There's still something delicious about John

John Taylor, Duran Duran. Always cute but now with blue hair.

Faith in Australia, gangnam style

When you are in small despair about something like this on a Sunday in Melbourne (yet heartened because it was just a small gathering of dickheads):












You can comfort yourself that in the exact same spot, just the day before, there was this:

Not a review of Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis

I hate having to do a spoiler alert because readers should be able to work it out themselves. But let me hold your hand... don't read if you don't want to know what happens, 'kay?


I'd like to start by saying I didn't realise this was a movie with R-Pat in it. Not that it would have made any difference to the reading of the book but I might have tried to find a copy of the book with a different cover.

It's a good cover, perfectly fitting but knowing it's R-Pat somehow diminishes it?

Now that I've read the book I'm confused about whether to see the movie. You see, I loved this book and seeing the movie will risk a shift in my feelings. It's rare that a movie complements a book properly. Hell, they're not meant to complement; a movie is meant to stand separately to the book and sometimes the book is devoured by the existence of a film version. But R-Pat is a bit cute if a little too skinny. Maybe it's a good film, maybe it's sexy and sharp and true to the book? Dilemma.

DeLillo is such a skilled writer I now want to read his oeuvre. I'm going to look up what he wrote, research his best and read them. I have heard him referenced, along with Thomas Pynchon, as one of those seminal American contemporary writers whose spheres of influence are enormous. Influence in terms of other writers, I mean. I think David Foster Wallace dug DeLillo big time. Or was it Bret Easton Ellis? Both? I forget.

Cosmopolis was the perfect entree into DeLillo's writing. It is deliciously-sized; packed full of action and interior 'idea-scapes' - it's a genius work. To have the limo as a mobile office. To have Eric Packer (the protagonist) hopping in and out of his limo as it inches its way through Manhattan, driving him to get a haircut.

I read the first few pages then put the book down for a few days. When I went back to it, I started again from the beginning. And this is what I wrote note-wise:

- cancer? the haircut and sleep failing him (p1)
- he's dying. Missed it the first time I read 1st 4 pages.

As it turned out, he wasn't literally dying from cancer - he just has an asymmetrical prostate - however he is dying (as we all are) throughout the novel. The ending is ambiguous; the reader doesn't find out whether the kindly assassin Richard Sheets pulls the trigger or not.

As Packer careens like a pinball through the streets of New York - having sex here, having sex there (but not with his wife of 22 days); eating, talking and methodically buying more and more Yen that will perversely lead to his financial ruin - there is much 'outside' action going on. The US President is in the vicinity (thus accounting for road blocks and even worse traffic conditions); there is some bizarre rat protest unfolding and there are credible threats to Packer's security (he has bodyguards, one of whom he himself kills).

Reading this book was electrifying; I found myself uttering exclamations of 'wow' and 'fuck'. I also found myself reaching for scraps of paper to write down the small 'literary' surprises, that in such a dynamic, action-packed story were like manna and balanced the reading beautifully for me:

He liked paintings that his guests did not know.

He'd thought about surfaces in the shower once.

... masturbatory crouch

Her poetry was shit (big LOL at that one)

Packer is like a modern-tech flâneur, wandering the streets, travelling along, seeing 'what happens' on his way to a haircut, but the pace is not that of a typical wanderer; it's edgy and sharp and there are things around the corner on the next page that will make you jump. At times I wondered where we were. Were we in the limo? Were we on the street? I had to concentrate to keep up - this is no idle read - but at the same time, it's not a hard read. You don't have to concentrate and keep yourself in the action, you go there naturally.

I loved the set up of this novel (novella? I reckon the wordage is around 53K); there is no back-story it just begins. Slowly, more characters are layered in, some staying for a while, others just popping in and out, but the question that makes him an interesting character is introduced very early. What's wrong with him, why isn't he having sex with his wife. Why doesn't she know that his eyes are blue?

The car-as-office is a clever device as is the setting of New York City. Anything can happen in New York and the pace is fast. I had to keep up, noting the line breaks which indicated a shift in scene and possibly location. There wasn't always a 'he got out of the car' indicator to inform the dullard reader of a change in location and this added to the pace; there was no extra stuff padding the prose and therefore slowing it down.

I've noted the scene on page 49-50 as being 'very interesting.' It's an erotic scene between Eric and one of the women-not-his-wife  who he has a sexual encounter with. This is where the cover image of Edward Vampire got into my head a little. I couldn't imagine Rob Pattinson talking about his erection and bondage:

This is the woman you are inside the life. Looking at you, what? I'm more excited than I've been since the first burning nights of adolescent frenzy. Excited and confused. I look at you and feel an erection stirring even as the situation argues strenuously against it...

All the same. Days like this. I look at you and feel electric. Tell me you don't feel it too. The minute you sat there in that whole tragic regalia of running. That whole sad business of Judeo-Christian jogging. You were not born to run. I look at you. I know what you are. You are sloppy-bodies, smelly and wet. A woman who was born to sit strapped in a chair while a man tells her how much she excites him.

And Judeo-Christian jogging? Snort.

I have some criticisms but there are only two (and one of them I feel dissolving, though, as I've processed the novel in the day since finishing it).

Towards the end of the reading I made this note: Eric is too young for all this wisdom and awareness. Why have him young?

I can probably answer my own question. Having a young man in this context with this story is more compelling than an older man. The idea that youth is not the answer to everything; that a large life can be lived in a short time; possibly the idea that money and power do corrupt so absolutely. But you never get the impression that Eric is superficial. He is a deep thinker and he's working it all out.

My other problem, and it was tiny, insignificant amongst all the wonderfulness: on page 206 I felt De Lillo was flawless until he explains the reference to Male Z. He has already mentioned all the accoutrements of a morgue: the sliding compartments, the sterile room, the bodies with tags and one of these tags is 'Male Z'. It's all fantastic up until he writes: He knew that Male Z was the designation for the bodies of unidentified men in hospital morgues.

Oh Don, why? You have written until now,  until page 206, refusing to explain, refusing to indulge a less-evolved reader by spelling things out. You have written bravely, putting the words on the page, catering only to yourself, not pandering to a reader. Why these words? Why explain? If the reader can't work out it's a morgue they don't deserve the explanation. You have lowered yourself and it stings me.

