Paris dreaming by Anita Heiss

This is 'chick, chook or choc lit' for a female readership in the 20-30 age range so it was a little hard for some Minervans to fully appreciate this novel.

It was considered rather lame and lacking substance however that isn't the purpose of this style of literature.  Rather it entertains, discusses fashion, young men and all to do with male/female relationships with a happy conclusion.

Anita Heiss is a young and 'proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of New South Wales as well as being Adjunct Professor with Jumbunna Indigenous House of learning at UTS, Sydney'. (Quote from her website).  Heiss is a prolific writer and researcher, writing children's books, novels (eg Manhattan Dreaming) and non-fiction such as Am I black enough.  She seems highly focussed and thereappears to be a touch of Anita in Lauren in Paris dreaming.

Her choc lit style is incorporated into a novel about a young Indigenous professional woman Lauren who works at the National Aboriginal Gallery in Canberra who has the temerity to push the boundaries. She questions her identity, her single status and her politics. She also extols the wonderful Indigenous artists, writers and poets with possibly an effect upon her reader's knowledge.

We also spoke about the use of Aboriginal words in the novel. These are a good introduction for readers.  We really appreciated the warmth of her relationships with her 'tiddas' -- both in Canberra and in Europe. These are strong bonds and there is a real feeling of responsibility between these good friends. We also liked the mother/daughter relationship, where Lauren is allowed to grow up strong and independent in contrast to her brothers.

Some members felt that Heiss degraded Canberra in contrast to Paris however that is often a feeling when one is bored. Another feature we liked was the introduction of an underlying plot about a Gypsy girl. This highlights Lauren's status as well as her compassion.

Overall an interesting and different novel !      

(February 2013 meeting)
 

Cold Light: Edith comes to Canberra

To start off this Centenary of the Naming of Canberra, we read Frank Moorhouse’s Cold Light, the third in his Edith trilogy.

We had some years before read and discussed Grand Days, the first book, covering his radical heroine Edith’s adventures in Europe and involvement in the League of Nations. He is a witty writer, and Edith a feisty and energetic character. Cold Light was not so warmly received by the group. Many in the group felt it was too long and indulgent, needing some tighter editing, and less labouring of some of the political and personal intrigues. It was obvious Moorhouse had done a lot of research, and wanted to use it in the book!

It was enjoyable to read the references to Canberra in the fifties: to the Canberra Hotel, Parliament House, the city before the Lake, discussion on planning, their home in Forrest etc. The emphasis on having her own office, and being able to furnish it stylishly, as well as her developing relationships with those whom she could trust, was a little insight into the bureaucracy of the time. Some things don’t change!

We agreed Moorhouse tells a good story, and creates some appealing and very human characters. Ambrose, the lavender husband  comes across as witty and warm. Janice was a witty and pragmatic foil to Edith’s earnest brother Frederick, an organiser for the Communist Party. And Edith is passionate, a little vain, ambitious, and adventurous. She seems to be playing at various roles: that of wife and stepmother, her drinking and smoking, a potential gay relationship with Janice. She has an encounter with suburban domesticity with her relationship with Richard, which ends rather sadly.

Sexuality is a continuing thread through the book, as the characters flirt, undertake their own sexual piccadellos, even describing the sensuousness of clothing as Ambrose cross dresses, and Edith herself is open in her sensuality.

Some described the book as a Comedy of Manners, with its arch, flirtatious tone, the dinner parties, and the ‘crass’ social mores of Australia contrasted with European sensibilities.

Other themes we teased out: the resignation of aging; we spent some time trying to discern Edith’s age and felt she would have been in her 50’s or 60’s; and we have a sense of her resignation in the face of her possible death at the end. The failure of idealism, or the shortcoming of ideologies, as the demise of the Communist Party, the failure to stop nuclear armament, and even the compromises in the planning of Canberra are portrayed through his mixture of actual and fictitious characters.

And secrecy: what is known and what is kept secret; we find Ambrose is a spy; Edith is asked to keep secret documents for her brother, Edith and Ambrose are covering up aspects of their relationship … and so on.

