tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25836485846264102912024-03-05T02:15:35.105-08:00bluelotuscoco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.comBlogger122125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-80606919450449927952017-11-10T18:53:00.003-08:002017-11-10T18:53:52.665-08:00Remembering War - the Rose of Jericho<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcFg6KklHwqsnaZ04bkWZBFvAIsW4pke1FsyFAilg5xF7gsGHYljzZM1ytRa7ox6-bFGqmrYVFfIUA8Gaqbu6p_qT8oJsxHzZ6dZlxuV9KQmRssRl7SNOaIKalY2OHdyHrxfcuTYrixu5O/s1600/rose_jericho1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1553" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcFg6KklHwqsnaZ04bkWZBFvAIsW4pke1FsyFAilg5xF7gsGHYljzZM1ytRa7ox6-bFGqmrYVFfIUA8Gaqbu6p_qT8oJsxHzZ6dZlxuV9KQmRssRl7SNOaIKalY2OHdyHrxfcuTYrixu5O/s320/rose_jericho1.jpg" width="311" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCjpk15PqnBWROpWlCrOYa9UkEoim_Bq2NS9n_eg8LKe-97utEVRCdnsrORDygvtDzxWeeTSrjly7gUjQD_qr6-iFWiDpsmv136QRu9Wo73QQrVHcEoFNjqzwpqJ8yktzt03iUwRZo-h8f/s1600/rose_jericho2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1070" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCjpk15PqnBWROpWlCrOYa9UkEoim_Bq2NS9n_eg8LKe-97utEVRCdnsrORDygvtDzxWeeTSrjly7gUjQD_qr6-iFWiDpsmv136QRu9Wo73QQrVHcEoFNjqzwpqJ8yktzt03iUwRZo-h8f/s320/rose_jericho2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">These images accompany and illustrate the following short piece:</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Beside a few
delicate teacups and a piece of scrimshaw, on a shelf in a glass-fronted
cabinet, my mother kept a pepperpot. It was of classic Georgian shape, a tiny
phallic basilica of a thing, not silver, but made from dark golden imitation wood,
intricately carved with designs of multiform roses. You unscrewed the dome and
put in the ground pepper; but it you unscrewed the base you found a secret
compartment in which my mother kept a treasured twig. This twig was a small
shrivelled claw from a bush called the Rose of Jericho, and it came from
somewhere in the Middle East, a souvenir brought home to Tasmania from the
First World War by an uncle.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Take the twig
from its hiding-place and submerge it in water for about twenty minutes. The
dried-up claw, in the water, gradually opens out, stretches tendrils, until it
blossoms, resembling a freshly-picked bunch of soft brown herb. Tiny bubbles of
ancient air bead the delicate branches. Then take it out of the water, let it
dry, and when it is utterly shrivelled and dead, replace it in the secret
compartment. Return the pepper-pot to its place in the cabinet.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The Rose of
Jericho is now in my possession. I keep it in a cupboard with such things as old prayer-books
and a pair of small white china hands. I removed these hands from my grandmother’s grave
after vandals had trashed all the ornaments, leaving the hands behind. Whenever
I take the twig from its hiding-place and let it come to life again, it's like a
beloved piece of music, played over and over. It can make me stop quite still,
make me hold my breath, stare in simple amazement. And it can trigger memories
long rested. Sometimes I remember to bring it to life on November 11, when many
Australians remember wars, in particular the two world wars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-28191015552072498802017-10-23T14:09:00.001-07:002017-10-23T14:09:15.411-07:00The Dead Aviatrix - The Story of the Stories - how they came to be written <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My ebook of eight short stories 'The Dead Aviatrix' is available on: </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><a href="https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/the-dead-aviatrix">https://www.kobo.com/au/en/ebook/the-dead-aviatrix</a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">And here below you can read a short history of the stories and how they came to be written </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="color: #cc0000;">THE STORY OF
THE STORIES </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Dead Aviatrix</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> is an ebook published
by Spineless Wonders in November 2017. It is the first book of short stories in
the Spineless Wonders new Capsule Collection series. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The eight stories in <i>The Dead
Aviatrix</i> are not obviously connected with each other by theme or character
or plot, although because they originate in my imagination, they all reflect my
interests and concerns. The ebook is a gathering of eight of my stories that
have been recently published in various journals. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Here is an account of how the
present collection came about: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The
Story of the Stories<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A few years ago I wanted to
revise my book on writing, <i>Dear Writer</i>, and offer it as an ebook. I
discovered the wonders of Spineless Wonders which was a small publisher
specializing in ebooks. <i>Dear Writer Revisited</i> became an ebook, and
Spineless Wonders also produced it in hard copy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Since then, they have published
my collection <i>My Hearts Are Your Hearts</i>, and in 2017 they began the
Capsule Collections which are small collections of stories or poems produced
solely as ebooks. They put eight of my new stories into a Capsule and this
became <i>The Dead Aviatrix</i>, published in November 2017. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Every short story has its own
history. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story One : The
Dead Aviatrix<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The title story ‘The Dead
Aviatrix’ was inspired by something that happened to me as the writer of a
novel some years ago. It was an awful and troubling thing, and I wondered for a
long time about how to write about it in a useful and interesting way. The
narrative involved my surname and the surname of an Australian woman flier, and
it was a story about publishing. Then one day I was reading online about the
phenomenon of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the first book-packager for children,
and I found there a story with a woman flier in it, and I was captivated by the
sentence:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The aviatrix sat
looking on through all this tumult with a happy smile.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Something went Ping! and suddenly
I had the story. Maybe the use of the term ‘aviatrix’ was what did it. A word
very much of its time. Female aviator. Not a word that is safe to use seriously
any more because it is unfashionable to characterize women workers as being
separate from men workers. You are not supposed to say, for instance,
‘actress’. So ‘aviatrix’ was horribly un-PC. In particular I loved the ‘trix’
part of it; I just liked<i> saying</i> it. The character of the intern invented
itself. Since I wrote the story, the matter of interns has become the subject
of government and media attention. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I chose the aviatrix as the title
for the whole collection. When I began telling people about the ebook I was
surprised at how many of them reacted to the title itself. The word ‘aviatrix’
set them off in various ways, and, curiously, so did the word ‘dead’. By
coincidence it was at exactly the time of the hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Amelia Earhart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the
story has in fact nothing to do with Amelia. This was one of those sweet
moments of coincidence that sometimes flavour and favour the writing of
fiction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Two: The
Whirligigge of Time Brings in His Revenges<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">When I was at high school, I
played the part of Olivia in <i>Twelfth Night</i>. One of the lines in the play
that sometimes comes back to me is ‘The whirligigge of time brings in his
revenges’. Now skip to 2017. Social media rules. There is no privacy. Once upon
a time publishers were often remote and powerful figures, shadowy even. But by
2017 some of them began to give in to the temptation to express themselves on
social media. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas once they might
have mocked the writing in the ‘slush pile’ to their colleagues over lunch, now
they could give the whole world a good laugh. I found this quite shocking,
really. The lovely line from <i>Twelfth Night</i> leapt to mind, and there’s
the story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Three: Cold
Case<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">‘Cold Case’ has its origins in a
memory I have from childhood. I liked to pick flowers that hung over fences.
Still do really. One day I picked a puffy greeny white viburnum bloom,
whereupon a hideous red-faced man materialized and shouted at me that he would
ram the flower down my bloody throat. I can’t really explain how the plots and
characters of stories build from these old memories, but clearly the incident
with the viburnum made a powerful impression on me, as did the line from <i>Twelfth
Night</i>, and maybe because my project in life is to manufacture fiction,
those things have the power to give birth to characters and narratives. I wrote
the story in the first person, but the narrator is only partly personal to m<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="OLE_LINK2"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="OLE_LINK1"><span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK2;">e.<o:p></o:p></span></a></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Four: Cactus<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In the goldfields region where I
live there are fascinating little old towns that have in the past been busy, grand
and elegant, but that are now very very quiet, perhaps more or less dead. One
time when I went to Tarnagulla, I saw vast areas of prickly pear gone wild in
the middle of the town. It’s an introduced weed. It was beautiful, the
proliferation, the sea of thick ears of green sprouting vicious needles and
blooming with silky peachy yellow flowers. And the fact that ‘cactus’ is
Australian slang for ‘dead, beaten, kaput’ appealed to me as a metaphoric
description of the place. There’s a beautiful old bank building, and several
handsome red-brick churches which I really love. All these buildings have been
converted into residences, I imagine for people who have come from the city to
enjoy life in the country. From time to time in towns like this, people set up
shops to sell crystals, or to tell fortunes and so forth. Anyway, my visit to
Tarnagulla inspired me to write the story ‘Cactus’. The lives of the characters
in the story are pretty much cactus too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Five: The
Matter of the Mosque<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I live in the Bendigo region of
Victoria. In recent years there has been considerable controversy about the
establishment of a mosque in Bendigo. The community is divided on the issue. I
should clarify here that I am in favour of the mosque. Sometimes I am stopped
in the street by strangers who rant about their belief that the mosque is going
to bring violence and terrorism to the city, that land values will drop, that
women will be raped, people will be slaughtered. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My most vivid experience of this
irrational prejudice occurred in an unexpected location. I used to take my
small grand-daughter to ballet classes. As the only grandmother among the
mothers who waited in a separate room while the children took the class, I was
invisible and ignored. The mothers talked among themselves, and every now and
then they would interrupt their discussion of ordinary everyday concerns with
expressions of rage and fear and disgust about the mosque. I simply told this
story as a third person narrative, dramatizing and foregrounding the vicious
intolerance that seemed to be as normal to the women as their talk about
hairspray. I just allowed them to talk. The story is a portrait of the
blindness and smugness of a certain section of local society in its own words. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Six: Surrogate<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I wrote this story at a time when
surrogate pregnancies were big news in Australia. When their surrogate baby son
turned out to be ‘imperfect’, an Australian family rejected him and left him
with his birth mother in a foreign country. Rather than meet this story head
on, I explored the issue of surrogacy and imperfection as a type of fairy tale
from the nineteen fifties. I think that some of the issues involved in
surrogacy can be highlighted by shifting some of the emphasis, and by adopting
an unexpected tone for the telling. Unlike many of my stories, this one has
distinctive characters and a straightforward plot. Incidentally, it is set at a
time when Europeans were arriving in Australia after the Second World War. The
Dutch people in the story are of course figments of my imagination, but I knew
several Dutch families in Tasmania in the fifties, and memories of them just
entered the narrative. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Seven: Love
Letter to Lola<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I think extinction of species has
been one of my preoccupations since my father told me that the last Tasmanian
Tiger had died in the Hobart zoo a month after my older sister was born in
1936. My father had seen the animal, but I would never see it or its like. Small
evidences of this interest have surfaced in my writing over the years, but
‘Love Letter to Lola’ is the probably only story I have written purely on the
subject. In 2003 a friend asked me if there was a book I would like for my
birthday and I said I would like Tony Juniper’s book about the extinction of
Spix’s macaw. The friend was a bit surprised at the choice, but she gave me the
book, I am happy to say. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In 2016 a publisher invited
writers to contribute to a book of love letters. For some reason the idea that
came to me was a love letter from the last Spix’s macaw. So I tell, through the
voice of the parrot himself, the terrible story of the extinction of the bird. Tony
Juniper told the history; I gave the parrot a voice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Eight: The
Tale of the Last Unicorn<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In 2013 I was guest editor for an
issue of <i>Griffith Review</i>. The topic of the journal that quarter was
fairy tales, one of my particular interests. The notion of ‘fairy tale’ is
still more or less lodged in the popular Australian imagination, possibly
thanks to Walt Disney, in the narratives of the Grimms, and in other European
traditions. At <i>Griffith Review</i>, it became clear that although there are
glorious Indigenous foundation myths and other legends, and also stories such
as ‘The Magic Pudding’, there is very little literature past or present that
falls into the category of ‘Australian fairy tale’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">With this at the back of my mind,
I began writing a new story. It’s always a mysterious process, writing fiction,
and so I can’t really explain why the idea of the Rainbow Serpent and the
Unicorn meeting in Tasmania occurred to me. But it did, and I began writing,
and it turned out to be an end-of-the-world story. Extinction of everything. In
a way it is a long-awaited response to the story my father told me long ago about
the extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-68931016547528335692017-09-24T15:54:00.002-07:002017-09-24T15:54:26.773-07:00FACT OR FICTION - WHO KNOWS, WHO CARES? On October 26th I will be discussing, at Readings in Hawthorn, the matter of CREATIVE NON-FICTION with Jane Sullivan and Lee Kofman. In preparation for this event I re-read an essay I wrote many years ago, and I reproduce it here now. The essay was part of one of my books on writing - Not Now Jack, I'm Writing a Novel. The image of the small blue butterfly refers to the very end of the essay.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4c82F816GNdgdFGUuVLzGTGw6XPjtZwz-IyPnqy2M9CfAaPJwccJ29MsqXEq6MqKHJpBhadKiax8userGG5uXpthvhXy0H_ILSFkiDOVrrsLKnqzVseZf873VG9mt_D8omzJVvch-DDIA/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4c82F816GNdgdFGUuVLzGTGw6XPjtZwz-IyPnqy2M9CfAaPJwccJ29MsqXEq6MqKHJpBhadKiax8userGG5uXpthvhXy0H_ILSFkiDOVrrsLKnqzVseZf873VG9mt_D8omzJVvch-DDIA/s1600/images.jpeg" /></a></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #000072; font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 18.0pt;">FACT OR FICTION -- WHO KNOWS, WHO
CARES</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Ask me the difference between fiction and fact,
about the relationship between the two. This is one of <i>those</i> questions,
isn't it. I know it's no use if I just say that the only thing that matters
about a story is whether you can believe it, whether you can go along with it
while you are reading it. I am talking here about any story, fact <i>or</i>
fiction. If you can't go along with what you are reading, you’re often inclined
to say to the writer of history <i>is this really what happened</i> and to the
writer of fiction <i>am I safe in believing this is all lies</i>. People want clear
categories, shelves marked <b>FACT</b> and shelves marked <b>FICTION</b>. A box
of fact and a box of fiction. You can grow bewildered and even angry when you
suspect writers are chucking bits from one box into another, especially if they
dump some fiction into the fact pile. Facts in the fiction box are more
acceptable, and you can see why they are there, and can enjoy them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Peter Ackroyd wrote a biography of Charles
Dickens. In this biography the author speculates: <i>What if it were possible,
after all, for Charles Dickens to enter one of his own novels?</i> Peter
Ackroyd then goes on to write a short piece of the fiction that could result.
Throughout the biography he slips, every now and then, into this fiction,
always telling the reader that he is doing so. He is writing a life of Charles
Dickens, but he occasionally makes bits up in a safe, legitimate way. We don't
expect to find these things in a biography, but we know where we are with it.
There is no confusion; we can take it or leave it. The author is just enjoying
himself playing around with the fiction created by Dickens to make some more
fiction with Dickens as a character. Peter Ackroyd is not shuffling the fact
and fiction cards. I read a book called <i>Poppy</i> by Australian writer
Drusilla Modjeska. This is also a biography, but not of a famous writer; it is
a biography of the author's mother. It is <i>also</i> a piece of fiction. A lot
of it is invented by the author who has written diaries and letters for her
character (her mother) so that it will never be clear to the reader where the
facts end and the fiction begins. You believe the story as you read it because
it is well written. But are you believing it as <i>fact</i> or as <i>fiction</i>.
The publisher lists the book as both biography and fiction, and it won prizes,
sometimes as fiction and sometimes as non-fiction. In the end you would
probably have to classify this book as fiction, allowing that fiction can
employ true facts about specific people at the same time as it invents things.
