Tag Archives: Australian literature

Stella, and a digression on envy, work, inadequacy

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The Stella Prize 2013, the inaugural prize, was awarded last week to Carrie Tiffany, for Mateship with Birds, which you know I enjoyed very much (here’s my Big Issue interview with Carrie from last year). She very generously donated $10,000 of the prize money back to the shortlist, noting that it was a selfish act because it gave the authors time and she was looking forward to their next books! Very sweet.

Helen Garner was invited to speak, prior to the prize-giving. She spoke honestly and personally about how prizes can be tricky, if you don’t win or aren’t nominated at all. You have to remember, she said, that prizes are judged by people, driven by unconscious urges. It’s also true that even the most intelligent, studied, insightful and well-read critic is a person. There is always a factor of subjectivity.

Slowly shedding the naive shell I carried when I moved to Melbourne five years ago, I’m starting to realise that the industry isn’t quite so humble. (Yeah duh, you’re saying.) I’ve been privy to conversations lately, at festivals and events, where people are wearing envy on their sleeves, often around writers who have received big advances or won multiple prizes. I’ve heard words like ‘prize-bait’, and ‘flashing their advance’. Among all the good and positive stuff, mind you, of which there is a lot. Sometimes it just slips out.

But it’s healthy to (privately) express such things, because the industry is tough and getting tougher. Honestly, many authors whom you would think of as famous and respected are getting such tiny advances, like $4000. These are authors who have published several books. So it’s natural, don’t you think, that hopes become higher, maybe a little desperation creeps in?

Since I consider that I’m at the beginning of my career, I’m realising that it is a smart idea to have other work—a day job, freelance work, or whatever—that is regular, enjoyable (or bearable) and can be relied upon for an income. It’s a challenge in itself to find this, because ‘artists’ are not always easygoing. ‘Regular work’ can be a big deal, especially if you’re nervy, neurotic or prone to anxiety or depression (as many creative people are—no, I don’t think it’s a myth, they need to be because they need to see the inner workings of things, even if they misinterpret them):

‘All writers—all beings—are exiles as a matter of course. The certainty about living is that it is a succession of expulsions of whatever carries the life force… All writers are exiles wherever they live and their work is a lifelong journey towards the lost land…’—Janet Frame, The Envoy From Mirror City.

My own envy swells up when confronted with artists who seem free to be artists. My biggest obstacle to that is not money (though of course that’s an obstacle), it is myself. My unfortunate absorption of others’ opinions of what I should be doing, and the distraction of other genuine but smaller goals, means that I often put my biggest, shiniest ambition last. It gets blocked. And then there’s all the life stuff.

And I’m not brilliant, anyway. I need to work on something a lot to make it any good. An author I very much like suggested the other night that publishing a book might actually hinder my career. But most Australian critics that I respect have published books, fiction and/or nonfiction; and secondly, I obviously don’t see my career in the same light as she does. And that’s kind of depressing. It effects me, and makes me think my ambition is lofty. And it’s hard to shake those words when I sit down to write. Who do I think I am? All the while I watch the musician on the cello, moving his head like a mad person, being pure music; passion, and I envy that.

There’s a reason, then, that I’m drawn to characters in both my reading and writing who feel inadequate (would that effect my critical bias? Maybe). But also, adversely, characters who are supremely confident. Or eccentric, or glamorous; even arrogantly so. Not hard to figure that one out. Characters and figures to relate to, to make you feel less alone, and characters and figures who possess traits you aspire to. Both types are outward expressions of one own ‘truths’ and desires, though how confused it often all becomes. Always Kafka and always glam rock.

Kafka

Love & logic: Graeme Simsion on The Rosie Project

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The Rosie ProjectText Publishing (buy paperback / ebook)

This feature interview was first published in The Big Issue no. 425

The main character in the novel, The Rosie Project, has difficulty understanding social cues. ‘Wherever Don goes, chaos will follow’, says the author, Graeme Simsion. Don Tillman is a professor of genetics at the University of Melbourne, undertaking a self-assigned ‘Wife Project’, a 16-page questionnaire designed to help him find a life partner. Don is fit, successful, and possesses a variety of impressive skills. Social interaction, however, is not so straightforward for Don and although he never acknowledges it, the reader firmly suspects that he exhibits characteristics of Asperger’s syndrome.

‘It started off inspired by a friend of mine’, Simsion explains. ‘I’ve known this guy for over 30 years—we go jogging together—and he can be hard work at times. He’s got an opinion on everything.’ Simsion’s friend also has a particular way of speaking, which the author channelled when he began writing Don: ‘He uses computer words, like “this meal has a fault”, or “I’ll initialise my eating procedure”‘. Simsion’s friend, too, has had a tough time socially in his life. He eventually found a partner, but Simsion says, ‘for a guy who was fit, intelligent, wealthy’, it was a struggle.

Graeme Simsion

Graeme Simsion

Simsion did research into Asperger’s syndrome for The Rosie Project, mainly through first-person accounts of people with Asperger’s, or those living with them. ‘I made a very conscious decision that this [book] would be in first person,’ Simsion says, ‘Don is highly functioning enough that we can relate to him.’

Simsion was clear that he did not want Don to be the kind of character who ‘helped [other characters] grow because they [had] met him, which you see in a film like Rain Man.’ Being inside Don’s head (essentially an unreliable narrator) makes for good humour, as the reader can interpret certain social cues, or subtleties of language, that Don misses. Don’s first date with Rosie is thwarted, for example, by his showing up to a fancy restaurant in a Gore-Tex jacket and then, under stress, proceeding to ‘disarm’ the bouncers with his aikido moves.

