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Max Easton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://giramondopublishing.com/authors/max-easton/">Del Lumanta/Giramondo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/reality-and-fantasy-combine-in-immaculate-anna-mcgahans-award-winning-debut-novel-209853">Reality and fantasy combine in Immaculate, Anna McGahan's award-winning debut novel</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A 21st-century commune</h2>
<p>The desire for a collectivism that might counter the alienation of modern city dwelling is voiced many times in Paradise Estate.</p>
<p>Flatmate Nathan is particularly keen to convert the Hurlstone dwelling into a self-sufficient commune, with the aid of his long-suffering girlfriend Alice, an enthusiastic gardener who can’t grow anything. In another comical moment, Helen observes how her flatmates treat Nathan with suspicion because of his over-reliance on the royal pronoun “we” , which she describes as the “sociopath’s first person”.</p>
<p>Nathan is indeed a potential cult leader, who works as a casual history tutor by day, but is also the self-appointed leader of a left-wing group called “The Centre”. The most extraordinary thing to come out of Nathan’s “Centre” is Dale, an antisocial alcoholic, whose residency in the share house is short-lived. He causes an outbreak of maggots, stalks flatmate Beth, and is finally caught masturbating with his bedroom door ajar.</p>
<p>Dale is an apolitical whirlwind who leaves a mark on flatmates and readers alike — so much so that his replacement “Rocco” is christened the “anti-Dale”. He brings a grunge element to the house and the novel. </p>
<p>In a way, he resembles the dissipated character of Gordon Buchanan in Andrew McGahan’s <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Andrew-McGahan-Praise-9781741147728/">Praise</a> (1992). But unlike Gordon, who is sexually active, Dale is sex-starved. His frustration produces more up-to-date comedy when his thinly veiled <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/16/us/incel-involuntary-celibate-explained-cec/index.html">incel</a> status is revealed through his drunken protests about a so-called “wave of sex negativity”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These days, no one wants to talk about sex. And people aren’t fucking as much either.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The dream of a share-house commune is not realised, as genuine collaboration and community is sabotaged by egotism. Helen’s assessment of Nathan comes true, though he proves to be more narcissist than sociopath. The novel follows the trajectory of the share house’s disintegration, closing with the scattering of its characters, who seek shelter and safety elsewhere. What stands out from the emotional rubble is Alice’s hilarious assessment of her ex-flatmates and Nathan:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She closed her eyes, feeling hopeless, carted away by her boyfriend the plagiarist, away from her housemates that included an animal killer, a hoarder, a self-described spinster, and a wannabe concubine…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Alice’s descriptions capture the wit of Easton’s novel. Yet despite its exposure of the frailties and shortcomings of its characters, Paradise Estate retains a sense of compassion and humanity. Fittingly, it ends with the three characters who have upheld its moral and psychological world – Helen, Sunny and Walt – and the completion of Sunny’s labour of love: Walt’s collected writings, titled “Walt Coleman’s Unpublishable Works of (Non)Fiction”.</p>
<p>Easton has produced an ultra-contemporary novel that references pop music, COVID 19, Donald Trump, the storming of the Capitol building, Twitter (now X), TikTok and the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. These references run the risk of quickly dating the text, but Paradise Estate should transcend the present. Its witty and intelligent chronicle of share-house living and micro-world of complex politics and idealistic desires ultimately speak to broader social concerns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Suzie 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>Paradise Estate is a good-humoured depiction of the travails of share-house living, with a political edge.Suzie Gibson, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2127682023-10-16T02:17:09Z2023-10-16T02:17:09ZDeath, grief and survival: two new Australian novels reinvent the elegy for an age of climate catastrophe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549967/original/file-20230925-25-14s1zu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C4%2C1493%2C1057&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Weeping Woman– Rembrandt (c.1645)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Circle_of_Rembrandt_-_A_Woman_Weeping,_mid-_to_late_1640s,_56.183.jpg">Public domain</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Gretchen Shirm’s <a href="https://transitlounge.com.au/shop/the-crying-room/">The Crying Room</a> and Briohny Doyle’s <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/why-we-are-here-9781760899639">Why We Are Here</a> share a preoccupation with death and grief and what it means to live on, without intimate others, during a climate crisis. Both novels feature protagonists who lose parents and partners, and both explore their themes via writer-narrators who are producing fictions. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The Crying Room – Gretchen Shirm (Transit Lounge); Why We Are Here – Briohny Doyle (Vintage)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Shirm’s book takes the form of a series of interlinked stories. We are introduced to the concept of the “crying room” by Monica, who is writing a story about her aunt Susie, who has played a motherly role in her life. </p>
<p>In the story, Susie is employed by a crying room where people go to express their emotions. She admires these “criers”, who labour in the dark to “make something” out of what they feel:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They reminded Susie of miners in a cave, with a small circle of light above them to illuminate their features. She thought of the clink, clink, clink of sharp metal implements chipping away patiently at cold, dark, stone. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In another story, titled “The Plane that Fell Out of the Sky”, Shirm uses marginal notes that run parallel to the main text to tell us more about Monica’s life as an author. Monica publishes a book that her publisher describes as “elegiac” – though she “didn’t understand where it came from, this pervasive sense of loss”. </p>
<p>Her publisher asks her to change the title: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>couldn’t we have some happiness here? […] Not everyone is <em>this</em> sad. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But Monica resists this request, reflecting that it is more challenging to write about happiness:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>there was a time component to happiness; it accumulated over months, across years. Sadness on the other hand, and grief – those emotions had their own definition and shape.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549247/original/file-20230920-29-skvpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549247/original/file-20230920-29-skvpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549247/original/file-20230920-29-skvpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549247/original/file-20230920-29-skvpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549247/original/file-20230920-29-skvpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549247/original/file-20230920-29-skvpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549247/original/file-20230920-29-skvpfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The use of Monica as the author of the more surreal parts of the book gives The Crying Room a complex, layered quality. The strategy allows Shirm to experiment with perspective and disrupt realist conventions while exploring the emotional lives of three generations of women.</p>
<p>Monica is at the end of a line of women who are ambivalent about mothering. Her grandmother, Bernie, loved her young daughters intensely but hyper-critically, making them feel uncomfortable with themselves: “withdrawing was a tactic she’d used on them as girls, and only now she saw what it had done.” </p>
<p>Her aunt Susie is a paediatric oncologist, who is unable to have a baby of her own, but believes that she can provide Monica with a better life than her seemingly unsympathetic sister Allison. At 11 years of age, Monica escapes Allison and is taken into the care of her aunt. “Susie had always expected to feel affection towards her; what she hadn’t anticipated was the blind feeling that surged up, the love.”</p>
<p>Susie’s relationship with Monica causes a breach in her relationship with her husband Will, who feels they are co-dependent – especially when Susie spends nights sleeping in Monica’s room to soothe her. When his Malaysian Airlines flight goes down, his loss is felt immediately. Susie spends years mired in grief searching for answers, which eventually leads to an encounter with Will’s “double” in a story called “The Closure Company”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549251/original/file-20230920-27-y20eo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549251/original/file-20230920-27-y20eo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549251/original/file-20230920-27-y20eo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549251/original/file-20230920-27-y20eo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549251/original/file-20230920-27-y20eo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=796&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549251/original/file-20230920-27-y20eo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549251/original/file-20230920-27-y20eo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549251/original/file-20230920-27-y20eo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gretchen Shirm, author of The Crying Room.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://transitlounge.com.au/book-author/gretchen-shirm/">Transit Lounge.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The story almost certainly draws on the Japanese concept of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rental_family_service">rental family service</a>: a professional stand-in service that provides clients with actors who portray friends, family members or co-workers. Susie seeks a stand-in for Will so she can ask him why he left, but she finds the experience more agitating than calming. </p>