Oh, there is another criticism. There is a section where the point of view shifts from close 3rd person to a first person voice for a total of about six pages towards the end of the book. This is 'Benno Levin' ('real name' Richard Sheet)  the man who is preparing to kill Eric. I see and accept the purpose of having his POV inserted in the narrative in this way but it is jarring and is not a seamless addition. Perhaps this jolt in the narrative 'works' alongside the other jolts the reader experiences. Certainly, those six pages are densely packed with personal information, the life of a man who is getting ready to kill another man. The mind of the disgruntled assassin. Perhaps I should re-read those pages, they would make more sense now because at the time I wasn't sure who it was.

The final scene is brilliant, particularly the dialogue, and there are still a few more jolts for the reader. When a work is unpredictable it is an achievement these days. There is so much that is banal and ordinary in writing and in life; to have a scene with two men discussing the reasons why one of them wants to kill the other one, and the intended victim - Eric - is calm and measured which unsettles the 'baddie', a self-confessed 'violent smoker'.

The man fired a shot into the ceiling. It startled him. Not Eric; the other, the subject.

It's writing like this that makes me admire DeLillo. It says so much with so little.

When Eric shoots a hole in his own hand, Sheets bandages it up for him and stops the bleeding. He still intends to kill him, but he helps him. It's details like this that make this book so real. That detail reminded me of a story about Ned Kelly walking to be hanged, and even though he was going to his death, he made sure the hood on his head (piled up, ready to be pulled down over his eyes) was be neatly arranged and wouldn't fall off as he walked. This is what's beautiful about fiction. I don't remember where I read that Kelly snippet and I can't remember if it's true or whether I made it up based on something I read.

So, goody goody gumdrops. This is DeLillo's 13th book and you know what, I read somewhere there are 14 books in total. I canner wait to get my hands on another one. Wonder whether I should read chronologically. I think I shall.

Catherine Deveny

I've never really taken to Deveny (might be something about her being a comedian?) but I do support her right to be 'loud and mouthy and opinionated' about things like homophobia, same-sex marriage, marriage, atheism, religion, immigration. I like this approach (probably cause it's my own) but I know that most people don't like this type of person (read woman). Her recent appearance on qanda last Monday (I just caught up on iview) has caused a bit of controversy it seems, re the way she took on Anglican Peter Jensen. (It's not only women who are called shrill and strident; Richard Dawkins gets it a bit, apparently).

This is a defence of Deveny and it makes for interesting reading, including the comments. It reminds me of the reaction Germaine Greer gets every time she opens her mouth including a couple of weeks ago, and I'm seeing whispers of it about Naomi Wolf too, about her new book Vagina, A New Biography. (That's maybe a whole other post. I'm thinking there's probably stuff I'd agree with, criticisms that is, however everyone just seems so fucking bitchy about everything and everyone. Is this the effect of twitter and blogging? Where everyone is just so out there about their opinions? So critical, so argh).

Connected to this story, is the issue of gaslighting. I'd never heard the term before but boy, I know the process. I read the open letter to Catherine Deveny and realised that it described perfectly what I'd experienced in a previous relationship. Wow. Just wow. I wonder if they really do know they're doing it? (the 'gaslighters'.)

What a find

Just came across this blog, Letters of Note; a compilation of letters between and/or by famous people.

You could spend days on it.

Is Tony going down?

It's not often I do politics on here. I used to a bit, when it got me riled, before I got jaded and old. Before I realised what a time waster it is. It's like people going on about trolls. Time wasting. People who leave comments on the online newspapers - time wasting. People who get into back and forth and arguments with trolls in the comments on online newspapers - time wasting.

It's taken me ages to realise that when people talk about Mr Rabbit they are talking about Tony Abbott. This is how far I've taken myself out of political thinking/discussions. My poor mother, when she tries to talk about Julia, I cut her off saying 'Meh, I'm not into politics any more. So boring.'

But a couple of things lately have caught my interest. First, Anne Summers wrote and delivered a speech entitled 'Gillard: Her Rights at Work' about the sexism/misogynism that the PM's been dealing with - it's worth a read. There's the R-rated version and the vanilla version, as well as today's response on The Drum, answering people who have said 'yeah, but it's no worse than anything male politicians have had to put up with, Larry Pickering's been drawing dicks on pollies for yonks.' [Anne Summers' website]


Then there's the current 'Tony threw a punch' story which is delighting me - that old schadenfreude tinged with very real hope that it will fuck him up so much he just fucks off, right out of the picture and takes his abortion/contraception views with him, along with his attitudes towards women.

I'll never forget what his daughter said about him:

Well, what would you know dad? You're just a lame, gay, churchy loser.

To be fair, these could be the words of any teen or young adult child about their parent and while there is something refreshing about it, the use of 'gay' in it to emphasise the 'loser' qualities of Tony Abbott is something I don't tolerate or support. Apart from this though, this is a testimonial about someone who wants to become PM by someone who knows him well. The church bit is probably what worries me most as an atheist who fervently believes church and state should always be kept separate. ALWAYS. But it was funny and it still is.

So now he's accused of slamming his fist into a wall either side of a woman's head back in uni in 1977. He's accused of being intimidating and violent. Someone else has come forward and backed up the woman's story. The response from the coalition is predictable: he has no memory of this; it's incorrect; it's an ALP set-up.

I really really hope he goes down:

The Bridport Prize 2012 - short list

So other people are announcing, I might as well too. I entered two short stories in this year's Bridport Prize (a UK writing competition).

Both my stories were short listed (again, like the Voiceless Prize, it's a long shortlist). They won't proceed any further but out of 6100 entries, I made the top 100. I am feeling pretty happy about this as it's the first time I've entered and it's my second run on the board in my recent efforts to get published and all that jazz.

I plan to submit both stories to another couple of things to see how they do. And of course, I will let you know if anything happens.

In other news, it's P's BD - SWEET 16. Unbelievable how did that happen etcetera etcetera. Have to go now and make a huge cauldron of chicken, mushroom and pea risotto for twelve people. Might also be time for a glass 'o wine after a huge day teaching.

The Brontes and their world

[Taken from p88, author Phyllis Bentley. This book was on my mother's book-shelf since I was a little girl. Now it's on my book-shelf but I probably should give it back.]

Emily Brontë was a 'space-sweeping soul' to use her own phrase about a philosopher; her thoughts on life, death, immortality, imagination, liberty, deity had a depth and breadth of vision compatible to Wordsworth or Shakespeare.