Non-fiction runs into trouble when it starts inventing things. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">But there's trouble too for the writer of fiction
here -- if certain facts in the life of my characters are recognisable from the
real life of somebody, and if I add more ‘facts’ that are indistinguishable in
quality from the first set of facts, will somebody get angry and sue me. This
is a dilemma for the fiction writer who must make decisions all the time about
how to use facts, how much to disguise them, how much to leave out, how much to
put in, how much to invent. It would be nice to be able to say you must be
conscious all the time of how you are twisting, bending and manufacturing the ‘facts’,
but when you are writing fiction you have to work unconsciously much of the
time. Lately I've been thinking about the importance of houses in fiction and
biography: I've read about vast, grand English houses; I've seen the film of <i>Howard's
End</i>; and I've re-read <i>Wuthering Heights</i>. And I often think about the
house I lived in when I was a child. I have not so far described this house in
fiction, although I have been aware of some of its details as I wrote – a pear
tree outside a window, a verandah. Once there was a gap of many years during
which I did not visit that house. When I went back I experienced one of the
truisms of the person who returns to the childhood house – the house had shrunk,
had become a tiny dolls’ house replica of the vast domain that was alive in my
mind from my infant explorations. Or had the house expanded in my mind with
time and distance. The garden that had stretched for such a long, long way was
the size of an ordinary suburban block. So what of fact and fiction here. If I
wrote about this house and garden and the surrounding houses and streets and
fields (the fields were still there, and were not figments of my imagination or
distorted patches of green memory) – if I wrote about the house <i>before</i> I
went back to be confronted by the true size, would my facts be wrong. Or if I
write about it now that I have seen the truth with the dreadful eyes of age and
the strange clarity of reality, will the facts come good. The facts, perhaps,
but what about the heart of things, the meaning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">It depends on the point of view, on who I am and
what I know when I am telling you about the house, and what I want you to know;
on what I feel and what I want you to feel. You see how the facts could slip
away in all this. We used to have a tall thick cypress hedge at the front of
the house. Tall? I know it must have been thick because I used to hide in it
and crawl through it and I kept a small wicker arm chair in it. I remember or
imagine that things in the hedge never got wet. Bandicoots lived there
sometimes. The front garden was on a slope and there were lawns and rose bushes
and pink paths. Pink paths? They are still there. Good memory, good fact. Once
I rode my bike down the slope and ended up in a rose bush. When I looked at the
slope recently I found it hard to imagine how I had done this. I remember doing
it. Perhaps I dreamt it? No. But the reality of today stands oddly beside the
memory. The hedge is gone. On the front lawn there used to be a palm tree.
Huge. So I say. I saw, long ago, a photograph of the palm tree that dominated
the garden and the house. One of the little children pictured in the photograph
with the tree is me, but I have no recollection of the tree in life. There is
(or was) photographic evidence of its existence (and of mine) and when I was
very young the tree was removed. None of this is known to me. I wonder how they
got rid of that big tree. It's funny that I don't remember the time when it was
cut down, or remember the remains, or remember playing with the palm leaves
that were left behind. I believe we had birthday parties beneath the palm tree.
There were photographs of the party tables, but you couldn't see the tree. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">It occurs to me at this point that autobiography
must be a very hard thing to write. I could not confidently say that when I was
a child we had parties underneath a large palm tree that grew on the lawn in
front of the house. I have the evidence of people who claim to remember, and I
have the so-called evidence of my memory of seeing the photograph of the tree
and me and assorted other children, but I <i>know</i> I don't remember the
tree. I can, however, imagine the tree, imagine me ... and the tree ... And now
I am safe; I have moved into fiction. In <i>fiction</i> I can have the palm
tree. I can claim to have <i>invented</i> the tree. What happens when one of
the other children from the photograph I claim to remember comes along in the
guise of an adult relative and says: <i>Gosh, the old palm tree. fancy you
remembering that. They got rid of it when you were three. Never thought you'd
put it in a book. Do you remember the dying pig balloons we always had at
parties? You ought to put those in a book. We blew them up and let them go and
they made this terrible noise like a dying pig. You were frightened of them and
used to cry.</i> I stare at this relative and feel my eyes begin to fill with
tears. I think of the dying pig balloons as they fly wailing and shrieking
above the lawn, above the party food, up into the leaves of the palm tree, up
over the hedge and into the street. Children in coloured paper hats laugh and
run and watch the paths taken by the balloons. Night falls and every balloon is
tied to a little light so that the swirls and zigzags made by the movement of
the balloons are marked in the air. And their paths lead backwards and forwards
from fiction to fact, fact to fiction. Like paths you can draw with light if
you wave a torch in the darkness. My father had a party trick with blazing
Indian clubs. He moved around in the dark, swinging the clubs in intricate
patterns and rhythms while somebody played the bagpipes. The <i>bagpipes</i>?
Yes, these things I do remember. I remember a dear little round man in what I
believe to be full highland regalia puffing into his wonderful bagpipes well
out of reach of my father in his kilt and singlet executing a kind of slow
dance in the centre of a pitch dark ballroom. This ballroom was in our local
Launceston Albert Hall, a grand Victorian affair built in a corner of the City
Park where there was a large dolls' house full of rabbits. These as some facts
I remember. I think they are the kind of facts that are difficult to include in
fiction. These facts have a look of being crudely invented. Life is a crude
inventor; fiction will only be convincing if it is more artful than life. To
make fiction take the reader in, you have to leave out lots and lots of
remarkable things that happened in life, you have to re-assemble, you have to <i>make</i>.
You are probably prepared to believe me when I say the story here about the
bagpipes and the Indian clubs and the rabbits in the dolls' house are facts,
are part of my autobiography. That’s the stuff they got up to in Tasmania in
the dark before they got television and all came to their senses on the living
room sofa. Fiction has to do better than fact. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Once I visited a museum in England where I saw a
pair of gloves that were so small and fine they would fold up and go into a
walnut shell. The gloves were made from the skin of a chicken. I have been <i>dying</i>
to put those gloves into a piece of fiction, and perhaps one day I will. But so
far I have not worked out how to do it. Do you believe me? I can scarcely
believe myself. Back to the reality of our back garden. It was full of fruit
trees, flowers, vegetables and raspberry canes. As well as having a fowl house
it had a Wendy house, a tool shed, a garage and two more buildings one of which
I turned into what I thought was a studio. All this on the suburban block? Well
I don't know. Perhaps it was bigger. We had love birds and a rabbit and a dog.
Somebody stole the love birds and a daphne bush. One day a galah knocked at the
front door and when my mother answered the door the galah said hello and walked
in. So we also had a galah. Under the back steps there was a kind of tunnel.
Under one of the ‘other buildings’ there was a bomb shelter made during the
second world war in case we were invaded by the Japanese. The walls of the
shelter were papered with beautiful pastel maps of the world, like huge Bible
maps. I had a tulip garden under a nectarine tree when I was little, and later
on I had a large plot of gladioli that I used to enter in competitions. (I find
that bit hard to understand, hard to believe.) Do tulips grow under nectarine
trees? They did. I, the teller of this tale; I the liver of this life, feel the
movement between fact and fiction as I write, see the edges as they blur. And
why do I circle the house, dwelling on the hedge, the love birds, the maps on
the walls of the bomb shelter. Did I live such an outdoor life? Did the sun
always shine in this part of Tasmania? It did not. I spent hours and hours
sitting on one of the wood boxes beside the fire. We had a black kettle on the
hob. I read books and knitted and sewed and listened to women talking. My
bedroom had a frieze of pink and green flowers and fruit running round at the
level of a picture rail. I had a print of a picture of the statue of Peter Pan.
Although all this is true, it is warped with falsehood. Did I do what I have
said from the age of two to twenty? I am picking bright little memories from
here and there among the dark leaves of a big tree. The bedroom curtains were
floral; the bedspreads were pink. I pasted pictures of penguins onto the
bedheads. Penguins? Penguins. There was pink and green floral linoleum and pink
rugs. As I write, some section of my childhood, some mythic sliver of it, is a
flowery, girly, misty whirl. My china doll sat on my bed. I had a chest of
drawers upholstered with floral chintz. I was fond enough of it all <i>then</i>,
but the picture of it I am painting for you (and for me) <i>now</i> is
terrible. But true. Is it true? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Let's get out of the funny flowerbed of the
remembered bedroom. Go to the side of the house, outside, on the up side of the
hill. This wall faces north, but the strip of land between the house and the
fence is too narrow to get the sun. There is a raised garden bed filled with
bushes of veronica and a carpet of catmint. At either end of the path is a tall
green lattice gate so that the whole area is enclosed. I think they must have
meant to put in a fernery. The light was always different in the world between
the lattice gates. The <i>world</i> between the gates? It was mine. The light
was different, and the smell. When I came home from school in the afternoon,
instead of approaching the house in the normal way I would walk through the
front garden until I reached the first lattice gate. I was about twelve when I
did this: I get to gate, put down case, undo bolt on gate, pick up case, go
through gate, close gate. I am in. I take as long as possible to walk from one
lattice gate to the other, to go the length of the house. I feel nothing, think
nothing, am nothing. I cease to exist, merge with the place, drift. I am
permitted to sit down on the edge of the raised flowerbed, but only to stare at
the leaves and flowers, to pick them apart, sniff them and taste them. I can't
read or draw. I can't <i>do</i> anything. I can only be. There was no act of
imagination. It was more an act of negation, an exercise in disappearing.
Having disappeared, I possessed the place, possessed myself, was possessed by
the place. It is hard to describe because it was against words and images.
Perhaps it was something like meditation or hypnosis, but I don't like to say
so because those words give a false impression. There was a feeling of going
in, being trapped, fulfilling the requirements of nothingness, getting out. I
knew I would emerge, would take up the real world again, be a schoolgirl with
hat and gloves, go into the house, open the case, get out my books and pencils.
However in the time between the lattice gates I was gone, I was nowhere, I was
not. The place had no name, no language. It was a piece of the world sliced off
for me where nothing happened. I did not feel safe there; it was not a refuge.
It was a trap, a zone to be negotiated, navigated, where rules must be obeyed.
Go slow, think nothing, head for the other gate. Slowly. Don't turn round. I
now realise I was creating a split in my real world, trying to find a way out
of reality, a way that was not dreams or imaginings. I think this desire for
getting into nothingness between the lattice gates is linked with my desire to
write fiction. I am not even sure how it is linked, but I see the person who
went into nowhere every day after school as closely related to me now when I am
writing stories. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">When you write fiction you <i>go</i> somewhere, but
it’s really nowhere. I have given you my version of what I used to do between
the gates, and it's a kind of fact. Perhaps you could find a neighbour who saw
me doing it, saw me dawdling along the side of the house. Hiding. Moping.
Dreaming. Chewing catmint. A deficient diet? Getting out of piano practice, out
of housework, out of homework. What I tell you is the inside fact of what I was
doing. I try to explain how I felt, how I was. The neighbour tells you what she
saw me doing, and how she interprets it. A scientist with a telescope watching
from his tower on the mountain will tell you the girl is going to be a
botanist. She puts plants in her pocket and takes them into the house to sketch
them. It seems there are degrees of fact here, and degrees of fiction. My own
interpretation of what I was doing might be closer to fiction than to fact. Is
there a scale with pure fact at one end and pure fiction at the other. The pure
facts would be the lattice, the plants, the girl, the uniform, the case, the
time of day. That’s the solid beginning-point of fact. Then you move through
points of view, interpretations, inventions, fantasies until you get pure
fiction. Somewhere down at the school hat end you would get autobiography, and
somewhere just past the middle of the scale you would get a sort of ordinary
fiction. At the far end you get pure fiction and fantasy. As I write fiction I
see and feel the movement along this scale from fact to fiction. In fiction it
doesn't matter how far you go along the scale. When writing fact it is
important to stay as close to the fact end as you can. That’s why I like
writing fiction -- there are no boundaries. I enjoy reading facts, but when I
write, I mostly write fiction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">In my fiction I get things from the fact end of my
scale. Elements of reality and memory inspire me. I am interested in the play
between fact and fiction, interested in the moment when the metamorphosis takes
place, when the grub of fact becomes the butterfly of fiction. I wrote a story
called ‘The Woodpecker Toy Fact’. It is fiction. It is also a reflection on the
way stories get told, fiction gets written. It is in the first person, and the
narrator recalls things that readers can see <i>might</i> be the recollections
of the writer. Readers ask me how much of it is true. It is not possible for me
to give a satisfactory answer to this question, not possible to tease out the
memory from the imagining, the fact from the fiction, to isolate the spot on
the fact to fiction scale where a transformation begins.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Some years ago I drove past a sign that said ‘Woodpecker
Toy Factory’. Perhaps all the letters were intact; perhaps some were missing;
perhaps the last syllable was gone, leaving 'fact' for 'factory'. I might have
dreamt or imagined I drove past the sign. In any case, I got the words
'Woodpecker Toy Factory' from reality or from imagination, and I played with the
words until they (minus the last syllable) became the title of a story and were
placed and justified and used in the story. They also gave rise to a place
Woodpecker Point where this and another story were set. My book called <i>The
Woodpecker Toy Fact</i> appeared on the computer at Dymock’s as <i>The
Woodpecker Toy Factory</i>. I like that. The first words of the story are 'My
mother', words that sound like the words of an honest narrator. Reader prepares
to believe narrator's story. It goes on 'My mother was a magger' explaining
that magger means great talker and gossip, like a magpie. At this point the
narrator's mother and the writer's mother are identical or very similar. I
imagine a photograph of a woman (Mother) and a series of reproductions of the
photograph, each print with a more pronounced double image until the second
last print shows to separate images of the same woman, and the final print
shows only one image, that being the one that has moved off from the first one.
The first Mother of Fact has gone, and the new Mother of Fiction has appeared.
