Paul Burman — bloggety-blog

Good living

2012-01-25T18:36:00.003+11:00

It's been an idyllic summer so far - hot days and still nights, walks to the beach, regular swims, afternoon siestas, the cooking of fine meals, the drinking of much wine... you get the picture. However, I suspect that too much good living gets in the way of writing at times, and the heat certainly puts my brain into a slower, mushier gear, so while I don't wish to trade any of this for being hungry in a cold attic (no thank you very much), I am feeling under-productive at the moment. Two or three hours of editing and rewriting, a bit of reading and painting, but not a lot more than this.

Never mind, I tell myself, this delicious holiday feeling won't last forever, and then, human nature being what it is, I'll be yearning to recapture it all over again. So I'm damned if I won't make the most of it whilst it's here!

One of the books I've read - well, a booklet really - was lent me by a friend who's a fan of crime writer Michael Connelly. In it, Michael Connelly describes how he developed two of his key characters: Mickey Haller and Harry Bosch. Although I haven't (yet) read any of Michael Connelly's novels, I found this a fascinating study, partly because it's often interesting to see how other authors work and partly because Mr Connelly very clearly recalls and articulates almost every stage of how these particular characters evolved.

I think this booklet was won as a prize. I'm not quite sure what my friend had to do to win it, but it was a neat get all the same.

Recent reads: War with the Newts by Karel Capek

2012-01-17T13:03:00.013+11:00

War with the Newts by Karel Čapek (translated by Ewald Osers) is unfortunately one of those books I would never have come across if it wasn't for a little serendipity: I was introduced to it by a friend who had recently travelled to the Czech Republic, and who, whilst there, had decided to read a Czech novel or two. That I hadn't heard of it before may be the result of ignorance on my part, but, regardless of that small matter, this book deserves to be even more widely known.

First published in 1936, two years before Čapek's death at the age of 48, there's a classic timelessness about War with the Newts, even though the narrative voice comes across as a little dated at times - although this might also add to its charm. Overall though, it possesses a number of exceptional qualities that remind me, at one and the same time, of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, George Orwell's Animal Farm and Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. That these three novels satirise the political follies of mankind may give an indication of what War with the Newts concerns itself with.

'Man discovers a species of giant, intelligent newts and learns to exploit them so successfully that the newts gain enough skills and arms to challenge man's place at the top of the animal kingdom. Along the way, Karel Čapek satirizes science, runaway capitalism, fascism, militarism, journalism, even Hollywood, yet he presents all the events on a comically human rather than spectacular scale.' Catbird Press edition

His astute portrayal of various national stereotypes certainly has relevance 70 years on, and the political insights he provides make it easy to see why the Nazi Gestapo named him Czechoslavakia's "public enemy number two."

Reading this was time well spent. Very glad I was introduced to it.

Aah, that's better.

2012-01-11T12:10:00.000+11:00

What a difference a couple of weeks away from the keyboard makes. No routine, no expectations. Love it. I suspect I began to go sane for a while.

I printed out my first paper copy of Number Three just before Christmas, but didn't start editing it until two days ago. That's not to say I wasn't thinking about writing though, because it seems I do my best reflective thinking whenever I remove the imperative to actually sit down and write. (Creating a distance allows for greater critical objectivity?) So, between sleeping off Christmas day lunch and Boxing day lunch, wandering down to the beach for a swim or two, catching up with friends and the like, I've been doing a fair bit of thinking about what I want out of Number Three, and have scribbled a few notes down on scraps of paper, book covers, the back of miscellaneous hands, edges of wine labels - whatever was lying around at the time. Now to try and put some of those ideas into practice.

Upon discovering how intently I was talking to myself this morning, I told myself I was going banonkers - more banonkers. Now there's a neologism: Banonkers - the state of having gone bananas and bonkers at the same time. Except, in checking it out, I discover it isn't a neologism, but that Google has over 2,600 references to it. Which means that a lot of people have gone banonkers before me.

During the break, we woke up one morning to find this fellow in our backyard. He was a black-nosed wallaby, I think, and about 40" or a metre from head-to-foot, though considerably taller when he was pushing himself up with that tail and those feet. Quite curious at first, he got very bouncy very fast when he couldn't find his way out again. About 45 kmh fast and about 6' bouncy, I'd say.

Also discovered this fellow on New Year's Day, all washed-up and dried out on one of our local beaches. I think the New Year celebrations may have been too much for Percy the puffer fish, but at least he died with a grin on his face.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

2011-12-21T11:32:00.002+11:00

It's that time of year. The summer holidays are almost here, along with Christmas and the New Year. I've been delighted to see there's been a small run on both The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore and The Grease Monkey's Tale over at Amazon of late, in time for Christmas presents or holiday reading, so I'll raise my glass and say Cheers to that. Of course, Snowing and Greening is very much a winter's tale, while Grease Monkey turns much of that on its head, so hopefully there'll be something for all, whether about to celebrate Christmas and the New Year through a southern summer or through a northern winter.

I'm taking a break from Blogdom for a couple of weeks, but would like to thank you for dropping by and say thanks for buying my books. Here's wishing one and all, a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

May your days be many and your troubles be few;
May those you love always love you too.

Inside the Express packet is a white envelope and inside the white envelope a Christmas card.
page 224 The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore

The Mad Square

2011-12-14T19:57:00.002+11:00

NGV Catalogue cover using Suicide (detail), George Grosz, 1916

As an 18 year-old studying for my Art and History of Art 'A' levels, I admired the work of George Grosz, Otto Dix, Wassily Kandinsky, Rudolph Schlicter... many of the artists who've since been lumped together as German Expressionists, but who also became directly or indirectly involved with Dada, Bauhaus, and the like - post-World War One, post-Blue Rider and all that. For a while I tried drawing like some of them, and held onto one piece that was clearly influenced by the likes of Grosz, Max Beckmann and Georg Scholz . (Took it out and dusted it down today, then promptly hid it back in my folio again.) It suited the person I was at that time, and aspects of the world I saw about me.

Eats, Paul Burman, 1976

'Under my rule, it shall come to pass ... in this livery will I clothe ye.' from The Robbers portfolio, George Grosz, 1922

I was delighted, therefore, to be in Melbourne recently, shortly after an exhibition, which celebrates "modernity in German art" and places it in its historical perspective, was opened. The Mad Square features an impressively broad range of work, from Franz Marc, Rudolf Belling, August Sander, El Lissitzky, Erich Dieckmann, to name just a few. The period from 1910-1937 is presented in paintings, prints, photogaphs, collages, films, sculpture, furniture, and well worth a visit if you're in Melbourne. It runs until 4th March 2012.

So many wonderful pieces. By way of giving a taster, here are two of my current favourites:

Self-portrait, Christian Schad, 1927

Triad, Rudolph Belling, 1918-19

Down at the Factory of the Imagination in November

2011-12-08T11:36:00.000+11:00

Last report had Number Three novel at 67,000 words. This report has it at 74,000. That's not too bad, although a tad behind where I was hoping to be by this point in the year. I had hoped all the words would be down, roughly in place, and that I'd be engaged in some glorious editing by now, but I'm not quite there yet. Another ten thousand words should do it though. However, the closer I get to the end of a project like this, the more frequent and more pronounced the self-doubts become. The best antidote to this is in telling myself that every draft is a rough draft, and that it's the polishing that really counts.

Writers delight, it seems, in developing metaphors that describe the process of writing, and I've been likening where I'm up to recently with the sinking of a mine shaft (without the environmental damage). Having invested a couple of years of time and creative energy in developing this manuscript because I believed the initial workings/the exploratory drilling looked promising, I sometimes worry that when I actually get to where I need to be with it there'll be nothing of value - nothing that I value. No gems to polish, just a slag heap of ideas.

This being Number Three though, I remind myself that I felt exactly this way with Snowing and Greening and Grease Monkey too. Ho hum. Onward and downward. Be sure and steadfast, and all that. Let's hope thar's gold in them thar hills.

Another Earth directed by Mike Cahill

2011-12-06T14:00:00.001+11:00

It was slashing down with rain when I was in Melbourne recently and, having already got a tad damp heading to the NGV, it seemed like a brilliant idea to spend a couple of hours in the cinema - the Nova in Carlton, no less. Another Earth was on the billing, and what little I'd read about this recent release intrigued me.

This was my first time in Nova, and I thought it an enjoyably retro experience - spot on for a wet, Saturday afternoon. In fact, the young American couple who'd found their seats in the auditorium before us must have felt something similar, because they were busying themselves photographing the fixtures and fittings until we arrived, and then they cheered for no longer being the only patrons.

I thought we'd entered the wrong auditorium and were about to get another film at first, because it seemed as if we were being shown the Another Earth preview - about the appearance of another planet, very close to Earth - except it was more depressing than I'd expected. Wasn't sure what we were going to get instead - not Cars 2, I hoped. Until it transpired that the preview was for Lars von Trier's Melancholia.

Another Earth is the feature film directorial debut of Mike Cahill, who co-wrote it with Brit Marling. She also stars in it, alongside William Mapother. Great performances by both. It tells the story of Rhoda Williams who, as a high school student out celebrating with friends, is driving home when she hears a radio report about the appearance in the night sky of another planet, which is, to all extent and purposes, the very image of Earth. She catches sight of the planet, is mesmerised by it, and crashes head-on into the stationary car of Yale music professor John Burroughs, killing his pregnant wife and young son instantly.

Because she is under the influence of alcohol, Rhoda serves a prison sentence (thereby ending her prospects of becoming an astro-physicist and exploring the nature of the universe!), and the main body of the film picks up with her release 4 years later, telling a story of grief, loss of innocence, and the painful search for redemption. If that sounds too depressing in itself, be assured that there is an energy and ambience about the film, and the portrayal of all the characters, that makes it compelling and ultimately life-affirming.

While the presence of the additional Earth adds some interesting elements to the story, this is not Sci-fi, and the storyline does not over-concern itself with too much pseudo-scientific justification of this - or the logical ramifications of it. Another Earth affects towards Arthouse-on-a-small-budget, down to the scratchiness and muted colours of the film (although this might equally have reflected the age of Nova's projector) and the hand-held camera work, which I found irritating for a few minutes, although on the whole these combined characteristics add rather than detract from the experience. On those occasions when I could suspend disbelief no longer and wanted to raise concerns about some of the logic flaws (particularly with the outcome), I found it useful to remind myself that the parallel Earth idea is, more than anything else, an effective device to explore a few interesting existential questions - a bloody big metaphor floating in the sky. Namely, how we each choose to live our life, the ways in which we respond to regret, self-forgiveness, the notion of the life we would like to have...

Well worth watching. Even more so on a wet afternoon.

2011-11-29T15:59:00.001+11:00

Forgive me, reader, it's almost two weeks since I last blogged.

It's not that I've been stuck on a desert island or anything, although I did have the plague for a few days and last weekend was spent (most excellently) in Melbourne. No, what it is, I think, is that the part of my brain which writes has been solidly engaged on Number Three - not to the exclusion of all else, but certainly to the exclusion of haunting Blogdom. Usually, writing a post or two is a welcome distraction, but of late it's become a distraction I could do without.

That doesn't mean I haven't kept my ear to the ground, and I was interested to read an article by Linda Morris in The Age entitled Writers are authoring their own destinies online. Through interviewing 'authorpreneur' Hazel Edwards and bestselling author Tony Park, Morris explores the "philosophical conflict" some authors feel about having to promote themselves and their work, and the benefits of this. There was nothing I disagreed with in the article, but it did reinforce for me how difficult it is for the vast majority of authors, who don't make a living from their writing, to juggle bread-and-butter employment with maintaining an online presence to promote their published work while carrying on writing. Bugger the lack of financial remuneration, being time-poor doesn't help.

On another issue, it was good to hear that not all is doom-and-gloom in the publishing industry - although I don't doubt some publishers will be the last to admit as much (not least because it'd mean that the less scrupulous ones would no longer have an excuse not to pay their authors). Recently released Records of Earnings indicate that publishers are doing well out of digital sales - despite dire warnings from many that e-sales would sink them. In The Business Rusch: How Traditional Publishers Are Making Money, Kristine Kathryn Rusch explores how publishers are indeed capitalising on this. It's an interesting article and well worth a read. (Thanks to Louise Cusack for the link.)

As for Melbourne, did some catching up, managed to fit in a visit to the flicks (Another Earth), a trip to the National Gallery of Victoria (The Mad Square exhibition), and had some delicious food experiences (Brunetti in Carlton, Grigons & Orr Corner Store in North Melbourne). But more on that later. I'll be back soon. Promise.

Around the traps

2011-11-16T20:09:00.001+11:00

By way of recommendation, here are some writerly pieces I've enjoyed of late:

Cam Rogers' site is in full-swing again. 7 Things I've Learned About Writing For Kids is a fine nutshell-article.
In Walk, Jay Kristoff tackles rejection slips, and how to respond to the critters.
Louise Cusack debates the role of the writer online, and authenticity vs spin.
Patrick O'Duffy gives his embryonic novella The Obituarist an ultra-sound - even traces the moment of conception - and promises to deliver the thing within a couple of months.
Alan Baxter discusses Writers as bitches and the investment of readers.
And over at The View From Here, literary agent Simon Trewin rounds off his posts from the International Festival of Authors in Toronto with a short piece about Project Bookmark Canada.

Here's an illustration. It is because it is. Some things just are.

It must be Friday

2011-11-11T19:49:00.001+11:00

I spent a while today trying to delete a full stop that had found its way between two.words of a Word document.

Every time I placed the cursor and pressed Backspace, though, I deleted one of the characters either side of it, instead of the full stop itself.

It took several attempts before I thought to scratch the fly shit or spider shit off the screen.

This sort of thing will happen when insects defecate in Times New Roman.

Down at the Factory of the Imagination in October

2011-11-07T21:51:00.001+11:00

Word-wise it may have been a slow couple of months, but idea-wise it's been pretty rich, and October in particular has seen a few new layers added to Number Three. This is the part I really like about writing novels. Some ideas have grown directly out of the process of editing, which is coming along well, but some have simply grown from chewing the fat with friends (about nothing and everything), from a bit of reading, listening to music, looking at paintings, eating and drinking and dreaming - living, thinking, gazing at my navel. Number Three is now at 67,000 words and I feel like I'm on the home stretch, even though all this thinking may have added another couple of months to getting the bloody thing finished. Except it's no longer a 'bloody thing' and I'm enjoying it again. Out of the doldrums. Full sail ahead!

Mixed metaphors for this report as usual. My bad.

Recent Reads: The Ascent of Isaac Steward by Mike French

2011-11-02T21:37:00.005+11:00

Be warned: this review might contain spoilers.

Before I say anything about Mike French's debut novel, The Ascent of Isaac Steward, other than to say it took Amazon and Fishpond three months and three attempts between them to deliver me a copy, let me say that Mike French is a friend and that I get an acknowledgement at the beginning of the book (very cool), so my opinion of it might be considered biased. That said, if I didn't like the book and didn't feel I could recommend it, then I'd probably say nothing here, but I do and I am.

To validate the sincerity of my comments though, I'll begin with a negative (and then maybe you'll accept my ultimate recommendation to read it for yourself). My biggest gripe about this novel is that Cauliay Publishing's copy editor might have spent more time... well, copy editing. Every author wishes to see their work published with as few typos/errors as possible, even though a few always slip through, dammit - and I have a recent edition of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four that still hasn't yet shrugged off a sixty-year-old typo or two - but there's the sense that Cauliay might have rushed this in a few places. That aside, the font and print, the paper, the cover - all those other finishing elements - are lovely. (It may be my imagination, but there's something about the cover paper that gives it a fantastic 'rubberised' feel, and I found myself regularly running my hand across it, just to confirm and reconfirm this. Hmm, I'll have to get that checked out.)

But to the novel itself. The Ascent of Isaac Steward is accompanied by some fine endorsements, and this one by author R.N.Morris (A Razor Wrapped in Silk) has been much referred to in various reviews:

"Reminiscent of the surrealist literary experiments of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake but blessedly readable. The Ascent of Isaac Steward is insanely ambitious, startlingly odd, boldly conceived, and executed with tremendous confidence. One of the most extraordinary novels I have ever read."

