I’m fairly time-poor at the moment, but I wanted to at least make a small note about a couple of books I’ve read lately in preparation for the Sydney Writers’ Festival next week!
The Fine Colour of Rust, PA O’Reilly, Blue Door, 9780007434930, March 2012 (buy paperback, ebook)
I’m a big fan of Paddy O’Reilly’s short story collection The End of the World and I’d been told to expect something quite different with this novel—more commercial, I guess, though we all get a bit confused about these distinctions sometimes. The Fine Colour of Rust is a bright and funny story of a teeny country town called Gunapan and its big-hearted and bold resident Loretta Boskovic. Loretta is a single mum (like many of the women in Gunapan) and she’s a perfect mix of hard-edged and dreamy. She may go off into fantasies about men in BMWs whisking her off (away from the kids), but when it comes down to it, Loretta will fight the fight that no one else dares or cares to. She’s thoroughly human, she cares about what others say about her and her kids, but she also doesn’t let it get to her for long. She’s both tough and tender, and she’s hilarious. I did some serious LOLing while reading this book. There are other memorable characters, like Norm, who runs a metal scrapyard and knows everything that’s going on in town; and a pair of goats that soften Loretta’s difficult daughter Melissa. This is a warm and affirming book that doesn’t exactly go in the directions you may expect. Loretta is allowed to remain complex.
What the Family Needed, Steven Amsterdam, Sleepers, 9781742702117 (buy paperback, ebook)
Stuffed if I know why it’s taken me so long to get to this, given how big a fan I am of Amsterdam’s writing. This book is entirely different from Things We Didn’t See Comingbut there’s something of a similar subtle heart-wrenchingness. The poignancy really sneaks up on you. On the surface it seems like a book about a bunch of related characters who are each granted a special power—invisibility, flying, super-strength—but there are layers of meaning beneath. Characters grow up and grow old, deal with desires and impulses, distances, and losses. ‘They were all separate, scattering like planets without even asking each other if it was okay.’ There are consequences to their choices and to their powers. The way some characters connect and understand each other, and others don’t, is also deftly handled. Amsterdam’s prose is clean and fresh, loaded with subtext. This book could be read really differently, too, by a rationalist or a fantasist. It reminded me a little of Joe Meno, the American writer; the combination of ordinariness (and children, and family) and strangeness or other-worldliness. There is space for the unknown and unexplainable, from Giordana not knowing why Janelle would be attracted to her brother, to why or how Ben can fly. This is a strongly empathetic book, and a book of wonder.
I’ll be chairing the panel ‘The Second Time‘ with Steven Amsterdam, Kirsten Tranter and Deborah Forster (free) on Thursday 17 May at Sydney Writers’ Festival.
I’ve attended the Sydney Writers’ Festival as ‘media’ before but this year I’ll get to chat with some great authors on stage. I’m chairing three panels in one day, Thursday 17 May. If you see me that night, don’t be surprised if I’m drunk or asleep in the corner of the hotel bar.
Two of the sessions are free (so get there early if you’d like to come) and one is ticketed. Blurbs are from the SWF program:
The second novel is notoriously difficult but it has not stopped Kirsten Tranter (A Common Loss), Deborah Forster (The Meaning of Grace) or Steven Amsterdam (What the Family Needed). Just to add to the pressure, each of them was listed for major Australian literary prizes for their first books. They tell Angela Meyer how they managed, and what was different the second time around.
11:30-12:30 Bangarra Mezzanine, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay, free.
Humour seems to have taken a back seat in Australian literary fiction of recent years. But we found three recent books that make us wonder if humour is making a comeback. Chris Flynn’s A Tiger in Eden, PA O’Reilly’s The Fine Colour of Rust and Charlotte Wood’s Animal People all make use of the wry to either contrast or even to laugh out loud. They talk to Angela Meyer about how they do it.
1:00-2:00 Sydney Dance 1, Pier 4/5, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay, free.
It’s a whole rural revival for a new crop of novels with PA O’Reilly creating the town of Gunapan as the setting for her The Fine Colour of Rust while Carrie Tiffany puts her characters in Mateship of Birds in the country town of Cohuna. They talk to Angela Meyer about why they decided to go bush.
4:00-5:00 Sydney Theatre, Richard Wherrett Studio, 22 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay, ticketed.
Of course, there’s a huge array of other events. Pour yourself a cup of tea and peruse the program. I’m definitely hoping to see Jeanette Winterson.
Gravel Peter Goldsworthy
Hamish Hamilton
March 2010 (Australia)
9781926428192
Gravel is Peter Goldsworthy’s new collection of short stories – amusing and moving - covering a range of predominantly white middle-class characters in conflict with their own egos. But there are also stories exploring erotic awakening (something Goldsworthy did well in Everything I Knew) and others where the drama is suspenseful, sad and intense. The amusing stories, though, are so memorable. What would you do if a stalker was secretly and gently stroking your ego? What if you were a teenage woman who genuinely fell for an older man? What if you were a happily partnered woman who welcomed the flirtatious attentions of a female shop assistant?
Goldsworthy’s excellent earlier collected works, The List of All Answers,is one of my favourite books, and I found Gravel to be a rewarding, entertaining read. I was happy that Goldsworthy agreed to answer a few questions for LiteraryMinded. Enjoy.
If you met someone unfamiliar with your work, and they asked about what you do, where would you start? Novels? Plays? Opera? Short stories? Poetry?
I’m just a writer. All these forms have their own different freedoms and constraints. Each offers something to the others. I learn about the power of narrative structure from film and theatre; from poetry I found a way of writing the dense, resonant and economical prose I like best. The clarity and simplicity of songs helps poetry. In writing novels I learn about character. So there are always lessons to learn and take across the boundaries.