This is too simple because the Mother of Fiction has gathered habits and
characteristics from other people along the way and she is not identical to the
Mother of Fact. To show her transformation you would have to keep adding little
changes as the second image slid into being. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;">Now as I write it is night and there is a wild storm outside. I can hear
the wind and the rain. In front of me on the table is a blue and white pot with
three white tulips blooming in it. The lowest leaves are broad and slightly
flounced; the higher leaves are spears of soft green. Where the silky white
cups of the tulips join the smooth pale green of the stems there is no grading
of colour, just a sharp change from green to white. These are the facts. The
flowers are strangely still. The strong light from a lamp shines on them, and
huge on the white wall behind them is thrown a tulip-shadow. This shadow is the
fiction. I search for ways to describe the switch from fact to fiction. The
story of 'The Woodpecker Toy Fact' begins with the fact of Mother brought from
the life of the writer, and there are other facts that the writer could
identify as the story goes on. These facts are re-arranged to allow for the
creation of fiction. It doesn't matter whether the characteristics of the
Mother of Fiction are those of the writer's mother, or of any other woman the
writer heard or knew about. The only thing that matters to the reader and the
writer and the story is the Mother of Fiction should be presented in such a way
that she has a life in the writing. From the first fact ‘My mother was a magger’
the story moves on, twisting in and out of fact and fiction, shifting all the
time along the scale away from pure fact until at the end of the story it
reaches pure fiction when the narrator's dead grandmother appears to the
narrator in the form of a small blue butterfly. </span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-61890106977243368642017-09-03T23:05:00.002-07:002017-09-03T23:05:49.821-07:00T H E D E A D A V I A T R I X<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT321KMB2otI38OgRsga-rfMt8nOewZs1w7J6tmMmRNbC5kEiW-EdYFRBm66o6H5gDC99E-3jZy4pnvBMNzYKOxc7LLhYm9dE34ggLWTRUXTISYlsp4yDluz37I9e_9rFIBUEUK9DHOAcE/s1600/Aviatrix_FC_72_rgb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="561" data-original-width="367" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT321KMB2otI38OgRsga-rfMt8nOewZs1w7J6tmMmRNbC5kEiW-EdYFRBm66o6H5gDC99E-3jZy4pnvBMNzYKOxc7LLhYm9dE34ggLWTRUXTISYlsp4yDluz37I9e_9rFIBUEUK9DHOAcE/s320/Aviatrix_FC_72_rgb.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
THE COVER OF<br />
MY<u> <span style="color: #b45f06;"><b>NEW EBOOK</b></span></u> OF EIGHT<br />
SHORT STORIES<br />
PUBLISHED BY<br />
<span style="color: red;">SPINELESS WONDERS </span><br />
TO BE LAUNCHED<br />
BY <span style="color: #38761d;"><b>JONATHAN GREEN</b></span> AT THE<br />
<span style="color: purple;"><u>STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA</u></span><br />
<span style="color: magenta;">DECEMBER 14, 2017 </span><br />
<span style="color: magenta;"> </span><span style="color: red;"><b> T H E D E A D A V A T R I X</b></span>coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-3065204838598840152017-08-21T16:05:00.003-07:002017-08-21T16:05:54.925-07:00THE DEAD AVIATRIX - EBOOK- THE STORY OF THE STORIES<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Dead Aviatrix</i> is an ebook published by Spineless Wonders in November 2017. It will be the first book of
short stories in the Spineless Wonders new Capsule Collection series. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The eight stories in <i>The Dead
Aviatrix</i> are not obviously connected with each other by theme or character or
plot, although because they all originate in my imagination, they all reflect
my interests and concerns. The ebook is a gathering of eight of my stories that
have been recently published in various journals. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Here is an account of how the
present collection came about: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><b>The
Story of the Stories</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">A few years ago I wanted to
revise my book on writing, <i>Dear Writer</i>, and offer it as an ebook. I
discovered the wonders of Spineless Wonders which was a small publisher
specializing in ebooks. <i>Dear Writer Revisited </i>became an ebook, and
Spineless Wonders also produced it in hard copy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Since then, they have published
my collection <i>My Hearts Are Your Hearts</i>, and in 2017 they began the Capsule
Collections which are small collections of stories or poems produced solely as
ebooks. They put eight of my new stories into a Capsule and this became <i>The
Dead Aviatrix</i>, published in November 2017. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Every short story has its own
history. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story One : The
Dead Aviatrix<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The title story ‘The Dead
Aviatrix’ was inspired by something that happened to me as the writer of a
novel some years ago. It was an awful and troubling thing, and I wondered for a
long time about how to write about it in a useful and interesting way. The
narrative involved my surname and the surname of an Australian woman flier, and
it was a story about publishing. Then one day I was reading online about the
phenomenon of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the first book-packager for children,
and I found there a story with a woman flier in it, and I was captivated by the
sentence:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The aviatrix sat
looking on through all this tumult with a happy smile.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Something went Ping! and suddenly
I had the story. Maybe the use of the term ‘aviatrix’ was what did it. A word
very much of its time. Female aviator. Not a word that is safe to use seriously
any more because it is unfashionable to characterize women workers as being
separate from men workers. You are not supposed to say, for instance,
‘actress’. So ‘aviatrix’ was horribly un-PC. In particular I loved the ‘trix’
part of it; I just liked<i> saying</i> it. The character of the intern invented
itself. Since I wrote the story, the matter of interns has become the subject
of government and media attention. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I chose the aviatrix as the title
for the whole collection. When I began telling people about the ebook I was
surprised at how many of them reacted to the title itself. The word ‘aviatrix’
set them off in various ways, and, curiously, so did the word ‘dead’. By
coincidence it was at exactly the time of the hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Amelia Earhart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the
story has in fact nothing to do with Amelia. This was one of those sweet
moments of coincidence that sometimes flavour and favour the writing of
fiction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Two: The
Whirligigge of Time Brings in His Revenges<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">When I was at high school, I
played the part of Olivia in <i>Twelfth Night</i>. One of the lines in the play
that sometimes comes back to me is ‘The whirligigge of time brings in his
revenges’. Now skip to 2017. Social media rules. There is no privacy. Once upon
a time publishers were often remote and powerful figures, shadowy even. But by
2017 some of them began to give in to the temptation to express themselves on
social media. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas once they might
have mocked the writing in the ‘slush pile’ to their colleagues over lunch, now
they could give the whole world a good laugh. I found this quite shocking,
really. The lovely line from <i>Twelfth Night</i> leapt to mind, and there’s
the story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Three: Cold
Case<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">‘Cold Case’ has its origins in a
memory I have from childhood. I liked to pick flowers that hung over fences.
Still do really. One day I picked a puffy greeny white viburnum bloom,
whereupon a hideous red-faced man materialized and shouted at me that he would
ram the flower down my bloody throat. I can’t really explain how the plots and
characters of stories build from these old memories, but clearly the incident
with the viburnum made a powerful impression on me, as did the line from <i>Twelfth
Night</i>, and maybe because my project in life is to manufacture fiction,
those things have the power to give birth to characters and narratives. I wrote
the story in the first person, but the narrator is only partly personal to m<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="OLE_LINK2"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="OLE_LINK1"><span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK2;">e.<o:p></o:p></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="OLE_LINK1"><span style="mso-bookmark: OLE_LINK2;"><br /></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Four: Cactus<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In the goldfields region where I
live there are fascinating little old towns that have in the past been been busy,
grand and elegant, but that are now very very quiet, perhaps more or less dead.
One time when I went to Tarnagulla, I saw vast areas of prickly pear gone wild
in the middle of the town. It’s an introduced weed. It was beautiful, the
proliferation, the sea of thick ears of green sprouting vicious needles and
blooming with silky peachy yellow flowers. And the fact that ‘cactus’ is
Australian slang for ‘dead, beaten, kaput’ appealed to me as a metaphoric
description of the place. There’s a beautiful old bank building, and several
handsome red-brick churches which I really love. All these buildings have been
converted into residences, I imagine for people who have come from the city to
enjoy life in the country. From time to time in towns like this, people set up
shops to sell crystals, or to tell fortunes and so forth. Anyway, my visit to
Tarnagulla inspired me to write the story ‘Cactus’. The lives of the characters
in the story are pretty much cactus too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Five: The
Matter of the Mosque<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I live in the Bendigo region of
Victoria. In recent years there has been considerable controversy about the
establishment of a mosque in Bendigo. The community is divided on the issue. I
should clarify here that I am in favour of the mosque. Sometimes I am stopped
in the street by strangers who rant about their belief that the mosque is going
to bring violence and terrorism to the city, that land values will drop, that
women will be raped, people will be slaughtered. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My most vivid experience of this
irrational prejudice occurred in an unexpected location. I used to take my
small grand-daughter to ballet classes. As the only grandmother among the
mothers who waited in a separate room while the children took the class, I was
invisible and ignored. The mothers talked among themselves, and every now and
then they would interrupt their discussion of ordinary everyday concerns with
expressions of rage and fear and disgust about the mosque. I simply told this
story as a third person narrative, dramatizing and foregrounding the vicious
intolerance that seemed to be as normal to the women as their talk about
hairspray. I just allowed them to talk. The story is a portrait of the
blindness and smugness of a certain section of local society in its own words. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Six: Surrogate<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I wrote this story at a time when
surrogate pregnancies were big news in Australia. When their surrogate baby son
turned out to be ‘imperfect’, an Australian family rejected him and left him
with his birth mother in a foreign country. Rather than meet this story head
on, I explored the issue of surrogacy and imperfection as a type of fairy tale
from the nineteen fifties. I think that some of the issues involved in
surrogacy can be highlighted by shifting some of the emphasis, and by adopting
an unexpected tone for the telling. Unlike many of my stories, this one has
distinctive characters and a straightforward plot. Incidentally, it is set at a
time when Europeans were arriving in Australia after the Second World War. The
Dutch people in the story are of course figments of my imagination, but I knew
several Dutch families in Tasmania in the fifties, and memories of them just
entered the narrative. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Seven: Love
Letter to Lola<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I think extinction of species has
been one of my preoccupations since my father told me that the last Tasmanian
Tiger had died in the Hobart zoo a month after my older sister was born in
1936. My father had seen the animal, but I would never see it or its like. Small
evidences of this interest have surfaced in my writing over the years, but
‘Love Letter to Lola’ is the probably only story I have written purely on the
subject. In 2003 a friend asked me if there was a book I would like for my
birthday and I said I would like Tony Juniper’s book about the extinction of
Spix’s macaw. The friend was a bit surprised at the choice, but she gave me the
book, I am happy to say. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In 2016 a publisher invited
writers to contribute to a book of love letters. For some reason the idea that
came to me was a love letter from the last Spix’s macaw. So I tell, through the
voice of the parrot himself, the terrible story of the extinction of the bird. Tony
Juniper told the history; I gave the parrot a voice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Story Eight: The
Tale of the Last Unicorn<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In 2013 I was guest editor for an
issue of <i>Griffith Review</i>. The topic of the journal that quarter was
fairy tales, one of my particular interests. The notion of ‘fairy tale’ is
still more or less lodged in the popular Australian imagination, possibly
thanks to Walt Disney, in the narratives of the Grimms, and in other European
traditions. At <i>Griffith Review</i>, it became clear that although there are
glorious Indigenous foundation myths and other legends, and also stories such
as ‘The Magic Pudding’, there is very little literature past or present that
falls into the category of ‘Australian fairy tale’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;">With this at the back of my mind,
I began writing a new story. It’s always a mysterious process, writing fiction,
and so I can’t really explain why the idea of the Rainbow Serpent and the
Unicorn meeting in Tasmania occurred to me. But it did, and I began writing,
and it turned out to be an end-of-the-world story. Extinction of everything. In
a way it is a long-awaited response to the story my father told me long ago about the
extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-91439024919980671802017-08-21T15:59:00.000-07:002017-08-21T15:59:06.958-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYdhrZIcL_tXaYZ8AW0pNf_splIFp176AN5MRkQ9MCS7EFuW61QjZd8szTHyuUPJjb1eL_WLNr6ZOJML9uF3lsiJWzdHEMxQMYS3C-FbThKYCjKL8ILDcVlu4NR5b1NaOQit7Jk4noGd5c/s1600/Aviatrix_FC_72_rgb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="561" data-original-width="367" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYdhrZIcL_tXaYZ8AW0pNf_splIFp176AN5MRkQ9MCS7EFuW61QjZd8szTHyuUPJjb1eL_WLNr6ZOJML9uF3lsiJWzdHEMxQMYS3C-FbThKYCjKL8ILDcVlu4NR5b1NaOQit7Jk4noGd5c/s320/Aviatrix_FC_72_rgb.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
<br />coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-62676965749493451462017-08-05T18:29:00.000-07:002017-08-05T18:29:01.182-07:00FIGURES IN THE LANDSCAPE<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">FIGURES IN THE LANDSCAPE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Critics,
Writers, Readers <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">Often in reviews of books, I read about a place called the Landscape
of Australian Literature. Books and writers get placed in this landscape. When
writing a book, you maybe should work out where you want to put it in the
landscape. I think perhaps the critic is an ant in the leaf litter of the
Landscape of Australian Literature. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">Then there is a certain language that belongs to criticism. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other day I saw on the cover of a new
book: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">‘The most intelligent, captivating, and exquisitely written book of
this year or any year.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">For one thing I don’t know what that means. But I had to assume the
blurb was trying to be funny. I didn’t actually investigate. Anyhow I looked
the book up online and discovered it to be – I quote –<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">‘A</span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: Garamond; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">n original, poignant
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for her teacher and meets a boy who may just be Heathcliff come to life.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Garamond; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">But back to
critics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181818; font-family: Garamond; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">The critic
has a small role to play in the reception of a book. </span><span style="font-family: Garamond; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">I think the critic must somehow try to follow the project that the
writer has set out to present. No use reading Shane Maloney and trying to make
him into Jane Austen. But you do sometimes read reviews that accuse a writer of
not being another writer. I have been accused of not being Shakespeare, and
Marion Halligan has been accused of not being <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">Patrick White. There are really no rules by which a novel, for
instance, can be judged. The reader/critic has to give over something to the
terms of the particular novel itself. No use wishing you were reviewing the
latest Ian McEwan if you are actually reviewing D.B.C Pierre. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">I suppose you could say you need to ‘honour’ the work in hand. Give
it the benefit of the doubt, maybe. But then critics also have to be able to
give an opinion on how well they consider the writer has fulfilled the writer’s
own criteria. In other words – what does the critic think the writer thought she
was doing, and does the critic think this aim was achieved? And was it worth
doing? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">When a radio play I wrote was broadcast on the BBC in 1998, a
listener from India called in with her response which was outrage. She vowed
never to listen to plays on the BBC ever again because of the shocking racism
of the first few minutes of my play. She had switched off after that. The play
was a dramatic expression of MY outrage at violent racism in Van Diemens Land
in the nineteenth century. This woman has gone into my vocabulary as Outraged
of Bangalore, and she is an example of a critic who has no idea what she is
talking about because she hasn’t paid fair attention to the whole work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">The first thing any critic must do is consider the whole work under
review. You might be surprised at how often this is not the case. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">When I read a book review my first criterion is that it should not be
dull. If the construction and tone and sentences of the review are dull, if the
review itself doesn’t invite me in, I can’t take it very seriously. For an
author, the dull review is worse than the negative review. Dull and negative –
well of course that’s the pits. I want a review of any book by me or anyone
else to give the sense that the reviewer has engaged with the work, reflected
on it, and constructed a response that will honour the work and inform the
reader-of-the-review. Does the reviewer like the book and why? If not, why not?
I am a big consumer of reviews. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">Way back in the early 1980s, before the internet, before book groups,
before writers’ festivals, I started subscribing to the <i>Literary Review</i>
which is an English monthly journal of book reviews written by selected experts
in matters literary. I love the <i>Literary Review</i> and I still read it
every month. I’ll read reviews anywhere and everywhere. If I start listing all
the places, it will sound a bit ridiculous. But I will confess that once a
month I go to the hairdresser and there I read the reviews in the <i>Women’s
Weekly</i> and also <i>The Monthly</i>. I also get nice haircuts and good cups
of tea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">I believe that the best way to learn to write in any form – novel,
short story, poem, <u>review</u> – is to read and analyse many many examples of
the chosen form. I can’t remember when I wrote my first review, or what I
reviewed, or who published it. I’d like to read it, but I’m a poor archivist of
my own work. So it’s pretty much lost, I think. I do know that my only
information on how to do it was the reviews I had absorbed, since there were no
courses or books I knew of on how to do it, and my formal education ended
before the invention of the task called the ‘book report’. At school we used to
study novels and analyse them and write essays on them. That was all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">Because I also write novels and stories, I am familiar with having my
own work reviewed, so I have at least two perspectives on the matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">The reviewer and the reviewed. And another perspective is that of the
consumer, the reader who reads reviews to discover how books are being received
and described.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">Before a book is available for sale, there is much promotional
activity that goes on. Some if it is kind of crypto critical – all positive of
course. Also there is vigorous social media, and these days there are sometimes
animations of the narrative. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">But often the first piece of comment the book-<b>buyer</b> gets on
any book is found on the cover. Such as the one about being the best book of
this year or any year. The publisher provides a few words of praise from
critics etc and offers them to the prospective buyers and readers. A recent
collection of stories by C.K. Stead says the stories are ‘challenging, fun,
urbane and brilliant’. On the cover of a selection of poems by Billy Collins,
Carol Ann Duffy says: ‘Billy Collins is one of my favourite poets in the
world.’ I actually prefer her kind of personal comment to the ‘brilliant fun’ thing.
I suppose because her kind sounds alive, whereas the other one is just a
collection of buzz words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So there, at
random from my bookshelf, are two different ways of presenting a book – with an
authoritative list of adjectives, or with a completely personal rush of praise.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">You can see that such things don’t really <b>mean</b> much. You
wouldn’t expect to find negative comments offered by the publisher anyway. It
is also fashionable for writers to be described as writing luminous or limpid
prose, but I have never quite understood what kind of prose those might be. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">In other words, book reviews are often collections of rather weird
‘review clichés’ which glide past the eyes of readers as code for good or bad.