I have no trouble agreeing with anything R.N.Morris has written here - he hasn't put a word wrong as far as I'm concerned - although I have to admit that my knowledge of Finnegan's Wake is based on a brief glance rather than a sound reading. However, it does allow me to reassure prospective readers that, unlike Finnegan's Wake, the prose in Ascent is comprehensible and indeed "blessedly readable". That aside, because Mike has created a novel which is wonderfully unique and experimental, it's probably normal (and useful) to have such a reference point against which to compare and contrast it, in order to clarify one's thoughts.

If I were to liken it to any book I've read before, it would be to Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman (yes, let's keep this with the Irish, even though Mike French is English, and not Irish... or French). To my mind, The Ascent of Isaac Steward, like The Third Policeman, and William Golding's Pincher Martin even, explores the nether world between the ending of a life and the recognition of death. It's fertile, surreal ground because we have no idea what dying and death is like, so almost anything goes.

There were times when I found it hard to keep track of the characters and their alter-egos, and to map out the hierarchy of worlds that Isaac and his cohort journey through, as I did with elements of The Third Policeman, but I found it a very satisfying book when I stopped worrying about this and allowed the crucial elements to reveal themselves.

Indeed, because it's such a startlingly original book, and subverts the reader's expectations at a number of points, I found myself approaching the narrative in a different way to usual. Instead of attempting to carefully understand each twist and turn, I grabbed hold of the characters' coat tails and let them take me where they would. In this manner, I went along for the helter-skelter ride, enjoying the spectacle of each scene, and adding one impression to another rather than needing to make absolute sense of every event as they happened.

Ultimately, it occurred to me that reading The Ascent of Isaac Steward is somewhat like engaging with a semi-abstract painting: it comprises a number of intriguing and bizarre images that are familiar, but slightly distorted, in the way that a dream might distort them, and, in the process, it creates a mythological world of its own. There are images from the bible, from Punch and Judy, from shoot-'em-up computer games, from underwater prisons... all of which, when you stand back and look at the whole picture, present an intriguing and entertaining story about a man battling with his memories and journeying through an underworld that is, to a large extent, his own nightmarish creation.

What I particularly like about this novel (and appreciate about Cauliay's investment in it) is that it takes risks. It is abstract, experimental and entertaining. So don't get hung up on understanding every single detail, but kick back and enjoy the helter-skelter ride yourself.

Mike French's blog.
The Ascent of Isaac Steward at Amazon.com

Children's Books I

2011-10-26T21:40:00.002+11:00

After 57 years of living in the same house, my parents recently moved; a different town, a different county. (Good on 'em.) As part of that process, they had a massive sorting out, which resulted in my mother sending me a book that played a role in both her childhood and mine: Albert, 'Arold and Others, written by Marriott Edgar and published by Francis, Day & Hunter Ltd of Charing Cross Road, London. There's no date in the book, but I gather it was released in 1938 or 1939.

As a kid, what I loved about this book was its black humour and the fact that much of it was written for a Lancashire working-class accent. What I particularly liked was that, in The Lion and Albert, young Albert, when visiting the zoo, gets eaten by Wallace the lion, and his parents are peeved for the wrong reasons. It was one of those books I never tired of, and I wonder whether the books we read as children shape what we read (or write) as adults, and whether they shape us in other ways too. What do you think?

The manager had to be sent for.
He came and he said "What's to do?"
Pa said "Yon Lion's 'et Albert,
And 'im in his Sunday clothes, too."

Then Mother said, "Right's right, young feller;
I think it's a shame and a sin
For a lion to go and eat Albert,
And after we've paid to come in."

The manager wanted no trouble,
He took out his purse right away,
Saying "How much to settle the matter?"
And Pa said "What do you usually pay?"

I had three other favourites from this time, which are still on my bookshelves: Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner (I read this seven times, so possibly wasn't a particularly adventurous reader), The Story About Ping by Flack and Wiese, and The Otterbury Incident by C.Day Lewis. Comics and annuals were part of my literary world too, but these had a much shorter shelf life, and I borrowed Enid Blyton's Famous Five adventures from the library on occasion.

To this day, I love kids' books, and relished that part of parenthood when there was a ready excuse to start buying and reading them all over again. The cupboards and bookshelves are crammed with these too, and it's good to take them out and read again every once in a while. I have many, many more favourites amongst them, but that's another story.

Around the traps

2011-10-22T21:04:00.002+11:00

There's been a fair whack of writerly stuff written around the traps these last few days.

Jay Kristoff advises on the benefits of sucking up every grain of despair when the manuscript you're working on is rapidly morfing into a pile of crap. A little bit of hate, he reckons, may make you a better writer.
Patrick O'Duffy responds to the perennial question writers have to ask themselves: What's the damned book about? He looks at the distinctions between premise and theme, and makes the point that the "premise is the hook that distinguishes your work from all the other bait out there."
Michael Pryor desribes how writing is like magic, and how he got involved in learning conjuring tricks as a result of his writing.
Over at Alan Baxter's site, Foz Meadows has written a fine guest post about Piracy and Free Content, and the implications of this for writers. Foz has since added to her thoughts about this on her own site.
The View From Here has posted some great articles recently. I particularly enjoyed Catherine McNamara's piece about interlinked short stories and whether these constitute a novel.
Oh, and with magic in mind, and never having thought much about the work of voice artists before, I was gob-smacked to hear this demo of Kevin Powe's work. (You can also find Kevin's KAPOWE! blog here.)

Recent Reads: Being Dead by Jim Crace

2011-10-17T21:42:00.001+11:00

Alleluia! After three disappointments, I finally found a book I could enjoy: Jim Crace's novel Being Dead.

Seriously, I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me. Perhaps I'd got so caught up in my own writing that, when searching for something in the fiction of other authors - some sort of escape, some sort of enchanting surprise, some sort of entertainment - I'd unwittingly doomed myself to being forever disappointed. As if I might, stupidly, be searching for the book I wanted to write. But, no, I just had a bad trot, that's all, and Jim Crace proved it. Cheers, Jim.

I must confess that I hadn't read Mr Crace before, but the quality of Being Dead is such that I'll soon be ordering a couple of his other titles (Quarantine will probably be one, as this took the 1997 Whitbread Award and was short-listed for the Booker Prize of that year).

It might sound depressing, but it's not. It's lyrical, imaginative and engaging from start to finish.

On Baritone Bay, in mid-afternoon, Joseph and Celice, married for almost thirty years, lie murdered in the dunes. The shocking particulars of their passing make up the arc of this courageous and haunting novel. The story of life, mortality and love, Being Dead confirms Jim Crace's place as one of our most talented, compassionate, and intellectually provocative writers. (Picador edition)

In finding out a little more about the author and the novel, I came across a fine blog, The Age of Uncertainty. You can read more about Being Dead, Jim Crace, and much more besides, here.

Conflux

2011-10-11T21:17:00.002+11:00

Speculative fiction ain't fully my thing. Nor fantasy. Not yet. They might be if there were more hours in the day, and at some point in the future I might want to make them more my thing, but for the time-being I'm happy doing what it is I do - whatever that is. However, recently heard about Conflux and, seeing that I'd never heard its name before, thought I should find out and share.

Conflux is an annual Speculative Fiction conference held in Canberra and, from what I gather, has grown from a rich history of 50+ Science Fiction conferences. It's got all you'd expect to find at a literary conference - guest speakers, discussion panels, workshops, author readings, book signings, wining, dining and networking - and more...

Under the 7 FAQs at the Conflux website, I thought this an interesting, if not telling inclusion:

What is the Weapons Policy?
No weapons are to be brought to, worn or carried at any time during the convention (including water pistols, real or replica guns, swords or knives), unless approved as part of an official event. Only the convention organisers may approve such weapons and their participation in any event.

What are they expecting? Or rather, who are they expecting?

Tracked down some answers at Talie Helene's spot, where it's revealed on a promo video that dress-up banquets have featured for the last five conventions - Medieval, Regency Gothic, 1920s New York, Southern Gothic, On board the Graf Zeppelin (hmm). There's a Conflux Cookbook, written by Dr Gillian Polack, to celebrate these. Talie tells more about her time at this year's banquet (and describes a bizarre conversation she had) close to this spot.

Weapons? Why wouldn't you bring a sword to a Medieval feast? Although might be a little awkward on a Graf Zeppelin hydrogen airship.

Alan Baxter was a guest at this year's Conflux (with or without weaponry), and you can get a flavour of workshops by looking at his schedule here and his report (with pics) here.

Reckon I've sold myself on this now. Will be signing up before long.

Down at the Factory of the Imagination in September

2011-10-06T11:25:00.000+11:00

Although I'm only about 20,000 words away from the end of Number Three, I haven't added a single page to the manuscript during September. This has been a deliberate and liberating decision. Instead, apart from editing the first few sections of the novel - demolishing redundant words and sentences, building pace, strengthening impact - I've spent most of the month thinking about writing.

While this may sound wanky, it's an essential part of the writing process for me. It's what I do before I start writing, but I also like to punctuate the process of writing - when everything's going reasonably well - with taking time out from committing words to the page and simply thinking about writing instead. Not only does abstinence make me hungry to write again, to get back to the characters and their stories, but in distancing myself from them for a short while, I find I can think about them afresh. If I do a little editing at the same time, visit a gallery or two, get hooked into some new music, read a good book, watch a few films, then new ideas start fermenting, and though I might not be adding dialogue, narrative or description to the novel, I end up scribbling lots of notes and with a stronger sense of what I'm writing - and how. New layers reveal themselves, extra dimensions to the characters become apparent, I see opportunities I'd missed before.

That's where I'm up to.

Good stuff

2011-10-01T21:17:00.000+10:00

I've been on the road these last few days; driving through thunder, lightning, flash floods, aquaplaning towards concrete crash barriers, sitting in traffic jams, waiting for delayed planes - that sort of thing. Not doing a lot of writing, but taking the opportunity to catch up with reading and with simply thinking about writing (a worthwhile thing to do at times), but I'll say more about that in a future post.

What I want to do here is give a shout-out or two, by way of celebrating just some of the good stuff that's happening around the writing community.

To Louise Cusack, who signed a three e-book deal (or is that threee-book deal?) with Pan Macmillan's digital publishing subsidiary, Momentum Books, to re-release her fantasy trilogy, Shadow Through Time, to the international market.

To Mike French, whose debut novel The Ascent of Isaac Steward (Cauliay Publishing), was waiting on the doorstep for me at the end of my journey, after a bizarre journey of its own (Amazon failed to send my pre-ordered copy, Fishpond spent two months losing the copy I requested from them, and then told me last week it was no longer available and so wouldn't be sending a replacement copy... but managed to post it to me on the same day). Likened by R.N.Morris to "the surrealist literary experiments of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake but blessedly readable", I'll enjoy starting it soon. Big CONGRATULATIONS to Mike too for being long-listed by the Galaxy Book Awards under New Writer of the Year category.

To Cam Rogers, whose claim that Fight Club is one of the "best zombie films ever made" got me thinking about this favourite movie in a whole new light. He presents a weirdly convincing case.

To Jay Kristoff, who tapped into my doubts about the value of tweeting and had me cheering at the same time, with his Ten reasons you can Follow THIS.

To Dmetri Kakmi, whose article on why Australia's constitution should be rewritten to recognise the country's indigenous inhabitants has had me wondering if a group of writers couldn't harness the net to make this happen. Or whether this is something that Avaaz might be prepared to take on.

And I have to stop there, so you can check out the links. There's so much good stuff happening at the moment. This is just a flavour.

Searching for the Story

2011-09-25T15:50:00.000+10:00

One September several years back, my job took me to Thessaloniki, northern Greece, for a couple of weeks. As I flew out of Australia, Sydney launched its Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, and the irony of seeing several events taking place in my home country through the medium of Greek TV wasn't lost on me. I'd lounge in my hotel room at the end of the day, watching the 100 metres or the discus throwing, and find it bizarre that Mount Olympus was only a spit and a lick away. As was Alexander the Great, Aristotle and Socrates, and there were more Byzantine churches, Roman baths, temples and tombs around than you could poke a javelin at. It's a stunning country to visit, not least because its rich history and culture is apparent at almost every turn. So many stories.

However, this isn't a travelogue, and while there were many experiences (from both contemporary and ancient Greece) to enjoy on that trip, and which I've often savoured since, it was a fragment of domestic grief only briefly witnessed that created the most profound effect on me. Comedy and tragedy happens all around us - unreachable and unalterable, despite being uncannily close at times - and sometimes all we can do is join the Chorus as unwitting and helpless observers, hoping that the worst of the stories are never our own.

On my last morning in Thessaloniki, before flying to Athens, I was up and packed by 5am and standing at the open window of my room. It was still dark outside - still and dark - and warm with the promise of another hot day. My room was located on the fourth floor, at the rear of the hotel, looking across to the back of a couple of high-rise apartment blocks. They didn't seem too big a stretch away and it would have probably added to the ambiance of the place if someone had slung a washing line between, but I've always enjoyed the backyard and rooftop views of cities, seeking out the back streets and lanes in preference to postcard hotspots, and so it suited me fine.

It was good to breathe in the end of night, the start of day, and to catch a few moments of stillness before heading down to the lobby and catching the airport bus. And I was thinking this and mentally checking to make sure I hadn't forgot something - that I'd kept my passport and tickets handy, and that sort of thing - when, from an apartment almost opposite, a woman began crying.

It began as a sobbing. Deep sobs, one after the other. Until one sob became an intense wail: a drawn-out cry that reminded me of someone drowning. She was sobbing and crying as if the best of her life was over, and I couldn't tell whether it was from grief or pain or loss or betrayal or... There suddenly seemed so many reasons a woman might cry at 5 o'clock in the morning.

I peered out to try and identify which apartment and which room she might be in. Was she hurt? Had she witnessed the death of her child. Or a husband? What sort of loss was it? Was she sitting next to a telephone or a bloody mess? Was there a scribbled note in her hand? Was she in danger? Did she need help? I couldn't tell, but the solitary sound of this woman crying was amplified across the courtyard of tall buildings, along with its poignancy, and it found its way into me. It was one of the most plaintive, lonely sounds I'd ever heard.

It seemed that at any moment someone would have to join her, to soothe and comfort her, or to continue bullying and berating her; that the click or slam of a door would be equally clear on a morning like this, along with the ripple of soothing words or the throwing of pans, the smashing of crockery. But none of that happened. Just as she began her lament, so she ended it. As I stood and listened and wondered what - if anything - could be done, a current swept her from one end of grief to another, and her wailing once again became a series of sobs punctuated by silence. Except the silence now seemed louder than before. And I had to catch a bus to the airport.

So evocative was this scene for me that I've tried writing it numerous times across the years, although most often when I'm somewhere far from home. Usually as a poem, but occasionally as a short story. Except the words I really want and the view I really want to present have always eluded me. All I've created are scraps of paper with scribbled jottings and crossings-out to join the heap of other scraps of paper covered in scribbled jottings and crossings-out. (I have trees worth of these and sometimes, when we're short of winter firewood, I'll burn a box or two of them and we'll warm ourselves on the flames of old words.)

I could leave it well alone, of course, and allow the scene to simply hang in the gallery of my memories. Except I'm reluctant to. And so, I do what many writers do and begin to analyse why what I've tried won't work, while searching for a way of telling it in a way that might work instead. I look at the possibilities from different perspectives and learn that I can't see my way forward, perhaps, because my focus has been misdirected.

Maybe, instead of attempting to present a view of the woman's predicament and an interpretation of her situation, or even just capturing an evocative moment in life, the power of the scene might lie in the many questions that are raised but left begging. Or, in a Carveresque manner, it might lie in describing two characters who, for very different reasons, find themselves on the brink of change. There are so many possibilities. Maybe it needs to be one of those stories whereby, instead of making sense of the world - or a slice of the world - we end up with even more questions than answers along with a weightier awareness of our smallness in the universe. Maybe I should turn to Euripedes, Homer, Sophocles, and ask how the Greek poets would have shaped the telling of this story. Perhaps I should question what universal truth might be revealed here. Maybe, perhaps, possibly... There are so many ways of telling a story, if only we, as writers, can find one that works.