We discussed the significance of the title: Cold Light, partly a reference to Canberra and the cold climate, perhaps the cold light shone on Communism (and the Cold War), perhaps the Cold Light of aging and experience, and beyond the heady and idealistic days of our main characters’ youth.

Overall, while there was much to enjoy, and to comment on and discuss in this book, many in the group were somewhat disappointed in the volume, and probably pleased that this is the third and final in this series. We will however continue our journey looking at books with relevance to Canberra in the coming months, and are looking forward to that!

Novel Sentence Challenge, 2012

Some years we set a literary challenge for our end of year celebration - and 2012 was one of those years. The challenge was to write a sentence using all the titles of the books read by the group in the year, with as few additional words as possible.

Here are our contributions, with some rather creative interpretations of the challenge. Who said there's only one way to skin a cat?:


The street sweeper from the plains of Stasiland visiting the museum of innocence was intrigued by the mystery of a hansom cab, a life in seven mistakes of a difficult young man. With pride and prejudice, he cried, clutching his foal's bread, 'I shall not hate the sense of an ending!' (Gerda)

The ending a mystery. A plain life of innocence, no mistakes, street bread and just a little sense of prejudice, some pride and difficulty at the museum, his workplace. So which of the seven cabs in Stasiland swept this hansom young man off the foal? (Jenny C)

When the street sweeper, a difficult young man whom - no, I shall not hate - took the foal's bread rather than the Hansom cab - no mystery there! - across the plains to Stasiland, was this a life in seven mistakes, pride and prejudice, or the sense of an ending - ah that's for the museum of innocence to file! (Kate)

So it was the pride of a difficult young man, the mystery of a foal's bread, which led to the prejudice of Stasiland, where a life in seven mistakes gave rise to the sense of an ending, which I shall not hate, but take off with the street sweeper in a hansom cab. (Kate)

Hate, bread and mystery on the street
Stasiland mistakes innocence for prejudice
Life is ending for the young man on the plains (Kate)

Prejudice is bread to Stasiland
Hate sweeps in a cab to the plains
While innocence mistakes the young. (Kate)

I shall not hate the street sweeper of Stasiland even though he's a difficult young man and his pride and prejudice made me cough up my foal's bread on the plains. What's the sense of ending my life in seven mistakes in the museum of innocence and never solve the mystery of the hansom cab. (Sue B)

I shall not hate the street sweeper, a difficult young man full of pride and prejudice, because he solved the mystery of a hansom cab, before leaving to work at the museum of innocence on the plains of Stasiland where, researching foal’s bread, he experienced the sense of an ending on seeing his life in seven mistakes. (Sue T)

The mystery of a hansom cab laden with Foal's bread parked outside The museum of innocence was solved by The street sweeper; he had The sense of ending his Life in seven mistakes but despite his Pride and prejudice he cried “Though I am A difficult young man I shall not hate The plains of Stasiland”. (Susan H)

The street sweeper watched and listened. The young people talked about the mystery of the hansom cab decayed and abandoned in the yard. They called it quaint. He remembered. Once a difficult young man, full of pride and prejudice had driven it through the dark streets to bury the unwanted out on the plains. The young would soon learn that the cab was not a museum of innocence. He thought and sighed, 'my life in seven mistakes'. He left the room. / A young girl watched an old man walk away muttering nonsense. He had tried to live a quiet and good life, with wishes such as 'I shall not hate' but failed. There was a changing of the guard. It was time to leave Stasiland for the sense of ending.  It was time to think of simple things like foal's bread and leave the dead behind. (Sylvia)

Enjoy ... and think what you might have done!

Gerald Murnane's The plains

Courtesy: Text Publishing

Gerald Murnane's The plains was a fascinating novel for we Minervans to finish our reading year on. It was our third Text Classics book of the year, though we enjoyed looking at the wide range of editions the members who attended the meeting had read.

I use "fascinating" somewhat loosely because most of us found it a challenging read, with some of us enjoying it more than others. One member said that she felt she wasn't getting anywhere, like she "was wading through treacle"! Another said it was "mercifully short"! One member had read several reviews but found they did not really explain the book any more to her. We agreed that that's probably because it's an elusive book and one that's not easy to explain ... which may in fact be part of Murnane's intention.