The contrast between Don’s competency in some areas and his ineptitude in others makes for classic comedy. But it also makes for depth of character, since Simsion makes Don work for his skills. In one of the best scenes in the book, Don appears almost heroic when he manages to remember, and mix, a massive number of cocktails at a function. (It’s part of a surreptitious scheme to collect genetic material for a side project with Rosie, who is trying to identify her real father.) But Don’s cocktail knowledge, while extremely impressive, is not ‘magic’. Don has spent hours and hours with a cocktail book, testing and memorising recipes. Simsion says he didn’t want the knowledge and skills to come to Don easily. ‘There’s this cliché that if you have Asperger’s or autism you’ve got a gift.’ From his reading, and from talking to people—mainly people who have autistic children—Simsion found that this idea of giftedness is one stereotype many struggle against. ‘Don’s very focused, but he’s not magic,’ Simsion says, ‘I tried to make him human.’

Though the author has had incredible pre-release success with The Rosie Project, selling the rights into more than 30 countries, he, too, has had to work hard for it. After a mid-life career change (Simsion is from a science and business background), the project began life as a screenplay, which Simsion wrote during many years studying screenwriting. The project has changed significantly since its inception. One influence on the story’s eventual tone and shape was the romantic comedy genre, particularly classic screwball comedies. These films also helped with the development of the female character, Rosie. Simsion watched many of the classics, including His Girl Friday (1940), Bringing up Baby (1938), Philadelphia Story (1940), Some Like it Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960). He particularly noted the strong female characters featured in many of the films, and thinks of Rosie as being more in line with a Katherine Hepburn style character, than female characters in contemporary romantic comedies.

But there is a somewhat traditional binary in the book, in that Rosie is the more impulsive and emotional character, while Don is the rational one. Simsion admits that some female readers have likened Don’s logic to that of ‘all blokes’, not just those with Asperger’s. Although the point is that Don is often ‘kidding himself’, says Simsion, when he believes he’s acting rationally. For example, when Don says, ‘I made a rational decision to go and see Rosie at the pub and help her find her father because that was good use of my time’, the reader thinks: yeah, right…

But it could also be said that there’s a Don and Rosie inside all of us: the side that tries to make the best and most profitable use of time, and the side which encourages us to ‘stop worrying about it’, and is open to new experiences. One of the reasons the book is so successful, and humorous, is due the reader’s recognition of these warring aspects.

Walter Mason on The Memory of Salt by Alice Melike Ülgezer

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memory of saltThe Memory of Salt
Alice Melike Ülgezer
Giramondo
9781920882907
August 2012 (buy)

reviewed by Walter Mason

One so rarely encounters God in modern Australian literature that it comes as a shock to see the word, especially so early on Alice Melike Ülgezer’s The Memory of Salt, an extraordinarily lyrical and original novel. The novel’s narrator, Ali, hears the name of God at the same time as she encounters a pointless and unexpected death. She realises that it is this call to the divine that has both swept her up in a mystical, though unconventional, devotion that comes close to defining her, and made her feel alien in a culture to which she has some claim.

Ali is an alien trapped between two different cultures. It is not just the conventional ethnic division, but the more profound divisions that fill this novel: divisions between secularism and faith, music and science, rationality and insanity. Her father, a carefree Turkish traveller, impresses her with his sense of freedom and his complete lack of attachment to the material realities of work, accommodation and even national belonging.

The Memory of Salt tells the story of her parents’ love affair, an ill-advised and doomed thing between a temporarily distracted middle-class Australian girl and a peripatetic Turkish Sufi. Theirs is a physically charged, intensely sexual attraction, and the intensity of their intentionally exotic love is played out in forbidden couplings in foreign hotel rooms, the call to prayer ringing in their ears as they fuck, smoke and doggedly ignore the impossibility of any kind of future together. Sex, too, is charged with a quasi-religious quality:

While they made love her body became a hymn calling out through the shadows and the fruit, through the streets and the lights… And as she spirited herself like an incantation across the city she became higher and higher until all the voices of all the children, and all the city lights were one.

The child of this mystical union, Ali, returns to Turkey to attempt to rescue her hopelessly stoned father, and while there she is drawn into the embrace of his family’s singular religion. A newly-pious aunt convinces her that this return to her ancestral religion is an act of grace and an exercise in destiny, and she urges the bookish and clever girl to read the Masnawi, the long, mystical poem of Rumi that addresses God as a lover and the ultimate source of being.

This is a rich and delicious novel. It brings to life modern Turkish Sufi culture in a unique and unexpected way, and is, in its own way, a particularly Australian literary artefact, blending cultures and experiences in a way that only this country and culture would seem to allow. While it demands to be read closely and attentively, it rewards with its sad and constantly surprising story. I think it marks a fascinating and important contribution to Australian literary culture, and shines some light on a world I have rarely encountered in books.

Disclaimer: I must declare that this book is published by Giramondo, a publishing house headed up by my erstwhile academic supervisor Ivor Indyk. And while I have complete faith in his academic advice, we don’t always see eye to eye in matters literary. In this case, however, I have been won over by the writing of Alice Melike Ülgezer, an author I am yet to meet, and this review represents my honest and uninfluenced opinion.

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walter3Walter Mason is a travel writer and speaker with a special interest in spirituality. His first book, Destination Saigon, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2010 to great critical acclaim. Walter has also featured in Vietnamese language broadcasts, and articles by and about him have run in the Vietnam Airlines in-flight magazine and other popular magazines in Vietnam. His book is sold in pirated editions in the backpacker districts of Saigon and Hanoi, where he is assured it’s a popular item. destsaigonDestination Saigon was named by the Sydney Morning Herald as one of the Ten Best Travel Books of 2010.