<p>The stories “The Crying Room” and “The Closure Company” are ostensibly inventions of Monica the author. But they also speak to Shirm’s interest in accessing emotion through ritual and simulation. Through her writing Monica begins to recognise the patterns running through the matriarchal line of the family, which in turn encourages her to find her way back to her biological mother. </p>
<p>Bernie’s later-life friendship with Narelle, a First Nations woman, educates her in local history and teaches her about children: “you have to let them cry so they know what they feel”. She comes to appreciate the apple tree planted in the empty chicken coop, which she had scoffed at when Susie gave it to her years ago. </p>
<p>The tree, growing against the odds in a hot climate, amid the bones of a long-dead calf, symbolises hope.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-at-first-you-dont-succeed-lie-lie-again-in-a-country-of-eternal-light-paul-dalgarno-explores-a-life-fragmented-by-grief-196112">'If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again' – in A Country of Eternal Light, Paul Dalgarno explores a life fragmented by grief</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Distruped expectations</h2>
<p>Briohny Doyle’s Why We Are Here, which might be labelled as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-autofiction-turns-the-personal-into-the-political-192180">autofiction</a>, also disrupts expectations. The novel is narrated by a character named BB after the death of her partner, who is referred to only as “Him” or “He”, possibly to indicate his outsized role in her life. </p>
<p>BB moves to Balboa Bay, a suburb of Silver City (Sydney), after spending part of the pandemic in Highborne (Melbourne), only to be locked down again. She lives in a condemned apartment, with trappings of faded grandeur, making Silver City almost affordable. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549249/original/file-20230920-15-tn0itr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549249/original/file-20230920-15-tn0itr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549249/original/file-20230920-15-tn0itr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549249/original/file-20230920-15-tn0itr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549249/original/file-20230920-15-tn0itr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549249/original/file-20230920-15-tn0itr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549249/original/file-20230920-15-tn0itr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549249/original/file-20230920-15-tn0itr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&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>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At first, she shares the apartment with Franz, a European man who has different taste: he prefers minimalism, while she is enamoured by rich colourful Almodóvarian interiors. When Franz is expelled by the closing of the borders, BB remains alone with her dog Baby and spectral visitations from “Him”.</p>
<p>The relaxed beach lifestyle at Balboa Bay is a stark contrast with BB’s Highborne existence, though it is regularly punctuated by the loudspeaker of the nearby prison. BB imagines these pronouncements are philosophical observations by Simone Weil, whose book <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gravity-and-Grace/Weil/p/book/9780415290012">Gravity and Grace</a> she reads as a “vision of surrender”. </p>
<p>The dog Baby and BB constant continually “telegraph” to each other. A long passage is devoted to Baby’s telegraphed thoughts about their relationship and the transience of other people through their lives:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>You are still here but there are those who are no longer with you. Tall man. Old Man. Upstairs Man. Snack girl […] We have a good thing going this with me. Let’s keep doing with me please I don’t care where as long as breakfast dinner. Now sandwich</em>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This technique is reminiscent of <a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/the-animals-in-that-country-9781925849530">The Animals In That Country</a> (2020), a novel by Doyle’s contemporary Laura Jean McKay, which forged new ways of writing non-human speech.</p>
<p>To divert herself, BB begins training local dogs during the pandemic pet boom, after her neighbour invites her to train his Doberman who is enraged by golfers shouting “FORE!” on the range next door. She thinks: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>perhaps this is the thing I’ve been waiting for. A calling to locate me in space and time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although she finds a language to engage with troubled dogs like the Doberman, she’s distrusted by local trainers who see her as competition.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-unreliable-narrator-and-a-stormy-relationship-propel-stephanie-bishops-moody-new-novel-200438">An unreliable narrator and a stormy relationship propel Stephanie Bishop's moody new novel</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Elegy</h2>
<p>BB lets us into her thinking about the work that we are reading, providing clues about how to decode it. She has conversations with a friend about what she is attempting:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Maybe what I’m writing isn’t really fiction, anyhow. Maybe it’s elegy. For Him, but also, for everything else. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>They decide that elegy is having a moment, but that it’s also “problematic, Judeo-Christian, colonial, or at the very least nostalgic”.</p>
<p>Such interpretations and valuations become a key theme. BB realises that “different deaths read differently”. Some are unsurprising; others are regarded as tragic. When she writes about the deaths of her partner and father, editors tactfully suggest that the circumstances of their deaths need to be explicated, so people can decide how to interpret them. This is necessary for “feeding the trauma economy”, another of BB’s friends tells her. </p>
<p>BB’s partner and father wrestled with addiction and poor mental health, placing them in the category of “regrettable but inevitable outcomes of choice or circumstance”. But in elegy, the way a person dies is not the point. </p>
<p>Stuck in a loop, BB repeatedly imagines His death, and that of her father:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I had an escape hatch that opened into His last moments in this world, I would jump right in and close it tight behind me. Only sometimes though.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549260/original/file-20230920-26-z9wy36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549260/original/file-20230920-26-z9wy36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549260/original/file-20230920-26-z9wy36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549260/original/file-20230920-26-z9wy36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549260/original/file-20230920-26-z9wy36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549260/original/file-20230920-26-z9wy36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549260/original/file-20230920-26-z9wy36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549260/original/file-20230920-26-z9wy36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Briohny Doyle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.penguin.com.au/authors/briohny-doyle">Nash Ferguson/Penguin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>BB comes to understand that the pandemic is experienced differently by people who haven’t been through the deaths of loved ones. Her grief keeps her at a distance from everyone, even her love interests, Vera and Franz: a hot ranger and sexy golfer.</p>
<p>She also sporadically inhabits a “university that turned into a grid of squares”. During her online creative writing classes, she talks to her students about how to make writing work. Through these conversations, we sense BB’s desire to challenge form. </p>
<p>Why We Are Here is not a plot-driven novel. It’s an open-ended, digressive book that tackles challenging ideas. Having written about climate futures for some years, notably in her novels <a href="http://www.briohny-doyle.com/the-island-will-sink">This Island Will Sink</a> (2016) and <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/echolalia-9781760899615">Echolalia</a> (2021), Doyle provides multiple resolutions for the reader to choose between. </p>
<p>One of the less palatable options is death, fire and pestilence. In this version, water rises up through the condemned apartment, pulling it off its mooring and sending it down the street towards a deluge “that used to be an infinite golf course”.</p>
<p>With the climate catastrophe looming in the background, Doyle and Shirm are renovating the elegy for the current moment. These works are preoccupied with the aftermath of individual deaths. They show us how we might go on, despite the inevitable losses still ahead of us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212768/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brigid Magner 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>The latest books by Gretchen Shirm and Briony Doyle are preoccupied with the aftermaths of recent deaths.Brigid Magner, Associate Professor in Literary Studies, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147242023-10-04T19:05:24Z2023-10-04T19:05:24ZPatrick White was the first Australian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature – 50 years later, is he still being read?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551955/original/file-20231004-27-unbcb6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C0%2C3982%2C2994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Patrick White c.1940</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Patrick_White_writer.jpg">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Did you know that 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Patrick White winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Australian writer to be so honoured? </p>
