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.

Can't resist

Prediction: in 10 years, Paris Jackson will be 23 and The Biebs will be 27. They will be dating, and possibly engaged. They will get married, have babies and form a new musical empire.

You heard it here first.