Irma Gold on The Invisible Thread + WIN a copy

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The Invisible ThreadThe Invisible Thread: One Hundred Years of Words is a new anthology featuring writers connected to Canberra, covering the past 100 years. There are stories, articles, poems and extracts by Judith Wright, Alex Miller, Jackie French, Les Murray, Omar Musa, Don Watson, Garth Nix, Kate Grenville and a huge range of writers new and old.

The anthology is edited by Irma Gold, who has answered a few questions about the anthology below. Gold, and the publisher Halstead Press, have also kindly offered to give away a number of copies of The Invisible Thread to LiteraryMinded readers. To go in the draw, leave a comment on this post that mentions a writer who is connected to Canberra. You can also write a tweet that mentions a writer connected to Canberra, but remember to tag it with @LiteraryMinded + #InvisibleThread. Due to postage costs this competition is open to Australia only. The competition will close on Friday the 21st of December at midnight and I’ll announce the winners on the weekend. Good luck!

Irma Gold

Irma Gold

Irma, how did you, and the Advisory Committee, select works to be included in The Invisible Thread?

The Advisory Committee spent a year reading through the work of over 150 writers. We tried to read as widely as possible through each author’s body of work. So between us we read hundreds of books, as well as individual essays, stories and poems published in various journals and magazines. We decided that the guiding criteria would be work of excellence, or work that ‘sings’, by writers who had a significant association with the region. The anthology is not about Canberra, so we were not limited by subject matter. From all this reading we put together a longlist, and I convened a series of meetings to debate the merits of each work. We then agreed upon a list of recommendations, from which I selected the final works that make up the anthology.

The Invisible Thread is divided into sections: ‘Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards’, and ‘Looking In, Looking Out’. Can you explain some of the choices behind the ordering and organisation of the anthology?

I spent last summer finalising content and deciding how to structure the anthology. This meant lots of time thinking, rereading, moving bits of paper around. At various points my office floor was completely covered in paper. There were so many different ways the anthology could have been structured. A chronological progression was one option, but this would have prevented the works from speaking with each other across the decades. I was looking to make connections between the works so that they could ‘sing’ together. In the end I settled on sections that are deliberately open-ended and kaleidoscopic. It’s this interplay that gives the anthology its richness. Like a choir of individual voices that together create a landscape of sound, the anthology is greater than the sum of its parts, creating a landscape of literature. I selected individual works based not just on their own merits, but also on the way they contributed to the whole. Readers often dip in and out of anthologies, which is part of the beauty of them, but there are greater rewards to be discovered reading The Invisible Thread from beginning to end.

Did you come to any other interesting conclusions, or make any notable discoveries (perhaps regarding Australian literature in general), while putting the book together?

One of the discoveries we made is that as a reflection of the last 100 years of publishing the anthology reveals the difficultly women have experienced in getting published and achieving recognition. Of the early writers included in The Invisible Thread it is the women who have slipped from our collective radar. Writers like Marjorie Barnard, Flora Eldershaw and Ethel Anderson who were highly regarded in their time but have now faded from view.

The disparity between the number of men and women in the anthology became evident only after I finalised content: one-third of the writers are female. There’s much debate at the moment about the undervaluing of women writers, and whether we—as a society—subconsciously preference male writers. In making decisions the committee was only thinking about the very best writing, but surely the committee hadn’t fallen into this mindset?

At the beginning of our search we were casting our net as widely as possible, without discrimination, seeking out every writer who’d had a significant association with the capital. I immediately went back to our initial list and discovered that only one-third of those writers were women, so the final selections reflected the imbalance of the broader pool. Recent stats show that women are still dramatically underrepresented in awards and reviews, and the newly established Stella Prize for women writers, named after Miles Franklin, is trying to redress that balance. I would like to think that the next 100 years will bring greater change.

What is the most ‘Canberra’ piece in the book, if you had to name one?

Such an interesting question and a tough one to answer (for starters, singling out one work from 75 is a terrible ask). The answer also hinges on how you define Canberra. Outsiders see Canberra as being dominated by politics, but for me what characterises the people who live here—and especially the writers—is a particular kind of thoughtfulness. This is a place of thinking, of ideas, of exploration. Most pieces in the anthology are set elsewhere, showing Canberra as a city connected to the world.

If forced to name one piece it would be Marion Halligan’s essay ‘Luminous Moments’. Over the years Marion has written so beautifully about Canberra in a way that has opened readers’ eyes to the everyday lives of the ordinary people who live here. But Marion’s essay is not just about what’s happening on the surface, it’s a moving and profound work about life and death. People have deep-seated negative perceptions about our city that have little to do with the reality of living here. Peel back the veneer and you’ll find a more subtle and complex place. That’s what Marion’s work does in an elegant and disarming way.

What do you perceive as being the role of a book like this, now and in the future?

Firstly, it makes evident the rich and diverse work Canberra has contributed to our national literature. Melbourne might be the official UNESCO City of Literature, but for a young city with a small population Canberra’s literary rollcall is impressive. The anthology also opens a conversation between works past and present. Readers can reacquaint themselves with writers now largely forgotten, discover writers who have previously been overlooked or not received the attention they deserve, and revisit the established greats. The Invisible Thread is a microcosm of Australian literary talent: worth reflecting on as we look to the next 100 years.

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Don’t forget to enter the competition! (Details at the top of this post.)