<p>Until last week, neither did I. Nor did many of my fellow academics. As a lover of White’s writing, I was shocked by my own lack of awareness, which was quickly overshadowed by the realisation that seemingly everyone had overlooked it. Surely someone must have commented? </p>
<p>As far as I have been able to find, there has been one article back in autumn by Barnaby Smith in the NSW State Library’s magazine <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/openbook_autumn23.pdf">Openbook</a> and few Twitter posts similarly aghast at the neglect. </p>
<p>By contrast, you are more than likely aware that this October marks the 50th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House, officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II two days after the announcement of White’s award. As David Marr recounts in his biography of White, when the photographers crowding around White’s house were asked if they could come back in the morning, they replied: “We have to do the Queen in the morning.” </p>
<h2>Cultural cringe</h2>
<p>When I first began thinking about writing this piece, I was motivated by a sense of frustration that White – and Australian literature more generally – was again being neglected. </p>
<p>My first thought could be summarised as follows: “How dare they forget him! There should have been conferences and celebrations – a festival that would leave the Opera House in the dust! Imagine the furore if Ireland had forgotten Beckett’s 50th anniversary in 2019! What a contemptuous place this is that can neglect an important occasion for one of its greatest writers!”</p>
<p>Previous anniversaries had received significant attention. The 50th anniversary of White’s best-known novel Voss in 2007 was marked with a <a href="https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/remembering-patrick-white">two-day symposium</a>. The centenary of his birth in 2012 was likewise acknowledged with <a href="http://www.asaa.net.au/files/PATRICK%20WHITE%20CENTENARY%20-%20Speakers%20v3.pdf">conferences</a> in Australia and various international locations.</p>
<p>What was different about this anniversary? </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551942/original/file-20231004-29-ladl5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551942/original/file-20231004-29-ladl5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551942/original/file-20231004-29-ladl5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551942/original/file-20231004-29-ladl5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551942/original/file-20231004-29-ladl5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551942/original/file-20231004-29-ladl5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551942/original/file-20231004-29-ladl5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551942/original/file-20231004-29-ladl5c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Patrick White in October 1973.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Patrick_White_1973.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite my anger, should I really have been that surprised? Last semester, I had quizzed my first year Literary Studies students to see if anyone knew who our first Nobel laureate in literature was. </p>
<p>Silence. </p>
<p>When I told them, no one had heard of Patrick White, let alone read him. </p>
<p>The same goes for Miles Franklin (both the author and the prize), Christina Stead and Joseph Furphy, just to name the canonical writers I thought they might have known. Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson were the only two to receive a reprieve. </p>
<p>Contemporary Australian authors didn’t fare much better. When I asked them why they didn’t read much Australian literature, the most frequent answer – usually tempered with laughter – was: “Well, I guess it’s just not very good, is it?”</p>
<p>Here is the opportune time to introduce the impossible to avoid concept of the “<a href="https://meanjin.com.au/essays/the-cultural-cringe-by-a-a-phillips/">cultural cringe</a>”, the term coined by A.A. Phillips in 1950. The cringe, Phillips wrote, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>mainly appears in an inability to escape needless comparisons. The Australian reader, more or less consciously, hedges and hesitates, asking himself ‘Yes, but what would a cultivated Englishman think of this?’ </p>
</blockquote>
<p>When it comes to White’s reception, especially post-Nobel, the cringe is everywhere apparent. It was fostered by the prize citation itself. For the Nobel committee, White was worthy of the prize because he had created an “epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature”. </p>
<p>As many people have highlighted, White’s Nobel was a watershed moment of international recognition for Australian literature. It would be followed by Thomas Keneally winning the Booker Prize in 1982 for <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/schindlers-ark">Schindler’s Ark</a> and Peter Carey winning of the same award in 1988 for <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/books/oscar-and-lucinda">Oscar and Lucinda</a>. </p>
<p>Here were signs, at last, that Australians could produce real literature – at least, according to Europe and Britain. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/minimalist-poet-antigone-kefala-wins-the-patrick-white-award-for-her-contribution-to-australian-literature-195194">Minimalist poet Antigone Kefala wins the Patrick White Award for her contribution to Australian literature</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A writer unread?</h2>
<p>White’s relationship to Australian literature was always shaky, if not outright venomous. He infamously chastised mainstream Australian writing as little more than the “dreary dun-coloured offspring of journalistic realism”. </p>
<p>Many Australian readers were happy to return the favour. His local critical reception was often uncomprehending, and at times hostile. A.D. Hope’s similarly infamous review of <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-tree-of-man-9781741667707">The Tree of Man</a> judged the novel to be “pretentious and illiterate verbal sludge”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551926/original/file-20231003-29-6sre11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551926/original/file-20231003-29-6sre11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551926/original/file-20231003-29-6sre11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551926/original/file-20231003-29-6sre11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551926/original/file-20231003-29-6sre11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551926/original/file-20231003-29-6sre11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551926/original/file-20231003-29-6sre11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551926/original/file-20231003-29-6sre11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&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 first U.S. edition of The Tree Of Man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tree_of_Man#/media/File:TheTreeOfMan.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>White’s uneven reception reflected an anxiety about what Australian literature actually was. This is still a live issue in literary studies. The preeminent questions asked in undergraduate Australian literature units are still: What is Australian literature? What counts as Australian literature? What is the writer’s relationship to the “nation”? </p>
<p>But these questions are today asked within the context of ever-diminishing Australian literature programs at universities, where you will be lucky to find one that offers more than one unit about it, and sometimes not even that. On these grounds, one could easily conclude that White’s star has diminished. Madeleine Watts, in her 2019 article, appropriately titled <a href="https://lithub.com/on-patrick-white-australias-great-unread-novelist/">On Patrick White, Australia’s Great Unread Novelist</a>, would certainly agree. </p>
<p>Christos Tsiolkas makes a similar argument in his <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/patrick-white">2018 book on White</a> for Black Inc.’s “Writers on Writers” series. He reflects that his desire to write the book emerged out of a “sense of pissed-offness” at not having been made to engage with White earlier by “my tutors, my fellow writers and our critics”. </p>
<p>That Watts and Tsiolkas are both novelists themselves might explain their fervour for White, a writer who fits well under the moniker a “writer’s writer”. And yet White’s reputation has always been tied up with the myth of him being a great “unread” novelist. Watts herself quotes a letter White wrote in 1981, in the last decade of his life, in which he declared: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m a dated novelist, whom hardly anyone reads, or if they do, most of them don’t understand what I am on about. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is not even close to the only time White voiced such frustrations. They are littered throughout his letters and documented in David Marr’s biography. Equally, one of the clichéd tenets of White scholarship has been an attempt to figure out whether we should continue to read him or not – as if this were really the fundamental question on everyone’s mind.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551934/original/file-20231004-19-dta6rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551934/original/file-20231004-19-dta6rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551934/original/file-20231004-19-dta6rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551934/original/file-20231004-19-dta6rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551934/original/file-20231004-19-dta6rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551934/original/file-20231004-19-dta6rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551934/original/file-20231004-19-dta6rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551934/original/file-20231004-19-dta6rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>So many of our contemporary discussions about literature – when we remember to have them – constellate around issues that are really at the service of generating discourse about “literature”, rather than genuine criticism and engagement with its artistic qualities. </p>