You know when you see a reviewer, towards the end of the glowing review, saying
‘however’ that this is the signal for the fact that they are going to say
something derogatory. They go: Searingly honest, poetic and visceral, monumental,
luminous, brilliant, deeply uplifting, gripping like the jaws of a dingo…
HOWEVER…says the critic …here are some REALLY BAD things that will put you off.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">This is a dull and routine review rhythm. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">Good good good – really bad. Where did the reviewer really stand on
that book? Not sure. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">The next earliest commentary on a book can be found in journals on
publishing, produced for booksellers and publishers. In June you will read
reviews of books that are going to be published in September. This gives the
reviewer a chance to discover where the book will sit in that good old Landscape
of Australian Literature. For one thing. Make no mistake – it’s really the
Landscape of Australian Marketing that we are talking about here. The reviewer
is a very small element in the grand plan of the marketing department of the
publisher. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">Anyhow – what you see after the stuff in those journals might be a
blurb from a bookseller. Now these are always positive, because the bookseller
is selling books, but they do give you some insight into the kind of book you
are dealing with. Of course these things are not without commercial support
from the publisher – so they will never be altogether without bias. There
exists a blurry line between criticism and promotion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">Then come the reviews in local and international newspapers, and in
journals, on radio. There are the blogs, some useful, some not – it’s a given
that these days anybody can publish a review, and that much of what is written
online is by any average standard just rubbish – but I think the most reliable
reviewing is still found in places where editors have selected experienced
reviewers who know what the whole thing is about. The best things are often
longish essays in which the critic has been given the time and space to deliver
thoughtful and careful analysis. The <i>Sydney Review of Books</i> is such a
place. You also get panel discussions – on TV and at Festivals and so on. Somewhere
in this maelstrom of words is the critic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond;">The critic plays a small part in the complexity of the life of a
book, and is as I said, probably an ant among the leaf litter in the Landscape
of Australian Literature. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-10562014748478755352017-07-17T17:12:00.001-07:002017-07-17T17:12:19.804-07:00THE DEAD AVIATRIX AND THE STRATEMEYER SYNDICATE<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro Bold"; font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro Bold"; font-size: 18.0pt;">THE DEAD AVIATRIX<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro Bold"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Eight Short
Stories<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Adobe Caslon Pro Bold"; font-size: 11.0pt;">BY<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Carmel Bird <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook"; font-size: 16.0pt;">TO BE PUBLISHED AS AN EBOOK</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook"; font-size: 16.0pt;">NOVEMBER 2017</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">1
– </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">The Dead
Aviatrix and the Stratemeyer Syndicate <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">2
– The Whirligigge of Time Brings in His Revenges<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">3
– Love Letter to Lola<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">4
– The Matter of the Mosque<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">5
– Cold Case<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">6
– Surrogate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">7
– Cactus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">8
– The Tale of the Last Unicorn<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">PRAISE FOR THE COLLECTION<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<div class="Pa6" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">‘Carmel Bird’s short stories are ingenious, each a
delicious fictional Venus fly trap that encloses you in its wonder or horror,
or both. There is little terrain of the human condition that her stories don’t
touch – a child’s cold case murder and a triggered memory that may have solved
it, the sinister banality of suburban life and all its hidden vestibules,
beauty and ugliness, creation and the future of the world, small towns and
their dark undercurrents, and of course love. Bird’s stories fizz and tingle
with originality and freshness, and carry an alluring humour that can turn
malevolent and deadly in the blink of an eye. Hands down, Carmel Bird is to my
mind the best living short story writer in the country.’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>MATTHEW CONDON<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Pa6" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Pa6" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: Baskerville; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">‘Dark, intriguing, yet always witty and delightful.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ANDY GRIFFITHS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Century Schoolbook";">Published by Spineless Wonders –
NOVEMBER 2017<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-43432634668244726522017-06-07T05:01:00.002-07:002017-06-07T05:01:56.505-07:00MY REVIEW OF 'DEATH OF A SHE DEVIL' BY FAY WELDON<div align="center" style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;"><br />(Review first published in Newtown Review of Books) </span></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">Nearly
60 years ago, in a Hobart pub called The Man at the Wheel, I had a conversation
with the novelist Christopher Koch on the subject of what he called boygirls
and girlboys. It was getting to be impossible, he said, to tell the difference,
and he was troubled by this state of affairs. Things have come a long way since
then, and now the matter of gender reassignment and transition from one to the
other and back again is not unusual. Maybe there is a pub in Hobart called The
Woman at the Wheel. Maybe not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">Gender
reassignment is the subject of the main plot line in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; font-family: Garamond; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Death of a She Devil</span></em>, which is set in contemporary
Britain. I should say at the outset that I have read all the fiction and most
of the non-fiction of Fay Weldon, that I delight in each book, and that this
one is now my favourite. It dances on a knife-edge of hilarious allegory.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">Tyler,
the 23-year-old grandson of Ruth the She Devil, who is 84, transitions into
Tayla. (Ruth first came on the scene in 1983 in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; font-family: Garamond; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">The Life and Loves of a She</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; font-family: Garamond; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Devil</span></em>.) The human body can be ‘carved and tucked and
seamed into something entirely other and still survive’, although Ruth’s
drastic plastic surgery was a disaster. Tyler, it so happens, is the only
sympathetic character in a large collection of very flawed and nasty people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">Notable
among these is a cold powerful wicked young 25-year-old Australian named
Valerie Valeria, whose name means ‘Strong Strong’. It is both a female and a
male name. Nothing subtle there. She is generally without any moral sense, and
says she has ‘never felt guilty in her life’. The She Devil also is ‘without
guilt’. Valerie is ‘a dedicated feminist with a PhD from the University of
Sydney’, her thesis being on ‘Feminism in Development’. She is bisexual,
leaning towards being lesbian, and she falls in love with Tyler who is
beautiful and, as I say, good. Valerie is the driving force in persuading Tyler
to transition, because she desires him as a female partner. (Same-sex marriage
was legalised in England in 2013.) Finally, there is the wedding, and Tayla
wears the lovely dress while Valerie wears the penguin suit. Tayla takes ‘this
woman’ to be her ‘wedded husband’. Tyler was ‘awesomely handsome’ but Tayla was
‘merely pretty’. Don’t assume that this marriage marks a happy ending – much
fun is made of ‘happy endings’ throughout. They do freeze Tyler’s sperm in case
they want to have a baby later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">If
you go by the title, and you should, death is on the novel’s mind. Not just
local domestic everyday death, but death on a grand scale. Hand in hand with
nature, human beings are a destructive lot. When the day is crisp, clear,
cloudless, blue, green, gold, the narrator remarks that ‘on such a clear and
peaceful day a bomb fell on Hiroshima, the Twin Towers came down, the tsunami
rolled over Fukushima’. The lovely thing is that as you shiver in horror at the
mention of those catastrophes, you also laugh at the constant juxtaposition of
reason and madness, order and chaos. And I do mean laugh out loud. Not to
mention the frankness of the language – words I don’t want to print here – you
must read them for yourself in the book. This is opera, this is magic.
Everything is up for satirical treatment, including humourless ‘feminism’. And
the weather is a constant and key player in events: ‘The sense that the weather
was merely holding its horses for something worse was very strong.’ The wind
will win in the end, and no need here for a spoiler alert.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">In the 17th century a
group of Carmelite novices escaping religious persecution in Belgium took
shelter in a lighthouse on the coast of England. They were on their way to a
convent on the Manhood Peninsula (nice). Their lighthouse has become the High
Tower of this novel, and it has transitioned into the headquarters of the
charity named the Institute for Gender Parity. In the Lantern Room at the very
top lives (and eventually dies) Bobbo, aged 94, the only male in the building.
Resembling ‘some garden gnome’, he is the one-time husband of Ruth, the She
Devil who is President and Chief Executive of the IGP, and who ‘rules the
roost’. The women live and work as a community in the High Tower. Security is
heavy as a matter of course, with Ruth driving an armoured S-Class Mercedes.
The windows of the tower are made from bullet-proof glass. The She Devil is
estranged from her children and grandchildren, and until he is 23, Tyler’s
existence is unknown to her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">The
great project of the IGP throughout the novel is the organisation of a winter
equinox ‘Widdershins Walk’ anti-clockwise around the exterior of the phallic
symbol that is the High Tower to celebrate 40 years since the founding of IGP
and also Ruth’s 85th birthday. The average age of the women of IGP is 72. The
walk was Valerie’s idea, and it takes a great deal of organisation, and many
meetings. Valerie has studied an ‘Events’ course at university, but has never
actually organised any events. The Walk is defeated by the weather. You might
have guessed, but don’t worry that I am telling you this, for there are
probably five surprises on every page.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">Here
you will find discussion, and the dramatising and satirising of, among many
other things, feminism, Alzheimer’s, euthanasia, youth, age, sex, death,
abortion, drugs, psychology, religion, architecture, fashion, food, gender,
suicide, fraud, funerals and computer games (in which the sound track consists
of ‘warfare, terror and rapine synthesised to make a jolly jape’).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">But if there is one
thing that spans the whole delirious exercise it is the examination of writing
and the construction of fiction. Romantic fiction is one of the evils of the
universe. Momus is the god of fiction, the great ‘puppet-master in the sky’ and
he is invoked by at least two of the several narrators, asking him to complete
the plot and ‘bring the story to fruition’:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<em style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">‘Great God of Narrative, Teller
of Tales, High Lord of Mystery and the Whole Fictional Universe, hear my
prayer. Do what is needed at this juncture.’</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;"> </span></i></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">So
there is in fact a crossover between the world of fiction and the world of the
events in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; font-family: Garamond; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Death of a She Devil.</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space"><i><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;"> </span></i></span>Bad
writing is derided: ‘History, now fashionably related in the present tense, has
deprived the past of its reality.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">And Valerie invokes
her chosen goddess, the Mother of All Life, Gaia. After faking an orgasm with
Tyler she rises ‘naked and beautiful at the window, her arms raised to heaven’.
She calls upon the goddess to send her blessings upon the young, and to ‘let
the old wither and perish’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-variant-caps: normal; line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">The
whole thing is really about life and death, youth and age, and it is all very
very sharp and very very funny. When Ruth comments that old Bobbo is still ‘as
strong as a horse’, the doctor known as Dr Pill Popper says: ‘Um, even horses
die.’ Remember that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-10770156457668365252017-04-13T17:18:00.002-07:002017-04-13T17:18:32.573-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4MBGLnV4meVISeNSKDkoiVKaEnNm4lkhP0LdF7xXlvzIMRllzZHXVpWi0A7GzzFHVp3fxQgpEe3athziMp2q0MEJmN5GabjZfxdwAG7B0wJ8CllzhLsrunMx874HopMwn06Jg0bhRPiiU/s1600/pianostool2364+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4MBGLnV4meVISeNSKDkoiVKaEnNm4lkhP0LdF7xXlvzIMRllzZHXVpWi0A7GzzFHVp3fxQgpEe3athziMp2q0MEJmN5GabjZfxdwAG7B0wJ8CllzhLsrunMx874HopMwn06Jg0bhRPiiU/s320/pianostool2364+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is the text of a talk I gave at the Newcastle Writers' Festival 2017. My co-speakers on the topic of 'The Getting of Wisdom' were Dr Peter Doherty (The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize') and Monsignor Tony Doherty ('The Attachment'). The session was mediated by Lee Kofman ('The Dangerous Bride').<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt;"> THE
GETTING OF WISDOM<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #16191f; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "\.SFNSText";">I am honoured to be speaking today on the ancestral lands of the
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #565656; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeueLTStd-Roman;">Awabakal
people and the Worimi</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #565656; font-family: HelveticaNeueLTStd-Roman; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: HelveticaNeueLTStd-Roman;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #16191f; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "\.SFNSText";">people. I acknowledge the First Australians as the
traditional custodians of the land and the waters. Their cultures are among the
oldest living cultures in history. I pay respect to the Elders, and I extend my
recognition to their descendants.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I want to show you this image. (See the picture above) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This is the tapestry on the seat
of my piano stool. It’s a simple tapestry pattern for the Tree of Knowledge. Or
is it the Tree of Life or the Tree of Wisdom. I won’t stop now to discuss the
distinction between knowledge and wisdom – my purpose in showing you the image
is to tell you a story. In 1981 I went to an auction and bought the stool. It
is charming. Part of its provenance, according to the auction house, is that it
was used in the movie <i>The Getting of Wisdom. </i>I’ve watched the movie at least
three times, and most recently I watched it for the express purpose of seeing
the piano stool in shot. So every time someone sat down at a piano, there I was
with my finger on the pause button, waiting to get a glimpse of the stool. This
did not happen. It seems that piano stools in movies disappear beneath long
dresses. So it’s nice to have the provenance, but the girls might as well have
been sitting on an orange crate. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">However, when I sit down to play,
I may be comforted to imagine that I am absorbing wisdom with my bottom. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">What I have learned by this
method, sitting on the piano stool playing the odd sonatina, is that science,
spirituality and the arts, including fiction writing, are all concerned in one
way or another with a search for meaning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My special field is writing
fiction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">One of my fictional characters
bears the name Carrillo Mean, and he turns up in my work from time to time. He
is a prolific writer among whose books are <i>The Mining of Meaning </i>and the
<i>Meaning of Mining.</i> He also has a facebook page called The Wisdom of Carrillo
Mean, but is quite lazy about posting on it. He’s a bit arrogant. So you can
see that I am usually quite conscious that what I am doing when I am creating
fiction is joining in the great human desire to know: Where did it all come
from and where is it all going and why. Wisdom you see. The search for wisdom.
But perhaps it would be wise not to ask those questions. I’m making my project,
my fiction, sound rather lofty and grand. It isn’t though. But it is serious,
although I can never help seeing the funny side of things, so my fiction is
also funny, in a darkish kind of way. Where, you may wonder, is the wisdom in
this? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The quest for meaning, the desire
for wisdom, conducts itself in my head as stories. Human nature is programmed –
if I can use that word – to make up stories and to respond to stories. Human
beings make sense of things perhaps most easily through stories. The writer of
fiction takes up the position of observer, interpreter, and ultimately teller.
No matter how much you observe, how much you interpret – the important thing
generally is to get the story into shape – orally or in print – and tell it to
other people. Perhaps with the accumulation of all the stories in all the
world, wisdom might be attained. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In one of the letters in <i>The
Attachment</i>, Tony writes that Irish people – I think he might mean all people –
value stories next after food, shelter and companionship. I’d go along with
that. Great myths and fairy tales and stories from many different cultures,
including religions, are storehouses of wisdom. And I think much wisdom is
available in the life stories, however short and anecdotal, of other people.
Listening to people is a great doorway to wisdom. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The title of this panel is taken from
the <i>Book of Proverbs</i> 4:7 – <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Georgia Bold Italic";">‘Wisdom is the
principal thing; therefore get wisdom: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Georgia Bold Italic";">and with all thy
getting, get understanding.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Georgia Bold Italic";">What I love about
that verse is the constant use of the uncompromising verb ‘to get’. And Henry
Handel Richardson adopted it in her title for the novel about schooldays. <i>The
Getting of Wisdom</i> – which is somewhat tongue in cheek really, as the main
character only arrives at the very beginning of wisdom by the end of the story.