Searching for the Story first appeared in The View from Here in February, 2009.

'On the Waterfront' and 'Fitzcarraldo'

2011-09-23T21:25:00.000+10:00

It's been one busy week, what with trying to complete an article for a magazine, the demands of turning up to a salaried job (ho hum), and my painterly partner bailing on her fair share of domestic duties as she does a bit of globe-trotting. However, it's had its highlights.

One recent aspect of the Day Job I've appreciated is that it's given me a heap of opportunities to get to know Elia Kazan's 1954 film On the Waterfront. This is a new discovery for me, but I must admit I've enjoyed exploring it. Marlon Brandon and Eva Marie Saint are wonderful, and the improvised scene, where Edie drops her glove and Terry tries it on, is magic. The politics behind the movie, with Kazan justifying his request that he be called again in front of H.U.A.C., so that he might name names during the McCarthy witch-hunt, is fascinating too. While the ending seems unsatisfactory, with the longshoremen trudging blindly into the maw of capitalism, and the dynamic Edie reduced to a simpering doll, there's enough strength in the film for it to work.

Also, came across two websites that are worth shouting about and checking out. Talie Helene is a musician, writer and editor from Melbourne, Australia, and you can find out what's she been up to here. Alan Baxter - another Australian, but this time from New South Wales - is the author of dark fantasy novels RealmShift and MageSign, and of late he's been blogging about How to Write Fight Scenes.

The other highlight of the week was watching Fitzcarraldo, directed by Werner Herzog. I've always liked the sound of this word - 'Fitzcarraldo' - whenever I've heard talk of Herzog's work, but am amazed I never got round to watching the film until now. More fool me. What a film! It's made one hell of an impression, and I can already sense that some aspects of it are going to influence the way I write, the way I think about writing. And as for Klaus Kinski - brilliant. Look, I don't want to be objective and critical here. While some of the potent images are still percolating through my head - Fitzgerald's passionate feverishness when he gatecrashes the opera, the way he clings to the church bell-tower and screams at the town, his interactions with the rubber barons and the indians, the winching of the 320-ton steamboat up one side of the mountain and down the other - I'm more than happy just to gush about it instead.

The trailer doesn't go anywhere near doing justice to this movie, but don't take my word for it: watch the movie.

The Ride of the Googlebots

2011-09-17T20:48:00.000+10:00

It used to be that my blog stats would show I'd been visited by one or two Googlebots a day, and I've always found comfort in this. It's reassuring, I think, to know that these little spiders had found their way to my blog, had a bit of a browse and then scurried back to Mountain View, California, or wherever their nest is, to record the memory of that visit, in preparation for sharing it with the world. Their visit is an affirmation of sorts. It reminds me that I exist - or that my blog exists, at least.

However, of late, the things seem to be swarming, and I wonder if it's to do with the mild weather... or whether, like fembots, they're part of a plan to take over the world. Fairly regularly, I find there's been 16 or 17 of the blighters across the day, trawling through the archives, leaving little bits of web hanging off the drawers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. The more affirmation the better. And I don't have an aversion to spiders of any sort. It's just that I wonder why.

Anyway, given that it's happening, I thought I 'd leave a trail of flies for them to follow: 01000100111000110011... all the way to a couple of websites I like to visit. I've been getting to know a few more Australian writers recently, amongst whom is Cam Rogers, author of The Music of Razors, and Michael Pryor, author of The Chronicles of Krangor, The Laws of Magic, and many other novels and short stories. Cam is overhauling his site at the moment, but that makes visiting the current site all the more worthwhile - catch it before it changes. Catch them both.

Little Red Riding Hood

2011-09-12T21:53:00.000+10:00

Little Red Riding Hood has always been one of my favourite tales. That it’s one of those frequently reinterpreted stories we carry with us from childhood into adulthood adds to its richness, as far as I’m concerned. Even though each variation may draw on common elements, I’m always delighted to hear how different storytellers respond to it – what they bring to it, what they choose to leave out. From the sexy and the sinister to the sermonising and the comical. From the Brothers Grimm to Roald Dahl.

My favourite retelling of all is, without a doubt, Angela Carter’s The Company of Wolves. This is a stunningly evocative story from an anthology (The Bloody Chamber) that I've found almost addictive at times, and which includes variations of Bluebeard, Puss-in-Boots, The Erl-King, and Beauty and the Beast, amongst others.

I don’t mind admitting that it was my great admiration of her writing that inspired me to include my own ‘folk tales’ as interludes in The Grease Monkey’s Tale, and to retell Little Red Riding Hood one more time (although my version was also shaped by witnessing the horrendous abuse of a young child by her drunk grandmother once).

With this in mind, I looked forward to watching Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood recently, but was disappointed. While I particularly liked the palette of colours Hardwicke employed – all that red and white, blood and snow – it felt as if the screenplay had attempted to cobble together as many stories connected with wolves as possible, and ended up doing justice to none of them. (Conversely, Angela Carter references the story of Little Red in The Company of Wolves to a number of other lycanthropic stories too, but achieves a tremendous unity for doing this.) I quite liked the medieval setting (reminiscent of the one episode of Game of Thrones I’ve managed to watch), but thought the CGI wolf was laughably bad – so bad I couldn’t stop laughing. All very corny and disappointing. To shake it off, I revisited The Bloody Chamber and Carter's wonderful description of the seduction of a wolf.

From Thomas Mann to Tim Winton - a marriage of music and words

2011-09-08T21:37:00.000+10:00

Having come across some great discussions about e-books recently (Louise Cusack's Enhanced Features for e-Books, help or hindrance? and Jason Nahrung's Putting the eeeeee! into e-books are essential reading), I have resuscitated an article I wrote for The View From Here just over a year ago. Its relevance might not be immediately apparent, but it meanders there eventually.

FROM THOMAS MANN TO TIM WINTON - A Marriage of Music and Words

I’m not sure whether I’d have ever read Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice if it hadn’t been for a trip to the cinema in 1973, but Visconti’s film adaptation had just been released and I needed an excuse to hang out with a girlfriend. I doubt whether I gave the film my full attention (for obvious reasons), but I recall brooding, impressionistic images and a soundtrack that drew heavily on Mahler. Not long after, and perhaps in honour of the girl and our evening together, I shelled out 35p for a paperback copy of the book.

I vastly preferred reading Death in Venice to watching it (the little I'd seen) and, although the girl soon disappeared from view, this slim novella has remained on my bookshelf ever since. However, Visconti had a more profound influence than I realised at the time, because as soon as I opened the book I couldn’t help but hear those haunting phrases from Mahler’s Third and Fifth symphonies underscoring every sentence, and they too have stayed with me.

Adolescent relationships may be fleeting, but the love affair between film, music and literature is an enduring (and polyamorous) one, it seems. This is especially evident in films that aren’t so much moving pictures as moving paintings, and where music is cast in a leading role rather than as an optional extra loafing about in the background. Maybe Walt Disney kindled the flame to this romance with the magical (if not trippy) Fantasia in 1940. Here we have Mickey Mouse’s animated orchestration of Goethe’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice dancing to Dukas’ symphonic poem of the same name. It’s a marriage with added significance when we remember it was Goethe himself who said: “Music begins where words end.”

The intimacy of the relationship became obvious in Elvira Madigan (1967). Drawing on Johan Lindström Saxon’s nineteenth century ballad, which chronicled the murder-suicide of a married cavalry officer and his young tightrope-dancing mistress, film director Bo Widerberg created an inseparable bond when he matched this story with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21. It’s proved such a long-standing affair – no murder-suicide to mirror the original – that the Elvira Madigan tag is still promoted on new recordings forty-three years later.

Nor have Australian films been shy in this respect. After all, Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) went all the way with Joan Lindsay’s novel. No brief flirtation here. Consequently, it’s become a challenge to pick up this book, let alone read it in the shadow of Hanging Rock, without drifting into soft focus and expecting the earth to move to the tedious ripple of panpipes.

The upshot of this was that, as an Arts student in the 70s, it was difficult not to believe that a half-decent understanding of literature must be accompanied by a sound grounding in music. How else could these directors have recognised the essential Mahler behind Mann, the Mozart in Madigan? If I couldn’t discover something similar in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Chekhov’s Three Sisters or Sartre’s Nausea, I sensed they’d remain incomplete texts, half-read and half-understood at best.

This belief led me to Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Satie, amongst others, until I recognised the risks of overdosing on classical music: sombre days and even more sombre nights. Literature needed to lighten up and start dancing with a younger partner.

So it was a relief to encounter bands like The Cream releasing Tales of Brave Ulysses and Camel dedicating an entire album to Paul Gallico’s The Snow Goose, and even to hear Kate Bush warbling her way through Wuthering Heights. Being a committed student, there wasn’t much I wouldn’t kick back and listen to. The more diversions the better. I thought of it as research and much preferred it as a study technique to browsing a library for notes on Chaucer, Conrad or Coleridge. Except when it came to Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch’s Legend of Xanadu. How could anyone take a band with a name like that seriously?

What I would’ve liked, though, was to actually hear the music that underscored the words for myself. Instinctively, as I believed Visconti had. But it didn’t happen. There may have been an occasion once, when I thought a few bars from a pianoforte leaked out of Mansfield Park, but that could equally have been because I was cramming my reading of Jane Austen at 3:00 am while twitched up on caffeine.

There was little for it but to make the most of literature that allowed for such tune deafness. Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King became a favourite the moment Eugene Henderson sang a couple of lines from Handel’s Messiah: “I am despised and rejected, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief”.

In marriage, partners redefine one another and – for better or for worse – while Henderson’s story has resounded to the Messiah ever since for me, so too has it been impossible to hear the oratorio without having flashbacks of a middle-aged American multi-millionaire blundering through the African jungle in search of salvation.

Something similar happens with Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. This novel embraces Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony so passionately (even as it flirts with Mozart and Bach on the side) that I no longer hear it without picturing Alex and his droogs bashing and raping, thieving and destroying. It’s a deliberately disturbing relationship that reverberates all the more for Alex’s belief that music is “gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh.”

Of course, not all literature is evocative of music; some texts are destined to go quietly through life – unaccompanied. But reading is particularly enjoyable when it engages at this level. It’s the reason I got excited when, with the advent of CDs, Laura Esquivel released The Law of Love with its own soundtrack slipped beneath the front cover – a track for each chapter – because it heralded a fresh dynamism in the relationship. However, although Tim Winton’s aptly-named Dirt Music was released with an optional double album of bluegrass and classical tracks (an invitation to re-read the novel every time it’s played), relatively few authors have travelled any distance on this bandwagon.

But the writing’s on the wall... or, if not the wall, it’s certainly appearing on digital readers. Putting aside my preference for the feel and smell of paper rather than screens and warm batteries, I’ve been considering buying a Kindle or Sony Reader lately. The software isn’t quite there yet, but I don’t think it’ll be long before e-readers are gauging what music should accompany which e-book, matching the compatibility of rhythm and mood in each, while allowing, perhaps, for the user’s reading pace.

Maybe then it’ll only be a matter of time before every piece of literature is accompanied by its own soundtrack, and Mahler’s symphonies will literally resound through Death in Venice. Unless it’s done badly and resembles those awful Christmas cards that play the same tinny tune over and over again the moment they’re opened... or if the moment Picnic at Hanging Rock is opened we’re forced to listen to those bloody panpipes yet again. In which case, I imagine the relationship between literature and music might end in a murder-suicide after all – the messiest of divorces – and we’ll be clammering for old-fashioned, silent books once more.

Down at the Factory of the Imagination - August report

2011-09-06T21:20:00.000+10:00

Okay, I'm a bit late reporting August's figures, but maybe I'm still working on the Julian Calendar... or cooking the books. Anyway, August wasn't too bad word-wise and there's 61,000 of the little critters perched more or less in place. The 60,000 mark feels like a critical psychological barrier, so overtaking it is accompanied by a sigh of relief, because now I feel as if I'm accelerating towards the end - that is, if 20,000 words will get me there.

I'm not sure what this next month will be like, in terms of capturing words, and suspect I'm getting to the point where I have to print the entire thing out if I'm to successfully find my way towards that ending. Like The Snowing and Greening, this is a non-lineal beast, so when the characters deviate from where I thought they were taking me, which they're doing a lot at the moment, I have to go back and change a number of details relevant to how they got there in the first place.

Okay, forget that hotch-potch of metaphors I've just stumbled through - the factory, the hunting, the road journey - maybe I should settle for time-travelling instead, because that's what non-lineal writing feels like at times. If only I could meet a friendly Tralfamadorian. Then I could let myself know yesterday how the rest of this month is about to go.

Two books I didn't enjoy

2011-09-04T11:52:00.001+10:00

Many years ago, in a bid to overcome my obsessive need to finish reading every book I started, however abysmal they were, I created a 40 page and 80 page rule. If I found myself disliking a book by page 40, and could find no redeeming features, or if I found a book wasn't compulsive reading by page 80, then I allowed myself to dump it.

But I've be breaking this rule recently.

Of the last two books I read, one shouldn't have made it past page 40, while the page 80 rule should've applied to the other. The first one I stuck with, skimming across fifty pages or so before dipping into the story again, all the way through to the end, while the second didn't get the final flick until page 136.

I won't bother naming names here - there's nothing to be gained from that, except to prove yet again that what engages one reader won't necessarily engage another - but I do find this business of reading such books useful to a certain extent, inasmuch as it reminds me what makes a story work and what kills it.

Briefly, with the first novel, I thought it had an interesting storyline and the author had created a compelling narrative voice. However, the main characters, who I was expected to be sympathetic towards, if not empathetic with, were tedious bores. I didn't give a toss whether they lived or died, whether their lives were wracked with guilt or whether they ever found true love. If I was on a bus having to listen to them, I'd have got off at the first stop and waited for the next one. I'd rather stand in a blizzard than put up with their prattling.

The second novel was touted as a 'classy ghost story', although it seemed to be working a tad too hard at conveying literary classiness at the expense of pace and... well, substance. One slow meandering after another that seemed to be getting nowhere. Left me cold.

Why stick with them? Well, what's usually a tower of books at the side of my bed, waiting to be read, is at an all-time low. Having been let down by Amazon with a couple of titles, I've also been waiting several weeks for Fishpond to deliver the debut novel of my friend, Mike French, but The Ascent of Isaac Steward is proving elusive. I'll have to write to them on Monday if it hasn't appeared in the post by then. Because of this, I've been making do with reading a few books that have been lying around, but now it's time to start building that tower again.

What's Hot & What's Not

2011-09-01T21:36:00.000+10:00

What's Hot:

Being a slow learner in most things grammatical (put it down to sloppy trends in institutionalised education when I were a nipper), I've surprised myself of late to find I actually enjoy refining my skills in this area. That's partly why Strunk and White's excellent The Elements of Style made such an impact on me not so long ago (see post). However, I've just come across this fine post ....... from .... Patrick O'Duffy (hater of the sloppy ellipsis) ........ called .... Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?
Also, came across the website of Australian novelist and short story writer Kirstyn McDermott, whose thriller Madigan Mine was released by Picador last year. Check it out here.

What's Not:

Tony Abbott, Bleater of the Opposition, claiming he's Australia's official critic-in-chief. Too easy! But then, when politicians say nothing loud enough and often enough they really seem to believe they must be saying something. Our current cast of parliamentarians are, I suspect, puppets who've escaped from the 1980's British satirical comedy Spitting Image, preparing to act out a Ronald Reagan sketch or two - particularly The President's Brain is Missing. Can't find that episode, but this'll do instead.

Paperback writer

2011-08-31T19:26:00.000+10:00

Hurumph! Earning a living gets in the way of writing.