Gravel features some very amusing stories where characters are in conflict with themselves due to the unsolicited attentions of others (‘Mirror, Mirror’, ‘The Fourth Tenor’, ‘Get a Life’). Why is this a topic of fascination for you?
I enjoy seeing people - especially the pious, and self-righteous – hoisted on their own petards. That includes me in my most pious moments, as painful as it has often been. I like stories that tell us about ourselves, even if we don’t want to hear what they say at first; stories that speak to our hearts even before we understand them with our heads – or that we resist with our heads, even as they fuck with them.
Many of your stories had me asking, as a reader, ‘what would I do?’ Such as, ‘what would I do if I feel for the person I babysat for?’ or ‘what would I do if I had to choose between the farm and my old dog?’ Is this often how the stories come to you?
Well – I guess those emotional trajectories we have all lived, even if on a smaller scale, or in parallel situations. There aren’t many new stories in the world; maybe ‘Shooting the Dog’ is one.
You’re skilled at capturing that moment of erotic awakening, in ‘The Nun’s Story’, and also in Everything I Knew. It’s the kind of topic that draws the reader in through memory, the senses and the imagination. Is the best kind of art, for you, something that stirs the intellect, emotions and physical body all at once?
Exactly. Too much literary fiction is pure confection – all head; too much popular fiction is cheap emotions – all heart. There are great exceptions; there is nothing human – nothing of the heart – in Borges’ best stories, and they are wonderful. But he knew to keep them short; he would never risk boring us with a novel. I want – unhumbly - to speak to all the organs at once. I’ve often written about this – as essay called the Biology of Literature, for one – how writing can make us weep and laugh of course, but can make the goosebumps rise (Robert Graves’ test of great poetry), or make our hairs stand up on end, or fill us with awe, or stop us sleeping for days.
Which story in Gravel was the most difficult to write, and why?
Hard to say. They are always a mixture of pain and pleasure. ‘Sometimes pus, sometimes a poem – but always pain’, the poet Yehudi Amichai wrote. ’Shooting the Dog’, perhaps – a story that was given to me by my wife Lisa, from her days as a young teacher in the bush. Or the last one, on the love between a middle-aged man and a school girl.
You’ve produced quality work consistently for many years now. Can you tell us a bit about your writing practice? How do you know what form an idea will take? Do you draft a story quickly? What is the best thing about writing?
I write each morning starting about nine. I practice medicine each afternoon starting about two. It’s a perfect balance; they are complementary in many ways. Ideas eventually find their ideal form, although sometimes they try out another form first. I keep a log of story ideas as they come to me, but they generally need to wait for their time, till they are ready, or for some other ingredient, or missing piece of their puzzle. The unconscious usually connects these over time.
Have you discovered many of the newer Australian short fiction writers, such as Patrick Cullen, Tom Cho, Steven Amsterdam, Cate Kennedy or Paddy O’Reilly?
I’ve been enjoying the work of Kennedy and O’Reilly for many years; the others more recently. I was pleased – even ift was at the expense of a novel of mine – that Nam Le’s stories won the PM’s literary award last year. The short story is, after all, our strongest form historically, and I suspect – along with poetry – it still is. If not the most perfect, it’s certainly the most perfectible.
What is escape or relaxation for you – someone with an obviously active, creative mind?
The usual. Family, friends, food, films, football, and one or two other things that start with f.
* This week I went to the launch of Peril, edition 8: ‘why are people so unkind’? It featured readings, and a fun, sexy performance by Ladies of Colour Agency that made me want to get up an shake it, baby. Maxine Clarke, who performed her poetry, gives a very warm of a rundown of the night here. I particularly enjoyed Tom Cho’s presentation where he f**ked with language. Check out the issue online here.
* I was asked by Readings to talk about the best books I read in 2009. Here’s what I said:
‘Some of my favourite reads of 2009 display the variety of books that come under the banner of “Australian fiction”. Steven Amsterdam’s enlightening post-apocalyptic novel-of-stories Things We Didn’t See Coming and Tom Cho’s brilliant, funny and imaginative ride through different types of transformation Look Who’s Morphing were major highlights. I’ve revisited parts of both. Kalinda Ashton’s The Danger Gameis a haunting insight into loss, modern city life, and having political and emotional courage – and I loved the challenging narrator, Patrick Oxtoby, in M.J. Hyland’s This Is How, as well as the book’s existential nature.
‘The best book I read from across the sea was Philipp Meyer’s American Rust, about mistakes and failures, and choices made and violence done on small and large scales, most often quietly. Highly memorable. Other books that definitely will stay with me from 2009 are Nick Cave’s disgustingly compelling The Death of Bunny Munroand Krissy Kneen’s raw and beautiful sexual memoir Affection.’
Check out what other writers, editors, publishers and Readings’ staff had to say, here.
* Some of you may have spotted both myself and the lovely Josephine Rowe in the Melbourne Times and Emerald Hill Weekly this week. Unfortunately it’s not online to link to, but it was a piece about ‘overnight sensations’, and I was chuffed to be interviewed. If you’re visiting the blog because of the article, thanks! Hope you enjoy it – take a look through the archives for reviews, interviews and personalised commentary.
* I blushed hard at my desk the other day when I saw this blog post – though I was flattered and very touched. That is the first time anyone has dedicated a Kafka passage to me (or called me a ‘blogonaut’ – I like it). By way of reply:
From Kafka’s diary, 8 December, 1917: ‘Sorrow and joy, guilt and innocence, like two hands indissolubly clasped together; one would have to cut through flesh, blood and bones to part them.’