Of course it emphasizes the importance of experience in childhood as the key to
learning wisdom, and there are examples in both Tony’s and Peter’s books (<i>The
Attachment, The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize</i>) of vivid childhood
memories which remain with the writers, nourishing their long search for
meaning. And if wisdom comes with experience, Lee’s book <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Georgia Bold Italic";"><i>The Dangerous Bride</i>
is a very personal reflection on experience, and carries a lot of hard-won
wisdom. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Georgia Bold Italic";">Lee asked me to give
some indication of how wisdom is approached in my own work. Well in my manual
for writers <i>Dear Writer Revisted</i> there is a suggestion for which I have been
famous since 1988. It is that if you want to be a writer you have to give up
housework. That’s probably the wisest thing I ever said. The other one – it
isn’t in the book – is what I sometimes say to students in workshops – sit down
shut up and write a sentence. Now write another sentence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Georgia Bold Italic";">Then at the end of a
story of mine – ‘The Woodpecker Toy Fact’ – there’s this: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Georgia Bold Italic";">The night before they
buried my grandmother she came to me as I lay sleeping. She had taken by then
the form of a small blue butterfly. She resembled a forget-me-not. She alighted
on my quilt and smiled at me as she always smiled. And all she said was one word.
She smiled at me and she said “listen”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Georgia Bold Italic";">Another thing is that
in my novel <i>Family Skeleton</i> there is a comment about death, at the beginning of
every chapter. Such as ‘The afterlife is our true home. It needs good
furniture.’ This may or may not be wise, but it’s a thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Georgia Bold Italic";">Anyhow, my main
source of wisdom is probably the piano stool. They really should have shown it
in the movie. Have another little look at it, and marvel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-45687672643926873502017-03-18T17:40:00.001-07:002017-03-18T17:40:18.229-07:00The Evolution of Dear Writer Revisited - a glimpse of a publishing history<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">This essay appears in New Adventures in Literature, edited by Simon Groth </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";"> So You Think You’re Going to Make and eBook <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">For my seventeenth birthday I got a typewriter. It was
an Olivetti letter-writer, bright red. I planned to be a novelist. So in the
university vacation, when I was not working in the ice-cream factory, or as a
waitress, I taught myself to type. I still have the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pitman’s Business Typewriting</i>, with its thick grey cardboard cover
and lovely round blue, green and yellow typewriter keys. Today I am typing on a
MacBook Pro, and between this and the Olivetti there have been many other
machines. I am learning to make an ebook. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">One day in 1987 I had lunch in Fitzroy with Diana
Gribble, my publisher at McPhee Gribble. As we crossed busy Brunswick Street on
our way back to the McPhee Gribble office, Diana said she thought it would be a
good idea if I were to write a book on how to write fiction. This moment has
remained with me, vivid in my memory, an illumination in heavy traffic. Diana
died in 2011, and at her funeral the thought of that instant in Brunswick
Street kept flashing into my mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">This happened in the days before writing courses had
come into being in Australian universities; there were no such things as
writers’ centres. However there were some initiatives from state governments in
the area of the arts, and I was involved in a program of manuscript assessment.
I was Assessor Number Eight. I was anonymous and so were the writers whose work
I assessed. I had been writing letters to the authors – yes, I typed them out
and put them in the mail. I wonder now which designs were on the postage
stamps. The letters went to people I referred to as ‘Dear Writer’. I kept
copies of these letters – possibly some of them still exist in my files – and I
realised I already had the core of my book on writing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">So in 1988 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dear
Writer</i> was published. I licensed it to McPhee Gribble which in 1989 became
an imprint of Penguin. The book was published by Virago in London. By the time
the licence came up for renewal in 1995 my publisher was Random House and so I
licensed it to them, and wrote a revised version of the text. Between the end
of the Penguin licence and the beginning of the Random one, I had a request
from a university for fifty copies. There were not fifty copies in existence so
I printed a limited edition of a hundred copies in a plain cover with Wild and
Woolley, a Sydney publisher who specialized in producing small fast print runs.
In 2010 Random decided not to renew the licence and the book went out of print.
Since then I have had many requests from universities for copies of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dear Writer</i>. It occurred to me that
perhaps the time had come to see it as an ebook. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">The file of the proofs from Random House (which was soon
to merge with Penguin) had not survived the various transfers from one computer
to another. I realised I would first need to scan the text. It so happened that
I had only one copy in my possession. If I tore it apart for the purpose of
scanning, I would end up with no copies at all. It seemed wrong not to have at
least one copy of my own book. You’d think that I could find one somewhere, at
least online, but no. Although there were plenty of copies in Indonesian. So I
persuaded a friend to relinquish her copy in exchange for a copy of the limited
Wild and Woolley edition (which uses the original, not the revised 1995 text).
The process of scanning, while being perhaps elegant and astonishing, was
tedious. As the book on my left shrank page by page and the pile of loose pages
on my right grew, the data on my laptop lay in between the two. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">When the scanned pages at last became a file, I began an
exhaustive revision of the text. While the basics of writing fiction remain
constant, the vast and rapid changes and developments in technology,
publishing, and teaching had to be acknowledged, reflected and addressed in the
new version of the book. After all, today people write novels on twitter. The
notion of the letters is now quaint in its formality, but to abandon it would
mean losing the tone of the book, and it was this tone that students and
readers found particularly helpful and engaging. I say ‘readers’ because this
is a book that can be read as a piece of fiction as well as a manual of
instruction. It isn’t simply a matter of tone; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dear Writer</i> is an enactment of its own principles. Interestingly,
people frequently refer to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dear Writer</i>
as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dear Reader</i>. I assume they feel
the text speaks to them, that they, the readers, are the writer being
addressed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">There are two characters: Writer and Virginia. Writer is
a middle-aged woman living somewhere in rural Australia and writing short
stories which she sends to Virginia for assessment. The novelist Virginia, as
it happens, is a character from my novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Bluebird Café</i> . The readers of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dear
Writer</i> never see the script of the story under review, but must build it up
in their imaginations. There are no letters from Writer. Because the characters
are of their time, which was long ago in 1988, they think about the virtues of
writing with pens compared with working on a typewriter, and then on a
computer. I remember being resistant to the image of the old Royal typewriter
on the cover of the Random House edition, because I thought it was suggesting
the text was nostalgic and ossified. Yet people said they loved the image. The
cover of the Virago version was never admired by anyone I ever heard of; it
suggests, with its blood red woman at a typewriter, that writing fiction is
something to do with menstruation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">You can see some of the problems that changes in
technology have introduced to the revision and re-presentation of a book like
this. Often when I see the phrase ‘changes in technology’, the image of Tess of
the d’Urbervilles comes to mind; that tragic emblem of a young woman trapped in
social revolution, destroyed. Writing, revising takes courage; I am brave
enough to do this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">I must now switch to a present tense narrative, because
as I write this essay I am still working on the revision of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dear Writer</i> in preparation for its new
appearance. I say ‘appearance’ rather than ‘publication’ because I have a sense
that something dramatic and revolutionary is happening to it, and that
‘publication’ is not a term that serves the purpose. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">I have considered the fact that most of the students of
writing today (2013) are very young, that they use social media, that they are
probably keen to by-pass traditional publishing, that traditional publishing is
also morphing even I sit here at my laptop, that those young students of
writing are probably writing novels with their forefingers and thumbs on their iPhones,
that possibly anything Virginia might say to Writer about, say, the agreement
of a verb with its subject, is not going to matter to anybody much. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">Yet I know that it does matter, and that it will
continue to matter. I am not talking about rigidity and inflexibility and
fossilisation, but about clarity and freedom. The more you know about how
language behaves, the better equipped you are to use it, the more power you
have over your own thoughts and ideas. Not so long ago I was teaching a
university course. At the end of the second session I asked the students what
areas of writing they would like me to cover in the course. They asked me to
teach them grammar. In the early nineties I taught a course at an American
college where the students wrote all their work, including their journals, on
computers. A group of them came to me after class and said they were going to
England for a semester and would have to write their journals by hand. They
asked me to teach them how to do that. I know, and not just from those
examples, that the things Virginia and Writer are able to convey are still
important to people learning to write fiction, and I am keen to re-fashion the
book in such a way that the original flavour is preserved, while the nature of
the world into which it will go continues to change. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">The challenges I face are not just those presented by
the current technologies, or by the changes in publishing, or the changes in
hardware and software, but the changes in the whole climate and make-up of
readers and students and writers themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">So I think I am going to make an ebook. By the time it
is done, ebooks might be obsolete, might be the luxury houses built on the edge
of the cliff, only to disappear beneath the waves as the level of the sea rises
in the heat of the blazing sun. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">Having converted the old Random House book into a Word file, I then
completely revised the text, taking into account the changed landscape of
writing and reading, and I was ready to meet the technology of the ebook.
Ready, it turns out, but not really quite able. I had to admit that I could not
do this alone, and searched for support and help. There are websites offering
methods and varying levels of support, but it was clear to me that they were not
going to be my thing. There are of course people who can just get in and take
up the challenge of the technology – I was not one of those. I confess I had
found it hard enough to do the conversion to scans and then into Word. I think
I did quite well for someone who didn’t know what they were doing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">Ebook help eventually came in the form of Bronwyn Mehan
who is the publisher of Spineless Wonders, a publisher dedicated to, among
other things, the production of ebooks, or books without paper, books without
spines. Bronwyn offered to take over the making of the ebook – but then she
pointed out something I had been trying not to think: she said a book such as <i>Dear
Writer</i> is a book that many readers and students of writing like to hold in
their hand, to consult in the old-fashioned way, to use the Index for quick
reference, to keep on the bookshelf. This was obviously true, because I had
found it impossible to get hold of a copy of Dear Writer until a fellow writer
volunteered to let me have hers. So Bronwyn’s suggestion was that before she
produced the ebook, maybe she could produce the paperback. The new title would
be <i>Dear Writer Revisited</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">We would proceed from the paperback version to the ebook
version, the ebook requiring its own specific layout and other elements needed
for electronic delivery. How to manage an index in an ebook? Such matters would
impact on the text. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "American Typewriter";">The ebook exists, and the hard copy of <i>Dear Writer Revisited</i>, published by Spineless Wonders, is in shops, in classrooms, in libraries, on the bookshelves of writers. </span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-85759036343668573212017-03-09T16:26:00.002-08:002017-03-09T16:28:18.992-08:00MY INTERVIEW ON THE GARRET - STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUrRsZLurbekaRsHxx5kyedgrOKElF2XHTWBj09BRiUygjgkue4yg4r0CwADCPc4DTGSZmYnhTLWv_3a2WG0A-VNGHrWUdL-4_T33cQrAsU54fjIJj0_p3hwx79P-LW-YBsslDU1ntISwe/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-03-10+at+11.22.07+am.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUrRsZLurbekaRsHxx5kyedgrOKElF2XHTWBj09BRiUygjgkue4yg4r0CwADCPc4DTGSZmYnhTLWv_3a2WG0A-VNGHrWUdL-4_T33cQrAsU54fjIJj0_p3hwx79P-LW-YBsslDU1ntISwe/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-03-10+at+11.22.07+am.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
THE GARRET<br />
<a href="https://omny.fm/shows/the-garret/carmel-bird">https://omny.fm/shows/the-garret/carmel-bird</a><br />
<br />coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-79292135642037842452017-02-14T20:31:00.001-08:002017-02-14T20:31:46.053-08:00VERBS<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">THIS PIECE ON THE TENSES OF VERBS IS PUBLISHED IN </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;"> NEWSWRITE (March 2017), the newsletter of the New South Wales Writers' Centre</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">One: It’s the middle of winter, and snowflakes are
falling like feathers from the sky. A queen is sitting by her window; she’s
sewing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">Two: Once in the middle of winter, when snowflakes
were falling like feathers from the sky, a queen sat by her window and
sewed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">The tone of first one resembles directions for a
play or a movie, or a summary of a story; the tone of the second resembles the opening
of a traditional tale. They are both valid ways of beginning to tell a story or
an anecdote. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, unless the Jack
the Writer is skilled and practised, it will be more difficult for him to manipulate
order and duration with clarity and elegance if he sticks to the present tense.
To tell you the truth, the second one really should begin with the phrase:
‘Once upon a time.’ This phrase is of course a traditional English introduction
to a fairytale, an introduction that places the narrative, in a strangely
specific (once) yet airily vague historical time. And the tenses of the verbs
used in language are indicators not only of the era in which events took place,
but also of the minutes, days, years between one action and another. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">Time is one of the key subjects of narrative. This
happened and then that happened, and then the other – a sequence of events
across time, until the end of the story or the end of time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Tempus fugit</i> – for along with sex, the
other key subject matter of fiction is death, the marker of earthly finality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">When you write in an eternal present, you have the
luxury of denying the inevitability of death, and this can be a comfort to you
as the writer and also to your reader. In 1939 Joyce Cary published <i>Mister
Johnson</i>, a novel written in the present tense. The novel was seen as
experimental, and Cary explained he wanted readers to be ‘carried unreflecting
on the stream of events’ as the character ‘swims gaily on the surface of life.’
He wanted the reader to ‘swim, as all of us swim, with more or less courage and
skill, for our lives.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">As I write this it is 2016 – and by the time you
read it, it will be 2017 – and nowadays a novel written in the present tense is
not only unremarkable for its tense, but even fashionable. Perhaps this
fashion, which as far as I can tell began to gather momentum in Australia in the
1980s, is fading out, but much fiction and non-fiction, is still being written
in the present tense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With more or less
skill. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">One: It rains so heavily throughout the spring,
that by early summer the leaves on the ivy are the size of dinner plates. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">Two: It rained so heavily throughout the spring,
that now in early summer the leaves on the ivy are the size of dinner plates. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">There are moves you can’t make without the use of
a past tense, but maybe you don’t want to make them. Because the present tense
gives you an eternal ‘now’, you can’t shift from ‘then’ to ‘now’. As I say,
perhaps you don’t wish to shift, although in the first one, if you think about
it for a minute, you don’t really know when ‘now’ would be. Not that ‘now’ is
invoked. ‘Now’ is inserted in the second one, affording this one an opportunity
to draw attention to the rhythm of the time shift, and also allowing a lilt in
the music of the prose. It is all a matter of you as the writer taking charge
of the effects you want. My examples so far have placed a certain reliance on
mention of the seasons, for the seasons are useful pinpointers of time. By
putting a season of the year in the narrative, I draw attention to the passage
of time, however slightly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">In Book One of <i>My Struggle</i> Karl Ove
Kknausgaard sometimes writes in what I call the Ecstatic and Eternal Present: ‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: TNYAdobeCaslonPro-Regular;">I stare at the surface of the
sea without listening to what the reporter says, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: TNYAdobeCaslonPro-Italic;">and suddenly the outline of a
face emerges</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: TNYAdobeCaslonPro-Regular;">’.
This is just one example of a skilled and practised author whose work can glow
with the light of recollected truth, defying time, while deep within the fabric
of the work, facing the reality of death. David Malouf does this brilliantly in
<i>12 Edmondstone Street</i>, as does Hal Porter in <i>The Watcher on the Cast
Iron Balcony</i>. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">In my book <i>Writing the Story of Your Life</i> you will find
discussion of ten English tenses, and a detailed analysis of seven different
kinds of present tense. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #262626; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Sans";">As you read and as you write, try always to be alert to
the ways you and other writers are using tenses, and why. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-20347495913621612052017-02-06T15:53:00.000-08:002017-02-06T15:53:05.816-08:00FAMILY SKELETON BOOK NOTES<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">FAMILY SKELETON by CARMEL BIRD<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">NOTES FOR READERS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">One<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">The skeleton in the
closet speaks directly to the reader, commenting on the behaviour of the
characters, and also telling the reader where to look, what to bother about.