<p>I’m drawn to these debates as much as anyone. The questions of why literature matters and what makes it meaningful should be discussed frequently. They are some of the most interesting questions we can ask. But the problem with these discussions, and the perpetual crisis of the humanities and literature that we hear about so much, is that they distract us from what is actually meaningful about literature: reading it. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/homemade-and-cosmopolitan-the-idiosyncratic-writing-of-gerald-murnane-continues-to-attract-devotees-210271">Homemade and cosmopolitan, the idiosyncratic writing of Gerald Murnane continues to attract devotees</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Reputation</h2>
<p>When I set out to the write this piece, I wanted to follow through on my anger. I wanted to claim that it was a scandal White had been forgotten by our cultural institutions, that it was a sign of our degraded cultural state. But the more I have thought about it, the more I have been drawn to the idea that maybe, just maybe, this is the best thing that could happen to White and Australian literary culture more broadly.</p>
<p>Ever since he won the Nobel prize, White has been unable to escape the institutional framing of his work, whether he is being critiqued negatively or positively. The question that is asked of White is not just “should we read him”, but should we <em>study</em> him. He has been bound up in cultural debates that may never cease. </p>
<p>White’s reputation as a canonical writer, and more specifically as a “difficult” modernist author and a “writer’s writer”, is a disaster when it comes to getting people, including students, to actually read him. He is not only the kind of writer one would expect to study at school and university; many people assume he can only be read in those contexts. </p>
<p>Of course, White is a difficult writer, though it is often overlooked that he can also be funny, especially in his depictions of suburbia. A favourite scene is this one in <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-cockatoos-text-classics">The Cockatoos</a>, describing an existential choice familiar to every Australian:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Olive Davoren fell asleep, a pillow-end between shoulder and cheek, like a violin.</p>
<p>She had noticed seed at Woolworths and Coles; it was only a matter of choosing.</p>
<p>One of the birds was pecking at her womb. He rejected it as though finding a husk.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What has never been in doubt is the beauty and sensuality of White’s writing. When reading him, I often feel like Laura Trevelyan in <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/voss-9781742756882">Voss</a>, listening to the eponymous German explorer:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She did not raise her head for those the German spoke, but heard them fall, and loved their shape. So far departed from the rational level to which she had determined to adhere, her own thoughts were grown obscure, even natural. She did not care. It was lovely. She would have liked to sit upon a rock and listen to words, not of any man, but detached, mysterious, poetic words that she alone would interpret through some sense inherited from sleep. Herself disembodied. Air joining air experiences a voluptuousness no less intense because imperceptible.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551933/original/file-20231004-21-ajfugr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551933/original/file-20231004-21-ajfugr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551933/original/file-20231004-21-ajfugr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551933/original/file-20231004-21-ajfugr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551933/original/file-20231004-21-ajfugr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551933/original/file-20231004-21-ajfugr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1177&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551933/original/file-20231004-21-ajfugr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1177&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551933/original/file-20231004-21-ajfugr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1177&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
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<p>The more we can learn to read White in this spirit – absolving our rational forms of scholarly detachment, just a bit – the more we might be able to read him as it has always been possible to read him: listening to the shape of his words, their voluptuousness.</p>
<p>Imagine, perverse as this may sound, if White never won the Nobel prize? Could it be possible that the reading of his work would be in a better place today? At the very least, we wouldn’t have nearly as much of the “pretentious and illiterate verbal sludge” – to borrow a phrase – that is obsessed with the discourse around White, rather than his actual works.</p>
<p>Literary prizes, as <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/heat/archive/beth-driscoll-how-prizes-work-in-the-literary-economy/">Beth Driscoll</a> has highlighted, have become an essential part of literary culture. They provide many benefits for winning writers. The domestic and international sales of White’s books greatly increased in the years after he won the Nobel. If he had never won, it’s perfectly conceivable that his work would now be out-of-print. </p>
<p>But the aura of a prize shines briefly. Sometimes it might fade after a week, a year, sometimes 50. But it will fade. What remains is the work itself.</p>
<p>Immediately after the Nobel Prize announcement in 1973, White was interviewed on television by Mike Carlton. Asked whether the prize was a “crowning achievement”, White responded: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I hope my books are the crowning achievement of my career, not awards. But perhaps that is vain. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Vain or not, it would seem, maybe until now, that the award has been the crowning achievement. In light of the neglect of its 50th anniversary, maybe we can start to read White again – read him as aesthetically-minded individuals, not as institutions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214724/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Reuben Mackey 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>The aura of a major literary prize will inevitably fade. What we are left with is the work itself.Reuben Mackey, Sessional teacher and PhD Candidate, Literary Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2145522023-09-28T05:05:12Z2023-09-28T05:05:12ZA journey of discovery and identity formation: The Dictionary of Lost Words makes its wonderful stage debut<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550806/original/file-20230928-23-jx07r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C17%2C5855%2C3880&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Roberts/State Theatre Company of South Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Dictionary of Lost Words follows Esme as she navigates the patriarchal world of Victorian England. While her father and colleagues construct the Oxford English Dictionary, Esme begins to form her own dictionary – particularly the words spoken by women and the working class who have been excluded. </p>
<p>Along the way she is buffeted by the seismic events of the early 20th century in the suffrage movement and the first world war.</p>
<p>Verity Laughton’s stage adaptation of Pip Williams’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-the-dictionary-of-lost-words-by-pip-williams-132503">best-selling book</a> is a wonderful work.</p>
<p>We are introduced to a crusty world of dedicated male lexicologists who are gathered together in the shed, or “scriptorium”, of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Murray_(lexicographer)">Sir James Murray</a>, played with erudite Scottish enunciation by Chris Pitman. They valiantly set out to construct volumes of meaning for words from the letters of the alphabet – with a hint of empire-building about the enterprise.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-the-dictionary-of-lost-words-by-pip-williams-132503">Book review: The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A brilliant innovation</h2>
<p>Tilda Cobham-Hervey makes a standout return to the stage carrying the central character of Esme. </p>
<p>We first see her as an ingénue child hiding under the large desk of the eminent lexicologists. Her direct address to the audience draws us into her perspective of what is occurring around her. </p>
<p>As she grows, her curiosity about the world deepens while her determination to be her own person strengthens, in spite of the limited opportunities for women. Cobham-Hervey navigates this journey of discovery and identity formation with a surety of purpose and endows Esme with a passion for words and their meaning.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C0%2C6761%2C4521&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman reads a letter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C0%2C6761%2C4521&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550805/original/file-20230928-21-i32lbl.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>
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<span class="caption">Tilda Cobham-Hervey makes a standout return to the stage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Roberts/State Theatre Company of South Australia</span></span>
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<p>In a brilliant innovation from designer Jonathon Oxlade we see words handwritten and projected from a camera hidden within a lamp above the central desk. This also enables the cast to indicate the location and the passing of time at the beginning of each scene – always a challenge when moving across the many scenes a novel brings. Postcards from locations are projected on a curved back-screen that echoes the diorama and magic lantern popular at the time. </p>