See also The Invisible Thread trailer on YouTube, and The Invisible Thread Facebook and Twitter pages.

Trauma, kindness & starting with a bang: Jessie Cole on Darkness on the Edge of Town

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Jessie Cole

Fourth Estate, 2012
9780732293192
(buy paperback, ebook)

A woman crashes her car outside Vincent’s house. Vincent attempts to help the woman, and the baby in her arms, which may not have survived the crash. Rachel is her name and her arrival will have repercussions for Vincent and his daughter Gemma, and will draw attention (and judgment) in town. Darkness on the Edge of Town is Jessie Cole’s gripping and emotionally intelligent debut novel. Jessie and I have been getting to know each other for a little while now, sending missives from my urban jungle to her forest and back again, about animals, books, children, place, and more. I finally sent through a few questions to Jessie in order to introduce her, and Darkness, to you:

Darkness on the Edge of Town has ‘thrilling’ aspects, it moves along, it’s compelling, but I’d say it’s a character-driven novel. Could you tell us a bit about setting up the situation, and then letting it unfold? About pacing the story? How much of the whole story did you have when you began writing?

Good question! Firstly, the MS I’d written before Darkness was a very personal ‘family saga’ kind-of-story, set across several generations, and I decided after I finished writing it that I really enjoyed reading books that were more just a snippet of time. Stories that simply picked up in a certain part of someone’s life and stayed with them for a bit. I liked the immediacy of those stories, and the way they almost felt like they were told in real-time. And I suppose, I liked the smallness of them. And that was about as far as I’d gotten in terms of thinking consciously about what I wanted to write next. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was ‘a writer.’ Only that sometimes I wrote.

darkness on the edge of townThen, the whole of Darkness came to me in a one big blast late at night. Beginning to end. Hit me like a whack across the back of the head. I have no real explanation for why or how that happened, but it was a very powerful moment and I knew from the outset that it was something special, something whole. It’s difficult to explain how a fully-formed story could come all-at-once, how it could even fit inside a mind in one instant, but it did. I didn’t think at all about setting up the situation, I just sat down and let Vincent talk. I imagined myself as a stranger in a pub who struck up a conversation with him. Him telling me his story— among all the noise and cacophony—and the story being just so hard and so strong he had to get it off his chest. The intimacy of it thrilled me. I wrote the first 20,000 words in a week.

In my mind Vincent and Gemma and Rachel were all compelling characters in traumatic but oddly intimate circumstances, and I was enthralled by them. Part way through the book I realised that I was writing something with some elements of a thriller. This was not purposeful, it was just how it came out. I’m not much of a deliberate writer. I don’t like to plan or over-think things. I do know that when I write I am looking to be thrilled—to feel a kind of wave or nervous tremor of emotion or sensation—and I do use this as a guide to know I’m on the right track. I didn’t think about pacing, the story had its own momentum. I trusted it. At some stage I saw Sonya Hartnett speak at the Byron Bay Writers’ Fest, and she said something along the lines of: ‘I like to start with a bang and end with a bang and have lots of bangs in between’. And I realised that this was what I was doing with Darkness.

Although Sonya Hartnett does plot out her novels, with different coloured sticky notes for different characters or something like that, I’ve been told! That’s what works for her. It fascinates me how each writer approaches a book or a story so differently (and it can be different for each book, too).

Yes, everyone works very differently. Sonya Hartnett has written so many novels, she must have it absolutely down-pat! I guess I just meant that last comment about the bangs in terms of pacing. When I heard Sonya say that, I realised that’s what I was aiming for in the pacing of Darkness, even though I hadn’t really known it. And yes, I think each book is different. I like what Jonathon Franzen says about how you have to become the person who can write the book you want to write, and how with each book you probably have to become a new person.

The connection that forms between the two young women in Darkness, Rach and Gemma, adds a layer to the story. They each come alive a little bit, and maybe grow and make some sense of what is happening to them (separately and together) through their conversations. Could you comment on this aspect of the novel?

I’m very interested in the power inherent in the kindness of strangers. I think in some ways Gemma’s generosity towards Rachel is a bit of a surprise. Teens are notoriously self-centred and maybe—in the circumstances—it would be natural for Gemma to be quite hostile and territorial. But she isn’t. I think that’s because she’s got this wonderful mix of knowingness and openness; she’s also hungry for adult wisdom and it’s in short supply. People who’ve been deprived can start to bloom with the smallest smatterings of attention, and I think Rachel and Gemma give this to each other in as much as they are able. To be truly heard is a powerful thing, and a lot of the time we don’t give each other that gift. I suppose I wanted to show how a kind of openness to connection can build something worthwhile and healing between people, even in the least likely of situations. I’m also interested in the idea of family. In Darkness none of the three main characters are related by blood, but the bonds that they form are, in many ways, familial. In our culture ideas about family can be so narrow. So nuclear. I guess I wanted to question that a little. What makes a family? How do they form?

I want to ask about the small town Australian setting. It’s really as rich as a setting can be, with its history and tensions, and its rituals (thinking about Gem drinking Jim Beam and Coke from a bottle, fumbling in her friend’s bedroom). How is the setting integral to the story?

This small-town-question always leaves me a little stumped. I know that sounds ridiculous because Darkness is so completely a small town story, but it’s really hard for me to have a lot of perspective on that. I’ve lived in the same small town almost all of my life. It’s funny, when people come to visit who haven’t been to my place before, they always say something along the lines of: ‘Wow, you really live in the middle of nowhere!’ And I always reply: ‘What do you mean? This is the centre of the universe!’ Which is, of course, a joke. But in a sense it’s also true, in that it is the centre of my universe. It’s the only way of living that I really understand with any depth.