* I wrote a guest post for Overland‘s subscriberthon this week on the ‘perfect match’ between book and reader. It begins:
‘I’ve been savouring Richard Yates’ Collected Storiesfor about the past month now, and quite a few times as I’ve been reading, a friend of mine, Ken, has popped into my head. There is the small fact that in the wonderful story ‘A Really Good Jazz Piano’, about male friendship, knowing one’s place, awkwardness, honour, social impressions (and so much more) the character is called Ken. But there are other things about the collection – working in offices, relationships, perceptions of self – things my friend and I have talked about, which made me exclaim to him vehemently the other day that he must read this book. It’s a book I would recommend to others, anyway, but not in the same way. With Ken I feel sure he will get something (a lot) out of it – more than passing entertainment. That ‘something’ is a kind of connection: an affirmation of a recognisable world (even through intertextuality or projection, say, in non-realist fiction – and in all its shades of light and dark) in which one is not alone in their ordinariness, their hope and their suffering.’
The elevator ride up to the Text Publishing par-tay on Thursday evening was devastatingly long (I’m a semi-claustrophobe, to add to my other semi-disorders). I met up with Kathy Charles beforehand (a Text author) to discuss my launching of her book, Hollywood Ending. The champagne flowed, the conversations were half-chewed like the piece of pizza I held for half-an-hour as one passionate face and voice replaced another. I estimated roughly 40 conversations on topics ranging from fiction, to Twitter, autofellatio, keyboard cat meets three wolf moon (worn by), to the spectacular view – we were truly at the vantage point of the tassel on the cap of Mr Stay Puft. The view of a drop, fear softened by glass after glass…
Of course, living up to my festival rep (enthusiasm for both books and partying), I was one of the stragglers who left the venue past midnight when the lights were turned on and we were ushered (kicked) out. I won’t out the other stragglers, but let’s just say I’m glad some very classy, respectable people will share the joy of a midnight slice of cold pizza.
Friday 21/8
Stories everywhere: A young guy on the tram made a pop-up book for his girlfriend’s 22nd birthday. He showed an old lady a picture on his iPhone.
Surprisingly (and perhaps also due to my semi-guilt complex) I got quite a bit of work done on Friday, despite ducking off for festival sessions. Writing in the City was Christos Tsiolkas, Barry Dickins, Kerry Greenwood and Andrea James discussing the city (and Melbourne, specifically) in their work. As MC Steve Grimwade put it, the session would ‘investigate and celebrate the writing of this city’. I ran into gorgeous young writers and fellow Tsiolkas aficionados Koraly Dimitriadis and Demet Divarorenand we listened to Tsiolkas talk about being a writer in Melbourne quite ‘by accident’, as his family were originally going to Argentina! He discussed how Loaded and Jesus Man expressed a migrant experience, how Dead Europe was an exorcism of ‘something called Greek’, finding that though he has a heritage that comes from Europe, he is ‘something else’ (being between cultures). These themes further manifested in The Slap. He expressed that, besides Indigenous Australians, it’s an ‘accident’ that we’re all here – ‘I’m writing through that accident’. I also liked how he told us about his desire to visit Baltimore, due to The Wire (‘the 19th Century Russian novel written for the 21st century’), and the film work of Baltimore-local John Waters, which he likes for its ‘perversity’ and its ‘sexual and cultural tension’.
Kerry Greenwood’s talk and reading were filled with colour, scent – the details of a historical city. She talked about her first visit to Melbourne as a girl where she ‘spoke to a small apricot-coloured poodle called Andre’. She read from her first Phryne Fisher novel (a delicious, light-sounding crime series I’ve always wanted to read), and I could hear, taste, see and smell an elegantly constructed 1920s Melbourne.
Andrea James is an Indigenous playwright and director, and artistic director of the Melbourne Worker’s Theatre, who acknowledged she was a ‘river girl’ and was comforted by Birrarung (the Yarra) just beside us in the theatre. She talked about Melbourne as a colonial construct, but also a place she loves for its culture. She wonderfully invoked the difficult, important and rich history underneath the streets – ‘a place whose present is informed by the past’.
Barry Dickins I paid particular attention to, since we are to share a stage soon. And I can’t wait to meet him. He is warm, clever, deep and hilarious. His memoir Unparalleled Sorrowjust came out – on a particular eight month bout of depression, where Dickins was given ECT treatment. But ‘the memoir was the medicine’, in the end, he said. Some other things he said stuck in my mind though I’m not sure why! He’s just one of those people that weights ordinary things – infuses them with life. ie. ‘I love hotels’ and ‘There were always weetbix on the tea table’.
Session’s best quote: Andrea James – ‘As writers you have to be outside in a way, to do what you have to do’.
Stories everywhere: An old man who knows his city. On the tram back to work the German man helps the tourists and people looking for their meeting spots. He knows all the numbers, streets and stops. ‘You know everything!’ the amazed, lost woman cries, who is late for her appointment. ‘I’m like a vorking computer in my head’, he smiles.
Stories everywhere: VCA protest on funding cuts – clowns, bands, wild-happy-looking faces. Drums and trumpets.
The Future of Fiction featured China Mieville (pictured) and Steven Amsterdam (who you know I’m a bigfan of), and was chaired by Ronnie Scott. I have to admit, I thought this session was a play on words, and that both these authors, who work in futuristic settings, would be talking about the ‘future’ within their own works. As it turns out, they literally addressed the future of fiction, or future of the book and reading. It’s a stellar topic, to be sure, but the authors, in this instance, were not experts. What did they do? What they do best – speculate.