The Green Man a.k.a. Leafy George

2011-08-28T15:39:00.001+10:00

It's been a while between blogs because we've had a few visitors to the Burman place recently, which always involves considerably more eating and drinking than usual, on the one hand, but less opportunity and motivation to sit at a keyboard, on the other. In fact, there's probably a Maths or Physics law to describe the inverse relationship between the two events: as the amount of time and energy spent on eating and drinking increases, so does the amount of time and energy spent on all other activities proportionally decrease - something like that.

Anyway, I was taking 20 minutes away from being a charming and sociable host yesterday, and ended up having an E.M.Forster moment.

I remember reading of E.M.Forster's surprise when he learned that Rooksnest - the house he grew up in, and which he used as the setting for Howards End - had, before the Forsters moved in, been known as Howards for many years. Instead of creating the name from his imagination, his subconscious had dredged it from forgotten memories (if that isn't a contradiction in terms).

Which is similar to my moment. In writing The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore, I thought I'd had little connection with or knowledge of The Green Man (also known as Leafy George) prior to researching this motif for the novel in the early noughties. However, as I was sifting through a box of cards that I'd collected many years ago, which I hadn't properly looked at since emigrating to Australia 21 years ago, I came across a Christmas card with this wonderful image that must have been loitering in a corner of my subconscious all that time. Handwritten on the back of the card is the following credit: Green Man by Aysha © 1986

Recent reads: In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami

2011-08-18T21:40:00.000+10:00

While I've raved often about the work of Haruki Murakami, a friend (visit his blog) suggested I try Ryu Murakami and, for starters, In the Miso Soup.

'It's just before New Year, and Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's nightlife. But Frank's behaviour is so odd that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: his client may in fact have murderous desires. Although Kenji is far from innocent himself, he unwillingly descends with Frank into an inferno of evil, from which only his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Jun, can possibly save him.'
(Bloomsbury, translated by Ralph McCarthy)

This is a relatively short, three-part novel (180 pages), and it's fair to say that my responses to it changed with each part. Part One captured my attention largely because of the descriptions of Tokyo nightlife; Murakami takes the reader on a neon-illuminated tour of Tokyo's seedier nightclubs and peepshows, providing us with an intriguing view of the sex industry - at least, selected aspects of it - before leading us to a baseball batting centre ('a surreal open space illuminated by fluorescent lights'). As for the characters leading this tour, I felt unconvinced and irritated by Kenji's intuitions about Frank's murderous nature, and wished that he'd stop his whining and get on with the job he'd taken or abandon the unlikeable Frank and go find, Jun, his girlfriend.

In Part Two, with blood pooling at the edge of each page, we meet the darker side of Frank. Though it felt like overkill to me in every sense, and I nearly finished with the book on a couple of occasions, it was towards the end of this part that Kenji's inability to detach himself from events began to pique my interest.

However, the third and final part completely won me over and made me glad I stayed for the entire macabre experience. Frank and Kenji came fully alive for me and I found myself wanting to find out what was going to happen to them. (It's when I just don't care that I know a novel hasn't worked for me).

What added considerably to my appreciation of this novel, though, is that, by chance, I followed my reading of it with Robert Louis Stevenson's Gothic horror Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

The similarities between Frank and Mr Hyde are startling, despite one being large and the other being 'dwarfish' and 'troglodytic'. They are both malformed, malevolent and given to murderous rage, and there are qualities about their appearance (the feel of Frank's skin, the foul soul that ... transpires through, and transfigures, [Hyde's] clay continent) which both narrator's find difficult to pin down and articulate. Kenji is a modern Mr Utterson, although the path he travels is much more perilous.

All up, In the Miso Soup is a novel I'm glad I read, and I'll be picking up another Ryu Murakami before too long.

New article for The View From Here

2011-08-12T10:10:00.000+10:00

It's been a few months since I wrote anything for The View From Here, so thought I should get my two fingers out (you'll see what I mean) and write something.

You can read What every chicken should know about Cupertino here.

Listening to The Waifs

2011-08-08T14:53:00.002+10:00

Have been listening to a fair bit of The Waifs recently. They've been a favourite Australian band of mine for many years, but I've been giving their CDs a renewed hammering of late. Songs I particularly like are The Haircut, Service Fee (both from Sink or Swim) and the slow version of Without You (from sundirtwater). Having painted those lighthouse steps recently (see second last post), thought this might be appropriate: Lighthouse.

Down at the Factory of the Imagination in July

2011-08-04T20:17:00.002+10:00

Some might say all's not well down at the Factory of the Imagination, on account of there having only been 5,000 words added to Number Three novel this month, instead of the 10,000 target (see previous post). And yet it feels as though I've written four times that amount ... at least. Honest guv.

Let me assure you, the cogs have not been idle; there's been no strikes, no working-to-rule nor go-slows in this factory. I've been labouring over a transition sequence from one main course of the story to the next, but it seems to have taken forever-and-a-day.

I was wondering how to explain this shortage of finished words, during a rare lunch break, and found myself wandering into the kitchen of the Works Canteen.

Cook was reducing a sauce, to serve with the day's speciality: Bœuf à la Métaphore. To make the sauce, the carcasses of ten Aberdeen Anguses (grazed on a diet of organic grain, stout and whiskey) had been boiled in several casks of red wine to form a vat of rich broth, which, over a period of three days, was being reduced to the amount of two and a half cups. Although I'm a vegetarian, and Cook likes to spit at me for this, I was assured that, so potently delicious is it, that a mere sniff of the finished sauce would instantly repair my damaged soul and convert me into a raging carnivore once more.

This, I realised, is what I'd been attempting to do with words across the last four weeks. I'd write a few hundred, and then reduce those to fifteen or twenty, and then, on the following day, I'd further reduce them to seven or eight. I'd struggle to dice in another couple of hundred words, but would then start stirring them around again, simmering over them, until only a thimbleful were left. And so on and so on. What feels like 40,000 words reduced to 5,000.

And there I have my excuse. My explanation. Surely I deserve a bonus, instead of getting my pay docked?

Burnt gravy, anyone?

Winter weekend, art, and a competition

2011-08-01T21:12:00.001+10:00

This coming weekend sees another of my home town's Winter Weekend celebrations. Throughout the winter months, every year, Port Fairy hosts a number of events, except I've gone and got myself involved this time. I didn't mean to. It just sort of happened.

While you can see the range of events taking place for this culinary-inspired weekend here, I rashly agreed to participate in the Smorgasbord of Port Fairy Art exhibition - a mosaic of paintings, depicting fragmented scenes of the town, which will be the subject of a competition (guess the layout of the mosaic). Twenty local artists were invited to choose one of twenty photos as the basis for a small painting (40 x 30cm), which will then be arranged as a mosaic. The photos, as chosen by each artist, can be found with details of the competition here, but that's my photo above.

I must confess, this has caused me some angst and I would have destroyed my effort several times over if I hadn't made a commitment. It may have been significantly smaller than the piece I put together for this year's Biblio-Art Exhibition (and I blogged about that and my nod to Jeffery Smart right here), but I found this one considerably harder. Nonetheless, I learned a bit along the way and played around with different brush strokes, so, while I wouldn't hang it on my wall, I'm happy to pin it up here for the time-being.

Not a review of Stieg Larsson's MilleniumTrilogy

2011-07-27T20:05:00.000+10:00

Having recently finished reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, the last in Stieg Larsson's best-selling Millenium Trilogy, I've been reflecting on what I like and don't like about these three books. For various reasons, I often steer clear of any book, film or event if the neon lights of hype are garishly flashing around it, but the quality of praise that this trilogy attracted (coupled with the fact that an opportunity to begin reading it occurred when I was on holiday) took the edge off the hype and persuaded me to pick it up.

Of the three, I least enjoyed Number Two: The Girl Who Played With Fire. After The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the characters seemed less convincing and the storyline little more than a run-of-the-mill thriller; despite being action-packed, its pace barely carried me through and I only stuck with it because, as a reader, I'd invested some time with the characters in Number One. Only in the final chapters did I begin to engage again, although this was probably more to do with the action than the characters themselves. Fortunately, in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, Stieg Larsson breathed life back into Lisbeth Salander, Mikael Blomkvist and their various sidekicks, supporters and adversaries. The dynamics between the characters made this a more satisfying read and, although it runs to 746 pages, I was locked in from the beginning. Once again, though, it isn't much more than an action-packed thriller (with a bit of espionage thrown in for good measure), which is excellent if that's what you're after and particularly if you enjoy the work of John Grisham, Tom Clancy, et al. So, apart from the hype, what was it about this trilogy and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo in particular that generated widespread enthusiasm? This is the question I've been asking myself. Even if I ask the question not as someone who fancies himself as a literary critic, but as a writer constantly clarifying what it is I want to write and how I want to write it.

While the characters in this first book are well-drawn, the plot isn't anything out of the ordinary - and, to my mind, some of the sub-plots are more interesting. So what is its allure? Well, Lisbeth Salander is certainly a quirky character, and there's often an appeal in that, while Mikael Blomkvist is an effective foil for her, as well as a strong character himself. But it's also the fact that this novel is set in and describes a strong image of Sweden, which, for English-speaking readers, adds considerably to its charm, I suspect. This in itself is an interesting journey to go on, and I don't believe it would have enjoyed a fraction of its popularity if the events took place against a more familiar backdrop, such as America or Britain, for example. There may be a parallel here with the success of Peter Høeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow, which creates some wonderful quirky characters, offers a mystery to be solved, introduces some high-level skulduggery, and takes the reader on a journey through both Denmark and Greenland. Maybe it's got something to do with a fascination for snow! On the other hand, I know that, apart from the captivating narrative voices he creates, the surreal storylines, the quirky characters (again), it's the Japanese backdrop - rural or urban - that's drawn me to Haruki Murakami's novels time and time again. Location, location! All in all, The Millenium Trilogy has got me thinking more about the significance of setting than anything else, being sidetracked into wondering if this is part of the charm for readers of Fantasy and Science Fiction (the allure of other worlds), and where I might want to travel next, both in my reading and my own writing.

Accentuate the positive

2011-07-21T17:02:00.000+10:00

This afternoon, my writing led me to the phrase 'accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative'. The sentiment was close to what my leading character was thinking ('Shit happens; get over it.') and so I jotted down the chorus of the Johnny Mercer song from which it's taken, in case I might want to use it.

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between.

The first time I heard this song, it was Bing Crosby's version, although lip-synched by Michael Gambon and others in Dennis Potter's 1986 television series The Singing Detective (what an excellent program that was). Needless to say, I got sidetracked into visiting YouTube to hear Johnny Mercer and The Pied Pipers do their stuff, followed by a segment of The Singing Detective. Nevermind, although the word count seems to be going backwards at the moment, I've spent enough hours for one day playing with words.

Book Group

2011-07-18T19:56:00.000+10:00

One of the pleasures of joining a Book Group for the evening as its guest author is the range of feedback one receives. While this feedback is positive on the whole - I don't think many groups would invite an author whose book they hated - I'm keen to get all manner of responses, because these reflect the many different ways in which readers read texts. I also believe that a reader's interpretation of a novel and the motivations of its characters are as equally valid as the author's (more so in some ways), so I occasionally come away from these discussions with new insights into how the story works. A group, who in the past had discussed The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore with me, recently chose The Grease Monkey's Tale for their monthly read, and it was interesting to hear their responses to Nic, Siobhan and The Gnome as characters, as well as to hear how they believed the stories of the main characters might continue after the novel finished. A lot of energy goes into discussing these elements, and it's fair to say that there's often almost as many interpretations as there are members. However, a common response is that female readers dislike Siobhan's personality with a passion and find her conniving, while male readers can understand Nic's attraction to her; female readers find Nic gullible, while male readers rarely comment on this. One useful upshot of this particular group's discussion was when I was asked about the title for Number Three. They immediately became my test group and, while the general response was okay, it became clear that the relevance of the title needed to be thoroughly explained. Needless to say, before I got home that night, the title was ditched and I'm now exploring replacement titles.

Bleak midwinter

2011-07-14T19:24:00.000+10:00

My pagan sensibilities swing me between wanting to eat, drink and be extra merry or to hibernate at this bleak time of year. I've been doing a bit of both recently. Celebrated winter solstice last month by warming my hands at a massive bonfire while warming my insides with a beaker or two of mulled wine, but this month - with the days feeling even wetter, colder, windier - I think the bonfire and the beaker would need to be twice as big.

Instead, I headed to Melbourne last weekend for a bit of Culture 'n' Cuisine - oh, and to catch up with the offspring. A matter of savouring life.

First stop was NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) to see Vienna: Art & Design - Klimt, Schiele, Hoffmann, Loos. The exhibition traced, in part, the development of Vienna during the second half of the 19th century, so it was interesting to learn about architect and designer Otto Wagner, but my main interest was the work of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, whose work I've long admired.

The exhibition highlighted for me the difference between the quality of original works and how they appear when photographed for books, posters, the internet, etc. Klimt's work was much the way I'd imagined it to be - grand, ornate, sensual - although the colours seemed more muted than they appear in books, and perhaps the originals have indeed faded with the years. However, Schiele's work - well, the pieces on display - didn't present those qualities I was expecting to find. Through plates in art books, I've long been drawn to the raw simplicity of his drawings, and how these seem to capture a gritty if not seedy element of humanity, but many of the pieces I thought I was familiar with seemed almost cartoon-like instead. Rather than astute and haunting, they seemed frivolous and superficial. Maybe, at the end of a four-hour drive, my eyes or brain were too weary. A fact not remedied by the early closure of the Viennese cafe.

On Sunday, we drove to the Yarra Valley, to the TarraWarra Museum of Art, to see the 2011 Archibald Prize Exhibition. Renowned for its vineyards, I'd never been to this area before, although I've truly acquainted (and frequently reacquainted) myself with its produce. I was stunned by how much it reminded me of Europe - France in particular - with its avenues of poplar trees, the long driveways leading to each cellar door, kilometre upon kilometre of grape vines along the broad valley, and the unremitting cold and rain.

If I'd been a tad disappointed by the variation between copy and original in the Viennese exhibition, the opposite was true for the Archibald exhibits. I'd visited the website and viewed the digital images of the successful paintings as soon as the finalists were announced, but almost every piece was considerably more impressive in actuality. There were numerous stunning paintings on show, but a couple of my favourites are Adam Chang's portrait of J.M.Coetzee and Alexander McKenzie's portrait of Richard Roxburgh.

As for cuisine, we didn't get to eat out as much as we'd anticipated - every restaurant and cafe in Healesville was packed on Sunday - but we did get to a fine Indian restaurant on Saturday: Madras Banyan Tree (924 Nepean Highway, for Melburnians). The service was disorganised, as we were promised it would be, and dishes were forgotten at each course, but the food (when it finally appeared) was heart-warming. Exactly what was needed to chase away those winter blues.

At Last with Kelly Auty

2011-07-07T19:58:00.000+10:00

Port Fairy was buzzing last weekend with events aimed at shaking off the winter blues. Any excuse. Of these, I particularly enjoyed revisiting the small theatre group who performed a play about the life of Sylvia Plath last year. Returning to Blarney Books & Art, New Performance Company (Janet Watson Kruse, Carolyn Masson and Peppa Sindar, directed by Brenda Palmer) presented a series of short plays across the space of a fast-moving hour... with wine and nibbles at the end. I was absolutely enthralled by Gaylene Carbis's This is What Happened, a tight and powerful piece of writing, which was rhythmic and full of wonderful nuances from beginning to end. Hats off! Bravo! Three cheers! and all that to the actors, their director and the script writers.

That was in the afternoon. In the evening, I had the pleasure of enjoying Kelly Auty for a couple of hours (that sounds wrong!). I'd seen Kelly Auty perform twice before and wasn't disappointed on this occasion either. She sang numbers from the repertoires of Billie Holiday, Eartha Kitt, Nina Simone and other blues and jazz greats, although it's her rendition of Edith Piaf songs that always blows me away. Quite sublime. Once again, there was wine and nibbles included in the price of the ticket, so the day had a pleasantly pickled quality to it. However, the most memorable song of the night was one I haven't heard Kelly Auty sing before, and that was Etta James's At Last. I've liked this song ever since Gary Ross used it to such great effect in the film Pleasantville, so thought I'd finish with it here, in the original (thanks to ZombieSlag36 fan video).