In terms of how the setting of Darkness is integral to the story, I suppose for the characters of Vincent and Gemma it is that ambivalent mixture of security and claustrophobia. That sense that they are ‘known’ by the people around them, which is in some ways affirming, but that they are also judged or pigeonholed by who they once were, or how their lives have played out thus far. In a small town the past is not a foreign country. It’s a tangible presence that everyone remembers. And on top of that is the way that the private can be translated in small communities. I mean, once you drive up your driveway in the country no-one knows what goes on inside your house. You have no close neighbours to listen to the rhythms of the household, so I think people make up stories about each other based on whatever facts are at hand, but often these stories lack subtlety, or even truth. Maybe the difference in the city is that people don’t assume they know anything much about the people around them, whereas in a small town more assumptions are made. In Darkness, Vincent struggled to communicate what was happening between him and Rachel. He knew that he’d never be able to explain, but that all sorts of judgments would be made. The friction between what is really happening in the private sphere and what the town at large assumes—and how these assumptions play out—creates a lot of tension in the story.

Just as an aside, I think our culture favours the ‘escape’ narrative. The story where we escape our past and start our lives anew. Makeover. Transformation. Alteration. Just look at how many films turn on that fantasy. Especially now, when moving is so accessible. In some ways it is seen as a type of failure not to leave your past behind. And it is almost a given that anyone with any prospects should leave a small town and make something better of their lives. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. And I’m interested in stories about people who decide to stay. I’m not sure how apparent it is in Darkness, but I feel there is a different kind of bravery required to live with your past, and it isn’t something that is celebrated all that much.

—

Check out Jessie Cole’s website.

The Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012: how did I go?

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awwc2012After completing the recent survey on the Australian Women Writers Challenge website I decided it was time I looked at my reading and reviewing of books by Australian women writers in 2012.

On the Overland website Jane Gleeson-White has declared 2012 the year of Australian women writers, and has provided a fantastic summary of the year in relation to the challenge, the Stella Prize, and the success of female Australian writers in prestigious literary awards. Founder of the AWWC, Elizabeth Lhuede, has also written an extensive report on the challenge for the Huffington Post.

Collective blog/reviewing challenges aren’t something I usually partake in. There are many demands on my reading already (for Uni, for specific festivals and events, for commissioned reviews) but I thought this challenge was important. Personally, in previous years where I’d recorded my reading, I had noticed a bias (about 60-70%) towards books by male authors. I’m not alone in that, it’s something that has been well recorded and discussed recently (and is one of the reasons Lhuede began this challenge). I wanted to consciously break that habit, and share reviews of some of the books I came across. I also probably don’t have to explain the significance for me, as a writer of fiction and nonfiction and someone who intends to have a future in this industry, to publicly address a bias such as this.

So here are the books I have read (so far) by Australian women writers in 2012. See the hyperlinks for any reviews or interviews, and feel free to ask me about any of the others in the comments section below.

Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan (young adult, review)
A Common Loss by Kirsten Tranter (literary thriller, review)
Careless by Deborah Robertson (literary/general)
Sweet Old World by Deborah Robertson (literary/character story, feature interview)
The Sea Bed by Marele Day (literary, review)
Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood (popular, mention)
When We Have Wings by Claire Corbett (speculative, review)
The Fine Colour of Rust by PA O’Reilly (general/humour, review)
The Beloved by Annah Faulkner (literary, review [might need subscription])
The Book of Emmett by Deborah Forster (literary)
The Meaning of Grace by Deborah Forster (literary)
Knucked by Fiona Wright (poetry)
Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth (historical, review)
Taking Shelter by Jessica Anderson (literary, classic author, review)
Taming the Beast by Emily Maguire (literary/general, mention)
The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson (classic, review)
Fishing for Tigers by Emily Maguire (literary/general, feature interview)
My Hundred Lovers by Susan Johnson (literary/general)
After the Darkness by Honey Brown (crime)
Nine Days by Toni Jordan (historical/general, review & ‘five facts‘)
Tarcutta Wake by Josephine Rowe (short fiction)
The Blood Countess by Tara Moss (popular/supernatural, mention)
All the Way Home by Kristin Henry (verse novel, review)
Hannah and Emil by Belinda Castles (historical, interview)
The Burial by Courtney Collins (historical, interview)
Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth (literary)
Whisky Charlie Foxtrot by Annabel Smith (literary/general, interview)
By the Book by Ramona Koval (memoir/nonfiction, do check out my feature interview with Ramona in the current Big Issue)
Darkness on the Edge of Town by Jessie Cole (literary/general/thriller, interview)
The Spider Goddess by Tara Moss (popular/supernatural, mention)
Black Spring by Alison Croggon (young adult, possible review forthcoming depending on Xmas madness)

I also read my friend Amy Barker’s excellent manuscript Paradise Earth, and I read many poems, short stories and essays by Aus women writers throughout the year in journals and anthologies.

fortunes of richard mahonySo far this year I’ve only read an abysmal 67 books in full (I have started a lot more…). 31 of them were by Australian women and more than half of them were by women in general, so I have done well at creating a positive bias this year. My absolute favourite book that I read this year was The Fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson. I wonder if I would have read Mahony if I hadn’t done the challenge? When The Lifted Brow asked me to review one of the Text Classics I deliberately went for a female author, and ended up with Mahony. It was worth doing the challenge for that alone: one of the best reading experiences I’ve ever had.