Amsterdam sees the main change in the future being the way content is distributed, ie. via ereaders. But he hasn’t yet held an ereader that’s converted him. We’re pretty backwards here in Australia though – in New York, he said, there are subway advertisements, ‘not for the Kindle, but for what colour cover you want for it’. He then painted a hugely bleak far future, and in typical style injected a glimmer of hope that stories will always be shared, even if the internet collapses and all the material books are burnt (Noooooooooooooooooo!).
Mievillestood up, showing his impressive guns, and gave both optimistic and pessimistic visions, allowing the audience to mull over them. I liked his prolific use of the word ‘segue’, because it’s really the coolest word (and yes, that’s how it’s spelt). The focus of his talk was more about the future of genre categorisation – something to be embraced, as the human brain ‘is a machine for categorisation’. He works in the genres he does to express the ‘insane unreality of the reality around us all the time.’ He also said, in the future there will be a ‘proliferation of movements and manifestos’.
In question time, other points were raised such as the nightmarish possibility of author commentary on ebooks (like DVD director commentary), the problem writers face more and more in that they have to be a ‘public persona’, rather than their natural writerly selves, sitting behind a desk (something discussed on Meanjin‘s Spike blog this week), the democratisation of text and the chaotic nature of the book industry, right at this minute.
Session’s best quote: Audience member – ‘I hadn’t heard of a Kindle until today, is it an acronym for something?’
The AGE Book of the Year Awards were presented in a small ceremony prior to the keynote address. Paul Ramadge reminded a packed-out town hall about the threat to our local book industry due to the proposed changes to territorial copyright law (and there has been a new session addedto the MWF program to discuss this further – tonight). Jason Steger, The Age literary editor, presented the awards for nonfiction to Down to the Crossroads: On the Trail of the 2008 Presidential Election by Guy Rundle (accepted by Crikey ed. Jonathan Green); poetry to Better Than God by Peter Porter (accepted by his daughter); and for fiction to… YAY… Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming. Then Things We Didn’t See Coming was named overall book of the year. I gasped audibly and then whooped and cheered – for a great book, and for a high quality small publisher who certainly deserve the attention.
The keynote address Guilt About the Past was presented by Bernhard Schlink. This talk is still resonating with me and it was a layered and reasoned argument, so forgive me as I cannot do it justice by summing it up here. If you are interested in the issues of guilt (immediate, collective and mulitgenerational), about trauma and reconciliation, I think his newer book of essays Guilt About the Past(as opposed to his novel The Reader) might satisfy. Professor Schlink is a tall, thin and dignified-looking man who spoke slowly and clearly so it was very easy to understand him, despite the thick German accent. He looks like a man who carries a lot (the trauma and the guilt – the need to express a way of reconciling?). Despite his reasoned and peaceful talk, audience members startled the room with long-winded questions and statements at the end, things they had been obviously storing up, and probably thinking about, while he ANSWERED THEM ALREADY within his talk. I know the unapologetic, righteous attention-stealers will only get worse as the festival goes on. I just wish they would listen to the talk, and reconsider their questions, before getting up. Schlink was patient and responsive, though he looked sad.
Let me try and cover this very briefly. Quotes are directly Schlink’s. Guilt and trauma that affects a generation ‘casts a shadow on future generations’ through the children or grand-children’s solidarity with their own family members, and their knowledge of them as human beings, despite their acts. Forgiveness is only adequate for the direct perpetrator and the victim – ‘to ask for forgiveness for someone else’s guilt is false’. Future generations cannot directly forgive, but can reconcile. In order to do so, they must act with respect for the other’s experience and feelings. From reconciliation comes ties that bind from equality. It requires empathy and understanding. Reconciliation will never be quick – ‘it is an endeavour for the long term’.
Although I’m taking my laptop this weekend, I may not be online. If you would like to keep up to date on the Newstead Short Story Tattoo (or just my silly and possibly drunken adventures) follow my Twitter feed – I can update from my mobile phone (but not check any replies).
If you are in Vic and feel like going for a nice little drive this weekend, this sexy session is on tonight:
Sleazy Storiesare stories that have elements of sleaze. Some writers may see this as a cockroach, greasy, sordid, erotic, or just plain grotty. Writers from different spectrums will be performing their works including David Thrussell, Josephine Rowe, Neil Boyack, Andrew Mckenna, Sean M Whelan and Guy Cranswick. Tunes provided by Will Donkin and the Donks. Sugartime Burlesque show at half time.
Tomorrow, Torpedo Volume 5 is being launched, then I’m in this one:
The Fictitious Woman brings together some of the strongest storytelling female talent around including Carmel Bird, Cate Kennedy, Jospehine Rowe, Angela Meyer, Tiggy Johnson, Eleanor Marney (to be confirmed) and Newstead’s own Janet Barker. This event will be MC’d by the driver of all things wordy, direct from Chewton, Zoe Dattner.
My chauffeur/ROAD TRIP buddy Rhys is in this one:
Crimes and Crucifixions celebrates stories that have crime, may be about crime, or have nothing to do with crime. The Newstead Courthouse, with its tales of woe and ghosts, is the ideal place to face the jury and bench and read aloud the tales of Lucy Sussex, Eric Dando, Anne Gleeson, George Ghio, Helen Cerne, Rhys Tate, Fraser Mckay and Phil Mac on the saw with some tales of his own. Entry by donation.
Then there are Fire Stories - mmm, lit-warmth; A Pleasant Sunday Morning with one of my favourite writers Paddy O’Reilly; The Hard Ball - footy stories; and Dig’s Local Legends. See all venue and time details (and author bios) at the website.