Productivity at the Factory of the Imagination

2011-07-04T18:36:00.001+10:00

Having set myself the challenge to produce 10,000 polished words each month (see here), things weren't looking too good in the Factory of the Imagination this month. In fact, I called the Time & Motion crew in at one point on to see what was going on. By 16th June - over half-way through the month - I'd only got 3,333 words down, and the following day only managed another 333 words (I kid not, the Time & Motion crew made a note of these figures), so it seemed like the whole idea was going to glurp down the gurgler.

Never mind, I told myself, it was an interesting motivational idea, but quality is what I'm after, not words at any cost. And then, as if to prove this to the Shop Steward, I actually went backwards for a day. I polished and polished, until there were finer but fewer words on the factory floor.

Never mind, I told myself again (having used up every original phrase on the production line), if I can produce 333 words every day for 29 days and 343 on the 30th day, that's a sweet 10,000, but if I write nothing on some days, then surely 666 isn't too much to aim for, by way of catching up. I just have a lot of catching up to do, that's all. Who needs sleep after all?

Anyway, having taken the liberty of pushing the deadline back to this first day of a fortnight's holiday from my other workplace (yes, I'm moonlighting, so sack me!), I think I can save face by reporting that I've covered just over 9,000 words this last month, having reached 49,167. Phew! It was a close thing, but that's close enough.

Now to see if I can shape 10,833 words in the next 27 days. Hmm.
I have to get this novel finished before I go mad.

Mash-ups

2011-07-01T20:30:00.000+10:00

I enjoy playing around with sound and images (at a very basic level), and am often blown away by the ingenuity of mash-ups in particular. There's a lot of talent in this area, and here are a couple of my recent favourites. In the first, Chris Rule (with assistance from Nick Eckert) have recut the Mary Poppins trailer so that it's transformed into the horror genre - Scary Mary.

In the second, Frans Peter Bull Enger, aka Norwegian Recycling (visit his site for a variety of excellent mash-ups) has mashed Harry Potter into Dark and Difficult Times. Enjoy.

Baby, Please Don't Go by Big Joe Williams

2011-06-27T12:50:00.002+10:00

One of my favourite sets of CDs features good old, gritty blues. The sound is tremendously rough in places - like cheap whiskey and three-day stubble - these being early recordings of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Blind Willie McTell and the like, and I love it. Always makes me want to dance and open the bottle. I gave a quick nod to this collection in The Grease Monkey's Tale (pp 94-95), albeit under a different name, and mentioned a track where Big Joe Williams plays (appropriately for Nic the mechanic at that point in his story) Baby, Please Don't Go.

Thought it was about time I found the man on YouTube, so here he is, playing this song on a 9 string guitar, of all things.

Willie Dixon - another blues great - is conveniently quoted under this video:

"The blues is the roots. Everything else is the fruits."

Recent reads: The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono

2011-06-23T20:29:00.000+10:00

I only recently came across the name Jean Giono, after his work was recommended to me by my friend, Dmetri Kakmi. Following that discussion, I ordered a copy of The Man Who Planted Trees.

Coincidentally, Dmetri has blogged about this particular book today and you can read his comments here. While I have a tale to tell about the arrival of this book, I won't add much more to what Dmetri's said about Giono's writing, except that the simplest tales are often the most profound and memorable. It's a fine piece of writing, and puts me in mind of Alan Garner's Stone Book quartet and elements of Paul Gallico (The Snow Goose, for instance), all of which I read many years ago, except Giono pares the story-telling back even further perhaps.

Anyway, I found the book online at a couple of sites, but Fishpond were offering an edition with wood engravings by Michael McCurdy that took my eye, and so I ordered from them. A very light, paperback-sized package arrived a few days later, which I opened to discover... a stamp-sized book. It's a tiny thing.

Perhaps I'm exaggerating in saying it's a stamp-sized book, but it's certainly not much larger than an unfolded book of stamps. And, including a 24 page Afterword by Norma L. Goodrich, it's only 77 pages long. I read it in one small sitting.

Regardless of that, it's a delightful piece of writing (with wonderful woodcuts) and I'm keen to read more by Jean Giono. The Song of the World may be next.

June sunrise

2011-06-20T20:42:00.000+10:00

It's winter here. The days are short, cold and often wet. However, on fine days, June is a golden month for sunrises and sunsets - regardless of volcanic ash clouds drifting over from Chile. Every year, it's impossible to resist capturing one or two on camera.

Took a whole sequence last Thursday, between 7:30 and 8:00 am, while taking a walk before work. These two, about five minutes apart, show how quickly the show changes. In the last moments, the reflected light in the wet sand glowed lilac.

From South Beach dunes looking towards East Beach, Port Fairy, 16th June, 2011

South Beach, Port Fairy, 16th June, 2011

Mike French: The Ascent of Isaac Steward

2011-06-16T18:49:00.003+10:00

Today sees the release of Mike French's debut novel The Ascent of Isaac Steward (Cauliay Publishing).

I first got to know Mike in 2007 when I was waiting for The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore to be released by PaperBooks and he was trying-out draft chapters of The Dandelion Tree online. Before long, Mike founded The View From Here - a literary ezine - and I was privileged to be one of the first authors interviewed. Since then, he's become a good friend, and there's something neat about being able to interview him in return.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

How did the story of Isaac Steward evolve?
In the beginning there was nothing at all but the desire to write. I honestly had no idea what I was going to do, why I was really doing it or how to do it. (I had to go find a book and look at basic things like how to format paragraphs, when to indent etc.!) It really was a matter of sitting down and bashing away at the keyboard to see what spilled out of my head, not knowing what on earth was going to happen.

From that beginning scenes came, which led to ideas, then characters. What grounded me were some key pieces like Isaac and Rebekah walking into Mamre Wood and the idea of the Dandelion Tree. After a year I had, I think, about 120 thousand words which I then edited down to half that length as I chopped out some of my wilder flights of fancy – or scenes that didn’t fit into the tone of the book. During that stage some characters merged into one, in order for Isaac to take central stage. I think some significant changes were the editing out of some talking frogs(!) and a character called Triage who determined what priority a new memory had in Isaac’s memory. It really was quite, quite mad with Triage fighting nano bots within Isaac’s mind, with the epilogue having the Punch and Judy characters blasting off in a rocket within Isaac’s mind only to encounter the nano bots out in space. Here’s an example of the frogs:

Before Temp finished his croak, Rana's strong hind legs propelled her off the curb in a gigantic leap towards Isaac. She landed, and braced herself for another leap across the road. Temp turned away, unable to look.
SPLAT. The fat chunky tread of the juggernaut’s tyres bore down on her and crushed her body into their rubber. Temp sat open mouthed.
‘Rana,’ he mouthed, tears rolling down his shiny face. He sat motionless, mouthing her name over and over to himself as he looked at the spot where the lorry had picked her up.

It’s nothing like that now! Well maybe a little bit like that.
The final version was an edit after leaving the MS for a year or so, reflecting on the key elements I wanted to tell; then moulding the material I had to pull those to the front of the novel.

In what ways, if any, does the place in which you live (or the places in which you’ve lived) shape the way in which you write?
That’s a very interesting question! My environment has affected some of the imagery, like the descriptions of Mamre Wood, which is from my observations of walking through a small wood near where I live and I think from my childhood where, unlike today, kids were free to roam, and I’d spend hours and hours exploring woods and the countryside around me in Scotland – I think that sense of wonder at your surroundings that you have as a kid have found their way into the novel.
So that affected what I write and how I describe things, the emotions behind the descriptions. The other thing of course is the people around where you live – for example my friend Charlie who pointed me the way of Stephen King’s On Writing.

What are some of the influences that most affect you as a writer (aside from booze or drugs!)? Perhaps you could write a few lines on:
Most influential book/author
It’s hard to single one out, I think influences are a mixing together of Julian Barnes, John Steinbeck, George Orwell, Tom McCarthy, David Lapham (his non-sequential story-telling) and Kurt Vonnegut. Like a blended malt. Although I don’t drink malt – a Ben and Jerry’s flavour ice-cream perhaps? Kurt can be the chocolate fish.

Most influential music ... or music you enjoy writing to
I only ever put music on if I need it to help with the mood of a specific scene – like a film soundtrack of something sad for example if I’m writing a sad scene. Even then that’s rare and I prefer to work in silence and let the story fill my mind so I can step into a scene and view it without any distractions. Having said that music has influenced me greatly, just not during the writing itself – stuff like Coldplay, Jem, Pink Floyd and Radiohead.

Most influential film
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. I watched this as a kid and it had a profound impact on me. It’s like a combination of George Orwell and Kurt Vonnegut, so I think in some way I must be hard-wired to like this kind of weird stuff. I’m also a visual person and Gilliam’s style is atmospheric, retro and mad.

Most influential visual image, architectural delight, sculpture ...
Can I say comics here? Does that count for visual imagery? In particular [the work of] Dave McKean, who I had the pleasure of interviewing last year. I love the interplay between images and text, the way one works with the other to convey mood and pace but, unlike most films, still makes the reader a key part of the process. In fact, having grown up with comics and taking to them again as an adult with such things as Sandman, Stray Bullets and Bone, I’d go as far as saying they probably played the most important part of shaping me as a writer – certainly the imagery conveyed in a novel is crucially important to me.

In what ways has your training and experience as an engineer shaped the way you write, or your expectations as a writer?
It helped with the cooling ducts that keep chapters seven and eight at a constant temperature, but, apart from that, none as far as I’m aware – and being an engineer was only a way of making my love of Physics pay the mortgage. I like the way Physics asks some huge questions about the whole nature of reality, especially with quantum mechanics. The idea that your common sense is built up over years by what you have observed and learnt, and how this is flawed as you can only observe the world around you through a narrow window. Physics widens that window, often with surprising results – that sense of what you could call the surreal effects the way in which I write.

How would you like readers to best remember The Ascent of Isaac Steward? (Other than it being the best novel they’ve ever read.)
I really can’t answer that! I hope that I’ve written it in a way that interacts with people that is specific to them, that the reader and book come to a mutual understanding of what the whole experience was about, shake hands and part as friends, lovers, sworn enemies, whatever. As long as there is a reaction, rather than, “that was nice.” Hopefully the reaction will be wildly different for different people and I’ve left room for that to happen.

In what way have you been most affected or changed by the process of getting this novel published?
That you have to discover what talent you have, be the best you can possibly be with it once you’ve found it, and never give up Mr. Frodo, er, I mean Paul.

I gather you’re writing your second novel – Blue Friday. Are you approaching the writing of this differently in any way?
I’m so excited about Blue Friday! But I’m trying to keep the lid on it whilst the Ascent of Isaac Steward goes out. In fact I’ve had to lock it in the attic where it hammers away like some lunatic wanting to be let out. (You can probably hear it now.) It’s actually finished, two people have read it so far and that’s it. I can’t let it out again for a while as it may try to burn the house down.
And yes I approached the writing differently – with the Ascent of Isaac Steward I started without the faintest idea of what I was doing and it took me years and years to get it to what it is today. Blue Friday still has all the hallmarks of what you’ll get in one of my novels, but it is stripped back, hard-boiled and a different animal all together. I was influenced greatly by reading Only Joking by Gabriel Josipovici shortly before writing it, and that, together with a greater understanding of the craft (which I cut my teeth on with Isaac), meant the whole novel was done and dusted in 4 months. That worried me to start with but Iain Banks knocks them out like that – or his latest one at least – and it is very short at just over 30 thousand words. I would have liked it to be longer but every time I went to tinker with it and carry on the story it just felt wrong, and I was messing with a perfectly good story just to fit it into a mould of what people see as acceptable for the length of a novel – it’s about the length of my arm if I stretch it out like this or Animal Farm if that is more helpful.
And although it only took 4 months to write, the ideas for the story had been swilling about my head for ages, in fact it started years ago as a short story, so the first chapter came already written, although it needed some editing to turn it into chapter 1.
The other main change was that I had the luxury of writing it almost continuously throughout the winter months at the start of this year, whereas Isaac Steward was written in dribs and drabs over the space of a whole year.
Excuse me a moment.
No, you can’t come out, later, stop hammering!
Sorry I feel like Mr Rochester sometimes. Is that all Paul? It’s been a pleasure. Cup of tea?

Isaac Steward thinks he has had a good life so far. That is what he chooses to remember. The Ascent of Isaac Steward is the remarkable and extraordinary debut novel from the senior editor of the prestigious literary magazine, The View From Here. Written with a literary, lyrical voice, the book follows Isaac Steward in an emotional and original tale as he struggles to deal with the resurfacing of a suppressed memory. Isaac becomes increasingly dysfunctional and delusional as the story unfolds in a hypnotic and startling way bringing into play childhood memories of a Punch and Judy show and the revelation from his half-brother, Ishmael, that he must be brought to a tree from his father's wood called The Dandelion Tree.

ISBN: 978095688101
Buy from: The Book Depository
Visit Mike's blog: mikefrenchuk.com
Visit The View from Here here

Recent reads: Black Hole by Charles Burns

2011-06-13T20:54:00.001+10:00

There's a secret pleasure in picking up a graphic novel. It reminds me of childhood and a fortnightly treat when I was allowed to buy a comic, which was usually The Beano, I think, followed by Valiant. It was a treat because comics were generally looked down upon as lazy reading, inasmuch as they demanded so little of the reader. These days, while part of me associates that same delicious laziness with graphic novels, they have a 'grown-up' legitimacy about them, which allows me to enjoy them even more. That's not say that graphic novels can't be dense, layered texts, which they clearly can (and I might hold up Jonathan Walker and Dan Hallett's superb Five Wounds as one of the best examples of this), but that because most people are visual readers first, there is a distinct pleasure associated with reading a story principally from images rather than words (and why we like our written stories to create strong visual impressions, perhaps).

Charles Burns's Black Hole is an impressively thick book, and I approached it with some awe (and respect for the work that must have gone into creating so many detailed pictures), but it's also an easy and reasonably compelling read, and only took me a couple of brief sessions to finish.

While I enjoy texts that are more layered than this one, and that require more work of me as a reader (so I can get fully involved), there were a number of elements I especially enjoyed about Black Hole. Chief amongst these was Charles Burns' decision to tell the story from overlapping points of view. Given that it might be harder to provide characters in graphic novels with the same depth as those in non-graphic novels, it was good to be provided with these different perspectives of the same story. The exploration of the drug-addled, sexually promiscuous 70s - albeit an American version - also added to my interest. Furthermore, but linked to this perhaps, I was intrigued by the symbolism that seemed to tie so much of the story together, but did wonder by the end whether I was imagining so many references to vaginas or whether these were indeed intended. There was nothing like that in The Beano.

The long, winter weekend - Port Fairy

2011-06-10T21:38:00.000+10:00

It's a busy few days in Port Fairy. Started yesterday evening with being invited to join a Book Group as they discussed The Grease Monkey's Tale (always enjoy these opportunities to answer questions about a novel, the process of writing, and to hear different reader's interpretations and views). Then, tonight saw the launch of an exhibition at The Whalebone Gallery, where SB promptly sold one of her paintings (so we'll be eating for a few more days). And tomorrow sees the launch of the Biblio-Arts Awards Exhibition at Blarney Books & Art, where we both have paintings on show. It being the long Winter Weekend (thanks to the Queen's Birthday public holiday - "Happy Burfday, Queenie"), when our small town is inundated with visitors, there's a host of other weird and wonderful events taking place, such as the Running of the Dachshunds. I'm not quite sure how the annual dachshund dash evolved, or whether Spain's Running of the Bulls should feel threatened by it, but it'd probably be more appropriate to the locality if it was a Running of the Crayfish or Running of the Abalone... except it can take a long time for an abalone to yawn, let alone to move a centimetre or two.