<p>Below the screen are immense rows of pigeonholes where the slips of paper containing word meanings are filed. In a neat twist, these pigeonholes become letterboxes as Esme distributes pamphlets for the women’s movement when she is converted to the cause by the suffragette Tilda, given appropriate boldness by Angela Mahlatjie.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Projected postcards above blue-lit pigeonholes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550808/original/file-20230928-19-rssir2.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>
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<span class="caption">Jonathon Oxlade’s set echoes the diorama and magic lantern popular at the time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Roberts/State Theatre Company of South Australia</span></span>
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<p>Lighting designer Trent Suidgeest sweeps diverse colours across the pigeonholes, also lit within, with the various hues accompanying the emotional arc of the play. </p>
<p>Composer Max Lyandvert adds fine and sensitive nuances to his score, which heightens the total theatre nature of the experience. A stylised version of Auld Lang Syne becomes a motif for the passing of those close to Esme, notably her father Harry, given dignity and depth by Brett Archer.</p>
<h2>A beautiful realisation</h2>
<p>Director Jessica Arthur handles the cast and use of video well. An inspired touch is having the ensemble move slowly behind key monologues and duologues, adding intricate detail. When Esme gives birth we see her mouth magnified by the live camera, in a close-up that amplifies the intensity of the birth.</p>
<p>Cobham-Hervey is supported by a fine ensemble who succinctly double up as required in Laughton’s economy of writing. Rachel Burke brings dynamism to Lizzie Lester, Esme’s “bondmaid”. Ksenja Logos doubles well between Esme’s supportive aunt and the rowdy and endearing market stallholder Mabel. </p>
<p>The market scene is one of the triumphs for the ensemble as it bustles with liveliness. The audience explodes with laughter as Esme discovers swear words though the indomitable Mabel. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a shawl and rags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550807/original/file-20230928-19-p2hdkn.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>
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<span class="caption">Ksenja Logos plays the rowdy and endearing market stallholder Mabel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Roberts/State Theatre Company of South Australia</span></span>
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<p>In the quieter second half, Raj Labade brings a warmth to Gareth, Esme’s suitor. Esme must first confess her dalliance with a former lover, Bill Taylor, played by Anthony Yangoyan with rakish charm. This is brilliantly shown by the ensemble as a flashback, where Esme has to make the agonising choice between keeping her illegitimate child, with the social consequences of the time, or giving her child away, with the accompanying grief that would follow. </p>
<p>As with Williams’ book, the play ends with an abrupt shift to 1989 and to Esme’s long-lost daughter who begins a speech with the Kaurna welcome “Niina marni”.</p>
<p>Williams’ intention is to highlight that the struggle for inclusivity continues, in particular for Indigenous languages. However, having spent so long with Esme, this feels like a rupture within the narrative – which indeed may be the purpose. </p>
<p>“Realised” might be defined as to give shape to an artform. This is a very clever realisation of Williams’ novel for the stage and gives great power to key moments of this epic story.</p>
<p><em>The Dictionary of Lost Words is at the State Theatre Company of South Australia until October 14, then at the Sydney Theatre Company from October 26 to December 16.</em></p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pip-williams-shows-how-world-war-i-transformed-womens-lives-in-a-new-novel-that-captures-the-poetic-materiality-of-books-199416">Pip Williams shows how World War I transformed women's lives, in a new novel that captures the 'poetic materiality' of books</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214552/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Russell Fewster has worked with State Theatre Company of South Australia in co-ordinating the second year course State Theatre Masterclass at the University of South Australia.</span></em></p>Verity Laughton’s stage adaptation of Pip Williams’ best-selling book is a a very clever realisation.Russell Fewster, Lecturer in Performing Arts, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2102712023-09-07T00:50:36Z2023-09-07T00:50:36ZHomemade and cosmopolitan, the idiosyncratic writing of Gerald Murnane continues to attract devotees<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546544/original/file-20230906-19-iajdvc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5850%2C3800&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Luke/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some time ago, I taught Gerald Murnane’s <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/barley-patch/">Barley Patch</a> (2009) and then, a little later, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-plains">The Plains</a> (1982) in two separate undergraduate courses. Each course was concerned, in specific ways, with postmodernism. </p>
<p>Already by then a rather outdated term, “postmodernism” never quite gelled with Murnane’s writing. But what I really wanted was for my students to read these unusual books in which “very little happens”. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Murnane – Emmett Stinson (Miegunyah Press)</em></p>
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<p>It is with this exact observation that Emmett Stinson begins his new critical study of Murnane. From the outset, he warns novice readers about the lack of conventional plotting in Murnane’s books, where there is “no rising action, no conflict, no dramatic tension, no resolution”. </p>
<p>This simply stated caveat foreshadows a theme that Stinson develops later: that of Murnane’s preference for the <em>via negativa</em> – an approach to “truth” through negatives, non-disclosure, absence and silence. </p>
<p>The inductive movement here, from simple statement to complex concept, exemplifies Stinson’s reading of Murnane. Direct observations lead to a sophisticated analysis of this most idiosyncratic of Australian writers. </p>
<p>Written for Miegunyah Press’s “Contemporary Australian Writers” series, Stinson’s <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/murnane-paperback-softback">Murnane</a> is compact and accessible, designed to interest potential and beginning readers of Murnane. Yet the book also offers plenty of new ideas to interest well-versed Murnanians and refresh the thinking of professional critics, scholars and academics.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-case-for-gerald-murnanes-the-plains-26797">The case for Gerald Murnane's The Plains</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The breathing author</h2>
<p>Born in 1939, Gerald Murnane lived for much of his life in suburban Melbourne. He has rarely travelled outside his home state of Victoria. </p>
<p>After a brief stint as a seminarian, Murnane trained as a teacher, then taught in primary schools from 1960 to 1968. In 1969, he graduated with a BA from Melbourne University. From 1980, he lectured in creative writing at Prahran College of Advanced Education (now Deakin University), retiring from that position in 1995. </p>
<p>By 1995, Murnane had published seven books. He then stopped writing for 14 years, except for one book of essays published in 2005. </p>
<p>Encouraged by Ivor Indyk of Giramondo Publishing, Murnane resumed writing in 2009. He has since produced a further seven books, along with a fully restored version of an earlier book. His final book, <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/gerald-murnane-last-letter-to-a-reader/">Last Letter to a Reader</a>, was published in 2021.</p>
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<p>A 2018 New York Times article described Murnane as “the greatest living English-language writer most people have never heard of”. Full recognition has indeed been slow to arrive. Murnane has never won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. It was not until 2018 that one of his books (<a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/border-districts/">Border Districts</a>) made the shortlist. </p>
<p>He has, however, received other awards, including the 1999 <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/v617">Patrick White Award</a> for a writer whose work lacks adequate recognition. </p>
<p>Now in his eighties, Murnane lives in Goroke, a small town in the Wimmera close to the north-western Victorian border. Although he seems to have ceased writing for publication, he still works on what he calls his “Literary”, “Chronological” and “Antipodean” archives, held in fastidiously organised filing cabinets.</p>
<p>Murnane’s many self-imposed rules, such as never wearing sunglasses, never using a computer, and never travelling in a plane (see his 2002 essay “<a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/heat/archive/the-breathing-author-gerald-murnane/">The Breathing Author</a>” for a full list), seem to mirror the contents of his fiction. His books are populated by shy, eccentric, isolated narrators whose proclivities and demeanours align with their author’s self-presentation. </p>
<p>Keen to pique my students’ interest, I succumbed to the temptation to show a video or two of Murnane, then available on YouTube, in which his idiosyncratic persona is on display. Murnane gives viewers a tour of his writing room, explains his self-designed system for learning Hungarian, and describes some of the contents of his filing cabinets. He shows us the ironing board he once used as a writing desk, and a row of pebbles lined up on his windowsill like horses poised for a race. </p>
<p>His performance teasingly invites readers to connect the real-life (“breathing”) author with the narrators (or “implied authors”) of his fiction. </p>
<p>Stinson’s study meditates on the dynamics of this blurring of fiction and autobiography, alongside other paradoxes. In Murnane’s writing, the intricacies of fiction’s mirroring of life can seem a kind of game. But if it is a game, it is one played with absolute seriousness. </p>