Now for a little round-up of links for the week:
* Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali (at which I’ll be doing a panel) will take place from 7 to 11 October. They have just launched a new website. They are also on Twitter (and I’m sure the feed will grow more active in the coming months); and you can becomes a fan on Facebook.
* Speaking of new websites – you may remember my review of Louisiana Alba’s Uncorrected Proof. Well, ElephantEars Press has a new space, and here’s a great post on Louisiana’s blog about parodical influences…
* There’s an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria for Jane Austen fans (or anyone who loves history, really) called Persuasion: Fashion in the era of Jane Austen. Must get along and see this, and the John Brack, myself soon.
* Feel like reading something girly and fun, while raising money for Muscular Dystrophy? Check out Australia’s Biggest Book Group.
* There’s a new(ish) author-presence website called FiledBy.
* Bloomsday is coming up on 16 June! I’m actually really excited, as I’m half-way through Ulysses and it’s an incredible work. I’ll write more about it when I’m finished. There’s an organisation called Bloomsday in Melbourne holding a few events and I can’t choose which to go to! Is anyone else doing something for it?
* Director Spike Jonze has a blog – We Love You So - charting the lead-up to the release of his film version of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. It’s uber cool.
* Steven Amsterdam has been interviewed on ABC Radio National’s The Book Show. Check out the podcast. Stay for the great reading toward the end!
* And lastly, the May/June issue of Bookseller+Publisher is now available as an emag. Download from the website (top right). In this issue I reviewed Will Elliott’s memoir of schizophrenia – Strange Places. There are also articles on the ABA’s opinion of the Google Books Settlement; the latest slate of MBS titles; interviews with Irfan Yusuf and Nicholas Rothwell; and plenty more reviews of upcoming books including Brian Castro’s The Bath Fugues and Tim Flannery’s Now or Never.
Read the LiteraryMindedreview of Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming, Sleepers Publishing, 9781740667012, 2009 (Aus, US)
Prompts – LiteraryMinded.
Responses – Steven Amsterdam.
Beginnings
I was inspired by a few loose pieces in the news, from life, the partisan splay of the 2004 election in the US, and my nervous mind, so I wrote ‘The Theft That Got Me Here’. When I wrote the last line, ‘I’ll keep going as far as the money takes me,’ I realised that it could be part of something bigger. I sent it out as a stand-alone piece, but started fishing around the pond of my brain for what other excitement this guy could get into.
Around that time, I picked up a copy of Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Memoirs. He was a general (for the good side) in the Civil War and president from 1869-1877, two presidents after Lincoln. In retirement, he toured the world, very well loved. During a financial boom and bust in the 1880s, he lost most of his savings by investing his money with some scammers. Suddenly in deep debt, he did what people do when they want to make money fast: he became a writer. He serialised his life story for $500 a pop, which is not at all bad. Turned out he was a good storyteller. He finished his memoirs (Mark Twain was his publisher) just before his death from throat cancer. The book earned his family close to half a million dollars in royalties which paid a lot of bills back then.
Reading his stories, I loved the notion that a person of this stature and ongoing national importance was still subject to the times, (war, assassination, financial turmoil). I was also struck by the fact that his stories didn’t always hinge on the importance of the historical moment he was living through. Instead they were often filled with details of interpersonal oddities, behaviour.
At first I was going to ape Grant’s whole thing, take some key moments and storify them in my imagined future. That quickly became too confining and dull. Still, I held onto the idea that the character would become president at the end. I was sure of that.
Urban setting:
We all know exactly what the city of the future is going to look like, right? Either shiny and sleek or grimy and run by gadgets gone bad. The first story I wrote (the second chapter) took us out of the city. What would nature look like? What would it look like just outside of the barricades? Who would live there still? What privations would they suffer? The next one, ‘Dry Land’ goes on and explores that idea, with the urgency of a biblical/climate change rainstorm in the background. The narrator is an urban character, by birth, but for most of the book he is roughing it outside of a city. A city boy myself, it was fun to roam the countryside and imagine this changed landscape.
Sickness
People don’t get sick enough in fiction, unless it’s sick fiction (and then it’s the whole point). But everybody in the real world gets sick sooner or later and one of the major reasons they feel like crap about it (on top of the prognosis or the limitations that come with it) is that they haven’t seen enough people being incidentally sick in fiction and movies. I wanted illness, not just bird flu and the like, to have a part in this future.
Ok, on rereading what I just wrote, it sounds like a con. I didn’t write the book to uplift sick people everywhere. This is the problem with interviews, or at least ones you can take your time with. I fabricate too easily. This is why I don’t keep a blog.
Still, there’s a truth in there somewhere and that led me to imagine a scenario, kind of like the world we live in, where people live well beyond their die-by date, but medical technology can keep them going further and farther. It’s not a huge leap to extrapolate adventure tourism for people with advanced cancer.
Worrying
I wouldn’t have latched onto the various scenarios that the character endures if I wasn’t susceptible to a bit of worry myself. I have been known to worry about many things, including Y2K, pandemic, climate change, war. You name it.
This book by Otto Friedrich was last printed in 1994. Chapter by chapter, he looks at the accounts of people who lived through devastating wipeouts – plagues, earthquakes, Pompeii, Auschwitz, Hiroshima. It’s healthy reading for a worrier, because the point is that the world keeps going (just maybe not with you in it). The book was written in the 80s, so it has this fear-of-nuclear-war spin to it. Remember nuclear war? Remember Chernobyl? How come we don’t worry about meltdowns anymore? Did that problem get all sorted out or did we move on to other concerns?