Julian Smith and I'm Reading a book

2011-06-04T20:54:00.000+10:00

Following on from Lane Smith's It's a Book, here's Julian Smith's I'm Reading a Book. Nice match.

Down at the Factory of the Imagination

2011-06-01T20:56:00.000+10:00

I'm a slow writer. I know I am. Some days, I end up with less words on the page than at the beginning of the day. Although, hopefully, they're better-placed words.

Be that as it may, in addition to the novel I'm currently working on, I have a queue of five books waiting to be written, and as many short stories. And I want to get them out. To that end, I'm trying to write faster ... without sacrificing the telling of the story, the placement of the words.

I set myself a goal at the start of May: to lay down 10,000 reasonably polished words every month until novel Number Three is finished. That would be just about doubling my output.

Well, it's 1st June today (the first day of winter in these 'ere parts, me hearties) and the word count has grown from 30,000 to 40,000 in the last month, so I'm reasonably content. If I get to 50,000 by the end of this month, then I'll feel like I've really achieved something, and if I can keep that going throughout these winter months, then spring may see in the first of the final edits - fingers crossed (but not too crossed, otherwise it's difficult to type).

Now, back to work at the Factory of the Imagination.

Lane Smith and It's a Book

2011-05-29T20:19:00.000+10:00

My brother sent me the link to this smart video clip: Lane Smith's It's a Book. And here's a link to Lane Smith's website, because he really is a rather superb writer and illustrator.

Recent reads: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

2011-05-25T20:50:00.000+10:00

Regular readers of this blog may realise that I've been on a Carson McCullers kick these last few months. It began when I was blown away by the stunning prose in The Member of the Wedding. After this, I had to re-read The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (and other stories), having first read this about 30 years previously. Next, of course, I had to buy a copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

I've always admired the poetic title of this book (as with Ballad), so was glad to finally get round to reading it and, in doing so, learned that while Ms McCullers originally called the book The Mute, her editor insisted on replacing the title with this romantic line from a poem by Fiona McLeod ('But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts/ on a lonely hill.' - see Introduction to Penguin edition by Kassia Boddy). While it's certainly a catchy title, I feel she did the book a disservice inasmuch as The Mute strikes me as more appropriate to the overall focus of the novel. The characters revolve around him and share their stories in a light they believe is cast by him, and his presence helps them define who they are up until that point when they have to come to terms with his absence (and the manner of his departure).

As for the story itself, while it's necessarily introspective, it didn't grab my whole-hearted interest until almost half-way through, when Bubber accidentally shoots Baby Wilson. Once upon a time, I could stomach a lot of navel-gazing and introspection in a book, but not anymore, and if The Member of the Wedding hadn't made such a big impact I may well have put this one down by page 80. Nonetheless, I stuck with it and was pleased that the characters did begin moving out of their "inner rooms" more in the second half, but what really made me glad I persevered happened to be pretty much that same quality that attracted me to Member; namely, McCuller's frequent snatches of brilliant prose.

There is a very 'painterly' quality about many of her descriptions, as if she knew how to really see colours, how to mix them on a palette and apply them to a canvas. And there's also a poetic quality about how she defined the world, drawing on all the senses, which leave her words still ringing several pages later. Here are two passages I particularly enjoyed:

Nothing had really changed. The strike that was talked about never came off because they could not get together. All was the same as before. Even on the coldest nights the Sunny Dixie Show was open. The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow.
(p.176 Penguin edition)

Out in the streets again he saw that the clouds had turned a deep, angry purple. In the stagnant air there was a storm smell. The vivid green of the trees along the sidewalk seemed to steal into the atmosphere so that there was a strange greenish glow over the street. All was so hushed and still that Jake paused for a moment to sniff the air and look around him. Then he grasped his suitcase under his arm and began to run towards the awnings of the main street. But he was not quick enough. There was one metallic crash of thunder and the air chilled suddenly. Large silver drops of rain hissed on the pavement. An avalanche of water blinded him.
(pp.299-300 Ibid)

Here's the post about The Member of the Wedding, here's the very brief post about The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, and here's a link to the Carson McCullers Center in Columbus, Georgia (although I'm having problems getting it to open at present).

The End of the World... yet again.

2011-05-22T11:00:00.003+10:00

I heard on the grapevine that Metrex or Contro or whatever they're called - the private company behind Melbourne's public transport system - had also successfully tendered to organise the latest End of the World event. That's why it didn't happen.

If you've been waiting for some sort of announcement about its indefinite delay/cancellation, don't hold your breath. Just hang around for the next one.

Hallelujah for novel research... and Leonard Cohen!

2011-05-18T18:22:00.000+10:00

It's not uncommon to hear writers lament how easily they're distracted from putting words down on the screen when the internet is only a click away. It's too easy, they say, to pretend there's essential research to be done... only to find themselves, an hour later, still wandering about in cyberspace, hand-in-hand with Google. And I'll put my hand up to that: I'm guilty too. But I love it.

I love discovering weird and wonderful snippets of information to gather up and hoard away in a messy corner of my brain on the off-chance that one day they may come in useful. And, without it, the task of writing The Grease Monkey's Tale would have been much more laborious because I don't know a whole heap about cars or the mechanics of them; nor as much about the illegal manufacture of drugs and money laundering as I really needed to know.

I've put myself in a similar position with novel Number Three, inasmuch as the main character is an accomplished pianist and I know sweet nothing about music - more's the pity. Fortunately, this girl is also autodidactic and delights in discovering weird and wonderful snippets of information that she gathers up... so I've now got a ready-made excuse to wander about in cyberspace, hand-in-hand with Google (and her), almost anytime I want!

There's a section in her story where she moves her hands across the keys of her friend's Bechstein boudoir grand, ghosting out the chords of a song, and I needed to find out exactly what those chords were (without knowing a whole heap about music). Twenty minutes later, I'm listening to one of my all-time favourite songs: Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah and, on another couple of tabs, I've discovered all manner of discussion about the meaning of the lyrics and the significance of the chords. It's exactly what I need!

Ten minutes later, I'm still on YouTube, but listening to Leonard Cohen - the man himself - singing this very song in Helsinki and London and...

At 76, he's still a stunning performer and he absolutely wowed his Australian audience in Melbourne last year (my daughter amongst them) - creating a new generation of fans and satisfying the die-hards too. While I sometimes think his lyrics are clumsy, with too many forced rhymes (sorry), some of the worst of these songs are also my favourites! They're stunningly evocative and remind me of moods and places and times and friends from my distant past. I can't hear Suzanne without remembering back to a time when, after a party, I was strolling alongside the Thames at five in the morning with a girl I fancied, watching the sun whisk up a new day; nor can I listen to So Long, Marianne or Sisters of Mercy without an olfactory flashback that involves the smell of joss sticks mingled with other sweet-smelling substances. His songs have become a springboard into nostalgia.

However, Halleluja, whether sung by Mr Buckley or Mr Cohen is in a league of its own, and I was delighted to come across it when researching Number Three. It'll get an oblique reference (for those in the know) - C Major, F Major, G Major, A Minor, F Major - and might even get one or two readers humming along or looking these chords up on the internet.

PS. Whether you're a new or old fan of Leonard Cohen, his Live in London album is very well worth buying. Superb.

Do you have a novel ready for submission?

2011-05-15T11:05:00.003+10:00

If you have a novel ready for submission and are an unpublished author, Legend Press (the publishing house that publishes me in the UK) are now accepting entries for the 4th Luke Bitmead Writer's Bursary. The bursary, which has seen the launch of Andrew Blackman's On the Holloway Road and Ruth Dugdall's The Woman Before Me (with Sophie Duffy's The Generation Game to be released in August), calls for adult fiction and offers a publishing contract with Legend Press coupled with a cash bursary.

You can find further details here.

The Grease Monkey's Tale and The Reading Agency

2011-05-11T20:38:00.001+10:00

At the end of 2010, Legend Press and The Reading Agency launched a project aimed at promoting "word-of-mouth in the book community" and at promoting the importance of libraries. To this end, one thousand free books were distributed and readers were invited to post reviews. The Grease Monkey's Tale was one of the five titles chosen for distribution, I'm very happy to say, and the following review was one of my favourites:

I found this quite a gripping story, even though I could see what was coming. The main character, Nic, was very likeable if extremely gullible. A little part of me believes that such an amazing place as Gimbly could exist after seeing some of the remote areas of North America... I enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it.
ML - Huncote Reading Group, Leicestershire.

Penultimate print run of The View From Here

2011-05-08T19:03:00.000+10:00

The last-but-one print edition of The View From Here is out now. And June will see the 36th and final copy. Yes, folks, after three years of running both an online ezine and a print magazine, The View From Here is returning to its roots and will be entirely online once more. It feels like a momentous occasion.

This month's edition features fiction by Catherine McNamara, Quin Herron, Kathleen Maher, Dan Powell, an article by Richard Beard (director of The National Academy of Writing - UK) called Writing a Novel and Tantric Sex, poetry by Nicholas Petrone, a review of Jasper Fforde's One of Our Thursdays is Missing, and my review of Anna Lanyon's Fire & Song, The Story of Luis de Carvajal and the Mexican Inquisition as well as my interview with Anna. Of course, there's the regular Rabbit Writer cartoon and lots of fabulous artwork too.

You can purchase your copy by following the links here.

Listening to Cesaria Evoria

2011-05-05T19:56:00.002+10:00

I have a couple of Cesaria Evora albums (L'Olympia and Cabo Verde) and give them a spin pretty darned regularly. Her voice, her songs, are the epitome of mellow, and I can't help but relax whenever I listen to her at the end of a working day. Her music is perfectly accompanied by antipasto - olives, semi-dried tomatoes, anchovies - cheese and a glass of wine, and I usually find myself dancing along, olive in one hand, glass in the other. It is wonderfully haunting.

I intended to post one of my favourite tracks here with images of Evora performing live, but in searching this out on You Tube came across an absolute gem instead. Cesaria Evora is performing Historia de un amor alongside Tania Libertad, accompanied by a beautifully haunting video. Enjoy - I hope you do.

Phil Burman - artist and bruvver

2011-05-02T21:30:00.000+10:00

My brother, the artist Phil Burman, sent me a catalogue of his recent works the other day, hard on the heels of an exhibition at The Ropewalk in Barton Upon Humber (UK). He's also had a piece selected for the Royal Academy's summer exhibition, which I thought I might shout about here (and jump up and down a bit too)... and a recent article in The Yorkshire Post. To get more information on Phil's work, you can visit his rather cool website here and have a butchers at his Facebook page: "Phil Burman - Artist". You can also buy his work, without needing a gallery or a mansion to house it in.

This is one of my favourite pieces:

Reviewing and interviewing Anna Lanyon for The View From Here

2011-04-28T19:50:00.000+10:00

I mentioned a while back, following the launch of Anna Lanyon's latest book, Fire & Song: The Story of Luis de Carvajal and the Mexican Inquisition (Allen & Unwin), that I'd be interviewing Anna for The View From Here. Well, my review of her book was posted online on Tuesday, followed by the interview today, so click away...

Painting, Adam & Eve, The Urban Landscape...

2011-04-25T05:00:00.001+10:00

One of the many things I like about painting is that it teaches me to see. It also changes the way I look at other people's paintings and what I believe I understand about the way they see. (A similar process might be true of writing and the way writing helps a person understand and interpret their world, but I find it harder to be sure about this.) A couple of years ago, I was looking closely at the Charles Blackman's wonderful Alice series and let that shape the first painting I'd attempted in... about thirty years. (See this post on last suppers and tea parties.)

Jeffrey Smart retrospective book cover Art Gallery NSW publication

But of late, I've been getting a particular kick out of the likes of Jeffrey Smart (in particular), Paul Resika, Raimonds Staprans and Charles Sheeler. I like the (occasionally geometric) abstractions in some of their work, how they look at urban and suburban landscapes, their use of light and shade, colour, perspective and spatial tensions. Painting not only helps me to see and articulate some of this for myself, but it's relaxing to use a different part of the brain to whatever bit gets used for writing - and to create something in a fraction of the time.

Anyway, here's the painting I've been plugging away at - an hour here, a couple of hours there - for the last four months. Painting number two. Originally it was going to be called Adam and Eve Expelled from the Garden of Eden (1), but I've settled for The Lost Garden (1) instead... "And thank goodness for that," I hear you say! (There are - optimistically - half a dozen more planned, hence the number.)

920 mm x 610 mm

acrylic on canvas

3rd time lucky with Strunk & White

2011-04-21T11:55:00.000+10:00

Here's a tale of persistence with a happy ending!

A couple of years back, when I was in America, I was shown a fine, pocket-sized book, brimming with excellent advice on language use, called The Elements of Style. It had been written and self-published by William Strunk, who'd used it when teaching English to his students at Cornell University, amongst whom, in 1919, was E.B.White. Forty years later, White - by that time an editor for the New Yorker - was persuaded by Macmillan Publishing to revise and publish this slim volume... and it has remained a popular title ever since, with regular (minor) revisions to update the relevance of the examples, and numerous reprintings.

I could see why and, given that most of my understanding of English usage has been picked up on the fly, as it were, I thought this would be a valuable book to own.

Last year, I called in to a bookshop in a city not too far from where I live, and ordered three books. I was after Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, and Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. None of the books were on the shelves, but I thought it'd be good to support the High Street bookshop rather than order online. This began inauspiciously as the shop assistant had never heard of any of the authors or titles and seemed to think that J.D. Salinger was a book by Franny and Zooey, but we found the titles (online) in the end and they were duly ordered. Two weeks later, I collected the Vonnegut and the Salinger, but was advised there'd be a delay with The Elements of Style. However, when I looked at the invoice, I noticed they were intending to charge me over $70.00 for the edition they'd tracked down, and so (although they weren't happy about this) I cancelled the order on the spot. After all, I'd priced The Elements of Style at approximately $15.00 on Amazon.

To Amazon I duly went, ordered, paid - the entire biz - and was quickly advised it was on its way. But I waited and waited... until I received an email from them telling me that the package had been returned and could I please check that address details were correct.

They were. I'd received quite a few packages from Amazon to the address I'd provided, so it shouldn't have posed a problem. Upon digging a little deeper, I found that the package had been 'returned to sender' by Deutsche Poste and that, on this occasion, Amazon had abbreviated the 'Australia' line of my address to 'AU' and had then posted it to Austria.

I gave up for several months, but decided recently that I really would like this book, and so thought I'd give Amazon another try. And Hey Presto! it's arrived: a beautiful hard cover, fiftieth anniversary edition for less than $12.00 (thanks to the strong Australian dollar).

It hasn't disappointed.

Here's a sample (without all the examples) from Chapter II - Elementary Principles of Composition:

17. Omit needless words
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
Many expressions in common use violate this principle ... The fact that is an especially debilitating expression. It should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs ... As the active voice is more concise than the passive, and a positive statement more concise than a negative one, many of the examples given under Rules 14 and 15 illustrate this rule as well...

Pigeons

2011-04-17T18:22:00.000+10:00

Gave a shout out to McSweeney's and 826 Valencia in previous posts - two U.S. projects aimed at improving literacy and encouraging young people to write. Well, I recently happened to come across one that's much more local to me, inasmuch as it's based in Melbourne (Australia), and thought it only right and proper I should give a shout to this one too.

Pigeons is a not-for-profit organisation with the same aims as McSweeney's and 826 Valencia, and is working to help establish a children's writing centre in Melbourne's inner-west. To help with this, they're looking for support/assistance from teachers, students, schools and other organisations - well, from anyone whose passionate about the value of this.

Check out their site at http://pigeonsprojects.org/

Poets and stuff

2011-04-13T13:28:00.003+10:00

I learned from Magdalena Ball's blog the other day that April is National Poetry Month in the USA. Following on from Maggie's lead, and even though I'm not American and that I live in Australia, I thought it might be timely to celebrate the work of three poets.

I too will dispense with well-established all-time favourites - John Donne, John Keats and William Blake, in this instance - and celebrate three contemporaries instead.