So, I won't really try to explain it except to say that it's told first person by a narrator who, at the beginning, is a young man who travels to the plains with the intention of making a film about them and the plainspeople. The plains are not defined in specific detail other than being, perhaps, Other Australia. (They are probably inspired, though, by the plains of northwest Victoria). The rest of the novel (novella?) comprises this character's discussions, meditations, ruminations on life among the plains people, mostly from the home of the landowner who has become his patron. The novel starts:

Twenty years ago, when I first arrived on the plains, I kept my eyes open. I looked for anything in the landscape that seemed to hint at some elaborate meaning behind appearances.

Our discussion started with one member suggesting that the novel felt a bit like academic life. She elaborated by saying that it's about a group of people beavering away in their own arbitrarily defined worlds with their own set of assumptions. These people pursue their ideas in their own way, and follow and follow and follow those ideas, not worrying if along the way the ideas they are pursuing become disconnected from life. The obscure wars between Horizonites and Haremen seemed also to fit in with this idea. How many obscure academic disputes - wars even - have happened over the centuries?

One member in particular found it a frustrating read and was infuriated by the secondary role women play in the novel, stating that this dated the novel. She also felt that its focus on wealthy landowners dated it. Others argued that it's a timeless, mythical sort of book and that therefore these things that might bother them in a realistic novel did not bother them here.

What made the book hardest to read, we felt, is the fact that it has no real characterisation or plot, making it quite an alternative sort of literature. This reminded us of Samuel Beckett - and one reader said that her introduction by the American poet, Zawacki, noted that Murnane is closest to writers like Proust, Beckett, and Kafka. The scene in the pub where the artists are waiting to be called into their interviews with the landowners was somewhat reminiscent, a member said, of the characters waiting for the trial in Kafka.

We talked about the beauty of the sentences. Many were long, and some were hard to grasp, but they were generally beautifully formed and lovely to read. It was suggested that you could take almost any sentence and have a philosophical discussion about it. Some felt the first part of the three-part book was the easiest to read and comprehend, while others found the last two parts more readable. Some of us found the book funny, and at times satiric or ironic. It seems often to deal in paradoxes. We wondered whether Murnane is also a poet, as the writing feels a bit like poetry, particularly in the abstract way it explores ideas.

We discussed the idea that our reaction to this book says perhaps more about us as readers than about the book - an interesting idea to contemplate because perhaps, more than most books we've read, this book made us think about the reading process and what we like and don't like, what we look for. We learnt a little more about each other as readers as a result!

As to what the book is about, we threw up many ideas, such as:

• Time, and how we understand time.
• Possibilities and not wanting to achieve them or pin them down but rather to always have them ahead, undefined and unresolved. 
• The idea of secret lives happening, of culture going on elsewhere that we know nothing about.
• History and the desire to make sense of records from the past that might in fact be quite arbitrary.

Another issue we explored was whether we might be able to draw any conclusions from when it was written. It was published in 1982, the Fraser era, a pre-modern (our current modern anyhow!) Australia when, although we were highly urbanised, we still had a sense of being defined by the bush, by the interior. One member saw shades of Patrick White's Voss in the sense of looking inwards, though said they are very different books. Another said it felt a little like Cormac McCarthy's Blood meridian and the mythic sense he conveys with larger than life characters, though again said they are very different books.

Finally we discussed the fact that the narrator plans to make a film - though he never does. We considered Australian films like The proposition and The tracker (in which the characters aren't named). These films focus somewhat on how we deal with landscape, with place. We wondered whether Murnane is creating in this novel a filmic view of ourselves, a chimera perhaps? There's a sense of exploring the nexus between illusion and reality and not being sure, or not wanting to define, where one ends and the other begins. Without giving anything away, the novel closes on an image of the narrator with his "eye pressed against the lens" of his camera. One member thought was a perfect image - in and, perhaps, for the book.

Please, Minervans, add your comments below because this was a hard discussion to write up!