Will I be doing the challenge in 2013? Not exactly.The challenge has done the trick of making me more aware of my reading choices and has helped me discover some amazing literature. But I don’t need to do it as a challenge in 2013, I’ll just be more considered each time I face the pile. I’m also taking a month’s break from social media in January (!) in order to finish my thesis, and just to give myself some head space. So I’d prefer not to take on any specific challenges. I’ll have plenty of good reading to get on with for the Perth Writers Festival…

Please feel free to link to your own round-ups of the AWWC in the comments below!

Writing from the ‘global south’: Dallas Angguish on Southpaw Issue 1

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Southpaw
Issue 1, December 2011
ISSN 1839-7867
http://southpawjournal.com/

Reviewed by Dallas Angguish

Southpaw describes itself as ‘a journal of writing from the global south’. This notion of the global south draws on and intersects with the recent critique in scholarly circles of the Northern hemisphere bias in critical theory, cultural studies (especially literature and film studies), social theory and the academy in general. One of the first, and most potent, elucidations of this bias appears in Raewyn Connell’s book Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. In Southern Theory, Connell starts with a critique of Northern hemisphere sociology then relates social thought from cultures and theorists in the southern hemisphere which, by highlighting the biases and blindnesses of much north-oriented social (and cultural) theory, provides fresh and sometimes challenging insights.

Southpaw’s editors (Alison Caddick and Chris Beach) have taken up the notion of a uniquely southern hemisphere worldview or ‘position’ and applied it to the domain of writing. This is unique in itself although not unexpected. Much of the theory and criticism coming out of the southern hemisphere has been about literature. The theme for Southpaw’s first issue is ‘displacement’, a potent idea that draws on postcolonial theory and writing on colonialism, globalisation and the spectre of mass population displacement (refugees) due to the twin horrors of northern hemisphere driven (and funded) war and ecological catastrophe.

The journal includes a diverse range of writing (poetry, fiction, essays etc.) from an even more diverse cohort of writers. Issue One has contributions from and/or about many places in the global south: Australia, India, New Zealand, Oceania, South Africa, South America and Asia. The writers are all positioned in the global south either geographically or theoretically. Many are members of the cultural and ethnic diasporas that are a reality of life below the equator.

Ali Jimale Ahmed’s poetry opens the issue and provides perceptive reflections on the irreality or constructed nature of the borders between north and south. Ahmed elucidates this notion when he writes that a ‘poetic swoon’ provokes a reorientation to the south which may or may not be a return to another (or an ‘other’) way of seeing things. Paula Tavares’ suite of poems ‘Mukai (Woman)’ engages with the notion of displacement in a more bodily sense. These poems reflect beautifully on the displacement of being a woman in a masculinist world. Tavares’ poems suggest that the female body provides links (umbilical cords) to the earth and the past that might help to counter this displacement. Although this idea might evoke (for a certain type of scholarly northern mind) the problematic of essentialist ways of seeing the body, it also suggests that perhaps there is a way of linking the body to ecology and history that northern theory has missed.

Although the poetry and fiction contained in this issue are all of a high standard, the strengths of Southpaw are mainly in its essays and non-fiction. For me, Martin Plowman’s essay ‘Traveller’s Guide to High Strangeness’ is among the best contributions to this issue. In this perfectly tuned essay, Plowman relates his ongoing fascination with ufologists (UFO boffins) and UFOs as it plays out in a journey to South America. Plowman uses the term ‘high strangeness’ to describe the conspiracy-filled, paranoid and intriguing world of ufology. The term comes from ufology itself and means ‘total uncertainty, a complete lack of meaning.’ Plowman’s essay is expertly written, engaging, informative and humorous.

‘Traveller’s Guide to High Strangeness’ also provides a moment of relief to the other longer contributions which are, in many cases, somewhat heavy. Many of the pieces are negatively skewed encounters with displacement (and the southern hemisphere perspective). This is not to say these other works are not well written. I just found that the journal did not quite balance out the tensions between light and dark, pain and pleasure, in the way that I prefer.

A really good journal should provide the reader with a challenging and informative but also enjoyable reading experience. For me, the profit of reading is as much about enjoyment as it is about illumination. For what is the point of illumination if it brings us only sadness and no pleasure? Not that Southpaw is a total downer. The journal has definite highs (such as Plowman’s essay and the poetry of Tavares), but one definitely leaves the issue feeling pessimistic. There is not enough exploration into the positive possibilities that might be found in displacement. But that is a minor weakness and only my opinion.

Overall, Southpaw is a commendable journal. It’s ideological (and ethical) orientation is worthy. Certainly, the works included in this issue deserve the space the journal has given them. Many of the works deserve wider circulation. I hope, therefore, that the journal is taken up by as broad a readership as possible.

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Dallas Angguish is a writer and editor based in Northern NSW. He has been published in a number of journals including TEXT, Lodestar Quarterly, Retort Magazine, Bukker Tillibul and Polari Journal (of which he is also the editor). Dallas’ work has appeared in the anthologies Bend, Don’t Shatter (2004), Dumped (2000 and US edition 2002) and When You’re a Boy (2011). A collection of his short works, Anywhere But Here, was published in 2006 and his collection of travel tales, America Divine: Travels in the Hidden South, was published by Phosphor Books in 2011. Dallas is also an Associate Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Writing at Southern Cross University. For more info: www.dallasangguish.com

Moments that transform us: AS Patrić on Las Vegas for Vegans

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I first met AS (Alec) Patrić when we were both participants in the Overland Masterclass for Progressive Writers, back in 2009. Alec is an incredibly hard-working, dedicated and talented writer. Since we met he has been published in almost every Australian literary magazine, has won prizes and has released two collections of stories. His latest is Las Vegas for Vegans (Transit Lounge). He is also working on a novel. I got in touch with Alec to ask him a few questions about his latest collection.