<p>This can fox readers, inducing frustration, impatience or even boredom. So while Murnane’s videos did indeed grab my students’ initial attention, their essays (aside from a superb few) suggested many remained perplexed by his fiction.</p>
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<h2>Inventive and playful</h2>
<p>Murnane’s 15 or more books (depending on how they’re counted) include works of fiction and non-fiction and a book of poetry. All manifest his distinctive rigour, exemplified by his famously “chiseled sentences”, as <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/12/20/quest-girl-bendigo-street/">J.M. Coetzee once described them</a>. </p>
<p>His work is technically and conceptually inventive, even playful, and it has attracted admiring readers at home and abroad. In recent decades, his readership has grown significantly, enhanced by the internet and social media, which have allowed niche readers to connect with each other. Murnane is now regularly touted as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. </p>
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<p>Noting all this, as well as the vagaries of Murnane’s publishing history, Stinson ponders his subject’s somewhat divided Australian reception. It is another of Murnane’s paradoxes that he is a profoundly Australian writer who deploys the most localised of materials, but an anomaly in “Australian literature”. The latter is (arguably) a self-consciously – or self-critically – national project. Yet Murnane’s books appear supremely uninterested in either politics or nation. </p>
<p>Critics of Murnane have also pointed to his ideological conservatism, his solipsistic or obsessive tendencies and, as Stinson notes, an idealisation of women that, for some, verges on misogyny. </p>
<p>At times, Stinson concedes the validity of such criticisms. But he generates fresh perspectives capable of disrupting easy assumptions. On the question of gender, for instance, he draws attention to the ironic framing of masculinity in Murnane’s fiction and its subtle subversions of the repressive sexual mores associated with the author’s Catholic upbringing in the 1950s. He contests the view that Murnane’s writing does not attract women readers or critics and makes a case for recognising Murnane’s creative investment in working-class cultural pursuits, such as horse racing. </p>
<p>Stinson neither apologises for Murnane, nor resiles from asking readers to view his subject’s sophisticated body of work in more considered and careful ways. </p>
<p>He also offers arresting ideas that illuminate individual works and Murnane’s oeuvre as a whole. In his introduction, for example, Stinson describes Murnane’s writing as at once “homemade” and “cosmopolitan”. He connects this with a group of mid-century American writers – including William Faulkner, Wallace Stevens and F. Scott Fitzgerald – whom the American critic Hugh Kenner described as homegrown modernists. These were writers who adapted local, mundane, domestic American material in their modernist experimentation. </p>
<p>“Homemade” accords well with Murnane’s interest in everyday suburban or domestic surroundings and local geographies. The intricate, desiring, inner worlds of his books are built from homemade materials: his recollections of childhood reading; the fantasies and unrequited loves of his teenage years; his riffing on horse-racing colours; his narrators’ attempts to glimpse endless plains from the upper storeys of inaccessible manor houses.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bad-art-friends-jen-craig-may-be-the-best-australian-writer-youve-never-heard-of-203420">Bad art friends – Jen Craig may be the best Australian writer you've never heard of</a>
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<h2>Post-break</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546116/original/file-20230904-25-f3q8jz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546116/original/file-20230904-25-f3q8jz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546116/original/file-20230904-25-f3q8jz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546116/original/file-20230904-25-f3q8jz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546116/original/file-20230904-25-f3q8jz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546116/original/file-20230904-25-f3q8jz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546116/original/file-20230904-25-f3q8jz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546116/original/file-20230904-25-f3q8jz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1055&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Four of the seven or eight books that appeared after Murnane paused his writing career in 1995 are fiction. These four are the focus of Stinson’s study. </p>
<p>For Stinson, the four post-break fictions – Barley Patch, <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/a-history-of-books/">A History of Books</a> (2012), <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/a-million-windows/">A Million Windows</a> (2014) and <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/border-districts/">Border Districts</a> (2017) – are not just an addition to or extension of the earlier works. They are characterised by a “summative” intention. Their purpose is to revisit, reorder, ramify and complete Murnane’s body of work as a whole. </p>
<p>Stinson wants us to recognise “Murnane’s desire to frame and shape his own literary legacy”. He also emphasises the dynamism and continuity of Murnane’s writing. As I like to say, his books produce an evolving “Murnaniverse”. If this term conjures the “Marvel Cinematic Universe”, it is not necessarily a strange analogy, given Murnane’s liberal mixing of literary and popular cultural materials in Barley Patch and elsewhere. </p>
<p>Murnane’s books are so consistently Murnanian that it is possible to overlook their distinctive, individual features. Stinson’s chapters on the post-break novels avoid this pitfall. I came away from them with a sharpened sense of each book, even as I could see continuities across the whole.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546117/original/file-20230904-23-37baqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546117/original/file-20230904-23-37baqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546117/original/file-20230904-23-37baqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546117/original/file-20230904-23-37baqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546117/original/file-20230904-23-37baqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=858&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546117/original/file-20230904-23-37baqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546117/original/file-20230904-23-37baqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546117/original/file-20230904-23-37baqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1078&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The chapter on Barley Patch highlights (among other things) modes of reading and writing that are evident in Murnane’s work. The reading of A History of Books examines the intricacies of the fiction-autobiography dynamic. In his chapter on A Million Windows – which he characterises as a satire on the creative writing manual – Stinson unravels the idiosyncrasies of Murnane’s concept of the “implied author”, while the chapter on Border Districts examines the no less crucial (and paradoxical) concept of “retrospective intention”. </p>
<p>Drawing on US critic Merve Emre, Stinson describes Murnane’s approach to reading as “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo26267945.html">paraliterary</a>”. This useful term provides a way think about Murnane’s preference for seemingly “untutored” reading practices, at odds with academic criticism, but no less complex and layered.</p>
<h2>Late style, late recognition</h2>
<p>In his substantial conclusion, subtitled “Gerald Murnane’s Late Style”, Stinson brings these elements together, succinctly and effectively explaining his larger argument. </p>
<p>“Late style” is a concept developed by <a href="https://iep.utm.edu/adorno/">Theodor Adorno</a> and, later, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/26689/edward-w-said/">Edward Said</a>. It is marked by the artist’s decision to withdraw from the world, follow his or her own desires, and opt “for complexity over resolution”. </p>
<p>Admitting that this may be true of all Murnane’s writing, Stinson nonetheless argues for its special applicability to the four post-break fictions. </p>
<p>Beyond this conclusion, we encounter one more component: the transcript of Stinson’s recent interview with Murnane himself. Questions about the author’s experience of his “late recognition” are broached and considered. The book comes to an end with Murnane’s own words. Beyond the books, the writing continues: “I am still filling the archives”.</p>
<p>Can literary criticism produced by an academic be of interest to general readers? A publisher once said to me, of a proposal I had submitted, that readers only want to read the author’s work or what the author has to say, not some critic’s interpretation. </p>
<p>And yet today we are witnessing the incredible proliferation of book clubs and reviewing cultures – though the “literary criticism” practised by social media “influencers” (on BookTube, BookTok and the like) may be something else entirely. </p>
<p>Either way, it seems to me that Stinson’s book, which will certainly interest those who are already Murnane readers, may well interest some curious general readers. Despite his rising visibility and reputation, Murnane is still a cult figure. He is the kind of a writer who is unlikely to appeal to a wider reading public. But he does attract devotees.</p>
<p>It is not hard to see that Stinson is himself an unabashed devotee. At one point, he makes the bold call that Gerald Murnane is the best Australian writer since Christina Stead. Such partisanship, with which I am in sympathy, is nonetheless tempered by Stinson’s careful and rigorous reasoning, and the elegance and lucidity of his approach.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210271/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brigid Rooney 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>A new book designed to interest potential and beginning readers also offers plenty of new ideas to interest well-versed Murnanians.Brigid Rooney, Associate Professor (Affiliate), Australian Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2104482023-08-29T20:12:37Z2023-08-29T20:12:37ZThe charismatic, enigmatic Charmian Clift: a writer who lived the dream and confronted its consequences<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541884/original/file-20230809-5449-s2ch1q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=59%2C5%2C3922%2C2988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Charmian Clift in Greek costume (1941).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frederick Stanley Grimes/State Library of New South Wales</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The centenary of the birth of <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/clift-charmian-9764">Charmian Clift</a> takes place on August 30. It comes at a time when the renowned Australian writer is, as they say, having a moment. </p>