It has been the fashion to speak of her as a metaphysical poet, but I prefer to call her a pantheist; she saw the universe as a whole, and her vision comprehended the lark, the woolly sheep, the snowy glen, the nature of being and God Himself as all part of the one great harmony. Nor can her thought be called speculative. She writes with a majestic, almost casual certainty. These tremendous themes, these minute observations, are both conveyed with an absolute simplicity of language; no purple patches of metaphor or simile, no elaboration of construction, no experiment with metre - one feels Emily would have thought any artifices contemptibly vulgar. She merely says what she means in the clearest, hardest hitting terms she can find. But if her metres are conventional and her words austere, her rhythms have a poetry so intense as to be deeply thrilling, in the most literal sense of that expression.

Fabulous stuff.

I can't believe that Emily wrote Wuthering Heights between October 1845 and June 1846 and had it published in July of the following year. How much editing? How many drafts? How many copies were sold? Who read this type of novel? Would it get published today?

WH remains one of my favourite books, evah.

Old Hem snippet - he was terribly clumsy

One biography on Hemingway by Jeffrey Meyers has an appendix which covers all accidents and illnesses. It is quite a read:

Accidents
Childhood - falls with stick in throat, gouges tonsils; catches fishhook in back
1916 - 17: boxing injuries; football injuries
Spring 1918: fist through glass show-case
July 8, 1918: concussed and wounded by trench mortar and machine gun
June 1920: cuts feet walking on glass
July 1920: falls on boat cleat, internal hemorrhage
April 1922: burns from hot-water heater
Sept 1925: tears ligament in right foot
Dec 1927: son cuts pupil of good right eye 
Mar 1928: pulls skylight on forehead, needs stitches
Oct 1929: tears muscle in groin
May 1930: cuts right index finger on punching bag
Aug 1930: lacerations from bolting horse
Nov 1930: breaks right arm in car accident
Apr 1935: shoots himself in legs while gaffing* shark
Feb 1936: breaks big toe kicking locked gate
?1937-38: dropkicks foot through mirror
Aug 1938: scratches pupil of bad left eye
May 1944: second concussion when car strikes water tank in blackout
Aug 1944: third concussion jumping from motorcycle into ditch; suffers double vision and impotence
June 1945: car overturns; head goes into mirror, knee injured
Sept 1949: clawed while playing with lion**
July 1950: fourth concussion; gashes head while falling on boat
Oct 1953: cuts face, sprains shoulder falling out of car
Jan 1954: two plane crashes in Africa; fifth concussion, fractured skull, internal bleeding, paralysed sphincter muscle, two cracked spine discs, ruptured liver, right kidney and spleen, dislocated right arm and shoulder, first degree burns
Jan 1954: severe burns fighting fire
Oct 1958: sprains ankle, tears heel ligaments climbing fence
July 1959: car goes off road


Illnesses
Infancy: left eye defective from birth, mysterious minor operation

Oct 1918: jaundice
Early 1919: tonsils removed, operation of injured leg
1920s: appendicitis operation
Oct 1922: malaria
June 1927: anthrax in cut foot
Sept 1927: swollen, itchy hands and feet
Dec 1927: grippe, hemorrhoids, toothache
Oct 1929: kidney troubles from cold stream
Summer 1931: eye trouble, needs glasses
April 1932: bronchial penumonia
Oct 1933: throat operation
circa Jan 1934: amoebic dysentery; prolapsed large intestine***
1934: blood poisoning in right index finger
Jan 1935: recurrence of dysentery
Dec 1938: severe liver complaint
Dec 1944: pneumonia, coughs up blood
Aug 1947: hypertension
Dec 1948: ringing in ears
Mar 1949: erysipelas, hospitalised in Padua
Feb 1950: skin infection
Sept 1950: ?skin cancer from sun at sea
May 1950: leg pains from encysted shell fragments
Aug 1953: second dysentery
Jan 1955: rash on face and chest
Nov 1955: nephritis, hepatitis, anaemia, swollen right foot, 40 days in bed w hepatitis
Nov 1956: hypertension, high cholesterol, arteriosclerosis; strict diet, not alcohol or sex
July 1959 - July 1961: skin rash, alcoholism, eye troubles, diabetes, suspected haemochromatosis, nephritis, hepatitis, hypertension, impotence, mental break-down, electroconvulsive therapy, loss of weight, loss of memory, severe depression

* gaffing: seizing or impaling with a gaffe

** as you would expect

*** from p263 of Meyers's book: 'His large intestine became infected and swollen [amoebic dysentery which he'd contracted on voyage to Africa] and three inches of it dropped out of his body. "He was passing nearly a quart of blood daily." ... He soon had 150 bowel movements a day and a prolapsed intestine that he had to wash with soap and water, and put back into his body.'

[Source: Hemingway, A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers 1985]

Princess comes back tomorrow

Apparently the weather will be stormy and windy and she flies in from Broome. She's been away on a 'school camp' but none of the school camps I've heard of involve a 3-week Kimberley experience where they live and work with local kids from Fitzroy Crossing and community areas up there.

Or is it over there?

They've been doing community projects (building a fire pit and a basket ball court) and working on a cattle station, learning about the local languages and flora/fauna and art. Swimming in water holes, tough life. Going to footy games, staying up til 'whenever' and lying around on the decking outside discussing different types of learning.

I haven't heard much from her about how it's been other than she's 'loving it' and 'doesn't want to come home'. But home she comes tomorrow and it will be a massive catch-up and I can't wait to hear it all.

*

Today I tried again to get my copy of Big Issue. Vendor wasn't in Acland Street either but I went into Readings to ask about him - Dennis is his name - and I accidentally bought two new books.

Fuck I just can't resist. It's like some compulsive addiction thing. Seriously.

I got a Dom de Lillo for cheap (hah just checked, DON) for $19.99 - Cosmopolis. It was the blurb that got me:

Eric Packer is a twenty-eight-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager. He lives in Manhattan. We join him on what will become a particularly eventful day in his life.

When he woke up, he didn't know what he wanted. Then he knew. He wanted to get a haircut.

As his stretch limousine moves across town, his world begins to fall apart. But more worrying than the loss of his fortune is the realization that his life may be under threat.