The street sweeper by Elliot Perlman

This month everybody who read this book liked (or loved) it and those still reading wanted to finish it. However, the contrived nature of the story spoilt it for some people.

This novel shows the importance of history and telling stories -- 'tell everyone what happened here ' is the main refrain through the story.  Dr Adam Zignelik, one of the main characters gives a lecture to his students at Columbia University early in the novel which is pivotal to the story. The lecture's topic is 'What is History ?'  Is something told to you, true or false and how much information do you need to know to be able to tell the difference ? We envied those students ! Can we use history to predict the future ?

The refrain is about the holocaust and what happened to the millions of Jews in the Nazi death camps during the Second World War. It is truly shocking in the graphic scenes !

The story of a death camp is told by a survivor, Henryk Mandelbrot, who was forced to work for the Nazis in the Sonderkommando. This factual 'tale' is told to poor Lamont Williams, the street sweeper and ex-con and 'innocent' main character. At the same time there is the fascinating and factual life of Dr Border (David Boder in real life), another University professor, who visited the death camps and concentration camps just after the War, capturing the stories of the survivors. Concurrently we hear about Adam Zignelik's life, an Australian/American intellectual, experiencing his own problems and getting involved with Dr Border's research.

It was felt that the characters were totally real and we loved Lamont -- he was such a battler. We also loved the scene where Lamont's cousin's daughter, Sonia is accused by her Mum, Michelle of saying the  'n' word.  Charlie, Michelle's husband is studying 'reconstruction' -- in other words, post civil war reconstruction (late 19th century) -- which was crucial in leading to the Civil Rights movement. He was an academic caught up in research and had little family life or even time for his friends, such as Adam. Was Adam clinically depressed ? Or was he just a wimp about his life with Diana, fathering a child and his career prospects ?

This novel is a great mixture of the real with the imagined 'history' and this lead to a discussion on history and imagination and how Kate Grenville was controversial in her depiction of early Sydney and the lives of the convicts. Likewise 'appropriation' could also be considered an issue in this novel -- we didn't really answer this -- Kate Grenville for instance, didn't tell her story from the Indigenous view point.  'The Street Sweeper' is such an amazing combination of stories about Jewish people and factual world history interwoven with the exploits of African Americans, real and fictional,  in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The resistance movement in the concentration camp surprised and horrified us, particularly for Rosa.  The Jewish Union officials were true to type -- their love of chicken soup was a slightly comic scene in amongst the seriousness.

Perlman's message is about every action having a consequence and life is about making ethical choices and how we must take small steps --realising that there are many dimensions to a problem.  Perlman engages us in narrating these stories -- third person narration most often with a melancholic tone throughout. A complex book which was apparently panned by 'The Guardian'. In our opinion it was a great novel -- certainly the best for the year so far.




    

Some books to consider for 2013

Potential Stella Prize contenders

The following books have been suggested by novelist Chris Flynn as possibilities for the (inaugural) 2012 Stella Prize:

• Carrie Tiffany, Mateship with Birds
• Deborah Robertson, Sweet Old World
• Paddy O’Reilly, The Fine Colour of Rust
• Susan Johnson, My Hundred Lovers
• Josephine Rowe, Tarcutta Wake
• Toni Jordan, Nine Days
• Chloe Hooper, The Engagement
• Michele DeKretser, Questions of Travel
• Drusilla Modjeska, The Mountain
• Romy Ash, Floundering

I've only read a couple of these so far (the Toni Jordan and Deborah Robertson), but they are probably all worth considering.

Canberra region books

We've talked about having a bit of a focus on Canberra next year given the centenary. Here are some ideas for that too:

• Irma Gold (ed), The Invisible Thread (an anthology of works by writers with a Canberra association)
• Alan Gould, The Seaglass Spiral
• Anita Heiss, Paris Dreaming (indigenous chicklit, deals with Aboriginal art and set in Canberra and Paris)
• Frank Moorhouse, Cold light (the third in his Edith trilogy and set in the Canberra public service)
• Kel Robertson, Smoke and mirrors (a crime book, and the book voted to represent Canberra in this year's National Year of Reading)

And of course

Hilary Mantel, Bring up the bodies (sequel to Wolf Hall and this year's Booker winner)

If you have other ideas, let me know in the comments and I'll add them to this post. We'll be discussing our schedule at our November meeting.