Firstly, because he's had a significant influence on me, is e.e.cummings. I scribbled about him here not so long ago, mentioning two of his volumes of poetry that I've been dipping into now for 30 years or more (*gasp*). One of my favourite poems begins:

one winter afternoon

(at the magical hour
when is become if)

a bespangled clown
standing on eighth street
handed me a flower.

A more recent addition to my favourites is Billy Collins, whose Picnic, Lightning anthology is one I enjoy returning to time and time again.

Here's the opening stanzas of I Go Back to the House for a Book:

I turn around on the gravel
and go back to the house for a book,
something to read at the doctor's office,
and while I am inside, running the finger
of inquisition along a shelf,

another me that did not bother
to go back to the house for a book
heads out on his own,
rolls down the driveway,
and swings left toward town,

I really feel that I should include one of the Mersey poets here because I grew up with their anthologies stuffing my pockets and I've always particularly liked Brian Patten's Prose Poem Towards a Definition of Itself. However, given that it's National Poetry Month for the USA, I'll keep the American flavour and tip my (metaphorical) hat at Philip Schultz.

This excerpt from The Wandering Wingless (Two):

Dogs, by nature,
aren't spiteful. They
don't hold grudges.
We punish, elevate, and bully them,
as if they were us. But even
we aren't us. (Nobody is.)

On holiday and listening to...

2011-04-09T17:29:00.000+10:00

Jumped off the treadmill for a couple of weeks holiday. Got a renovation job or two to finish, but there'll still be plenty more time to write, finish off a painting I've been working on, catch up with some reading, dry and bottle some of the tomato glut we've grown, kick back, relax... listen to music.

At the moment, I'm right into Antony and the Johnsons - I am a bird now - and, because it's my habit to always listen to these two albums one after the other, M Ward's Transistor Radio.

Antony and the Johnsons playing Fistful of Love

Requiem is from M. Ward's Post-War album.

Progress with the next novel

2011-04-06T20:15:00.000+10:00

At the moment I'm working pretty solidly on Number Three novel - a mystery thriller that's a bit Gothic and a bit 'noirish'. I was working on Number Three and Number Four at the same time for a while, but am in that pleasantly obsessive phase now where the characters of Number Three seem all fleshed out and leaving me needing to tell their story. Like an addiction. I know pretty much where they're going and why - all those elements having revealed themselves through lots of brief observations about them - and so I'm enjoying playing with the words, discovering the nuances of meaning and letting their actions and intentions speak louder than their words. It's a slow process, this weighing of words, but one I delight in. I'm about 25,000 words into this phase at the moment and hoping (perhaps a little optimistically) that everything will be in place by the end of the year. I'm a slow writer, but it's something to aim for.

Recent reads: South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

2011-04-03T19:35:00.000+10:00

This is the answer to my last post: South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami.

Mr Murakami is one of my favourite authors, inasmuch as I've enjoyed everything I've read by him, and this particular novel (written in 1992, but number seven on my H.M. list) is no exception. While his writing might be most noted for its surreal, slightly sinister story-lines, there's another quality about it that sucks me in.

Childhood sweethearts, long ago separated, meet again and innocent love re-awakens as desire, unquenchable and destructive.
The Harvill Press

There are lots of different ways of telling the same story, but it's the quality of the narrative voice (and the elements this comprises of) that often defines the best writer, and this is what, for me, makes Haruki Murakami such an enchanting story-teller. In the words of a less accomplished writer, his stories might come across at times as overly introspective and too incredible, but Murakami brings the characters too life, makes the incredible seem plausible and leads the reader in a compelling dance. A great read.

Listening to while reading

2011-03-30T19:30:00.000+11:00

I'm reading a book by one of my favourite authors at the moment (will comment on this in my next post), which features quite a few references to jazz. In fact, the narrator runs a jazz bar, as did the author at one time, and while I'm not a massive fan of jazz - leaning more towards blues - it's put me in the mood.

This particular song doesn't feature in the book (unlike Duke Ellington's The Star-Crossed Lovers), but is one of my favourites, so grab a whiskey, sit back and relax... Duke Ellington and John Coltrane playing In A Sentimental Mood.

By the by, anyone want to take a punt on the title of the novel and/or the author?

Two-line poem

2011-03-27T21:50:00.000+11:00

Was sent an email recently about a two-line rhyme competition run by the Washington Post. Thought I'd check it out, but it seems these 11 poems have been posted online at various sites for quite a while. All the same, they made me laugh.

The rules are simple, if you want to have a go: a romantic first line followed by a contrastingly unromantic second line.

My darling, my lover, my beautiful wife:
Marrying you has screwed up my life.

My love, you take my breath away.
What have you stepped in to smell this way?

Kind, intelligent, loving and hot;
This describes everything you are not.

Love may be beautiful, love may be bliss,
But I only slept with you 'cause I was pissed.

I thought that I could love no other
- that is until I met your brother.

Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.
But the roses are wilting, the violets are dead, the sugar bowl's
empty and so is your head.

I want to feel your sweet embrace;
But don't take that paper bag off your face.

I love your smile, your face, and your eyes
Damn, I'm good at telling lies!

I see your face when I am dreaming.
That's why I always wake up screaming.

My feelings for you no words can tell,
Except for maybe 'Go to hell.'

What inspired this amorous rhyme?
Two parts vodka, one part lime.

Inside a Dog relaunched

2011-03-24T14:10:00.000+11:00

I gave a shout to the State Library of Victoria's dynamic website Inside a Dog last year, which was out of commission over the (Australian) summer period while it was being rebuilt. Well, the final touches have been touched and it's just been relaunched.

Designed specifically for readers of Young Adult fiction, and in its own words:

The Dog is a place to find great reads and share your thoughts via reviews, blogs and book clubs. Read about an author’s process with a new guest Writer in Residence each month, create your own reader profile or discuss the latest news in youth literature.

You can find it here: www.insideadog.com.au

Out of the Ashes

2011-03-21T08:45:00.000+11:00

Nup, this post has got nothing to do with cricket ... *yawn*

More to do with the phoenix - the mythical bird that, at the end of its life, builds a fire for a nest, from which a new bird rises.

I mentioned in my last post about the demise of some chain-bookstores and my hope that this might enable small, independent High Street bookstores to start up again. Well, a good friend of mine pointed out that this is certainly the case in Portland, Victoria, where The Little Bookshop has recently started trading. I visited it a couple of times in January and bought a Haruki Murakami title on one visit and a Carson McCullers on the other - as well as some wonderful gift cards. The owners are planning on running workshops and literary activities in the shop too, so it's got a lot going for it. Even copies of my books!

Good luck to it and go visit it often if you happen to be near Portland, Victoria.

You can also visit its website and browse its gallery of photos - to see what a good bookshop looks like here. Maybe it'll inspire other bookshops to rise up out of the ashes.

The breaking of chains

2011-03-17T15:43:00.000+11:00

I'm not sure whether the American and British bookstore-chains that have recently closed or slimmed down have so much been defeated by external market forces or whether they've opted to shut up shop simply because their profit margins are not growing as rapidly as they'd have liked. I've heard arguments that suggest either of these reasons might be the case for the sudden demise/reduction of some of the Big Name high street outlets.

In Australia during recent weeks, both Angus & Robertson and Borders have joined this international trend, but I can't help wondering if it's all that bad and whether in the long term it might not even be good news. (At this point, I should say that I'm considering this solely from a book-selling point of view and completely aside from the stress these closures cause if you happen to be an employee of such a company.)

It seems to me that it wasn't long ago that we were lamenting the rise of the bookstore-chains and the manner in which they were squeezing out a number of independent booksellers. At the time, I believe it was argued that the likes of Borders and Waterstones had arrived at too great a cost to the livelihoods and existence of traditional, family-owned bookshops. As the independents were forced into liquidation, so too disappeared a level of personal service and knowledge that couldn't always be found in the multinationals, along with an equally-defining attitude that books were somehow more than just a commodity to be dumped in the three-for-two box.

Ever the optimist, I'm hoping that with the demise of the big chains might come the resurrection of the small independent book shop. There's certainly an opening for them, regardless of the rise of the online store: small shops where the customer can browse and touch books, discussing a title or two with the owner/assistant, and perhaps buy a decent greeting card or two at the same time. There'd be no reason why authors couldn't launch, sign and promote their books here anymore than in Borders or Waterstones, I guess, and the special promotions would be at the discretion of the local owner rather than the marketing department in a distant city. Ah utopia! Am I dreaming?

Recent reads: Fire & Song by Anna Lanyon

2011-03-14T16:28:00.000+11:00

Had fun launching Anna Lanyon's third book - Fire & Song, The Story of Luis de Carvajal and the Mexican Inquisition - at Blarney Books & Art in Port Fairy last Thursday evening. The hardest part of the evening was getting half-way close to the pronunciation of that Carvajal family name.

This is Anna's third book (all published by Allen & Unwin) and, like Malinche's Conquest and The New World of Martin Cortes, explores events that occurred in Mexico during the sixteenth century. I'm not going to say too much about Fire & Song here because I'll be interviewing Anna soon for The View From Here, and no doubt will get my two bob's worth in then. However, it's a fascinating story - told often through the translated words of Luis de Carvajal and the transcripts of Holy Office records (which are remarkably detailed), but held together by Anna's wonderful gift to recognise and tell a darn good story.

I listed the blurb in an earlier post last week.

A Shout-out for Corporate Cannibal

2011-03-11T21:12:00.000+11:00

My friend and fellow author Dmetri Kakmi has recently launched his blog: Corporate Cannibal. Dmetri is, amongst other things, an internationally published essayist, and will be posting on films, books, fashion and the like - about all of which he is very knowledgeable and enviably articulate. Dmetri is also the author of the excellent memoir Mother Land (Giramondo, 2008) which I've raved about both here and at The View From Here in the past.

Go visit Corporate Cannibal here.

Recent reads: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

2011-03-08T13:08:00.003+11:00

I really enjoyed the first in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. While it was a fast-paced thriller and an easy read, the characters (and their relationships) were intriguingly quirky, and it was this element that won me over. I gave it a couple of months before re-entering the world of investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the computer-hacking, much-put-upon, 'social misfit' Lisbeth Salander, because, although I like Stieg Larsson's style of writing and enjoy sprinting along with an action-driven plot on occasion, I like to engage a little more fully with characters than this genre of writing sometimes allows.

Although The Girl Who Played with Fire was certainly a fast-paced thriller, it didn't win me over in quite the same way that Dragon Tattoo did. Maybe with the first book behind him, Larsson didn't feel the need to draw the characters quite so strongly, but, while we're provided with a good deal more of Salander's back-story, Blomkvist and Salander both come across as being a little less substantial and substantially less intriguing. What made them so interestingly unlikely first time around comes across as being a tad predictable or formulaic during this second slab of 569 pages.

I'll certainly pick up the third in the trilogy - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest - in the next couple of months, and I'll happily run along with these two characters one more time. However, I'll be hoping that, when I do, a little of their magic returns and that they come to life again for me.

An invitation to the launch of Fire & Song by Anna Lanyon

2011-03-04T11:51:00.002+11:00

Here's an open invitation to attend the Port Fairy launch of Anna Lanyon's third book: FIRE & SONG The Story of Luis de Carvajal and the Mexican Inquisition, published by Allen & Unwin.

I'll be introducing Annie, who's an old friend, and doing a bit of spruiking on behalf of her and this wonderful book.

The evening will kick off at Blarney Books & Art (37 James Street, Port Fairy) next Thursday (10th March, 2011) at 6.00 pm.

It is1596 and in Mexico the Inquisition is at its most efficient. A young man trembles in his cell as he prays for salvation, torn between the Christianity he was schooled in and his ancestral faith. What heresies will the Holy Office uncover? Can he protect his mother and sisters?

He is Luis de Carvajal. His forbears had fled the Inquisition in Spain to Portugal and then from there to the New World. But the lives they try to rebuild as conversos in Mexico are just as perilous, for the Inquisition is determined to root out heretics throughout its realms. Luis's quest for true faith unfolds a tense and moving narrative, as he and his family's spirit and ingenuity are tested again and again.

Anna Lanyon's Malinche's Conquest was awarded and widely translated, and was followed by The New World of Martin Cortes. Fire and Song also shows her as the historian whose chronicles from contemporary testimonies are so vivid that readers feel witness to the dramatic events and intimate moments of individual lives, woven deftly into the fabric of their times to illuminate the bigger historical picture. Fire and Song presents a world without the human rights and tolerance we take for granted today; yet the insights remain all too pertinent - into the power of faith, the tangled knot of religious and political interests, and human yearning for identity, belonging and spirituality.

Chinatown and The Ghost Writer

2011-03-01T13:01:00.000+11:00

Recently Ive been watching and re-watching Roman Polanski's 1974 (neo) film noir classic Chinatown. Although it's one of those films I've come to late, I've made up for that by watching it 3 times, and have enjoyed it more with each viewing. Excellent. It's certainly one of those layered films that provides considerably more when viewed more than once - all the little hints and clues, and the over-riding relevance of Chinatown. A fine movie in every sense.

Can't say I feel the same way about Polanski's latest film: The Ghost Writer (2010). I enjoyed the first two thirds well enough, but then it seemed to fizz out. As for the ending, I can only imagine it was intended to be film noir-ish, but it struck me as film lame-ish instead. Not very convincing and rather disappointing. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.

Like A Version (vol. 6)

2011-02-26T10:37:00.000+11:00

I enjoy listening to Triple J radio fairly often and the station has put together some nifty compilation albums in the past, such as the annual Hottest 100, where listeners vote for the best songs of the year. No pop crap here, but an eclectic mix of almost everything else that's contemporary in flavour. My favourite Triple J production, though, is the annual volume of Like A Version, where some pretty spectacular bands/singers knock out a cover of what might be a most unlikely original. They do this live, in the studio, very often making do with the instruments they've got to hand. It's up to volume six and one of the tracks that's got under my skin in a pleasant way is The Last Kinection performing a cover of Rhythm is a Dancer. That chorus line has been bouncing around my head and dribbling out my mouth since the start of January... much to to the annoyance of everyone in listening range! (One of the presenters of the show - Tom Ballard - is an ex-student, which makes this clip a bit more special for me.)

You can find product details here.

Recent reads: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers

2011-02-23T13:48:00.001+11:00

I've always had a soft spot for the title of this novella. It's a very evocative title, The Ballad of the Sad Café and makes me receptive to the story that Carson McCullers weaves even before I've started it.

I bought this edition in 1978, when I read it for the first time (along with the half dozen short stories that add a little thickness to what otherwise might be too slim a volume) and recently decided I had to read it again after being blown away by The Member of the Wedding, which I read for the first time a few weeks back and raved on about here. Mind, I also went out and bought The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (another great title, although I believe the credit for this goes to McCuller's editor, who insisted she change it from The Mute to this line from a poem by Fiona McLeod), so I'm having a bit of a McCullers kick at the moment... sandwiched between a few other books.

Of the short stories that accompany Ballad, I particularly liked the last one: A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud - a wonderful streetcar café scene about an itinerant who corners a 12 year-old-boy with the message that he's discovered the science of love. You can only imagine how the boy takes this.

I've also been re-reading some favourite Raymond Carver stories recently and spending some time with a few Charles Bukowski poems - so there's some wonderful flavours of American literature coursing through me at the moment.

Oh, and by the way, just in case you forgot, it would've been Carson McCullers' 94th birthday last Saturday if she was still alive. I think she would have raised a glass to that!

Here's a link to the Carson McCullers Centre in Columbus, Georgia.

The Mahogany Ship

2011-02-20T16:09:00.000+11:00

There's a local story that began in 1836, which has generated considerable interest across the last 175 years.

Two Port Fairy whalers, having lost their boat and a companion in rough seas, were walking homeward along the beach from the direction of Warrnambool (approx 30k distance) when they came across the timbers of an ancient ship sticking out from one of the dunes, near Kelly's Swamp in Armstrong Bay. It's not uncommon for the dunes to be eaten into after heavy storms and a king tide or two, nor for them to grow again as the south-westerly winds dries out the sand and blows it back across the beach, so it wouldn't be unusual if this wreck, which had never been noticed before, was suddenly revealed.