Now there are several things about this that I like, and one thing I don't.

I like the correct adjectival hyphenation in that first sentence.
I like that he's in Manhattan. It wouldn't be as attractive if it were, say, Auckland. No offence.
I like the bit about him not knowing what he wanted, and then knowing he wants a haircut.

I don't like that it's got Edward the Vampire on the cover (it's a movie, shit, why didn't I notice that before I bought it?)

But then the bit about the potential loss of his fortune and the life under threat bit, hmmm. Is it going to spin off into freak-out territory with over-dramatic plot twists? (I hope not) or is it him descending into some drug-induced paranoia or psychosis? (I like this idea much much better.)

We shall see.

*

The other one is The Memory of Salt by Alice Melike Ülgezer.

This has:

A beautiful cover
A blurb that gets me in but not for the details or storyline, for the fact it's got Turkish characters in it
Her middle name - Melike - is one of my Princess's names (Princess has many names and there was a rumour at her school in Year 7 that she was a Turkish princess. She is half Turkish but not a real princess, just a pretend one on here.)
It's got a circus in it
It's got Australian outback in it, so it's a melange of different settings: Kabul, Melbourne, Aus outback, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, London.

I have to see how this is done. I'm half scared it will be fantastic, half scared it won't.

Again, we shall see.

Beautiful

This pic is attached to an article that is about a father whose boy likes to wear dresses and so the German dad showed his support by wearing a skirt.

I thought it was fitting considering we've just had Fathers Day, not a big deal in my books with the commercialised push that goes on but still, it's nice when you come across a dad who rocks.

So a technical problem

It's like this, Alex. (I know it'll be you who helps me but that doesn't mean other people who know what they're doing can't jump in and assist)...

In the old days, at the bottom of my posts page, I used to have something like 'more posts' or 'next page' and this is gone now.

I'm not sure it's because the blog has grown OR whether something has happened with my settings. But I would like to be able to go to a month on the side list and trawl through all the posts in that month.

Just can't seem to be able to do this.

*

Also, does anyone remember the '80s diaries and how my dad was caught up in a moider? And I don't know if I mentioned on here but I got a couple of comments from a woman purporting to be the killed woman's bio-daughter. Well, it was a cold case and it is now heating back up. All sorts of police interaction (not with me, with my dad). Oral swabs, official statements. At one stage I said to Clokes 'maybe they think he did it?' (not wanting to say 'maybe he did it') and then dad said recently, when I said 'maybe they're saying that to everyone', ie 'we are close to an arrest, we know who did it we're just getting our stuff together' as a way to make people nervous?? and I said 'maybe they think you did it' and dad said 'well I know I didn't do it!'

Anyway, Happy Fathers Day, Dad (don't know if he reads this anymore).

*

Also GO CATS

Yale has got a whole bunch of open courses

You can access them via the Internet. There are all the lectures videoed and posted. For free. For real.

Biology, history, philosophy, English and many others.

Including a whole course on Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald.

Oh my fucking god.

I can't believe how lucky kids are these days to have this type of access. It is mind-blowing. Want to round out your course? Jump online and watch some of the best lecturers in America doing their thing.

It is extraordinary.

Publishing process in gif form

This is from Nathan Bransford, agent extraordinaire in the US who is linked to the right in my blogroll (click on his name to watch at his blog).
This pretty much sums it up. I'm still at the editors from publishers saying no (although it's still with two biggies and they have said no once but are looking at it again and the longer I don't hear from them the more insistent the voice that is saying 'it's gonna be a no' but so too the greater my inclination to NOT follow up with those two editors because then I'll just nudge them to the no a little quicker).
I tried the agents step but no, no, no.
One thing I'm wondering with MS #2 which I'm still on second draft of so very early days, do I do the agent thing or straight to publishers? I'm thinking maybe straight to publishers because I now have email relationships with some of them...
Hmmmm.

Ulysses cracked

This is how anyone is ever going to be able to read this fucking book. Audiobook. But be warned, I estimate there are about thirty hours of it.

Having said that, it's is amazing and brilliant and an unbelievable achievement.

I drove to Adelaide on Friday and back today. I'm half way through. I think maybe MAYBE I'll be able to read the paper version after this. Or read it while listening again.

Extraordinary stuff and now I want to know more about his background. I wonder whether his marriage was happy, how much of a sensualist he was. How he worked, how he worked on this.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. I did.

I can't help it but I like these people

I know I'm meant to be outraged by the 'go-go' juice and other examples of bad mothering in this show, but I can't help warming to Honey Boo Boo and her family. Is it just me? It's not just the car-crash effect a la the Osbornes or the vicarious fly-on-the-wall effect that you enjoy watching the Kardashians.

There's something about these people that is charming and touching and admirable. I need to think a little more about what it is though.

Phew

After a coupla glasses of the widow I am celebrating the sale of my funky Secret-Life-of-Them pad. Had it for a while. On a windy September day we took Princess back there from hospital, our little bug in a rug who charmed and delighted both me and Ali. It was the place that we fucked in and fought in, the place Ptook her first steps* and the place where I would lie in the bath with her, when she was only weeks old, one of my swollen breasts bigger than her whole body it seemed. It was the place I cried when we split up, the place I laughed and clapped hands at my special birthday when the jangling belly-dancer danced for all and then we drunkenly stumbled down the street to Topolinos all talking too loud at about one in the morning.

It was the place I watched Seinfeld and the place I wrote my first book. It was where I cooked myself simple lunches of pasta and chilli, with a sneaky glass of wine. I sat on the back step and inhaled the sunshine and beauty of the skyline; the red brick roof and gargoyles of next-door.

This was a place where I scraped midnight blue paint off the scalloped plaster walls; where I Japan-blacked the kitchen floor myself after ripping up the old lino. Where I painted a flower mural onto the terrazzo shower wall so that lying in the bath with my book, my baby, I could trace the outlines of the petals with my toes.

This was the place I leaned out of the windows on various nights telling drunks to fuck off, telling men beating up on their women to stop, telling idiots pissing in our front garden to begone. And declining their offers of putting their dicks in my mouth by way of restitution.

This is the place where most of the neighbours were awesome but there's always one, or two and you just have to learn to get by.

Where when we bought it one room was fuschia, one the dark navy blue, one sun burnt orange.