<p>Clift’s typewriter has been still for over half a century, but the fascination with her life and writing shows little signs of abating. Recent years have seen new Australian editions of her work in its various genres: fiction, memoir and journalistic essays. There has been a <a href="https://theconversation.com/sue-smiths-hydra-how-love-pain-and-sacrifice-produced-an-australian-classic-113640">play</a> about her in the theatres. A <a href="https://documentaryaustralia.com.au/project/life-burns-high/">documentary</a> is in the making and a feature film is in <a href="https://www.news.uwa.edu.au/archive/2019060611424/arts-and-culture/page-big-screen-half-perfect-world-writers-dreamers-and-drifters-hydr/">pre-production</a>. </p>
<p>Next year we will see “new” writing from Clift, with the first publication of <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/books/a-hundred-years-on-charmian-clift-s-time-has-finally-arrived-20230814-p5dwau.html">The End of the Morning</a>, the autobiographical novel she was working on at the time of her death.</p>
<p>Interest in Clift’s legacy has also been evident overseas, where her <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460700037/mermaid-singing-and-peel-me-a-lotus/">two memoirs</a> of Greek island living – <a href="https://muswell-press.co.uk/product/mermaid-singing/">Mermaid Singing</a> (1956) and <a href="https://muswell-press.co.uk/product/peel-me-a-lotus">Peel Me a Lotus</a> (1959) – have been republished in the UK after more than six decades, to often rapturous reviews. These books have appeared in translation for the first time in Greek, Spanish and Catalan – a measure of an international readership that was elusive during Clift’s lifetime. </p>
<p>And if this cake needed further icing, it comes in the form of Clift and her writer husband George Johnston emerging as “characters” in international novels and films. They have come to exemplify the experience of artistic expatriation, solidarity and dissolution that transpired on the island of Hydra in the 1950s and 1960s. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-fresh-perspective-on-leonard-cohen-and-the-island-that-inspired-him-105392">Friday essay: a fresh perspective on Leonard Cohen and the island that inspired him</a>
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<h2>A riveting portrait</h2>
<p>Exactly why Clift enjoys this prolonged afterlife when once far-better-known mid-century writers struggle to sustain reputations is a matter for another time. But there is a hint to be found in a fragment of her extraordinary life – a photographic moment that condenses her charismatic and enigmatic essence into a single, riveting image. It is a photograph that is remarkable in itself, but made extraordinary by the use to which it would be put. </p>
<p>Intrinsic to the photo’s quality is its creator. It was the work of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liselotte_Strelow">Liselotte Strelow</a> (1909-1981), a significant German portrait photographer. Her powerful and intensely focused black-and-white images identified her as an <em>Autorenphotographie</em> – an artist-photographer – capable of extracting from the human face a deep reflection of character and interiority. </p>
<p>Strelow built her stellar reputation with memorable portraits of the artistic, intellectual and political greats of postwar Europe, including Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Marlene Dietrich, Henry Moore, Thomas Mann and Maria Callas. Her portrait of Clift is as well realised as anything in her body of work. </p>
<p>Also critical to the photo’s success is that Strelow found in Clift a subject who was prepared to match her ambition. Clift exposed herself in a starkly unadorned and unguarded manner. Her hair is thrown about and seemingly tied with string; her skin flaws are clearly visible. She has what appears to be a bruised left eye. </p>
<p>Devoid of coquetry or coyness, Clift’s direct gaze penetrates the camera lens with uncommon intensity. She appears both assertive and vulnerable. </p>
<p>Clift wasn’t new to working with photographers. She first attracted attention by winning a beach-girl photo competition in 1941 with a image taken by her sister, Margaret. She then undertook part-time photographic modelling in wartime Sydney. As her biographer Nadia Wheatley noted, Clift was blessed with “that indefinable thing which makes a certain face photogenic. It is clear that the camera loved Charmian – and that the feeling was mutual.” </p>
<p>This much is true, but what is on show in Strelow’s image is something more than a straightforward representation of a photogenic subject. Working in tandem, Strelow and Clift have created an image that reaches beyond the superficial appeal of an attractively structured face to reveal a scintillating intellect, and expose layers of anguish and self-doubt. The result is a masterwork of “Australian” photographic portraiture.</p>
<p>Little is known of the context in which the photo was taken, or even when Strelow travelled to Hydra, which is demonstrably where it was taken. It is almost certain, however, that the image was specifically required (by author and publisher) for use with Clift’s forthcoming book, Peel Me a Lotus, a highly personal account of her Hydra life. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541885/original/file-20230809-25-qpfxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541885/original/file-20230809-25-qpfxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541885/original/file-20230809-25-qpfxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541885/original/file-20230809-25-qpfxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541885/original/file-20230809-25-qpfxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541885/original/file-20230809-25-qpfxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541885/original/file-20230809-25-qpfxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541885/original/file-20230809-25-qpfxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The first UK edition of Peel Me a Lotus (Hutchison, 1959).</span>
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<h2>Existential yin and yang</h2>
<p>In some ways, the dust jacket designed for the first British edition of Peel Me a Lotus is entirely of its time. The stylised chevrons are highlighted by “of-the-moment” saturated colours and fonts that are typical of postwar design. What is unexpected is the use of an author photograph to adorn a travel memoir in the 1950s. </p>
<p>The 1950s continued the pre-war preference of British publishers for illustrated or graphically designed dust jackets, usually based on watercolours, woodcuts or pencil drawings, and adapted for two or three-colour offset printing. Clift’s previous travel memoir, Mermaid Singing, was typical. Both the front and back covers featured drawings by her friend, Australian artist <a href="http://newtheatrehistory.org.au/wiki/index.php/Person_-_Cedric_Flower">Cedric Flower</a>. </p>
<p>Author photos, if used, were relegated to the back cover or the internal cover flaps. It was extremely rare to find an author pictured on the front of a dust jacket, and particularly with a photo presenting the author as anything other than a confident and reassuring presence. </p>
<p>There were few precedents for a dust jacket portrait that challenged the reader in the manner of Strelow’s photo of Clift, which is far more likely to unsettle or provoke potential readers rather than offer reassurance. But somebody – very likely Clift herself – selected this image and promoted its use on the front cover. </p>
<p>And it was done with good reason, in that Clift’s achievement in Peel Me a Lotus is the literary equivalent of Strelow’s photo. The book’s success – and a key to its lasting appeal – is found in Clift’s willingness to go beyond the benign expectations of Mediterranean exoticism and take the reader into a darker personal experience of expatriation. </p>
<p>Peel Me a Lotus is made memorable because of its evocation of Clift’s existential yin and yang of exhilaration and despair, belonging and deracination. The book commences amid a blossom of optimism that accompanies the birth of a child, the buying of a house, and the embrace of the sun-drenched Hydra lifestyle. But it soon pitches headlong into the anxieties brought on by Clift’s recognition that she and Johnston are “marooned” in poverty. </p>
<p>The growing numbers of expats and tourists attracted to the island provide an irresistible link to the outside world and relief from growing tedium, while posing a threat to the personal dreams the couple were seeking to fulfil.</p>
<p>Clift describes how work and family suffer amid the dockside sociability. She and Johnston would “go home a little drunker than we ought to be, feeling vaguely worsted, jangling with some unspecified resentment, indefinably tainted”.</p>
<p>Her growing anguish in response to her increasingly complex reality is momentarily frozen by Strelow’s camera. The image exposes Clift’s realisation that the very circumstances that fed her creativity were also capable of depleting it. This compatibility between image and text transforms a great photo into the basis for one of the most compelling dust jackets produced for an Australian writer.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542917/original/file-20230816-17-polgjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542917/original/file-20230816-17-polgjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542917/original/file-20230816-17-polgjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542917/original/file-20230816-17-polgjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542917/original/file-20230816-17-polgjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542917/original/file-20230816-17-polgjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542917/original/file-20230816-17-polgjf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1182&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Peel Me a Lotus did not have its first Australian publication until a decade later, when it was occasioned by Clift’s <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/136943230">suicide</a>. For this edition, the dust jacket consisted of a stock photo of cliched “Greekness” used as a stand-in for Hydra. Specifically, the photo depicted the blue-domed dockside church of Agios Nikolaos on Mykonos. </p>