According to research by Jack Loney (The Mahogany Ship, 6th edition, Neptune Press, 1985), the wreck - estimated at being approximately "100 tons burden" by another witness - was sighted on a number of occasions in the drifting dunes until the last sighting in 1880, but one person stood on its deck and discovered the timber was like iron, while another is reported as having taken a length to build a mantelpiece.

While the story is much bigger than there's room for here, more information can be found on the net and here's a link to Wikipedia, if you're interested. The reason I've brought it up today is because I saw the mahogany ship down at the jetty the other day - no kidding.

Well, a replica.

Local man, Graeme Wylie, recently completed building a 70 tonne working model of a 15th century Portuguese caravel based on the Mahogany Ship, and the boat was launched a couple of weeks ago. We occasionally get tall ships arriving in port, but not often are they built locally to reflect a local legend. It's quite a stunning sight and Graeme Wylie plans to undertake some significant ocean voyages before long.

McSweeney's too

2011-02-17T13:41:00.001+11:00

Gave a shout to 826 Valencia: The Writing Center in my post before last (scroll down or click here), a worthy venture founded by author/editor Dave Eggers and educator Nínive Calegari. Well, it seems that Dave Eggers is a busy and enterprising bloke, because McSweeney's is also his brainchild. Apparently it began as a literary journal that only published articles rejected by other journals (which is a great idea in itself), but, like one of those gloriously rambling Gothic edifices that has extensions built onto other extensions, and little bridges and staircases linking one extension to another, so that you're never quite sure where the original building begins and where the various extensions might lead to, McSweeney's too has grown in all directions. And, like the 826 Valencia site, this is reflected in its website. It's part of the fun of exploring what's there, getting lost amongst all the options, wandering from one part of the site to another, pressing button after button, enjoying every little quirk along the way, until you discover you're looking at fifty open windows on your monitor and have forgotten what you were looking for to begin with. Phew! As you can probably tell from my own website, I like magic buttons and trapdoors - surprise sounds and images - but there's something a bit Gormenghast about this one. As you wander (and lose your way), you'll find the original journal, a publishing house, a monthly magazine called The Believer, a quarterly DVD magazine called Wholphin... a whole mansion of interesting literary rooms and passageways, too numerous to map out here. Go on, take a look... get lost!

www.mcsweeneys.net

Valentine's Day Music

2011-02-14T11:00:00.001+11:00

If (thanks to Billy Shakespeare) music be the food of love 'n' all that,

and it being Valentine's Day today (no thanks to Hallmark),

I think it's timely to share some fine sounds here - to sing and dance a little.

Have turned on the radio a couple of times of late to hear songs I really like

only to discover they're both by the very versatile Joanna Newsom,

so figure it's time I bought an album.

The quirkiness of this video soon begins to match the quirkiness of the song:

The Sprout and the Bean.

Happy Valentine's Day.

And a quote for the day? Why not.

Make love, not war.

826 Valencia: The Writing Center

2011-02-11T20:21:00.003+11:00

Ahoy there, here's a site (and venture) that I was introduced to recently, which I think is especially worth shouting about. 826 Valencia: The Writing Center is, up front, a Pirate Supply Store, but behind the scenes it's a dynamic organisation aimed at giving kids/young adults (6-18 year-olds) a boost with their writing skills as well as promoting excitement about the literary arts. As someone who works in both those areas, I'm blown away (me hearties!) by the fantastic range of opportunities they've created, and the website is well worth spending quite some time browsing or supporting in any way you can. I'd love to be able to visit the pirate store, which really does sell eye patches, glass eyes, pirate dice, Jolly Roger flags, lock-picking kits... a whole range of wonderful pirate bounty - and I may well have to set sail on a voyage to America and San Francisco one day to do just that. If only I could find a boat to capture...

The shop's FAQ page is a blast!

Through my head

2011-02-08T20:51:00.000+11:00

Heard that wonderful track Choose Life from Trainspotting not so long back and, as usual, it's kept spinning through my head over and over again ever since. You know, how with those old record players you could leave the arm up and the needle would get to the end of an album and then go straight back to the beginning and play over and over again - driving the neighbours stark raving mad... especially if you'd left home for a few hours.

Anyway, it made me realise that I didn't mention Trainspotting (directed by Danny Boyle) as one of the clutch of superb films from the nineties when I blogged about favourite films here a few months back, and it certainly didn't fit into the piece I did for The View From Here about Visconti, Bo Widerberg, Peter Weir et al, which you can find over there. So I thought I should mention it now and, not only that, but get Choose Life out of my head (and stop myself from going even more raving mad) by playing it right here, right now.

"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."

Talking of films, here's a great site that I've linked to before and well worth bookmarking if it's your thing too: Cinema Autopsy.

Lawrence of Arabia

2011-02-05T18:38:00.000+11:00

Thought I'd do a Lawrence of Arabia recently and so went for an hour-long camel ride along the beach. It's a few years since I rode a camel, and the last time was only for about 10 minutes, but I must be a romantic at heart because I thought it'd be pretty cool padding along the surf, with the dunes on one side, the Southern Ocean on the other and a high, blue sky above. Ho hum.

Within 5 seconds of clambering into the saddle, I realised I'm not designed to sit on a camel - not without pain. Fortunately there weren't any troops to attack and so it didn't involve galloping, otherwise I'd probably be walking bow-legged to this day. All the same, despite the beautiful dunes, ocean and sky, it felt like a very long hour and I would've been glad to climb off the thing again if I'd had any feeling left in my legs. I have no idea how T.E.Lawrence & co. spent hour after hour in the saddle, so I take my hat off to him (or would if I was wearing one at this very moment).

Like T.E.Lawrence in this film clip, however, I too went without water for the whole trip... although I might have taken a few comforting slugs of whiskey if I'd thought to take a flask with me!

Abby Dobson - two of 'em

2011-02-02T14:52:00.000+11:00

Have been listening to a bit of the Australian singer Abby Dobson recently (ex-lead singer in Leonardo's Bride) and particularly enjoying this performance of an old favourite: Even When I'm Sleeping.

In searching for her on YouTube, though, came across the American, blues singer Abby Dobson, and glad I did. Great stuff from both.

More on Page 99 Test

2011-01-30T14:34:00.000+11:00

Following on from my previous post about the Page 99 Test, Lance Jones, one of the co-founders of Page99Test.com dropped by to leave a comment about improvements to the site, and also pointed out (what I hadn't noticed before) that it's possible to sign in using Facebook login details (scroll to the bottom of the Login page). So I've given it a shot and posted up The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore and The Grease Monkey's Tale.

The forthcoming improvements involve:

1. Writers will be able to point readers/followers directly to their own page 99;
2. Writers will be able to upload an accompanying back cover blurb to help set context for the readers who'd prefer that.

So there you go. Have fun!

Page 99 - The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore

2011-01-27T13:54:00.002+11:00

I don't think I'd ever heard of the 'page 99' test until very recently, when I got an email from the good folks at Legend Press/PaperBooks about a new website called Page 99 Test. The first thing I look for in a book is a decent cover, then I briefly flick through the blurb (accepting that most blurbs don't do justice to the book); after that, things get serious and I might have a butchers at what other novels the author has written before reading the first page of the one in hand. If all's good, I might browse a couple of random passages from further in the book, before deciding to buy it... but I've never headed to page 99.

This new website, which my friend and fellow author Gary Davison has already had a crack at, is about providing an opportunity for published and unpublished authors to post their own page 99. And good on 'em. All the details are on the site, so I don't need to go on about it here, although I've decided not to upload anything simply because it's yet another site that requires registration, password, email address, etc, just to read the page 99s, and at the moment I'm feeling over-registered and over-passworded as it is.

However, having Googled the history of the page 99 biz all the way back to Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939), I thought I'd give it a go and would post my pages here. And then I opened The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore (paperback edition) and discovered that page 99 is just six lines at the end of Chapter Five:

She hands back, unread, the letter she wrote eighteen or nineteen years ago and continues massaging her back. “I’ve done the lunches,” she says, and heads down the hallway.
I pick out the corn dolly and put it with the flight bag and money belt, then shove everything else from the suitcase onto the topmost shelf of the wardrobe.

Hmm. Not much to go on. So, thinking creatively, I take down the large print, hard back edition of The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore, and open up to that page 99... and it's all about sex. Not many lines because it is in large print, but, anyway, here you go - now you'll have had both of them:

reminded of a crimson pæony unfurling at my fingertips; a moist, expectant darkness of pollen, charged and trembling at each touch.
“My clitoris,” she says, catching her breath. An overdue introduction.
She can give the names of things, summoning words and placing them where they belong. I’m in awe of that, know I have a library to learn, will have to browse the encyclopædia tomorrow.
“We’ve met,” I say.
“Careful,” she winces. “It’s sensitive there. Not so rough.”
“One clear It or Is of life,” I murmur, stroking. A rainbow in the making.
“I like that,” she sighs. “And you. You too.”
Stumped for words and blushing, I whisper, “John Thomas,” and would shrug my shoulders if I could. “Say hello to John Thomas.”
She grins and greets me continental-style. “Bonjour, monsieur.”
Later, we share a bath and soap one another down, giggling over spilt suds. I place a dollop of bath foam on each of her loganberry nipples; she places the raspberry welt of a love bite on my shoulder – tutti-frutti nakedness. We play those games people play when one says, “If you could be absolutely anything you wanted, what would

Now go and buy the book!

Art Fix

2011-01-24T14:51:00.000+11:00

Travelled to Melbourne for a much-needed fix of exhibitions last week. Managed to visit four in twenty-four hours. All at the National Gallery of Victoria. My favourite was an exhibition of contemporary New Zealand art called Unnerved and, of the pieces in this exhibition, I was gob-smacked by Michael Parekowhai's sculpture The Horn of Africa, which depicted a life-size seal balancing a grand piano on its nose.

Also enjoyed The Naked Face ("how self-portraits have shaped our perceptions of art and the artist’s life") and the photographic collection Luminous Cities. (There was another exhibition I visited, but that left me cold so I won't go into that.) Left the city feeling enervated, stimulated, satiated... well, just generally 'ated'. Arrived back in western Victoria to find the highway cut off by floodwater at Panmure and it being sand-bagged against the rising Hopkins at Allansford. Quite a trip. Well worth it.

Re-reading The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham

2011-01-20T12:33:00.000+11:00

The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham is the final book I needed to read for my 2011 booklist - essential preparation for the job that pays the bills! Subtitled an Australian gothic novel of love, hate & haute couture and published by the now-defunct Duffy & Snellgrove, it's a light-hearted and quirky romp through country Australia in the 1950s. It still reminds me of Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, in terms of the characterisation and some of the descriptive detail, but these deliberate eccentricities are enjoyable and add contrast to the tale of long-suffering Tilly Dunnage and her 'mad' mother, both of whom are treated as witches by the parochial and despicable locals. It's a story with tragic elements, but vengeance is served up comic and sweet.

On T-shirts

2011-01-17T14:37:00.001+11:00

If T-shirts are called T-Shirts because of the short cut of the sleeves, then surely a "long-sleeved T-shirt" is an oxymoron? Shouldn't this be called an "M-shirt" instead, or simply a "shirt"?

More on Carson McCullers

2011-01-14T16:51:00.012+11:00

Following on from my last post about Carson McCullers' wonderful The Member of the Wedding, I received a comment from Cathy Fussell, director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians in Columbus, Georgia (USA). Cathy thought visitors to my blog might like to know about the forthcoming Carson McCullers conference that takes place 17-19th February on what would be the great lady's 94th birthday. There are plenty of details at the website: www.mccullerscenter.org

What I thought might also be of interest to other writers is the opportunity to apply for a Fellowship (the chance to live and work in Carson McCullers' house in Columbus for a semester) and for musicians to apply for a Composer Residency. *~~I'm not sure whether applications are limited to American residents or nationals~~, but it sounds like a tremendous opportunity and is supported by Columbus State University.

*Have since learned that the invitation to apply is extended to non-U.S. citizens, so good news for all on that score - see Cathy's note under Comments.

If this is the sort of thing you might be interested in - or you'd simply like more information about Carson McCullers herself - the website is well worth a visit.

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

2011-01-11T19:25:00.000+11:00

Heard mixed responses about Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding, but the negative views suggested it was too slow, introspective and the key character wasn't engaging. So I approached it with some anxiety, especially as I was a fan of McCullers' superbly titled The Ballad of the Sad Cafe when I read it at uni many years ago (although I can't remember much about it).

Anyway, I have to say not only did I enjoy every page (despite it being inward-looking in many respects), but her use of language is so rich I was hanging on every sentence - it's stunning. Although it's a little pointless to take phrases out of context, without the rhythm of preceding lines, voices, insights, there are startlingly visual sentences like:

"At last the summer was like a green sick dream, or like a silent crazy jungle under glass" and "the minutes of the afternoon were like bright mirrors."

Not only that, but I did engage with Frankie, the central character, and couldn't help but get caught up in the flow of words and ideas so that the pages turned very well indeed. So much so, that I've dug out my copy of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (dusty and page-darkened) and placed it on my pile of books waiting to be read.

Murphy's Law or... Shit Happens

2011-01-08T18:04:00.001+11:00

A few weeks ago, we decided to remove our fairly large pond and find new homes for the seventy-odd fish who lived there (we started off with three, but they got pretty friendly with one another). Then we shipped in a few cubic metres of top soil and I spent a couple of hard-graft weekends wheel-barrowing it from the nature strip to the back yard, spreading it, levelling it, replacing bandaids on blisters - the whole deal. Re-mortared the veggie garden wall, set up a bird bath (because the pond was nothing if not a fancy bird bath), fought off three million mosquitoes and planted three silver birches, which I've been watering every day this summer...

And then got a call from the Water Authority the other day.

There's a sewerage pipe that runs across that section of our property, it seems, which is in a state of collapse and has been causing the neighbours a blockage of poo or two, and so now the workmen need to come in with a bobcat and dig up everything I've just put down. Out come the silver birches, my rock wall, the veggie garden, a lime tree - the lot.

Ho hum. Oh well, might as well laugh as cry.

Lisa Mitchell: Wonder

2011-01-05T13:10:00.006+11:00

Listening to Lisa Mitchell's wonderful album Wonder a lot at the moment. Had an iTunes voucher to spend a couple of weeks back and wasn't sure what to buy until I heard Oh! Hark playing on Triple J. Listened to a few more tracks on YouTube and loved every one of them, so knew this was an album for me. Delightful stuff.

Enjoy - I hope you do.

Recent reads: Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo

2011-01-02T12:44:00.000+11:00

Love these lazy summer days (and how, as a migrant from the northern to the southern hemisphere, Christmas heralds the onset of them), and especially love the opportunity to kick back, cook, eat, paint, swim ... and catch up with loads of reading. It becomes a guilt-free pleasure during the holiday.

Read a couple of plays last week, in preparation for 2011 (and Happy New Year to you, by the way), which I always enjoy as quick reads. The first was Cosi by the Australian playwright Louis Nowra and I was particularly looking forward to this because I'm a big fan of one of his other plays: Radiance. Cosi is set in a mental institution in 1970 against the backdrop of protests against the Vietnam war, and tells the story of Lewis, who is employed as a director to stage a production of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte... with the "help" of the patients.

The other play was an old favourite by the Italian playwright Dario Fo: Accidental Death of an Anarchist. As the blurb to my edition notes, this "is a sharp and hilarious satire on police corruption in Italy ... [and] concerns the case of an anarchist railway worker who, it was claimed , 'fell' to his death from a police headquarters window in 1969." I don't usually enjoy farce, but this is a major exception. As plays go, it made such an impact on me that I gave a nod to it in my first novel, The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore. It's the play Kate Hainley is reading (in Italian) when she meets up with Tom one time in Northampton, but her mood is muddy and so is the river and the sky.

There's nothing muddy about today, and so it's almost time to pour a glass of wine, grab a book and swing in the hammock a while. Happy reading!