* This is technically a lie. She took her first steps in England. But it makes a better story to have it above thusly.This is creative nonfiction, right Lee Gutkind?

Oh dear

Just finished a book.

It's got a lighthouse in it, which annoyed me because 'one day' I would like to write about a lighthouse. Or about a person who lives in one.

But then, but then...

It all goes deliciously wrong. The writing is overdone. So many exclamation marks, so much yelling and berating and shouting and pleading. Wooden characters. Much praying and goddy stuff. A child who is so unlikeable you want her to wander too close to a cliff and die. A father so wet that you want him to put a noose around his neck. Or throttle his demanding wife. Or have her take some poison, or kill herself or stab him. Or something. The writer clearly did lots of research and so has to resort to various clunky means to 'get it all in there.' It's melodramatic and overwrought and nothing exciting happens at all. It's insipid and flat and bland apart from the occasional passages that describe nature which are okay.

I had read negative reviews so I wasn't expecting much but I still wanted to read about the lighthouse. I'm glad it wasn't brilliant because that means there's still room for a good lighthouse book.

New page for talking about the thing Alex wants to discuss.

So. Shoot.

Tidying my desk and here are my notes on the raft of Australian books I've read recently

All That I Am (these are additional to the ones I wrote when I first tried to read the book; those early comments are on this blog somewhere):

TICK p30 'I had a love affair with a girl whose sweetheart was at the front. When he was killed she lost interest in me.' - these are a terrific couple of sentences

CROSS p33 'How about I go get us some sandwiches?' - Clara is speaking, this is WWII time in NYC, would this speech pattern be accurate? Just seemed too modern to me

TICK p33 Ruth: 'his war'

CROSS p33 boy lying injured on the front, calling out (cliche)

TICK p33 'Why is it famous people are so much shorter in real life?'

TICK p34 'had already been inside them'

DOUBLE TICK p37 'Scheinbild and Gott sei dank' - like it that she doesn't translate the German

TICK p40 Ruth's POV - well done

p55 Toller POV - second reference to Clara's shorthand as 'strange curly marks' (so that's a CROSS)

CROSS p74 Toller talking about Dora (as love?) unconvincing. Not enough room for 2 love stories here. So far only enough room for Ruth's private life and Toller's public/professional life

CROSS p74 Clara chews the inside of one cheek. Is C the only person to be doing all these actions? [Late note: I wonder if Clara is Anna F?]

CROSS p74 Clara sitting = hands together under her chin. All these mentions yet they are insignificant and detract from the story. Is it because Toller POV and therefore the male gaze is noticing these things? Funder, being female, expects males to notice all the actions and mannerisms of a pretty woman?

TICK p89 'the soft black eyes of a Labrador'

CROSS p 100 Clara - more body stuff

TICK p147 'Sometimes making love is making love and sometimes it is other things, a homecoming and an attack - stabbing to get back into the life that was nearly taken from you.'

TICK p174 cherry blossoms as 'extravagant explosions'

TICK p175 'her blouse snaffles the light into its deep magenta folds'

TICK p176 'People often have to be alone to think or write, but being with Dora wasn't like being with another person.'

TICK 183 'A fly was making its way around the rim of a teacup, throwing a surreal, leggy shadow into the bowl.'

TICK p186 'a short blond boy with waxy skin who was always hungry and whose name I forget.'

BIG TICK p293 lovely writing: 'coughed out of the earth'

Anna Funder's Miles Franklin acceptance speech via youtube

I think it's her acceptance speech, or more a clip that was obviously played at the MF awards because she couldn't attend.

What a speech, my new hero I think.

I think I shall also have to read Stasiland now.

How we respond to books

My last post I was talking about rating novels. I put All That I Am at the top but only because I think it deserves every prize it wins because of the type of book it is. It's a large book. But this doesn't mean I loved loved loved it. More I was impressed by it and impressed too that an Australian had written it. Makes sense that she lives overseas and has spent a lot of time overseas. This book did not come out of the brain of a person with a small backyard, so to speak.

Foal's Bread made me feel more than ATIA, so while I've ranked it below the Funder-wunder, in terms of heart I think it has more (however one major bone I have to pick with that book is that most of my momentum in reading it came from a need to find out what happened to the baby in the river. We never do, so that was disappointing.)

Just finished Jasper Jones; it doesn't have as much heart as Past the Shallows BUT it has some of the best cracking dialogue, and humour as well, which Past didn't have. ATIA didn't have much humour. Foal's - can't remember. Past the Shallows was lovely, will be interested to see what she does next. Now that story is out of the way.

I like heart and beauty but it doesn't mean it can't be dark. But with the darkness I'm sick of cliches. I don't want dead mothers, or horrible mothers (a la Jasper). I don't want dead fathers or horrible fathers (a la Jasper and Past the Shallows). Probably that's why ATIA worked for me (apart from the incidental things I've mentioned several times) - there are none of those parental cliches.

I'm going to re-try The Man Who Loved Children because I've just re-read Franzen's essay on it.

I'm also going to re-read the first novel of the woman in my writing group. The other night, she reminded me I'd said something about it (I'm terrible at reviewing books to their writer's faces, just terrible).

You said it kind of went nowhere, she said.
Did I? I don't remember saying that. (I didn't.)
Yeah. You said something like it trailed away at the end, or was disappointing or something.
I can't remember. Why didn't you ask me what I meant?
I didn't know you as well. I would now, but not then.

So I'm thinking I owe it to this woman, to read it again and give her a proper response. She has been very good with me and with helping me, ie putting me in touch with two big editors (editrixes?) who have my book, again, looking at it (after revisions.) Which sounds more impressive than it is, really I am not expecting anything (other than deep in my heart of hearts...)

The other thing is I have now put this blog link on a writer bio I had to submit. I asked the friend above whether I should clean it up, remove anything defamatory or nasty about other writers and she said 'nah, leave it. That's the good thing about blogs, they are out there.'

Hmmm. I don't know. I'm not sure about the baggings of various books, eg the piece of excrement about the sister of Jesus, um was the there anything else? It's not good form to be critical of books is it? If you are wanting to gain entry into that world yourself? Don't you have to suck up to everyone and be all bland?

Past the Shallows

I bought this yesterday at Readings. Really, me and Readings is a dangerous combination. I was in there with P and the longer I'm in there, the more likely I am to pick up something else. Once something is picked up, it's rarely put back.