What effect does this narrative device have on the telling of the story?<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Two<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Margaret’s life story
is mostly revealed in her journal. Does this intimate view of Margaret help you
to understand her, even to empathise with her? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Three<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Lillian is a bit
different from the other characters in many ways. She is the central location
of goodness in a messy, wicked world. In what ways is she different? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Four <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">The Second World War
fractured the twentieth century. How did it affect Margaret? How did it reach
into the lives of the O’Days of Toorak? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Five <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Doria is ‘the stranger
who rides into town’. What effect did she have on the lives of the other
characters? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Six<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Margaret thinks the
past should remain in the past. Most of the other characters seem to want to
explore and expose the past. Who is right? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Seven<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">The subject matter of
the novel is dramatic and serious, yet much of the style of the writing is
comic. How do you think these two elements work together? Does the comedy make
the drama more memorable?<b> <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Eight <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">The chapters are
headed by a short quotation form Margaret’s late husband Edmund. What effect do
these sayings have on your reading of the novel?<b> <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Nine <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">The novel ends in such
a way that the reader is invited to complete the picture. Did you enjoy this
freedom for the reader’s imagination? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Ten<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">What does the skeleton
want the reader to notice in the advertisement on page six? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Eleven<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Without the presence
of Doria, would the secret have been buried forever? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">Twelve <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 11.0pt;">The skeleton says to
take no notice of such things as the butterflies. What game is the skeleton
playing? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-81092921801348325962017-02-04T22:43:00.001-08:002017-02-04T22:43:20.816-08:00Launch of Family Skeleton in September 2016<a href="https://vimeo.com/202114116">https://vimeo.com/202114116</a>coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-27416288432021372092017-01-28T16:48:00.001-08:002017-01-28T16:48:01.852-08:00IN PARIS 1965I was writing some memories of Paris long ago. I found this picture of myself in the rue de Sevres, wearing a dark green velvet coat I had just bought, and looking quite pleased with myself. It seems so funny and old-fashioned <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhanDBjZZ8qKIypA-2pKonuI68gcJfsW9PY3SnH_WV4spN4TWot6bB2wVdh0cGILfAg19Nm9mjWCQMO1b9Bt2Fm0RacIA5juvIfLyEKmNHhm7janRG1d2qfLP-nrkjqN2MCt8xgTt0yfDR3/s1600/paris006.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhanDBjZZ8qKIypA-2pKonuI68gcJfsW9PY3SnH_WV4spN4TWot6bB2wVdh0cGILfAg19Nm9mjWCQMO1b9Bt2Fm0RacIA5juvIfLyEKmNHhm7janRG1d2qfLP-nrkjqN2MCt8xgTt0yfDR3/s320/paris006.jpg" width="320" /></a>to be also wearing gloves. Gosh.coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-71336996473431739702017-01-26T03:18:00.000-08:002017-01-26T03:18:03.339-08:00Diary of Events 2017<span style="color: #e06666;">2017</span><br />
<br />
<b>February</b><br />
<u>Saturday 4</u><br />
"The Mind's Eye" Soiree, Christ Church Castlemaine, 7pm<br />
<u>Wednesday 8</u><br />
Author Talk, Toorak-South Yarra Library, 6.30<br />
<u> Saturday 11</u><br />
Writing Workshop, Toorak-South Yarra Library, 1pm<br />
<u>Thursday 16</u><br />
Interviewing Jacinta Halloran (The Science of Appearances) Kyneton Library, 7pm<br />
<u>Thursday 23 to Sunday 26 </u><br />
Perth Writers' Festival<br />
<br />
<b>March</b><br />
<u>Wednesday15</u><br />
St Kilda Library, Conversation with Jacinta Halloran, mediator Donna Ward<br />
<br />
<b>April</b><br />
<u>Saturday 8 to Sunday 9</u><br />
Newcastle Writers' Festival<br />
<br />
<b>May</b><br />
<u>Saturday 27 to Sunday 28</u><br />
Sydney Writers' Festivalcoco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-43112055640630807322017-01-23T14:51:00.001-08:002017-01-23T14:51:24.717-08:00FEAR OF WRITER'S BLOCK<div class="normalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="normalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="normalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "garam","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I have no experience of writer’s
block. However I have studied the phenomenon over the years in some of my
students – although it seems to me it is not as common as people seem to
imagine. I am inclined to believe that it is related to some kind of fear –
fear of failure, fear of success, fear of the truth – for example. <span style="color: red;">Fear of writer’s
block, maybe.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="normalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "garam","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">One good exercise it to stop
trying to write on, and to write instead a quick list of things that frighten
you – fire, flood, spiders, heights etc. And maybe write a few paragraphs under
the heading ‘Fear’. In my book <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="color: red; font-family: "garam","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Dear Writer
Revisited</span></i><span style="color: red; font-family: "garam","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "garam","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">there is a chapter on facing the
fear and overcoming writer’s block. And another of my books on writing <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><span style="color: red; font-family: "garam","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Writing the
Story of</span></i><span style="color: red; font-family: "garam","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> <i>Your Life<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="normalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "garam","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">grew out of a project I gave
myself to help a friend to overcome her inability to recall events in her early
life. She had been asked by her therapist to write down these things, and she
had no idea what to do – a rather huge writer’s block, that one. The whole book
is in fact a series of twenty-eight exercises in how to deal with writer’s
block (although I don’t think I used the term in that book.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="normalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
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<div class="normalCxSpLast" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "garam","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The thing is really that you need
to separate yourself from the thing you are writing, and concentrate on the
business of the fear, meet the fear itself. Some people try to push forward by
just keeping writing, but I have observed that this does not seem to work. So I
suppose you treat the condition (fear) by taking it separately seriously, and
return to the writing task in due course. I have seen this treatment, this process
work for writers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-42021671701496027572016-11-30T15:14:00.000-08:002016-11-30T15:14:02.902-08:00FIRST RULE FOR GETTING WORK PUBLISHED <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">Every published piece of work has
its own readership, its own audience. The bedtime story you make up for a
three year old is different (I trust) from the poem you write to communicate
your grief at the death of a friend. This is of course a dramatic difference,
but I choose it to try to show you that the destination, the readership,
the audience to which your work is directed, really really matters. And
between the work and the audience sit the publishers – and the publishers know
what they think the audience will want, because usually the publishers are
proposing to sell the work to the audience. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">You have heard the old advice ‘know
your enemy’ – that’s a good one – but it’s also a good idea to know your
audience, to befriend your audience, and the gatekeepers between you and your
audience are publishers – so in a sense you need to ‘know your publishers.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">What you as the producer of the
work need to know is – what kind of things do publishers A, B and C like
to sell to their audiences? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">How do you discover this? It is not
a secret. The publishers make it clear every time they publish something. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">SO<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">You have to study, to READ what
publishers put out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">You want to have work in
Fiddlededee Journal? Then READ a few copies of FJ. You want to have your
novel published by MishMash? Then you simply HAVE to read some books by MM. I
mean READ them. Take the time to read them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">I know all this sounds so obvious –
and you are probably thinking – yes yes yes – tell us something we don’t know –
BUT – in my experience (vast)** <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have
observed that although writers KNOW what I am saying is true, many, many
writers ignore the whole idea, and just go ahead and bombard journals and
publishers with their writing which is DOOMED to be rejected because it is
going to the WRONG PLACE. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">Look, I know what I have just said
is not the be all and the end all (funny expression) to getting work published,
but it is just about the first rule. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">Other things that will get in your
way are publishers who ignore every approach you make to them. You could try
barring their way to the exit at a writers’ festival (publishers are notorious
for not answering emails – this is not necessarily personal – maybe they just
don’t like email). You will really have to work out your own strategies for
getting their attention – but I can tell you the first rule of having work
published really IS – know your desired audience, and realise that the
publishers are the LINK between Beautiful You and your Beautiful Readers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">So that was One Thought – but a
good one. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">………….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">**Sometimes I think that writers might have a secret desire to get work rejected. They will come to me in woe and say
their bedtime story has been rejected by Fiddlededee Journal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">Me (astonished): But why would a
journal for young violinists consider publishing the story about a family of
mice living in a drawer full of embroidered tablecloths? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">Writer (also astonished): Oh, I
didn’t realise Fiddlededee was for violinists. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "American Typewriter";">Me (weeping): Oh, right, yes,
right, I see. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-90432908929940358412016-11-18T13:31:00.000-08:002016-11-18T13:31:05.350-08:00PATRICK WHITE LITERARY AWARD 2016 <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhhhca-sGHYRMBXcmTIZkva9g1K1UPkPGv697CR06qcK57ms6eK2XRNVUiPYmtYP-rl1C7u-vhLEFYbDcOKSZooMIYlZpm57e4Ori5GrWYPKHZyeQyvSI7iwAr9o9LlGfptD3c14zs9ylj/s1600/2016-11-13+14.27.09-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhhhca-sGHYRMBXcmTIZkva9g1K1UPkPGv697CR06qcK57ms6eK2XRNVUiPYmtYP-rl1C7u-vhLEFYbDcOKSZooMIYlZpm57e4Ori5GrWYPKHZyeQyvSI7iwAr9o9LlGfptD3c14zs9ylj/s320/2016-11-13+14.27.09-2.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">November 11, 2016 I received the Patrick White Literary Award</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Robyn Annear gave me the postcard bearing the image of Patrick White's spectacles, Fran Bryson gave me the glowing butterfly, HarperCollins gave me the lilies, Donna Ward took the picture.<br /><br />coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-58815555912858480472016-11-18T12:53:00.000-08:002016-11-18T12:53:17.058-08:00ANDY GRIFFITHS SPEAKS ABOUT 'WOODPECKER POINT'At the Stella Awards in 2017, one of my all time favourite authors Andy Griffiths surprised me by speaking very warmly about my 1987 collection 'Woodpecker Point' (originally titled 'The Woodpecker Toy Fact'. He has kindly given me permission to publish his talk here:<br />
<br />
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Stella spark
talk about Carmel Bird<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">By Andy
Griffiths<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Thanks so much for the invitation
to speak tonight. I’m happy to be at an event celebrating literary woman as
I’ve spent my entire writing career surrounded, helped and inspired by many
women, one of the most important being my wife Jill who was the editor of my
first children’s book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Just Tricking</i>,
back in 1997 and who has edited—and increasingly collaborated on the books with
me ever since.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve often wondered whether part of
the success we’ve enjoyed with the books is due to this blending of our male and
female sensibilities. Despite the perception amongst some that our books have
special appeal to boys, our audience has always been made up of both boys AND
girls … and many of these girls are just as enthusiastic and amused by the
taboo & disgusting elements of the stories as the boys.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m wary of subscribing to gender
stereotypes but I will say that—over the years—I think I have helped Jill to
appreciate the humour of the physical slapstick of The Three Stooges (and not
just sit there feeling sorry and upset for Curly because Moe is being mean to
him) and—in return—she has brought me to a fuller appreciation for the verbal
gymnastics of The Marx Brothers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But
before I met Jill I was fortunate enough to read, meet and then be taught by
Carmel Bird, a Tasmanian writer then living in Melbourne.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I
was aware of her fiction from a book called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Woodpecker Toy Fact</i>, a collection of highly original and darkly humorous
stories that were playful, self-aware, personal, honest and utterly unlike
anything I’d read to that point. She could take the most ordinary incidents or
objects and through sustained attention and exploration transform them into
little tableaus of wonder, sadness and delight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So I
was thrilled to find her writing instruction book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dear Writer</i>, a practical, inspirational, common-sense examination
of all aspects of the writers’ life written in the form of a series of letters
from a fictional writer to an imaginary beginning student.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
1990 I attended a two-day summer school writing course run by Carmel at the
then newly established Victorian writers centre. She waltzed into the room with
an ethereal air—looking not unlike a character you might expect to find in a
fairy tale—though whether good, evil or simply mischievous was difficult to
tell. She gave us each a piece of white tablecloth and invited us to use it as
the starting point for a piece of fiction. I can’t remember exactly what I
wrote but I remember it made her smile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I
showed her a collection of writing fragments I’d been working on– and asked her
what I’d need to do in order to get it published. She suggested I organize it
in some way. I argued it was better to keep it random. “I know that,” she said,
conspiratorially, ‘and you know that, but publishers won’t know that.” And so I
began the long slow process of organizing—and rewriting—what was to become my
first officially published book—a creative writing textbook for use in high
school classrooms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A
few months later she invited me to be part of a poetry/short story reading
night with her and some other established writers at a hotel in Fitzroy. It was
both an amazing show of confidence on her part and a terrifying prospect, but
it was reassuring to know that I was doing something right—though I wasn’t
quite sure what.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But
I kept practising, and two years later, as luck would have it, I discovered
Carmel was teaching a year-long graduate diploma of fiction writing at Rusden
College in Toorak.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So
in 1991 I took leave without pay from my high-school teaching job and enrolled
in Carmel’s Monday evening class and spent the rest of my time writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">During
this year she taught me three hugely valuable things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Firstly,
the importance of considering your reader. This was achieved through the often
gruelling practice of having to have our stories critiqued by the other
students in the class. Carmel would preside sagely over this process, stepping
in when things got too brutal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Secondly
she taught me the value of reading widely and introduced me to many important
writers including Helen Garner, Henry Handel Richardson, Elizabeth Harrower,
Ruth Park, Katherine Mansfield and Barbara Baynton.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And
thirdly, by point blank refusing to tell me the magic secret of how to get
published—which I was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sure</i> all
published writers knew—she gently forced me to learn to trust my own
idiosyncratic voice and ignore the nagging feeling that because it was my own
idiosyncratic voice it must somehow be wrong … which was of course the magic
secret all along.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Because
of my fondness for writing humour she nudged me in the direction of writing for
children – we both agreed that what seemed to be missing from Australian
children’s writing at the time was the sort of rambunctious fantasy that we had
both enjoyed in the work of Enid Blyton. (She once wrote—or told me—I can’t
remember which that she thought the thing with Enid Blyton was not that her
stories and characters were unbelievable, but the opposite—they were TOO
believable.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As a
fiction writer Carmel has experimented with many different genres and styles.