A difficult young man, by Martin Boyd

Courtesy Sydney University Press

It was a rather unruly discussion when Minervans met this month to discuss the Australian classic, A difficult young man by Martin Boyd. A difficult young man is the second of what is now known as the Langton tetralogy and has an autobiographical element but, as the narrator tells us:

... the reader must take certain wild statements as intended for fun, though they contain an element of truth too subtle to be confined within the limits of accurate definition. One can make exact statements of fact, but not of truth, which is why the scientist is forever inferior to the artist.

Ha, there's a lot packed in there but the main point is that the book contains, we thought, a lot of truths about the Boyd family while the facts of their lives diverge.

Our discussion started with two members talking about their close encounters with the Boyds. One member's father knew Arthur Boyd, Martin's nephew, and could have had a Boyd portrait of her father in the family if only her father had foreseen the future! The other member lived near the Boyds in Melbourne. She was friendly with Martin Boyd's great niece and visited their home. How many degrees of separation do the rest of us get from these!

Most finished the book, and most liked it, but a couple found the style hard-going. We discussed the long rambling sentences and suggested that in some ways the style is "old-fashioned". Yet, many of us also felt the self-analytical, self-deprecating tone had a modern feel. One member liked the fact that the characters felt like real rather than fictional people - they'd come and go in the story like real people she said. Another member felt that the wit, irony and satire reminded her of Jane Austen, even though his narrative voice (first person) and plot (more family saga than romance) are not at all like Austen. Several members spoke of the great descriptions in the novel, such as this description of a young woman:

She spoiled her appearance by a peevish manner, and her exquisite fragility had little correspondence with her inner nature, which was as hard as the enamel on a snuff box.

We liked the satire and Boyd's astute observations about people.

The plot focuses on the eldest brother (well, promoted to eldest after the tragic death of his older brother), Dominic, and is about Guy's attempts to understand him. We felt that while the story is ostensibly about Dominic (loosely based on Merric Boyd), the novel is in many ways about Guy himself. Guy describes a well-to-do family, pre-world war 1, in which paid employment has not been the expected thing. The result is some level of class snobbery, but one borne of their family circumstances than of any active desire to denigrate others. In fact, the family finds itself at the wrong end of snobbery when they spend time in England where they are seen rather as New World upstarts. It was suggested that these books would make a great miniseries, à la Downton Abbey or The Forsyte Saga.

While we didn't spend a lot of time discussing theme (or what the book is about), we did discuss it a little. We felt that one theme was to explain why his family was the way it was. Other themes we noticed included promoting a humane way of viewing the world (one that abhors cruelty like war), and the value of living a creative life. The Boyds have certainly emulated the latter through several generations now. There is also, in the book, a sense of the end of an era - particularly for the leisured class - something that the father, Steven in the book, sees coming but which they are not necessarily well prepared for.

There was much more discussed and quotes shared but the conversation was so animated that I didn't manage to capture anywhere near all the points raised and talked about - so I hope members whose points have not been properly represented here will add them in the comments!

Near the end of the discussion, one member bemoaned the fact that she hadn't heard of this novel before and wondered why, suggesting that Martin Boyd had been overlooked by the Australian literary establishment because of his "English-ness". Others weren't so sure of her thesis, particularly those who had heard of Boyd and his novels. There are so many novels out there, it's not surprising we haven't all heard of them all, even the significant ones! We appreciate the work of publishers like Text bringing these books to the fore again.

And now I will close on a mundane point. Two members read the book in e-versions (one on a Kindle and one using the Book-ish service). Both complained that their books were presented with a skewed chronology: their books went something like chs. 1, 2, 3, 9, 5, 6, 7 ... to the "real" last chapter, followed by ch. 4. How disconcerting. These were not free versions ... seems like rather sloppy quality control to us!