Come on, I said to her. She was sitting down the back, looking at something vampiric.

Just a minute, she said.

I wandered back to new releases. To the tables. And picked up another two.

Walked out with Past the Shallows, Jasper Jones, The Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman (about a lighthouse; one day I'd like to write about a lighthouse) and the new Jonathan Franzen collection of essays Farther Away. I, unlike many others it seems, love Franzen's writing.

Everyone has raved about Jasper Jones and we have to discuss the first chapter tomorrow night at my writing/reading group. Past the Shallows I read and finished this morning, it's a quick read but it's moving. Disappointed (or unsurprised) to note the usual suspects in terms of the following cliched appearances (some of which appear in my first novel, too, so I'm not blameless): a significant photograph, a car crash, a dead mother (seriously, everyone has dead or disappeared or distant mothers). Also a violent father. It also very quickly reminded me of Winton (the sea)/Hemingway (again, sea motifs) and Mockingbird (Boo Radley echo) but while I felt this was obvious, perhaps it was just moi? As it was, the brothers and their relationship was beautifully rendered. It was moving and I enjoyed it. I shed a tear which always counts for lots of points. She writes beautifully. It was spare but not too spare. It was filled-in but not too filled-in. There was no stultifying interior 'feelings' stuff (something I'm guilty of in my writing sometimes.) It deserved the recent Dobbie award.

With the recent 'Australian' books I put All That I Am above Foal's Bread only because it is an 'important, global, large' book but I adored Foal's Bread more, and Past the Shallows I liked a lot.

Sour grapes

"The team were incredible. They left everything out on the road. I am so proud of them. We didn’t expect any help. We rode the race we wanted to ride... Other teams were content that if they didn’t win, we wouldn’t win. We expected it. If you want to win, you've to take it to them."

"The guys all sat there in the tent absolutely spent. We did everything we could. The crowd was tremendous the whole way around, but the Aussies just raced negatively."

Enduring Love Part 2

Recently I wrote about Back Dorm Boys and my love for them in that particular song. I also loved Seinfeld (the show, not the stand up) and Larry David (his show that followed.) So get this, a new show called Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The first episode has him picking Larry up in a blue VW beetle and they talk about what they eat for lunch, smoking cigars versus cigarettes ('a person smoking a cigar is not in a hurry') and Larry says his marriage probably would have survived if he hadn't given up drinking coffee.

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

Thursday Crytime

I don't go looking for these things, they come across my desk, so to speak. But I am a sucker for them and they usually leave me with tears rolling down my face.

Here's one, though, that isn't so cry-y. It's just gorgeous, I wonder if this movie did come out and I wonder where I can see it.

Babies

The NRA greets its members with 'Good morning, shooters.'

I don't know about you but I am kind of steering clear of all the response to the latest shooting in the US. But this article comes well-recommended. I skimmed it but it's from Overland Journal, so it would be pretty good.

One thing I will say about the shooting: what the hell were so many babies and young kids doing at a midnight showing of a movie? What the hell were so many babies and young kids doing at an M-Rated movie. Sure, the babies won't take any of it in, maybe they were asleep but wouldn't it be loud and noisy and crashy and scary? As it turns out, it really was.

Congratulations to Greg Fawcett

He beat 139 other Papas to win this year's Hemingway look-alike competition. He likes fishing, hunting and cocktails but not writing.

Glad that's over with for another year

We have been more heavily into this than in past years. Before it was the food and our annual 'Franch' meal however this year the beginning of the race coincided with my and Princess's trip north. She got more knowledgeable about it than moi, in about half a day, she seemed to know all their names, all the team names and colours, what all the maillot colours mean. She had a short list of faves, particularly she was into the Germans because she enjoyed saying their surnames so much. Over and over.

The funny thing is we didn't even watch it last year, when Cadellikins (as P calls him) won. I had seen him complete tour after tour in previous years, wearing the yellow then losing it. Dominating on the mountains, but never quite getting there. As Princess said: Why didn't we watch last year? I can't remember why, perhaps I was busy with this or that. Certainly I would have been writing.

So we are pumped for next year. And I have to say, I went from hating Wiggins to not minding him. I was annoyed by the cyborg Sky team who seemed to crush all in their path and never had any facial expressions, who always positioned themselves in the front in a vee, protecting their man (like they're meant to) but there was an arrogance.

One last thing: AG2R La Mondiale PLEASE do something about the pants next year.

For Jo: JM Coetzee is...

... a novelist and he wrote, amongst other things, Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello. I loved Disgrace and it was made into a film as well, with John Malkovich. Coetzee is originally from South Africa but now lives in Australia, in Adelaide I think. Anyway, he's one of the eminent writers around the traps.

Also, in other news, the Tour de France finishes tonight so I can go back to my early nights. It's killing me Jerry.

And just finished my umpteenth draft of my thing. Added another layer in to make it more 'topical' and after a read from some readers in my group, will send it around the traps. Again. But different traps this time, unless one or two of the previous traps are willing to have another look-see.

Fingerrrrs crossed.

Some small writerly news

So a while ago I knocked out an essay for the Voiceless Prize. The essay had to be between 5K & 10K words, and be concerned with animals produced for food in Australia, or found in the native environment. I chose to write about cows and it wasn't easy to scrape together a coherent 5,000 words.

But I was shortlisted out of 350+ entries and I am a little bit pleased with myself.

http://www.voiceless.org.au/news/Over-350-writers-speak-up-for-animals

So, yay me.

By the way, being shortlisted doesn't mean I am still in the running for a prize. It's more like a longlist (though they call it a shortlist) and it means that they might publish my piece on their website or 'communications' (whatever that means.)

Oh, and the judging panel was headed by JM Coetzee. (This is probably the most exciting part of all, to think he may have read my words.)

Oh Paul, I miss you

If we, as a country, vote in a certain ''obstructionist capuchin'' then we "will get a large kick in the bum and [we] will deserve it."

That is as good as anything I've got on this wet Friday.

In other news, Princess and I are going on a road trip to Byron Bay. We are heading up the highway (and then back again) for about 11 days and it will be great. Last time we went up there was on a family holiday in about 2003 or 2004 and I loved driving up, although I was so tired once we got there it was like jetlag and I couldn't find the place we were staying. Someone from the convoy had to come back and get me and drive me in.