Getting the future wrong:
I was well aware that trying to write a big dystopian book was a thankless exercise in some regards. I hadn’t read enough to know what had already been done. I didn’t know enough about politics and technology to be able to begin to meaningfully predict what would happen. Remember 1984? Because of that book, so much meaning attached to the year as it drew near. All that remains in my mind now is Reagan’s reelection and a song from the Eurythmics. So what did we learn when New Year’s 1985 came around? Nothing works out, least of all worst-case scenarios.
So I wondered, Why should I get stuck describing one doomsday? This freed me up from getting caught in a particular groove (eg. drought), and let me explore all the terrible futures that are thrown at us every day. It also freed the book from being a standard dystopian extravaganza. Shoot wide, I say.
In ‘The Forest for the Trees,’ where the narrator watches Robocop in some tank-like vehicle ten years from now, and smirks at the poorly-predicted future, that’s my out for everything I get wrong. The book is less of a prediction than an exorcism of my fears.
‘If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.’
- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
My narrator, who started as a relatively opportunistic teenager, was never going to be wholly innocent. I wanted to maintain his passive sense of shiftiness in each part of the book. At one point, an early reader suggested that the story would work better in the third person. That’s one of those comments that writers love, up there with ‘why don’t you try rewriting everything from the dog’s perspective and see how it looks?’ I did try it, briefly, and immediately saw that we would absolutely lose sympathy for him if we didn’t have the closest view into his conscience. Additionally, being trapped there is what keeps the book intimate and concerned with the conduct of people, rather than the apocalypse.
In general, one should consider the greatness of Jane Eyre as much as possible. It’s got everything you need from fiction in one handy volume. It’s sugar as well as salt. Likewise Lolita (which has a particularly offensive narrator who we all seem to overlook). They’re both fully balanced versions of their form like The White Album (the Beatles’ and Joan Didion’s). I can think of no greater praise.
Ok, this movie is probably awful and I haven’t seen it for years, but it still gets so much goodwill from me because I loved it when I was in my early 20s. It was written by Dennis Potter who dramatises the conflicted, happy sad moments of life so so so well.
Do you know The Candidate? It’s a Robert Redford movie from the 70s, where this smart, good guy, runs a long, difficult campaign for the presidency. In the last minute, he’s won, and he’s being led through hotel corridors and elevators to make his acceptance speech. (I may be remembering it wrong so, true fans, please forgive me.) He has a moment that I’ve always loved there, kind of like when they’re on the bus at the end of The Graduate. This candidate has gotten exactly what’s he’s been chasing and now he’s at a loss: What do I do next? I wanted the book to end that way, with him finding himself president and bewildered (as any of us would in the same position, really). In the end, Obama became too real a prospect and the American presidency was something that was getting way too complicated by modern-mythology to touch. I had to change my plan for my narrator.
But I liked that What do I do now? moment. Like Wile E. Coyote standing a few feet off of a cliff with a hint of victory still in his smile, in that split second between elation and terror. It seemed like a good feeling for each chapter to end on. Maybe not with the same doom as Wile E. Coyote, but with a similar sense of confusion and chagrin. Plus, the emotional uncertainty provides a more engaging close, I think, than an upbeat resolution or a downturn of events.
‘And all that mother-loving freedom’
- Things We Didn’t See Coming
Mother-loving is a cleaned up version of a much stronger adjective that begins with the same first word. The narrator thinks it when he’s feeling utterly duped, dejected, and dumped. The last thing in the world he wants is freedom. Why he invokes his mother at that moment, I’ll leave to the shrinks.
Discontinuous narrative.
I like it that readers have to reorient themselves with each new chapter. It seems life-like: In the space of a few years, anyone can wind up with a new world of associates, a new job, a new set of priorities. (I know I have.) It was there in Grant’s Memoirs. You evolve with the times, for better or worse. Every cell in your body is new, and all that. You don’t really have a choice.
This gave me freedom to not write every moment of the character’s life, which let me focus on the exciting bits, which is good for the reader. At the same time, it kept me from feeling like I was working on anything as daunting as a novel, which was good for the writer. In my mind, I was working on short stories, not a novel. I wrote them without a complete plan and out of order (the last chapter was written second, the first chapter was written last). It wasn’t till it was mostly written that I became sure about the chronology. This arrangement, which I’ve since been informed is discontinuous narrative, served my mood, my insecurities, and my purpose.
For a while I kept hearing about couples where one partner worked hard, brought home the bacon and resented the one who stayed home looking after the house and kids. Of course this was the traditional role setup in Western families (of a certain class) for a long time. The resentment seemed strange to me. Another thing I’d been wondering about was heroes and their personal lives. Following these threads, I wondered what would happen if one of these stay-at-home fathers figured out he could fly. That’s ‘Nothing Surprises’.
From that, I’ve written a few other stories about heroes. One was accepted for the Readings 40th Anniversary Anthology, the other I’ve just started sending around. I have no idea where this theme is going. All I know is this: I doubt it will turn into the book I imagine.
Cinnamon cookies
These were what I made for the Melbourne launch of Things We Didn’t See Coming. I wasn’t working that day and had to do something.
The recipe I have calls them Mexican Wedding Cookies, but I’ve also seen them called German Wedding Cookies and Austrian Wedding Cookies. I haven’t been to a wedding in any of those countries, so how can I know? The cinnamon is my addition, let’s add a pinch of salt, which never hurts and call them Launch Cookies.
Preheat the oven to 150 C. Paper line cookie sheets.
Take 120 grams walnuts and grind with 60 grams of caster sugar. (Note: The walnuts benefit immeasurably from being lightly toasted first; they give off a caramel-ish unctuousness that, I swear, makes a difference).