<p>It was the first of a series of Australian editions to feature covers of generic domed churches unaffiliated with Hydra – an island with its own remarkable architecture, but notably devoid of these classic painted domes. One can confidently assume that Clift would have been appalled to see such photos deceptively embellishing a book that was emphatically about the beloved and very singular island that shaped her expatriation for a decade.</p>
<p>It is easy to understand the marketing appeal of these images, which speak, however inaccurately, to an audience of sun-seeking holiday makers dreaming of a Greek island summer. They are, however, an inadequate representation not only of Hydra, but Clift’s intentions in marshalling her writerly genius to expose the fractures in her own psyche. </p>
<p>It is a pity that Australian readers of Peel Me a Lotus were denied the opportunity to look into the eyes and soul of the woman who was both living the dream and confronting its consequences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australian writer Charmian Clift was born 100 years ago today. One rivetting photograph of Clift captures the existential yin and yang explored in her work.Tanya Dalziell, Professor, English and Literary Studies, The University of Western AustraliaPaul Genoni, Associate Professor, School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2098532023-08-28T05:08:04Z2023-08-28T05:08:04ZReality and fantasy combine in Immaculate, Anna McGahan’s award-winning debut novel<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544179/original/file-20230823-23-6im6to.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C3874&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Allegory of the Immaculate Conception – Gregorio Vasquez de Arce y Ceballos (1638–1711).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I read Andrew McGahan’s <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Andrew-McGahan-Praise-9781741147728/">Praise</a> (1992) in my first year of university. I was blown away. It was unlike anything else I had ever read: raw, gritty, real. </p>
<p>One of the most prominent writers of Australia’s short-lived literary “grunge” movement, McGahan – along with his peers Christos Tsiolkas, Justine Ettler, Luke Davies, John Birmingham and Linda Jaivin, among others – represented a cohort of young writers interested in a literature that was both political and personal: confessional in terms of their own lives, but also as an expression of a generational experience. </p>
<p>Coinciding with the popular grunge music of the early 1990s, grunge literature was jaded, anti-authoritarian and rage-filled, but retained an element of humour. It described a world of dead-end jobs, empty sex and mind-numbing drugs.</p>
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<p><em>Review: Immaculate – Anna McGahan (Allen & Unwin)</em></p>
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<p><a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Vogel-Winner-Vogel-Winner-2023-9781761067990/">Immaculate</a> is the first novel by McGahan’s niece, Anna McGahan, and this year’s winner of the Vogel Award for writers under 35. The reader looking for the legacy of Andrew McGahan and his grunge roots will find its traces here in the unhoused characters hovering at the margins of the city, frequenting the soup vans where Immaculate’s protagonist, Frances, once worked. They return to the cheap boarding houses dotted throughout Brisbane’s inner-city suburb of New Farm, where much of Praise took place. </p>
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<p>Some of the sadness and desperation of Praise thus finds its way into Immaculate. But in Frances herself there is also a sense of grunge grown up, or perhaps grunge aged. She is a woman in emotional turmoil following a nasty divorce, the loss of her conservative Christian faith, the revelation of her own queerness, and the terminal illness of her young daughter Neve. </p>
<p>Frances and her ex-husband, Lucas, had been senior members of a large church in Brisbane called Eternal Fire, where he remains as a pastor. Her faith had formed the foundation of her personal and professional identities, and of their marriage. </p>
<p>Its crumbling has led to the collapse of everything in her life. She is “no longer a wife, […] no longer a mother, fifty per cent of the time”. </p>
<p>Frances divides her time between her part-time duties as mother, in which she maintains a charade of ordinariness for her sick child, and the days when she is not responsible for Neve, when she avoids her home and anyone she might know. She works in dark clothes in the shadows of a theatre each night, before visiting a brothel to receive the regular attention of a sex worker named Celine. </p>
<p>This relationship is not so much about sex or even companionship. It is a charade of domesticity. Celine offers Frances “the paid experience of a familiar, peripheral loneliness”. </p>
<p>Frances’s life is now just an echo of the real, the numbness with which she moves through the world reminiscent of the literary interests of the grunge. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-unreliable-narrator-and-a-stormy-relationship-propel-stephanie-bishops-moody-new-novel-200438">An unreliable narrator and a stormy relationship propel Stephanie Bishop's moody new novel</a>
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<h2>Narrative in tatters</h2>
<p>Even the structure of the narrative itself is in tatters. Immaculate is formed by epistolary fragments of first-person narration from Frances and her teenage wards, Mary and Jasper, as well as other textual artefacts: text and telephone messages, letters, police records, news reports, websites, and so on. </p>
<p>The first-person sections are styled as biblical passages – The Gospel According to Frances, The Book of Mary, The Book of Jasper – granting these characters an authority they do not possess elsewhere. </p>
<p>Mary is the name adopted by 16-year-old Penelope, who has suffered horrific abuse and is now pregnant and alone. Rather than style herself as a victim, however, Mary insists that her pregnancy is the result of an immaculate conception, and that she has a higher order of business to attend to. Specifically, it is her task to guide guests to otherworldly dinner parties at which they discover fundamental truths about themselves. </p>
<p>Frances and Jasper are two of these guests, as is Celine’s partner Glenda, who is suffering from early Alzheimer’s, and others who frequent a large inner-city park at night. </p>
<p>The narrative mode creates a sense of authenticity and veracity, making readers privy to factual evidence from which they can form their impressions. McGahan has also incorporated the genre of verbatim theatre into the novel. Like epistolary narrative, verbatim theatre aims to bring the authenticity of lived experience to a story. </p>
<p>The play being performed at the theatre where Frances works is itself a verbatim piece, written by Glenda and recording the experiences of those lost souls who gravitate toward the park. As one theatre-goer observes, “they collected interviews from all these people who have experienced profound grief and suffering, and put them into a piece of theatre. All their real words!” </p>
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<span class="caption">Anna McGahan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eva Rinaldi/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>A dreamlike fantasy world</h2>
<p>These narrative strategies work alongside the first-person accounts to ground the otherwise unstable or fantastical elements of the novel. This is the other side of Immaculate’s emphasis on the real: a dreamlike, fantasy world, which somehow exists within a shared consciousness of several of the characters. </p>
<p>The magical-realist space offers the characters a way of healing their real-life traumas through a deeper understanding of their individual fears and desires. </p>
<p>Traces of this dream world remain in the real world, making it impossible to write off this part of the story as illusion or hallucination. Like Frances, the reader must accept both experiences as equally real, without succumbing to a spiritual explanation that would negate Frances’ break with the church. Like Frances, the reader must accept the possibility of a miracle, even if it does not look the way she had expected in her former faith. </p>
<p>Some fairy tales, Frances realises, “tell the brutal truth”, while others “give you false hope of happy endings”. Ultimately, the fairy-tale world is a way for Frances, Mary, Glenda, Jasper and others to accept the “brutal truth”. That in itself could constitute a “happy ending” – at least, as happy as an ending can be when it involves the loss of a child.</p>
<p>Frances’s fantastic experiences allow her to see the truth, but as a lesson about the duality of pleasure and suffering in life. Now, she understands, “the miracle is what He has already given me, not what I am waiting on. And there is great healing in that.”</p>
<p>If grunge had one theme at its core, it was to question what was known or accepted, to record and sometimes resist the social expectations that make us numb to our own selves. That theme remains in Immaculate, but McGahan finds a way beyond grunge’s nihilism, even in the depths of the most profound tragedy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Gildersleeve 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>Some fairy tales tell the brutal truth, others offer the hope of a happy ending. Immaculate raises the possibility of both.Jessica Gildersleeve, Professor of English Literature, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.