But I always come back to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Woodpecker
Toy Fact</i>, especially the passage at the beginning of ‘A Taste of Earth’,
which—in retrospect—I think I took to be a sort of mission statement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“When
I read fiction I want the words to take my spirit into the places beneath the
surface of the everyday world. I want the freshness of dreams to be again
revealed to me. I want to know the loveliness and terror of what lies beyond
the last star … to feel the anguish and exhilaration of the fiction writer’s
power to create and destroy.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">From
reading Carmel’s fiction I have no doubt about her power to create and destroy,
and from being a student in her class I can personally attest to her ability to
inspire—a true stella spark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-50954205413706982472016-10-13T15:23:00.000-07:002016-10-13T15:23:38.064-07:00FAMILY SKELETON REVIEW - BY KYLIE MASON - NEWTON REVIEW OF BOOKS <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #151515; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">KYLIE MASON REVIEWS FAMILY SKELETON <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #151515; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">IN NEWTOWN REVIEW OF BOOKS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #151515; font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">In Family Skeleton one of Australia’s most prolific and original
authors delivers a tale of life-changing family secrets.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">Margaret
O’Day has always lived an ordered and beautiful life. She’s a beloved mother
and grandmother and, as an enthusiastic volunteer and fundraiser, a true pillar
of the community. She wouldn’t say her marriage to her husband, Edmund – now
sadly deceased – was perfect, but Margaret believes living a good life requires
the ability to be accommodating and forgiving, two virtues she has often had
occasion to practise. And any unhappiness Edmund caused Margaret wasn’t entirely
his fault; how could he live up to the great and glorious man who was her
father, Killian O’Day? Edmund nevertheless made sure she had everything she
wanted, like the butterfly screen that had stood for years in the foyer of the
family business, O’Day Funerals:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">"A
few feet behind her in the tapestry room stands a tall folding screen, known as
the Zephyr screen, framing her mothly presence with its own eerie beauty … It
is in five folding sections, eight feet high, made from a deep golden wood
voluptuously carved, framing great panels of glass. Between the two pieces of
glass are trapped the bodies of dozens of iridescent blue Zephritis butterflies
from Peru, their giant wings spread and stilled. Each specimen is matched,
underside to underside, with another, so that both sides of the screen are
virtually identical … The patterns formed by the wings on the screen are
mesmerising, the shimmer and unearthly glow of the colours, the sense of
arrested flight. But the truth is that the insects are the stiff little bodies
of dead things, creatures captured at the height of their beauty and bloom,
trapped now between glass for the pleasure of their killers and admirers …
Margaret sometimes formulates these thoughts as her gaze settles on the screen
each day, but still she is drawn to the beauty. She delights in it, loves it,
her eyes following the designs and patterns made by the insects under the
glass."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";"><o:p> ***</o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">Into
Margaret’s steady and charming world rushes Doria Fogelsong, a distant cousin
who is determined to write a comprehensive O’Day family history. And since
Margaret and Edmund were themselves cousins, many times removed, who better
than Margaret to help Doria flesh out the history? But Margaret isn’t so sure
she wants this stranger digging into the family’s past. Not that she has
anything to hide, it just feels so unseemly and unnecessary:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">"Doria
comes to this story as a given, as a presence, and then as an absence. Margaret
is the force up against which she is matched, and it’s Margaret, and who she
was, that really matters here. It’s the cumulation of the events in Margaret’s
life that are really going to converge and swallow Doria up … was Doria a
nemesis? Was this how a nemesis worked? But Margaret had done no harm. Nothing
for which she should be pursued and punished. She was only trying to do that
thing people talk about, trying to ‘come to terms’ with the past."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">***</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">Unfailingly
imaginative, Bird lets a skeleton in a wardrobe – ‘I still have my own teeth’ –
in Margaret’s house, narrate the novel. Interspersed with the skeleton’s wry and
often scalding narration are snippets from Margaret’s journal, in which she
reveals herself as human after all, often just as lost and lonely – and as
given to gossip – as anyone. It’s the skeleton who divulges the intricacies of the
O’Day family, its joys, controversies and rivalries; Doria would probably kill
to have a conversation with it. Margaret touches on a number of these things in
her journal, too, though she is far less honest than the skeleton, even as she
tells herself she’s being candid: ‘I sometimes astonish myself as I record all
these things in my book, but the recording has, in the past few days, become a
kind of comfort to me.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";"><o:p> ***</o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">As
ever, Bird’s writing is lyrical and transporting. She vividly paints the
privileged world Margaret inhabits and the past she has idealised, as well as
gracefully exploring the nature of family, loyalty, spirituality and truth:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">"She
lay down on her back under the trees, gazing up, trying to see as far as she
could into the sky. For an instant, an instant that seemed to last for a very
long time, Margaret realised she understood something very grand, something
inexpressible. She seemed to know, for that fleeting moment, and yet forever,
the meaning and the reason of things. She was unable to put this into words,
unable even to form the thought, but for the rest of her life she carried the
knowledge – or was it just a feeling – of the gift she received there
above the river on the afternoon of the picnic."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";"><o:p> ***</o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "PT Sans Narrow";">Perhaps
it’s this knowledge, bestowed upon eight-year-old Margaret, that enabled her to
get on with life, to withstand the disappointments and betrayals growing up
would bring. But Doria sits outside this fundamental understanding of
Margaret’s, disrupting the peace she has dwelt in for years, and Bird has great
fun exploring Doria’s meaning in the context of Margaret’s world. Family
Skeleton is an enchanting examination of what happens when an inconceivable
revelation makes the solid earth of a woman’s world crumble beneath her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-17298011064228999542016-10-03T21:30:00.002-07:002016-10-03T21:30:55.992-07:00FAMILY SKELETON - NOTES FOR READING GROUPS<div class="MsoNormal">
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<b><u style="text-underline: dotted;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "GARA","serif"; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">FAMILY SKELETON<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></u></b><b><u style="text-underline: dotted;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "GARA","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">by</span></u></b><b><u style="text-underline: dotted;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "GARA","serif"; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>CARMEL BIRD<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<b><u style="text-underline: dotted;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #548dd4; font-family: "GARA","serif"; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themetint: 153;">READING NOTES <o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">ABOUT THE NOVEL<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">Told
from the perspective of the observant and sometimes cynical skeleton in the
closet, this novel of manners takes the reader into the emotional depths of the
lives of a family of funeral directors in a wealthy Melbourne suburb. The
patriarch is a charming and amusing philanderer, his wife is a virtuous
philanthropist, his mistress is treated as a member of the family. But the sins
of the past are about to surface, with catastrophic results. Dark and
hilarious, dramatic and moving, Family Skeleton has been compared to the novels
of Fay Weldon, Penelope<b> </b>Fitzgerald, Muriel Spark and Anne Tyler. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">ABOUT THE AUTHOR<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">Carmel
Bird has always been in love with the music of language, the rhythms of speech,
the possibilities of fiction. She has written thirty books, including nine
other novels and six collections of short fiction. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">COMMENTS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">‘An intensely un-put-down-able novel with a rare
pitch perfect ending. What a rich, delicious, suspenseful, witty, sinister,
joyous confabulation, wow!’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">JAN OWEN </span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">‘Carmel Bird is a literary artist to her
fingertips. She writes prose that has the precision of poetry, and that uncanny
quality poetry has of making the inner life speak.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">PETER CRAVEN <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">‘One of Australia’s more prolific and renowned
authors, Bird clearly hasn’t lost her enthusiasm and sense of wonder as she
enters again the imaginative world of fiction.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">SUSAN MIDALIA <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">FOR DISCUSSION <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">1. The Skeleton in the Closet speaks directly to
the reader, commenting on the behaviour of the characters, and also telling the
reader where to look, what not to bother about. What effect does this narrative
device have on the telling of the story? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2. Margaret’s
life story is mostly revealed in her journal. Does having this intimate view of
her give you a sympathy for her that you might not otherwise have had? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">3. Lillian is different from the other characters
in many ways, and she is the central location of goodness in a messy, wicked
world. In what ways is she different? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">4. The Second World War fractured the twentieth
century. How did it affect Margaret? How did its ripples reach out into the
lives of the O’Days of Toorak? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">5. You could say that Doria is ‘the stranger who
rides into town’. What effect did she have on the lives of the other
characters? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">6. Margaret thinks the past should remain past,
even mysterious. Most of the other characters seem to want to explore and
expose the past. Who do you think is right? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">7. The subject matter of the novel is dramatic and
serious, yet much of the style of the writing is comic. How do you think these
two elements work together? Does the comedy make the drama more memorable? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">8. The chapters are headed by a short quotation
from Edmund. What effect do these sayings have on your reading of the novel? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">9. The novel ends in such a way that the reader is
invited to complete the picture. Do you find this satisfactory, or would you
prefer to be told what actually happened?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">10. What do you think it is that the Skeleton
wants the reader to notice in the advertisement for the house sale on page six?
When you get to the end of the novel, why not go back and re-read the ad. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>11. Next
door to Bellevue is the Freud House where an eccentric psychoanalyst lives.
What is the function of the Freud House in the overall meaning of the
narrative? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">12. There are glancing references to matters such
as the indigenous history of Australia, IVF, gays, the presence of the Chinese
in contemporary Australia, incest, unmarried mothers, religious prejudice. How
do such elements have a place in the tapestry of Margaret’s life?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">13. What is the role of children in this novel? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">14. The secret was bound to come out when Ophelia
died. But without the presence of Doria, would Margaret have been able to bury
that secret forever? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 74.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">15. What is the role of fate in this novel? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Zapf Dingbats"; font-size: 14.0pt;">8</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14.0pt;">16. The Skeleton says to take no notice of such
things as the butterflies in the story. He says they are meaningless. What do
you think? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-13234146102339385392016-10-01T14:27:00.001-07:002016-10-01T14:27:46.245-07:00PETER PIERCE REVIEWS 'FAMILY SKELETON' <br />
<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 11.0pt 36.0pt; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> Novel </span></span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Family
Skeleton reviewed by</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 11.0pt 36.0pt; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Peter Pierce</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 11.0pt 36.0pt; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">In the
Sydney Morning Herald </span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 15.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">September
30, 2016</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #535353; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The mordantly witty 'Family Skeleton', supposedly
related from a wardrobe by one of them, is Carmel Bird's ninth novel, and as
vibrant and off-beat as those that have happily gone before. The O'Day family,
its fortune made as funeral directors, especially to Melbourne's rich, and
latterly from the death-driven theme park Heavenly Days, lives in the mansion
Bellevue, built for them in Toorak in 1933. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The patriarch, rakish Edmund Rice O'Day, has expired in the arms
of his mistress. He is survived by Margaret, the distant cousin (a
"medical" rather than a "funeral" O'Day) whom he married
long ago. From the tapestry room in Bellevue, Margaret casts a cool eye on the
generations of her family as they disport themselves in her gardens. Deep into
her 70s, Margaret feels the not unpleasant compulsion to compose a
journal-cum-memoir, The Book of Revelation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The novel entwines the voices of the sardonic, presumably female
skeleton narrator and the not always charitable observations Margaret writes of
family and acquaintances, for instance of her daughter-in-law Charmaine, who
"sprang from a diplomatic family that has been turned into a family of
wealthy dry-cleaners". Charmaine's children now number four – Orson,
Oriane, Orlando, and most recently Ophelia. This strikes her grandmother as an
ill-omened name, which indeed it proves to be. For such fashion Peaches Geldof
is blamed – "she had set the benchmark high". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Into this commotion arrives a distant, but determined and
disruptive relative from the US, Dr Doria Fogelsong, who is writing an
expansive history of the O'Days. Margaret is at once worried and alert:
"Doria was the archetypal stranger who rides into town … the harbinger of
fate." Doria will overhear the indiscretions of children, probe the
meaning of old photographs and find time to give the quilt made in Van Diemen's
Land by two female O'Day convict ancestors to the museum in Hobart. It is
perhaps no surprise that one of Margaret's sons-in-law will suspect Doria of
being a blackmailer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Bird marshals a large and preening cast from Melbourne's
professional ranks – psychiatrist, solicitor, bibulous poet who follows several
real-life predecessors into death by drowning, gay parish priest and family
doctor, besides "jolly fat aunts and mean skinny ones". Astringent
fun is had in the portrayals of each of them, as we move between the dissecting
gazes of the two women telling their parts of the story. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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scandals are rehearsed – Edmund's philandering since his school days, the
mystery of why his sister Marina interrupted a dance at Bellevue by jumping
from the first floor – while for Margaret, the most shocking of them all is
unexpectedly revealed. This is the metaphorical skeleton, so long unsuspected,
at the heart of the novel.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Throughout, Bird's touch is light as she deploys the motifs of
butterflies for weddings and funerals and the small brown suitcase that appears
each year under the Christmas tree because "there are sad children
somewhere"; imagines the daily epigraphs, his jocular remarks on death,
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">As the narrative quickens to the climactic events of Margaret's
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mess people haplessly and indulgently make of things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The Family Skeleton maintains its energy and power of surprise
literally to the last lines. This is one of Bird's most accomplished and
enjoyable fictional escapades.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Peter Pierce is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to
Australian Literature.</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #161616; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2583648584626410291.post-26478321614202657992016-09-27T04:41:00.000-07:002016-09-27T04:41:45.382-07:00MY TALK TO STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY, SEPTEMBER 2016<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b><span style="color: #0b5394;">WRITING <i>FAMILY SKELETON </i></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“Suddenly a White Rabbit with
pink eyes ran close to her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Burning with
curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it
pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. In another moment, down went
Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was going to get
out again.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">You all know that story – how
Alice entered the world of the imagination. And the rabbit-hole long ago
entered the language. So it’s a kind of cliché to say that writing fiction can
be for the writer a journey down the rabbit-hole. The surprise of the rabbit,
the chase, the entrance into another world, another set of circumstances, led
on by curiosity – and a rabbit. I wondered in fact whether the expression
originated with Lewis Carroll, or whether it was older, but as far as I can
tell, he made it up. “Down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I don’t always have a particular
rabbit and rabbit-hole that I can identify as the beginning of a novel, as the
inspiration that set my imagination going. But with Family Skeleton I am able
to identify the moment. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I was on a bus driving through
bushland when I saw, not wildlife, but an Edwardian funeral hearse slowly
emerging, almost sailing, out from a track between the trees, onto the road. I
suppose I saw it for about half a minute, and possibly my imagination instantly
embellished the vision. It was elegant, regal, gleaming. Eerie. Romantic. Ominous.
The windows were etched. There were silver knobs. It was the gift that
stimulated my imagination, that put in motion the story that became Family
Skeleton. I followed the hearse. Well, figuratively, I followed the hearse. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I knew at once that it was the
impetus, the heart of a novel. I am in the habit of writing fiction. I don’t
suppose anyone else on the bus went home and started a novel as the result of
the apparition of the hearse. I could be wrong about that. I am trying to
explain to you how these things happen for me, and I think I can best do it by giving
you another example. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The rabbit-hole for my novel
Child of the Twilight was a small news item in the paper. I mean small small.
It told the story of the theft of a miraculous religious statue from a church
in Rome. I had seen the statue years before. I wondered how you would steal it,
and why. Then I wondered what you would do with it. Incidentally, the statue is
still missing. In its place in the church there’s a copy, and it seems to
perform the same function as the real one anyway. But the theft was the
beginning of the writing of the novel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I think a fiction writer is
always naturally alert to these prompts, these objects or occasions that set
things in motion. It’s often a small thing. Sometimes I can’t even remember
what got me started. But whatever it is, it raises urgent questions for me, and
the novel in its construction and its characters is a form of answer or answers
to the questions. I have to tell you I am not the kind of writer who begins
with a written plan. Some do, some don’t. I don’t. I would not find it
possible, as I begin to write a novel, to set out a detailed plot outline, to
write the details of the characters, or to do any of the other things I often see
described in books about writing fiction. When I have finished a novel, then I
can analyse the parts, can tell you the plot and discuss the characters and so
forth, but for me everything develops as I write – the characters along with
the plot and structure. This is a personal matter – I’m not saying one way is
right or better than another, I’m just saying this is how I do it. I believe
that the Spanish novelist Victor del Arbol (The Heart Tastes Bitter) is the
opposite of this – he does a complete plan, and also has detailed biographies of
all his characters before he begins writing. I also do biographies of my
characters, and in particular I do a lot of timelines and dates – but nothing
like what someone such as Victor del Arbol does. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But to return to Family Skeleton
– before I knew it, there was a dead body in the Edwardian hearse, and I knew
who it was – the matriarch of an influential family, but I didn’t know how she
had died. However almost at once, she was the matriarch of a family of funeral
directors. Where did they come from? I realise now that there are points and
elements in my life from way back that inform the narrative. Probably a key
element is the fact that when I was a teenager I had a boyfriend whose family
were funeral directors. So I had quite vivid insights into that world. The
family in the novel call their place of business ‘the box office’, as those
people did. And the boyfriend occasionally was permitted to use a hearse for
social purposes. These details are the same for the people in the novel. When I
came to prepare this talk for you, I realized that the funeral and the
graveyard and so forth are threaded, woven throughout the course of my own
life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Maybe to begin with, my great
grandfather, who came to Tasmania from Ireland in the middle of the nineteenth
century, became a tree feller and timber miller, and he also bred horses. Part
of his business with the horses was training black horses for the funeral
industry. My grandfather followed the same career, and was known as a horse
whisperer, training the horses for funerals across the state. As a child I
found this pretty interesting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As a teenager I used to sometimes
spend the afternoon at a place not far from our house in Launceston. It was a
disused old grave yard, called the Caledonian Cemetery. I used to ride my bike there,
and take a book to read and also a notebook for writing and drawing. Many of
the graves were sepulchres, rooms dug into the side of the hill, with wrought
iron doors. Everything was broken down and overgrown. There was a view that
stretched far down to the centre of the town, and in the foreground I could see
a formal Chinese garden where a man in a coolie hat worked among the
vegetables, like something in a painting or a myth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I think they are the three main
elements I can point to as feeding my choice of a family of funeral directors
for Family Skeleton. But there are also more pieces of evidence for my being a
novelist who would write about this stuff. When I lived in Los Angeles for a
year in the sixties, I visited three cemeteries of the Forest Lawn Memorial
Park chain. I had read Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, and Jessica Mitford’s
American Way of Death. These days there are six of these privately owned
cemeteries. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These places were the
antithesis of the old Caledonian Cemetery in Tasmania. The first idea was to
eliminate upright grave-markers and feature works of art such as sculpture and
stained glass. They were not called cemeteries, they were funeral homes and
memorial parks. When I visited them they were in fact sparkling, manicured parks
where flowers bloomed in glorious profusion, where recordings of birds played
in the trees, where the atmosphere was dreamy, sentimental, full of fantasy,
and serenity. The memorial parks were described by management as ‘A first step
up toward Heaven’. Copies of famous statues and paintings – Leonardo’s Last
Supper is a stained glass window in the wall of the vast marble Memorial Court
of Honor in the Glendale location, the first one to be built. Glendale began as
22 hectares (might be bigger now, I don’t know, probably is) on which there are
churches and lakes and places of meditation. You can be married there if you
like – in the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather. There are sections called Babyland,
Vesperland, Dawn of Tomorrow and Inspiration Slope. I like the sound of
Inspiration Slope. When I looked recently at the lavish book I bought at
Glendale in the sixties, I see that there is a photo of the Council of Regents
of the Memorial Court of Honor and they are all old white men in scarlet robes.