We are going to have talking books on the way and I am going to enjoy watching the vegetation and scenery change; that's one thing I remember, the change in the trees.

As for the rest of the family: Clokes will keep working, The Boy will be in QLD with his grandparents and the other daughter didn't want to come. So much for female bonding but actually I understand it. Being trapped in a car with me and Princess for 18 hours would be hell of the worst kind for some people. Our tangential conversations; our philosophical posturings; our exclusive displays of high humour. Yeah, I can see why. Oh also she'd be away from the Internet. Maybe that has something to do with it as well.

But not leaving yet. I'll say goodbye when we do.

Time now for coffee and a bagel I think. With some scrambled eggs. Yum. I have finished work for the term, no more teaching but things with the new business are going really well. We have 18 schools on our books and I had two more enquiries yesterday. We are ace.

All That I Am

A few months ago, when I first tried to read this book, I struggled with the early pages. Best opening line ever? was followed by lots of description of physical mannerisms and I found the unlikeliness of a person standing on a snowy balcony, dripping with bath-water, for long minutes, unbelievable.  BUT I did go back and re-read and got momentum and the second time these mountains seemed more mole-hill and none of it stopped me reading, though I continued to notice. I got through the whole thing effortlessly and ended up really enjoying it. It has stayed with me, particularly some of the female characters. They are still with me, which is proof that this book works. So I guess this is a kind of tail-between-the-legs post to say that as soon as I read it I knew it would win the Miles Franklin and I think it deserved to win the award. It's a really large book and in parts is so beautifully written, she puts words together really really finely. So I take back what I said.

Suck job? Maybe, but really who cares. The book starts with a fabulous sentence, and if you can ignore the tucking of hair behind ears and repeated references to insignificant body characteristics, it's a great novel.

I was probably just bitter because she's so damn good-looking.

I recently read Foal's Bread, another on the short-list, and I loved this one as well. Where others have said they didn't really like the main female character for me, she was a sympathetic character, not least because of her flaws. This is great writing too.

From one of my favourite blogs

From Arse About Fez

How the Turks might count olive pips (an extension of how we do Tinker Tailor for cherry pips):

Tinker
Tailor
Soldier
Sailor
Rich man
Poor man
Beggar man
Thief

Shoe shiner
Taxi driver
Mussel seller
Fez maker
Raki drinker
Tea bringer
Ageing singer
Cop

Nut adjuster
Goods duster
Simit baker
Watch maker
Breast enlarger
Over-charger
Ahmet's father
Quack

Rubbish trawler
Street bawler
Belly dancer
Tourist stalker
Footballer
Kerb crawler
Loud talker
Pimp

If you find yourself with a few free hours to fill, you could do worse than trawl through this guy's back-list.

Enduring Love

I never get tired of this.
 
I love it so much.

Six years now.

I am wondering how I can incorporate this into my power-point presentations for work.

Friday cry time, and go Cats

Oprah has our dog

... or we have her dog. Either way, it's Gigi, second from left

Trecherous Alliance - Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US by Trita Parsi

So I googled the image for the next book Alex and I are going to do a tandem read on and googled 'Secret Alliance' instead of 'Trecherous Alliance.'

And I admit, part of me wishes we were doing a review/reading of The Secret Science Alliance rather than this one:
 

It's not just the attraction of goggles and welder hat but also the thought of plowing through almost 350 pages on a topic that is interesting but not fascinating to me might be a little more difficult than I'd thought. Murakami was a bigger book but it was so easy to read. While I do love non-fiction and am also currently on my fourth Hemingway bio, ultimately I do prefer fiction. I fear this book might stretch my brain a bit too much, or my tendency to lose interest rapidly in things that bore me, but Alex was a stick about Murakami so I will persist with this one. I've even started, and taken some notes.

Probably my reticence is because it will be a political book, and as well it will have US politics in it, and Israeli. I guess I'll be looking to see how balanced it seems (how can I really know if it really is?)

I also should declare my bias towards the Middle-East and away from Israel and the US, well documented over the last years on this blog. This bias stems more from my annoyance with American and Israeli politics rather than an active 'loving' of Middle-Eastern politics, people, religions, culture, ways and means.

If anyone else would like to join us for the read, or has read this book and would like to comment, please jump in.

*

My notes written over a wine in a funny little wine bar in Middle Park, which is run by alcoholics I think.

Preface xi Current hostility between Israel and Iran more to do with the end of the cold war and the defeat of Iraq in the first Persian Gulf war, than it does the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

pxiii credibility - "no argument in the book is dependent on one or two quotes alone"

- large pool of interviewees
- cross-checking of accounts. How? No detail about that.
- many  interviewees are recollecting (during the interviews) of times from 20 years earlier


pxiv The book "addresses the state of Israeli-Iranian relations from the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 to the present."

p1 "The Iranian president is a Persian version of Hitler" - Shimon Peres re Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

p2 suspect phrasing and imbalance? Para "on one side... [Israel's defender's position] and on the other side [Iran's enemies position]" - this doesn't leave a side or position that could possibly be positive to Iran and negative to Israel. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun. It's like 1 tick for Israel and 1 cross for Iran.

p3 - look up meaning of 'suzerainty'
[current note: meaning is the 'position or authority of a suzerain; "under the suzerainty of...".'

Hmm, helpful. What the fuck's a suzerain? 

1. A nation that controls another nation in international affairs but allows it domestic sovereignty.

2. A feudal lord to whom fealty was due.

Wow, never heard of it. But is this similar to the power the US had over Japan after WWII? Or Europe over Germany?

p4 refers to Bush administration in the present, this hasn't been updated and it's glaringly out of date. The preface was new.

p6 zoroastrian, I like this word. It's one I have heard of but I can't remember what it means.

Zoroastrianism "The religious system founded by Zoroaster and set forth in the Avesta, teaching the worship of Ahura Mazda in the context of a universal struggle between the forces of light and of darkness."

Wow again. Interesting how these definitions really are unhelpful sometimes.

Zoroastrian - "(Non-Christian Religions / Other Non-Christian Religions) a follower of Zoroaster or adherent of Zoroastrianism: in modern times a Gabar or a Parsee"

 Getting a bit more gen* now. 

Persian (Farsi) is closer to Swedish and French than Arabic, though it's written in Arabic script and contains many Arabic words.