So I want to ask first about your process of discovery. Las Vegas for Vegans reaches far and wide in terms of subject, setting and style. Before we get to the philosophical and psychological elements, can I ask about the process of selecting and engaging with the material aspects of the stories? Why hotel rooms? Why insects and gods?

Until now I didn’t realise how many of my stories are set in hotel and motel rooms. Then there are stories set in a post office and a book shop, rooms in hospitals and shelters, a boarding school and an acting academy, an airplane toilet cubicle and even a spaceship. Those settings open doors to insects and gods, and vitally, the stories themselves. ‘The Eternal City’ takes place in a hotel room in Rome but that material aspect is fundamental to the story. It’s not just a location. I don’t think it could be set in a Melbourne flat. ‘Las Vegas for Vegans’ takes place in a hotel that looks out at the Mojave desert and that’s just as crucial to the characters and ideas in that piece. ‘The Mirage Inn’ revolves around a motel on the edge of the Simpson desert, but the difference between the two deserts is significant. In one, a character has more of a chance to find himself, and in the other, he’s likely to lose himself—one man wants to find his way home and the other wants the opposite. If a story is set in the family home, as with ‘Beckett & Son’ or ‘Daughters of Vesuvius’, it’s because family is the chief feature of those stories. Whenever I write a short story or novel, the first thing I look for is a vehicle for the characters and ideas I want to explore. If you’re asking me specifically, why a hotel room, my answer is because it strips a person down to a fundamental state of transition, and the ways we change, moments that transform us for better or worse, is what interests me most about the characters I’m creating or discovering in books when I’m reading.

I’ve always been fascinated by the ‘in-between’ space of hotels and motels, too, so I really enjoyed those stories. Out of the settings and characters in Las Vegas for Vegans comes a range of intellectual, philosophical and moral enquiries. At least as a reader I was faced with questions about love, family, society, history (and personal history), death and what may or may not come after; space, existence… Do you see the stories like this? Or do you think there is more of a single overarching concern?

I don’t write stories with a theme in mind or to explore a philosophical idea or examine a moral, though I do feel gratified that you found yourself responding to those things in my book. I don’t want to educate my reader, but if there are those features you mention in Las Vegas for Vegans, they arise because what I’m doing is testing my own existence in each one of the stories. (I think that’s why writing can be so hard, even though it seems the simplest of activities—to sit comfortably at a desk and tap away at a keyboard). Despite the highfaluting rationale, the primary concern for me is always the dramatic potential of narrative and vitality of character. Hopefully, this translates to nothing more complicated than a great story and my motivation is as basic as wanting to be a compelling storyteller. Anything else is a bonus.

I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about your interest in flash fiction, or very short stories (of which there are a few in the collection).

A flash fiction might seem an exotic bird but they’re as common as canaries. Any three-minute song you’ve ever enjoyed is a flash fiction. Lyrics have word counts of 500 words or less and they open up the world through a window we call ‘story’. That’d be my technical definition of a flash fiction. Interesting articles in the newspaper might qualify as well, perhaps even a blog post or a weekend anecdote told at work Monday morning. And yet when we’re offered the same creature on a literary page it’s a dodo. A song has a singer and musical instruments (often an accompanying video) to help the story out the window, so it’s not easy getting the same story to fly off the page with so few words and none of those accoutrements. Creating a character, an involving narrative, satisfying beginning/middle/end—with tens of thousands of words—is a lot easier. That’s why many readers think the novel is the only place to find what they’re looking for. I don’t think we’re really interested in birds though; how big or small, how high they fly or how pretty the feathers. It’s still all about the song and what it does to our heart/mind/soul. The only question for me is whether that song gives us another way to fly.

It seems like you do want to play with different ‘effects’ though, in terms of what a story does to heart/mind/soul. Some of the stories in Las Vegas for Vegans are warm and tingly, like ‘Below Zero’; others have a kind of blank emotional tone. Numbness itself is a theme of the story ‘Measured Turbulence’. Are these tonal explorations deliberate? Or do you find it happens organically depending on what mood or state of mind you’re in when you sit down to begin a story?

It’s a lovely irony that the warmest piece in Las Vegas for Vegans is a story called ‘Below Zero’, but you’re right of course. It’s a flash fiction that is essentially a burst of love. It’s about falling for a person before they’re born. I wrote it when my eldest daughter was in the womb and I was delighted to be able to read it to her recently. Summer is almost three years old now. ‘One in a Million’ is at the other end of the spectrum, perhaps the coldest story in the collection. It’s about emotional isolation and so that blank tone was certainly intentional. That sense of ice-cold reality is what I wanted to capture. The emotional tone was primary. Tone is usually secondary to most other stories. ‘Measured Turbulence’ was inspired by Bunuel, Lynch and Fassbinder, and I have found in many of their films there’s a kind of placid tone that drifts along until very disruptive events storm through the narrative.