In a mixer, cream 450 grams of room temperature unsalted butter with 120 grams of sugar and a few teaspoons of vanilla extract (or a scraped bean).
With the mixer on low, pour in 500 grams plain flour and a teaspoon of salt., and two tablespoons of cinnamon. Mix until just combined, then add the nuts.
This batter doesn’t spread much, so just roll them into the size of small plums or large cherry tomatoes and put them reasonably close to each other on the baking tray.
Baking time depends on the size and the oven, so it’s not exact. Mine take between 20 and 30 minutes. They should just be getting browned around the edges.
While they’re warm, pick them up gently, roll them in icing sugar and put them on another piece of baking paper. When they’re cool, do it again.
This recipe makes about 100 bite-sized cookies. The dough freezes well, so you can bake half a batch and save the rest for another time.
According to my dashboard, this is my 200th post since I started this blog in May 2007. And you know what? In the past couple of years through this blog, my novel manuscripts, my short stories and thesis, and my work, I’m quite sure I have written over a million words. I mean, I probably average 2000-3000 a day! Other numbers: I exercise on average one-and-a-half hours a day, I read on average two hours a day (wish that were more), I sleep on average four to five hours (I’m working on this), and thus lie awake stimulated/frustrated by thoughts and ideas for about three hours a night, I see one or two movies a week, I spend on average three nights at events or with friends, I spend five days at work, I spend a very small amount of time of washing clothes and dishes, I take five minutes to put make-up on, and I watch zero television.
I was the only person in the cinema by myself last night, that I could see. This interests me. Because it doesn’t bother me to be alone. I have many friends that I could have invited, whose company I enjoy. Instead, it was just me and chocolate and Rorschach (Watchmen ‘Read and Seen’ coming soon…). Last Sunday night I saw Taxi Driver and Easy Rider alone at the Astor. I did invite someone at the last minute, but they were busy. There were many people alone in that session. I think there is a very fine line between solitude and loneliness. Solitude I enjoy, I crave, I need – but loneliness can slip in easily and unexpected. I relate to Travis Bickle at the same time as he makes me cringe, feel hollow. I love Midnight Cowboy because it speaks deeply of connection – so fleeting, possibly hurtful, possibly impossible. I love it when it all goes wrong for the characters. I feel it is truthful. I feel scooped out by the end of Easy Rider but also feel like someone has looked me in the eye and told me the truth about freedom. Often I’m afraid to share the experience with someone in case they don’t feel the same – in case they try to gloss it over. By the end of the weekend it can sometimes tip into loneliness.
* I went to two great launches this week. Bel Schenk’s book of poetry Ambulances & Dreamers was launched at FAD Bar/Gallery, down one of those fun little lanes off Chinatown. The poems are simple, modern, resonant – and many also engage with the subject of solitude.
The other launch was of Sleepers Publishing’s first book, Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming, which I reviewed earlier in the week. I got to meet Steven and eat his delicious cinnamon cookies. The introduction from Toni Jordan, author of Addition, was gorgeous. She said to the small, eclectic (and quite distinguished) room ‘look around you, look at the people on either side of you, lock this in your memory – because this will be a moment in history’. I don’t doubt it. For the record I was standing next to Dan Ducrou, who is a launch-whore like me and has been shortlisted for the Vogel, is also a Varuna alumni, and has been published all over the place; and a guy called Gus. The new editor of Voiceworks, Bel, was nearby, as was Jessica Au, a writer I’ve admired for a long time and now have met. Was very excited to hear she is working on a novel. I also got to see Emily Maguire briefly, but she had to go before I could go and gush to her about how great I think she is. I hope I’ll have a chance to talk to her properly one day. Steven Amsterdam wrote in my book ‘Be prepared for anything’. I’m not quite sure how I can do this, except perhaps keep going to the gym so I’m fit and strong and can superhero my way out of any situation (sorry, still Watchmen on the brain). I should probably also stock up on Steven’s cookies for emergency energy needs. And decide on those ‘desert island books’ that many people I know keep talking about.
I’m very happy to report that Steven will also be doing a ‘responsive’ interview for LM.
* Just finished reading this month’s Australian Literary Review. My favourite piece was Mark McKenna’s ‘Silence Shattered With a Whisper to the Heart’, because it engaged me and taught me about a writer/activist and his works – Henry Reynolds. A friend on Twitter remarked that they were disappointed with the ALR because it had no new voices. I’ve been thinking about this a bit over the last few days. My opinion is that as long as ‘established’ voices provide interesting insight (and the ideas are fresh), I don’t have too much problem with ’established’ writers/critics taking up the pages. It’s a small country, and it is very difficult to break into the realms of reviewing and intellectual debate in some of the major newspapers/magazines, but surely we do need something to aspire to? It would be great to see ‘new’ voices, but not just for the sake of it – for the fact that they’re providing some essential addition to public cultural discussion. And there were, actually, a few names in there I hadn’t heard of, so I don’t know if it’s technically true. What do you think about old/new voices in mainstream media? I would very much miss Robert Dessaix if he got shunted just because he was becoming old hat.
* You might recall that I am curating the 15 Minutes of Fame segment at the Emerging Writers’ Festival. I have been handed the shortlist by the lovely organisers, and I am trying to put together an interesting program of a mix of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children’s which will run over three or four nights during the festival. I didn’t realise how hard it would be. I can think of questions I’d like to ask them all. I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this, and also for the opportunity it gives these writers, many of whom don’t really have the resources to promote their work otherwise.