Iranians largely follow the Shia line of Islam rather than the surrounding countries who follow the Sunni branch. (Interesting side note; Turkey is the other way around. Majority Sunni, minority Shia.)

- Saddam** invaded Iran - the UN didn't consider it a threat to international peace and security

- took 2 years to call for withdrawal (compared to 1990 Saddam invaded Kuwait, it took 12 hours to demand immediate and unconditional withdrawal)

- from 1980 (date of invasion) another 5 years passed before the UN addressed Saddam's use of chemical weapons. Even then Washington ensured UN resolutions were watered down to protect Saddam. (US and Western countries either sold directly or condoned chemical weapon use.)

- the US later used these crimes to justify its invasion of Iraq in 2003

(this is one reason the US shits me.)

p8 "Anti-semitism is not an eastern phenomenon, it's not an Islamic or Iranian phenomenon [it] is a European phenomenon."

*

That's as far as I've gotten but I will turn my mind back to it when I can.

Over to you, Alex.

* Like that? Gen is a Hemingwayism.

** Has anyone else ever noticed that Saddam Hussein was always referred to as Saddam rather than Hussein. I've always thought it's strange. Like saying 'John invaded Iran... John's use of chemical weapons...'

I'm a sucker for some Elaine Lee

Vera Collins from Number 96 and Anne Louise Lambert from Picnic at Hanging Rock.


Knew both their faces instantly in this short film from The Age website. Is it just me or is it quite moving?

A new direction

Doing some reading and googling around for a new writing idea. It involves Japan, a failed first marriage and a terminal illness.

Saw this amazing page while trying to find out the name for the piece of equipment a soldier (British) would have used in WW2 to eat out of. A ramekin? Pannekin?

Above is a Polish soldier kit.

You can see a whole bunch of others here.

Just remembered how much I loved Bjork

Her Big Time Sensuality clip = amazing.

Recently I bought some books

Quelle surprise, I hear you say.

Well, out of the two novels, I read the first quite easily (Five Bells, beautifully written but there were some jarrings for me within that day depicted on the page) and then Animal People which after the very promising opening couple of pages I struggled with majorly.

And now, I have fallen into the arms of Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence. And like I described to someone else recently it's like falling into a beautifully made bed that has the finest linens, in a gorgeous room. With someone you really want to fuck. But make love is probably the more appropriate term, for there is nothing crass or hurried or fucky about Pamuk. The opening chapter, he is in his beloved's arms in an apartment in a block his mother owns in Istanbul.* She is so beautiful and he is so happy. This chapter lasts less than two pages but it is jammed with the room in which the lovers lie yet not crowded. The writing is not crowded. Then, right at the end the narrator says that within a month he will be formally engaged to another woman, Sibel.

The opening reminded me of another of Pamuk's books - The Black Book - one I was unable to read/finish. It was too dense or something but I will try again one day.

I have just finished Chapter 24 'The Engagement Party' and I don't think I have ever read such a thrilling, fraught, teasing, cleverly written number of pages. Ever. It is amazing and I can't wait for tonight when I climb into my own bed with reasonable linen in a pleasant room with no one to continue reading this book.

* This apartment is like a recurring motif; Pamuk's own mother had an apartment block she owned in Istanbul as well which figured in his memoir of that beautiful city.

Looking forward to this

Looking forward to Julian Assange's new talk show. The first episode is being released via a Russian English channel, I'm guessing it will also be all over youtube.

Oooh, found the trailer, via RT the Russian station:

But before we get to Rachmaninov

here's another Russian emigre.

Nabokov talking about Lolita, from a tv show in 1950. The man smoking is Lionel Trilling, American literary critic. This is just wonderful. I love the smile playing with Nabokov's lips throughout, the way he abruptly gets up and moves to the couch where he slumps to the side from time to time. You get a sense of his brain power and his humour, especially in the second part where they are discussing great love affairs.

To me it's extraordinary that not only can I hear Rachmaninov playing his own compositions on youtube, but I can see an interview with Nabokov. I love my life.

The only thing I like as much as Rachmaninov

Are Bach violin concertos.

Oh the beauty.




And the second movement:

So been a while

I have nothing much to report, well I do actually. Manuscript for book # 1 is with two publishers, on their request thanks to a feisty pitch via email by a writerly colleague of mine.

Imagine a bidding war between Text and Random House. Oh, I wish.

Everybody please cross fingers and any other bendy flexible bits of bodies. Thank you, I shall keep you posted.

Almost finished first draft of book # 2.

*

In other news, business is going well. We have 11 schools 'on the books' and debuted a few weeks ago. It's all going swimmingly though we'd like a few more bookings so we are doing mail out number 3 on the school holidays.

*

Today I went to Readings to kill time. This is what I bought:

Five Bells by Gail Jones.

Animal People by Charlotte Wood.

The Idea of Home by Geraldine Brooks (as part of the Boyer Lectures). I was disappointed with People of the Book and thus wasn't interested in Caleb's Crossing but liked The Year of Wonders and adored Nine Parts of Desire (non-fiction) so I expect this small volume will be engaging.

Quarterly Essay featuring Anna Krien's 'Us and Them' piece on animal welfare/animals/us and them

AND

Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence.

If just for the front cover, love it.

Which to read first, oh I love these types of conundrums!

Exporting blog for backup

Has anyone ever used the export blog function to back up a blog?

I want to do this but am scared of the whole thing disappearing.

My generation

This is fucking awesome.

It takes commitment, about 30 mins of your time, but it's a real statement of my time, my people, my comedians and actors. The way they can take the piss of themselves; I'd like to see the current young upstarts do something like this.

I wasn't a particular Beastie Boys fan but I always liked their style.


You might want to revisit the original for a refresher before watching the whole thing.

I want this bathroom

Or maybe I should be more polite and say I would like...

It would go nicely in my rambling country house that I plan to buy in about ten years. That's pretty much when city-duty will be over (?) ie kids will have finished school and left home or finished university.

I told Clokes last night his two old hard drives will not be allowed in the house, he can have the garage because of course I will have my writing shed, separate to the house.

Isn't the colour beautiful?

PS I found this via Sublimation's facebook page.

I know I know

It's been so long.

But this just caught my eye and I had to share.

I want a writers hut so badly, you have now idea. I want it in a beautiful garden, and I prefer the truly rustic ones, nothing flash.

Check out some others here.