Tonal variation across a book (whether novel or collection) is vital to me. Many writers choose a narrative voice, rhythm, mode, and write in the same way in story after story, and often, novel after novel. That bores me as a reader. John Updike can be too persistently elegant in the same way that David Foster Wallace can be persistently pyrotechnic. As a writer, I want to do more than lull my reader into a narrative dream (or nightmare). I want to wake my reader up to an experience, jolt them with an idea, shock them with the warmth of an emotion, chill with a realization a few seconds later. And yet variation in tone is only valuable if it can open up the fissures of heart/mind/soul. A sentimental story like ‘Below Zero’ benefits from being very short—also from the brutal emotional tone of ‘The Mirage Inn’ which precedes it in Las Vegas for Vegans, and revivifies a reader ready to move on to the following story. ‘Boys’ is next, and I hope a reader at that point has no idea what might happen. Which is more true to life. And I suppose what I’m hoping is that I can offer a totality of experience with a book. One moment you have a careful hand to your wife’s womb waiting for a movement and the next moment the world breaks in with whatever comes next.

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Alec also interviewed yours truly in 2011 for Verity La, an online magazine he founded. If you like our banter, you might want to check that out.

The alpha brother: Annabel Smith on Whisky Charlie Foxtrot

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Fremantle Press, November 2012
9781922089144
(buy paperback, ebook)

Whisky and Charlie are identical twins, but they couldn’t be more different. Whisky is in a coma after a serious accident, and Charlie has to face up to the kind of brother—and person—he’s become. Whisky Charlie Foxtrot moves between the brothers’ earlier lives and their difficult present. It’s a great read; warm, multi-layered, moving, and satisfying. I asked the author, Annabel Smith, a few questions about the novel…

I’d like to ask first about the brothers. Very slowly throughout the narrative you reveal that, while Whisky is certainly no angel, Charlie may have also been pretty hard on him. Could you tell us a bit about developing the relationship between the brothers?

In my first draft of WCF I believed I was writing a book about a decent guy and his wanky, unscrupled ‘evil’ twin. I got to around Chapter seven (Golf) and Whisky was getting pasted. Then, my friend and mentor, Richard Rossiter, guided me to introduce a crisis into the story, to add drama in the relationship, and thus, Whisky’s coma was born. After that it became challenging to hold onto my idea of Whisky because it feels wrong to tell nasty stories about someone who is in a coma! As my perspective on Whisky shifted, so too did my perspective on Charlie. Charlie’s realisation—that Whisky might not be all bad and that he himself might have played a part in the demise of their relationship—was really my own realisation about the truth of their relationship.

It’s great that you’ve maintained that process of realisation for the reader. So when you decided to make a coma the crisis, how did you go about it? It seems like you’ve done research not just into the coma state but into the ways that people deal it.

You’re right, I had to understand coma both in a medical sense and also in terms of its impact on family and friends. For a long time, I wasn’t sure whether Whisky would recover from the coma or not. So I needed to know for how long someone could plausibly remain in a coma; what kind of therapy they would receive and other health threats they might face while in a coma state. In case Whisky woke up, I researched recovery, rehabilitation and the physical and mental implications of long-term coma states. In the event that he would not recover, I explored right-to-life issues and the euthanasia process. The last thing I wanted was for readers to pick holes in the science. So I gathered statistics, diagrams of the brain, explanations of testing procedures and diagnostic tools etc. I don’t really have a science brain so it was pretty heavy-duty reading for me!

I used both medical and anecdotal sources and came across some amazing recovery stories and also many heartbreaking accounts without happy endings. There are lots of forums on the internet for the loved ones of comatose patients and they were an excellent source of material. People contribute advice about things they’ve learned along the way, tips on what helps them get through; some just need an outlet to share their stories with others who understand what they’re going through.

As well as information that had dramatic possibilities, I gathered details that would help to make the story feel real, especially to readers who might have some knowledge of coma, all of which were collated into a giant tome which I printed out and carried round with me for months on end. I was so happy to retire that wad of papers, I can tell you.

I’d like to ask about using the phonetic alphabet to build the structure of the book, and to introduce characters and themes. I think it works so well. Did you have that in place from the beginning? Were there ever any issues adhering to it?

The alphabet was in place right from the start. It was a great springboard for giving me ideas about episodes in the twins’ lives. But it also posed some challenges. Any of the chapters with names (Charlie, Juliet, Oscar) were simple—they became character names. But ‘Yankee’ kept me awake at night. For a long time I had no idea how I was going to work that in. Others posed problems in terms of chronology. X-ray, for instance, was an easy idea to work in, given that Whisky was hospitalised, but I really wanted that information to appear earlier in the novel. I had to do some tricky manoeuvring, like using flashbacks, to make some of the chapters work.

You said you received some valuable advice from Richard Rossiter while writing the book. At what point do you show your work to others? Is it something you’d encourage all writers to do?

I was part of a writing trio (with Amanda Curtin and Robyn Mundy) while writing Whisky Charlie Foxtrot, so I started showing drafts to them almost from the start. I found it really helpful to have feedback at an early stage, when I was still uncertain about the voice, the style and whether the story was appealing or compelling to readers. Once I got on a roll with it, I had more confidence and felt less in need of ongoing feedback. After finishing the first draft, I sought more feedback, and from a wider circle. I think it’s critical to have perceptive readers whose feedback you trust to look at your work. If you can find the right person/people, they can support you when you lose faith in yourself, brainstorm a way through issues in the text, and notice things you can no longer see because you’re too immersed in the work. I have no doubt that the feedback I received made my book stronger and more satisfying to read.

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This post will be added to my tally in the Australian Women Writers Reading + Reviewing Challenge.

Review of All the Way Home by Kristin Henry on Cordite

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My latest review for Cordite Poetry Review is of Kristin Henry’s compelling, neatly written verse novel All the Way Home. It’s about Jesse, the son of a travelling salesman, who falls in love and takes his small family to go live on a commune in NSW. The book is full of tension, music, and careful imagery. Read the full review, in the Cordite style with plenty of samples from the book, here.