* Only one week until my participation in the Format Festival! Please come along if you’re in Adelaide (the 15th of March).
* Here’s a really handy blog/site created by Sophie Moon on where and when to submit stuff! It’s called SnUfft. Thanks Sophie for collecting these mags and comps for us.
Things We Didn’t See Coming is a series of vignettes, from different stages of the unnamed protagonist’s life in a dystopian alterno-present/future. It is a post-apocalyptic story, but told in a hard-boiled, yet highly resonant literary style. The sentences are sharp, the character is hard and the environment is one of rapid change and ruin – but throughout there is also deep resistance. The book acts to massage you at your core, and every secondary character met along the way (no matter how fleeting) leaves a poignant stain on character and reader. They are examples from all of humanity’s shredded social standings – how different people would deal with natural disasters, segregation (between urban and land environments), political situations (and radical politics), survival against disease, and more. There is so much imagination at work in describing employment the character undertakes throughout the novel, and in his family situation, his love life, and his drive for physical and emotional survival. Though it is a series of stories, they run linear – from a small boy taken to his grandparents house on the eve of Y2K (which isn’t named, but that’s what the situation seems to be) and his father’s rant about the world we live in, to a conclusion which shows that through all the rapid fluctuations in the world, some people don’t change, and there will always be pockets of good, of nature, of things that don’t make sense at the time. There will always be meaning to a fleeting existence.
The character is adamantly nonreligious, but there really is a spiritual essence in this book – in his personal ethical struggles, and the overriding hope within the bleakness. The character fights with his instinctual nature to steal, and to live for survival and himself alone. This is a great part of his journey that isn’t played out overtly, but is present in his actions throughout the novel.
There are many moments of struggle and sadness, such as the chapter ‘The Theft That Got Me Here’, an incredibly poignant escape with his grandparents, on the day his grandmother’s pills kick in and she becomes herself again, fleetingly.
There are also moments of pure imaginative fun – sexual encounters; a difficult and moving love story; a cocky kid the protagonist has to guard; the jobs; the conflict; and the pharmacopia.
One interesting thing to note – the setting of the book is unknown and never made explicit. Deer are mentioned, and some landscapes that seem North American, so it will also sell in that market, I presume, but my imagination still planted the story in Australia. I know it’s due to my awareness of the author’s origination, but I think one of the points of it is it could be imagined in just about any Western country. A kind of nowhere-land of modern Western civilisation and societal mores, politics, religions, etc.
Another experience of reading this book, is the realisation that so much of it actually seems plausible. It is rooted in a speculative framework, but it is very near-future, or even alternate future. Droughts and floods, for example, don’t seem so implausible – and the political situations that may arise due to technological class divisions, generation gaps and opposing urban/nature mindsets. Not to mention evolving illnesses and an ever-increasing cocktail of drugs. Of course while much of it is imaginable, much of it is highly fantastical, and both prove the quality of Amsterdam’s skill and imagination.
Things We Didn’t See Coming is bleak yet inspiring, a little like retro-future text Blade Runner. It’s a completely refreshing literary work from an Australian writer who I predict huge things for.
The Fine Colour of Rust, PA O’Reilly, Blue Door, 9780007434930, March 2012 (buy paperback, ebook)
What the Family Needed, Steven Amsterdam, Sleepers, 9781742702117 (buy paperback, ebook)
Gravel
* I blushed hard at my desk the other day when I saw 
The elevator ride up to the Text Publishing par-tay on Thursday evening was devastatingly long (I’m a semi-claustrophobe, to add to my other semi-disorders). I met up with Kathy Charles beforehand (a Text author) to discuss my 
Barry Dickins I paid particular attention to, since we are to 
The Future of Fiction featured China Mieville (pictured) and Steven Amsterdam (who you know I’m a 
The AGE Book of the Year Awards were presented in a small ceremony prior to the keynote address. Paul Ramadge reminded a packed-out town hall about the threat to our local book industry due to the proposed changes to territorial copyright law (and there has been a 
Let me try and cover this very briefly. Quotes are directly Schlink’s. Guilt and trauma that affects a generation ‘casts a shadow on future generations’ through the children or grand-children’s solidarity with their own family members, and their knowledge of them as human beings, despite their acts. Forgiveness is only adequate for the direct perpetrator and the victim – ‘to ask for forgiveness for someone else’s guilt is false’. Future generations cannot directly forgive, but can reconcile. In order to do so, they must act with respect for the other’s experience and feelings. From reconciliation comes ties that bind from equality. It requires empathy and understanding. Reconciliation will never be quick – ‘it is an endeavour for the long term’.
Although I’m taking my laptop this weekend, I may not be online. If you would like to keep up to date on the Newstead Short Story Tattoo (or just my silly and possibly drunken adventures) follow my Twitter feed – I can update from my mobile phone (but not check any replies).
Read the LiteraryMinded 
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According to my dashboard, this is my 200th post since I started this blog in May 2007. And you know what? In the past couple of years through this blog, my novel manuscripts, my short stories and thesis, and my work, I’m quite sure I have written over a million words. I mean, I probably average 2000-3000 a day! Other numbers: I exercise on average one-and-a-half hours a day, I read on average two hours a day (wish that were more), I sleep on average four to five hours (I’m working on this), and thus lie awake stimulated/frustrated by thoughts and ideas for about three hours a night, I see one or two movies a week, I spend on average three nights at events or with friends, I spend five days at work, I spend a very small amount of time of washing clothes and dishes, I take five minutes to put make-up on, and I watch zero television.
The other launch was of Sleepers Publishing’s first book, Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming, which I 
Sleepers Publishing, 9781740667012, 2009 (