I thought at the time that the photo was horrifying – today it seems even more
ghastly and full of dread. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">So anyway, Forest Lawn was an
inspiration for the private cemeteries owned by the family in the novel. I take
matters further and satirise them, making them closer to theme parks where
there are ghost rides and such. This brings me to the tone of the novel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">At some point, and I am sorry but
I can’t tell you how this happened, because I don’t really know, it became
clear to me that the narrator was in fact a presence – it was the truth-teller,
the skeleton in the wardrobe. I’ll read you the prologue: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Prologue
by the Storyteller<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“Imagine you have a talking
skeleton in the wardrobe. That’s me. I still have my own teeth. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Once upon a time, in the years
between the great wars, there was born a baby girl named Margaret.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This happened in the artistic atmosphere of
Eltham in the shire of Nillumbik, twenty kilometres to the north-east of
Melbourne. Margaret’s childhood was happy, although during some of it the whole
world was at war for the second time. When Margaret grew up she married Edmund
who was a very distant cousin, and she went to live in the wealthy atmosphere
of Toorak in the city of Stonnington, five kilometres to the south-east of the
Melbourne Town Hall. And lived happily ever after. You think so? There was
happy and there was sad. Life’s like that. Even Cinderella died in the end.
Margaret and Edmund had four children, and in the way of things, before he was
quite seventy years old, Edmund died. So Margaret lived alone in the lovely old
house built by Edmund’s father. She was known as a philanthropist and patron of
the arts, and people from the news media would sometimes come round with
various recording devices and would then tell stories about her and her good
works and her pretty family life in Toorak. These stories didn’t get very far
beneath the surface. How could she possibly be as good as she seemed? One
morning she said to her faithful housekeeper, Lillian: ‘I think I’ll write my
memoirs.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Now we’re getting somewhere.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">So the ironic tone has been set. There
are sections of the text where the matriarch Margaret tells her version of
things in her Book of Revelation. And sections where the family skeleton tells
his (I think of it as a he, but it’s never clarified) version. He has access to
everything that’s going on – I think that’s often called omniscient – but he
has a particular perspective, and always has his mildly amused ironic tone. And
his vanity, by the way. His own teeth. Of course all omniscient narrators have
to select what they report – nobody can ever tell the whole truth and nothing
but the truth, can they? I think I’m right in saying that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I recently heard from a friend in
a book group that she was the only person in her group who liked the book they
were reading, and that the other people hated the book because they didn’t like
any of the characters. This gave me pause for thought. I didn’t really know
that people – in this case the whole group but one – read fiction in that way. I
wonder if those people would like any of the characters in Family Skeleton??
Would they dismiss the novel because they didn’t LIKE the characters. Surely it
doesn’t it all come down to just liking characters? And for that matter, what
does ‘liking the characters really mean?’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I put my mind to some of the
characters in Family Skeleton – and I decided that I for one like the skeleton.
And I decided that even though many of the characters are pretty awful people,
and do pretty awful things, I think that in the case of the main ones at least
there are compassionate insights into them. Does this make them likeable? Would
they pass muster at the book group? Possibly not. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But as I thought these things, I
thought also about the first requirement for a piece of fiction. Lean in close.
The first job for the writer is to make the reader CARE. Maybe you disagree.
But that’s my belief based on my reading and my writing. The clue, maybe the
little hook in the Prologue, is the bit that says the stories about Margaret in
the media ‘didn’t get very far beneath the surface’. Will the Book of
Revelation go deeper for the reader. The reader hopes so. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">So the writer is suggesting,
promising really, to the reader that the text is going to go beneath the
surface and reveal truths. Of course a skeleton in the wardrobe, or cupboard,
or closet, is a secret, isn’t it? So even the title of the novel is suggesting
that secrets are going to be uncovered. If you go back to the epigraph at the
front of the book – between the title and the prologue – it says: “The
storyteller knows what the story teller knows; the storyteller tells what the
storyteller tells.” So the skeleton knows – but he might not tell you
everything. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Going back to what I said before
about planning and not planning – the things I have just said about tone and
narration and so forth – I didn’t, couldn’t, plan any of that. It all happened
in the telling and in the writing – each element influenced the other – the
characters and the plot and the structure and the tone – all this developed in
concert. Perhaps this is due to years of practice in writing and in reading. I
must stress my belief in the importance of reading, careful, close, attentive
reading of other writers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As the characters and plot
develop, the writer’s own interests and concerns also become part of the fabric
of the whole thing. Subject matter. Sometimes the subject matter of a novel is
a huge dramatic topic, a current burning issue such as racial inequality or
climate change. My novels are not like that. The subject matter of Family
Skeleton is, in a sense, death. It approaches this via the life of one woman,
Margaret, and how the events that happen on the surface of the everyday
ultimately pull her to her destruction – so that she ends up in the
aforementioned Edwardian hearse. She would have died anyway – as the skeleton
says in the prologue, everybody dies in the end, even Cinderella. But to begin
with Margaret is set up as a wealthy Toorak widow with a family to dominate,
and the reader can tell from the prologue that she is going to come to a bad
end – but how will this be managed? This is the matter the reader cares about.
And before long there is in fact a mystery – the woman visiting from Florida
has disappeared. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The narrator has an ironic and
satirical slant on human folly, and the family of the undertakers is rich
pickings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There are some key elements to
the writing of fiction that I haven’t yet mentioned. There’s language and
rhythm. Choice of words and attention to music. The melody of the sentence. The
harmonies and discords set up by the structure. The attention to punctuation
and paragraphing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In a few sentences, I can’t
really tell you how any of that is done, but if you are alert to those things
as you read, you can become practised in them as you write. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I said the novel is about death –
but it also plays with death’s close relative, sex. I will read you a little
sex bit. It’s told by the skeleton, and it is about a young man called Edmond
and a schoolgirl called Cecelia, known as Sissy. They have been playing tennis
at the family home of the funeral people. Edmund O’Day is the eldest son. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">“After the last game everybody
gathered under the oak for lemonade and cakes. Somehow, it seemed to Sissy,
everybody dissolved and she was suddenly alone again with Edmund. She had
longed for this, and dreaded it too. The tingling feeling of the pleasure of
Edmund’s touch filled her body and seemed to spin into her brain. She had to be
back in the boarding house and ready for tea by six-thirty. There was a flutter
of panic in her heart. But Edmund had this time-table well figured in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his</i> brain. We are after all dealing with
Edmund here. Sissy would be back in time. But first they must explore the paths
that went round to the outside door, the door to the wine cellar. Edmund
produced a key, and in they went. The door was dark green. It was worn and
dusty. Yes, it squeaked as it opened. The interior was dark as dark can be.
They briefly roamed the gloomy passageways between the rows of bottles. He
showed her wines from Bordeaux that were put down when he was born, that would
be opened when he turned twenty-one. He grasped a dusty old bottle of brandy
and swung it by the neck. She loved the sight of him doing that. And he showed
her the door of the bomb-shelter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The bomb-shelter. Who had not
heard of the legendary bomb-shelter in the O’Day house? Thirty-nine steps down,
down down below the cellar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">‘Do you want to see? My family
had it built at the beginning of the war. Excavated underneath the cellar. It’s
like a really deep grave.’ He laughed. ‘Or an Egyptian tomb. Do you – want to
see?’ His voice was careless, but with more than a hint of expectation and
sexual excitement. Sissy lifted her face towards him, opened her eyes wide,
slightly pursed her lips while smiling shyly, and nodded. Edmund kissed Sissy
ever so lightly on the cheek. He was an artist in these matters. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There was a steel bar on the
outside of the door, placed there because the door had a habit of swinging open
at inopportune times and hitting anyone who happened to be there for one reason
or another. In truth, few people ever ventured into this remote part of the
wine cellar. Edmund lifted the heavy bar and swung back the door, flicked on a
light, and stood aside to let Sissy go in first. There were cobwebs, and dusty
concrete steps leading down to the underground shelter. Then he followed,
closing the door behind them. They were beautifully sealed off from the outside
world of reality. Never mind the dangers inside the cellar. It was completely
freezing down there, and Edmund plugged in an old electric radiator that had a
centre like a beehive. It was in fact quite effective. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This was Edmund’s special place,
furnished with broken chairs and a sofa, glasses and ashtrays, everything
faintly grimy and covered in a veil of dust. Three gas masks, like the heads of
three terrible insects, hung from a hook high up on the wall. Sissy had heard
of the cellar before, but nobody had ever described it to her. The walls were
covered with maps of the world, resembling in their pastel colours, maps from
the Bible. Empty shelves on one wall, a few comic books lying in a heap on the
floor. An old stained sink with a tap. The air was stale, there being one tiny
clogged-up ventilator high up near the ceiling. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">‘A drink?’ he poured them
generous glasses of brandy. Sissy was unused to drinking, and so Edmund watered
it down for her. She gagged a little, then got used to it. They sat on a sofa
and Edmund lit them each a cigarette. Sissy was quite accustomed to smoking, as
it happened. They removed their shoes, and Sissy tucked her feet, still in her
socks, up under the pleats of her tennis frock. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Before long, naturally, they were
lying on the sofa in an embrace. The perfect buttons in their perfect
buttonholes placed by the deft needle of Daphne Feeney give way to the deft
fingers of Edmund O’Day. And Sissy, her head beginning to spin with the brandy,
became a lovely young creature in white socks, chaste white knickers, thick
white bra, gold cross on slender chain around her throat. She still <i>dimly</i>
remembered she was supposed to be a temple of the Holy Ghost, but her will was
in fact, at this stage, growing very weak indeed. The bra and knickers were
gone. She had never really been a particularly devout or religious girl, and
right now her body was feeling simply glorious. She wanted more and more of the
feeling Edmund aroused in her. More and more. She hardly even knew that Edmund
was naked, then in a flash Edmund’s fingers were inside her, and the feeling
was one of almost unbearable pleasure. He was above her. He took her hand and
placed it on himself and she began to stroke him, quite softly, and he
obviously liked that a lot. She was by now drifting in a little ecstasy of
astonishment. He grinned and then he said quietly in her ear, ‘Turn over,’ and
he gently rolled her onto her front. Her backside, remember, was one of her
greatest attractions. ‘Kneel up,’ he whispered and then he pushed himself into
her from behind, and in a few miraculous seconds of wonderfully sharp pain and
a blissful flood of unknown warmth it was all over – with Sissy flat on her
face on the sofa and Edmund lolling back, stretching out full length, obedient
to cliché, lighting two cigarettes. If he, in those few minutes, hurt her, the
pain was the pain of high pleasure. He took a long draw and exhaled, throwing
back his head as he did so. Then he turned Sissy’s face towards him, kissed her
lightly on both cheeks, and put the second cigarette between her lips. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">‘There,’ he said. Then, ‘Oh-oh,
there’s a bit of the old blood.’ He handed her a grubby towel. Cecilia stared
in a kind of dumb horror at the sight of her own blood on the towel. She stared
and stared. She was in fact beginning to feel ill. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">‘It’s OK, it’s normal you know,’
Edmund said. Is it? Is this normal? Nothing was normal. Everything was shifting
and spinning slowly. Sissy knew very little about the facts of life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">‘Here, have some water,’ and he
handed her a glass of water that was still tainted with the brandy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There she was, a convent girl
naked except for her socks and her gold cross, bleeding a little, sitting on an
old leather sofa deep underground in a bomb-shelter, gulping down water from a
dirty glass. Where to from here, Cecelia?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The skeleton has a little habit of asking
questions of the characters. He’s going to do it again in the last piece I will
read. Then you might like to ask me some questions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Here is a scene between Evan the
psychiatrist who lives next door to the O’Days, and Doria who is the visitor
from Florida who is eventually going to disappear. They are out at one of the
O’Day cemeteries – this one is called Heavenly Days, and it’s a jolly kind of
theme park. Doria is an historian who is doing the O’Day family history. This
is a shorter reading.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I should point out that part of
my technique is to signal for instance the importance of the unconscious mind
in the text by putting a Freudian psychiatrist in the house next door. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">“As it happened,
Doria became sort of friendly with Evan Keene, the psychiatrist in the house
next door to Bellevue. The O’Days had very little to do with their neighbours,
but Evan was different. He was in fact a significant part of their lives. He took
Doria shopping in the city and also in Carlton. She seemed to buy nothing at
all – while Evan stocked up on cheeses, wines, and exotic sausage. One
afternoon he drove her, in the pink MGB, out, out to what she called the
boondocks – to Heavenly Days. They roamed the pathways under the spreading
trees where lifelike birds warbled sweetly, and lifelike blooms nestled
permanently among the leaves. This was nothing new to Doria, America being well
stocked with much bigger, wilder, better, stranger death parks than this. They
read a few clean, expensive headstones, and Evan became very quickly bored.
Doria would have kept going – this was an area closely related to her life’s
work, after all. But in the end they gave up and lunched on death-watch beetle
wraps and Blue Bat merlot in the Catacomb Café. Things had begun to look up!
They went on the rides in the theme park. Yes! Evan was like an ecstatic child
on the ferris wheel, while Doria took everything in a strangely solemn mood,
scarcely batting an eyelid, never uttering a sound, let alone a squeal. Inside
the sepulchre that housed the tomb of the unknown zombie Evan grabbed Doria’s hand
in alarm when two zombies, accompanied by threatening music, came slowly
tottering towards them, and Doria said ‘Woah, Evan, it isn’t real!’ But of
course it was; the undead lurched up against Evan’s arm and almost knocked him
over. Doria was unmoved. Evan went to jelly, rushed from the place and had to
sit down on a pile of coffins at the entrance. Still Doria didn’t even crack a
smile. Remember she looks like Andy Warhol – that’s something to think about.
Doria had wanted to take the option of being locked up for five minutes in the
dark with the zombies, but Evan drew the line. Daylight, daylight! He was
almost hysterical. With some relief he went for a ride on the Spooky-Kooky, and
had a grave-robber’s sundae with wiggly worms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And this man, Doria said to herself, is an eminent psychiatrist. Yes,
Doria, he is. A loony-doctor. What are you to make of that?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">I will conclude
with a quote from Edmund – who is in the habit of making up </span><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16pt;">pithy
sayings:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-ansi-language: EN-AU;">“The past is a ghost, the future a dream, all we have is now – and the
funeral industry.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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coco bellevuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08255920858007946908noreply@blogger.com0