Coetzee is among my favorite Nobel Prize winners. There is a deep vein of humor in his work—so deep we may never break into overt laughter—but a vein Coetzee is among my favorite Nobel Prize winners. There is a deep vein of humor in his work—so deep we may never break into overt laughter—but a vein that is fast and cold and refreshing. These essays are criticism for the work of others, and choosing the order from among the selections is a rare delight.
In Nemesis, one of a series of novels written by Philip Roth, Roth confronts the idea of a plague visited upon a city, in his case “the polio summer of Newark in 1944.” The reader is unsure for most of the novel who is writing. A voice belonging to Arnie is describing the life and inner thoughts of another person, a man called Bucky Cantor. "The novel is an artfully constructed and suspenseful novel with a cunning twist towards the end." Reading Coetzee read Roth is revelatory.
Another essay highlights my second encounter with the work of Heinrich von Kleist, whom another author I admire has called greater than Shakespeare. Heinrich von Kleist wrote in the early part of the 19th Century, and died by his own hand at age thirty-four. Von Kleist was a playwright foremost and wrote prose fiction for money, thinking it a very inferior art form. His “Michael Kohlhaas” story has lasted two centuries, lately resurrected every couple of years with new film treatments, i.e., The Jack Bull (1999), and Age of Uprising (2013). I understand that story is now considered a novella rather than a short story; I was able to discover it reprinted in Twelve German Novellas, translated and edited by Harry Steinhauer. Hopefully that's up next.
On the subject of Samuel Beckett, Coetzee breaks his musings into four separate essays, one concerned with the young Beckett, one on Watt, and one on Molloy. His final essay “Eight Ways of looking at Beckett” completes his examination. So thorough and intriguing are these essays, they could be used as the basis of a university course, with students reading Beckett (in the original French if possible) and Coetzee’s observations. Why did Beckett begin to write in French?
"Part of the answer must be that by 1946 it had become clear to him that France was and would in future be his home. Another part of the answer was that the French language was hospitable to a savage directness of tone that he wanted to cultivate."
What I find so intriguing about his analysis of Molloy is that Coetzee finds the soliloquy assigned to Molloy
"…is not the voice of an individual, a ‘character’ (in this case Molloy), but the communal voice of much of Beckett’s fiction from Molloy onwards. It is a voice that seems to echo, or take dictation from, another remoter and more mysterious voice… "
Coetzee moves on, sharing facts about fellow citizen Patrick White who on most counts is considered
"…the greatest writer Australia has produced, though the sense in which Australia produced him needs at once to be qualified: he had his schooling in England, studied at Cambridge University, spent his twenties as a young man about town in London, and during the Second World War served with the British armed forces.”
Patrick White’s fiction was too difficult for me to grasp when I first encountered him, and I see in Coetzee’s discussion so many reasons why White escaped me. This delicious substantive critical analysis mixed with well-chosen highlights from the author’s biography is perfectly intelligible to someone not steeped in the tradition of criticism. White wrote of an adult world outside of my experience. I was more at the understanding level of his Kathy Volkov, a thirteen-year-old girl in The Vivisector, “for whom White draws—a little too closely at times—on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.”
Coetzee does not discuss the work of David Malouf (born 1934) or Thomas Keneally (born 1935) in this work, but does discuss the work of their contemporary of whom I have never heard, the so-called fiction writer, Gerald Murnane (born 1939). Murnane was of Irish Catholic descent and suffered for it. His work was apparently awash in self-criticism, uncertainty, fear, and lacked the standard features of novels. In his later years he admitted,
“I should never have tried to write fiction or non-fiction or anything in-between. I should have left it to discerning editors to publish all my pieces as essays.”
The extraordinary range of Coetzee's essays, covering writers from every continent over five centuries, is the least of its astonishments and delights. What we appreciate most is Coetzee’s deep reading and enlightened presentation, his enjoyment of untangling the mysteries of great and not-so-great writing, and the fact that not for a moment is he dismissive or forgetful of the ordinary human failures we all share.
All of the essays have been previously published, many in The New York Review of Books. Others are mostly excerpts of Introductions written for reprints of his subject’s work. In one of his essays on Patrick White, Coetzee discusses White’s insistence, before he died in 1990, that his unpublished papers be destroyed. They were not. Coetzee suggests authors who know their executors will not comply with their wishes do the deed themselves before they are too infirm. He has thought about his own legacy, I suppose. I wonder what he will choose to do....more
Teaching tools must be updated often now to keep pace with the chances in our awareness & social development. This geography book was published in 201Teaching tools must be updated often now to keep pace with the chances in our awareness & social development. This geography book was published in 2015, and seems to have taken into consideration most of the complaints about earlier cultural tourism. It looks like a fun book--teachers may find themselves skimming but getting caught in the interesting detail and in imagining how they would present the material in class. It is a colorful round-the-world tour of certain countries and parts of the world, e.g., A for Australia...
To my eye, it looked appropriate for 10-year-olds, but I have seen it listed for third-sixth graders, in the U.S., that would be 8-11. That seems about right.
It has a current feel. Women are shown, not all working in traditional jobs, and there is a sort of poem at the start of each new letter that can be put to a beat, if one wanted. Could be useful for class projects....more
Berns uses what he’s learned about human cognition and emotion in the title of this book, which promises insights into the understanding of the dog brBerns uses what he’s learned about human cognition and emotion in the title of this book, which promises insights into the understanding of the dog brain. To be fair, the book does discuss experiments and findings involving what happens in a dog’s brain while commands are given and associations are made. But the book goes far beyond the dog to discuss cognition and sentience in animals of many kinds, principally by using evidence from MRI and fMRI brain scans. It is a fascinating look at the study of neuroscience on animals.
Despite the density of terms required to study neuroscience, Berns guides us easily through the basics, allowing us to understand the principal goal of their studies on dogs: to determine how dogs process information. I will admit to a degree of awe to think they could manage to get a dog to voluntarily crouch within a noisy MRI machine and stay immoveable long enough to be scanned while the scientists perform tests. Georgia dog trainer Mark Spivak was given a shout-out at the end of this book for his insights and indefatigable efforts to this end.
The decades-long work of Peter Cook of the pinniped labs in Santa Cruz, CA is highlighted for several chapters beginning with “Seizing Sea Lions.” Berns and Cook worked together to determine the effects of domoic acid toxicity on normal patterns of connectivity in the brains of dead sea lions. Domoic toxicity caused by agricultural runoff was determined to be the cause of a wave of malnourished sea lion strandings during El Niño years.
After the sea lions come dolphins, a discussion of how echolocation manifests in the brain, and some indication how dolphin brains resemble and differ from other mammals. Then back to dogs, where studies have shown a real possibility that rats and dogs may experience regret: regret for choices that do not turn out as desirable as anticipated. Berns acknowledges it is difficult to imagine regret in a rat, but he suggests that our word for it does not limit the experience of the emotion to those who understand the word. From here he moves from “what do words mean to animals”?
The detail in his discussion of dog training with words and visual cues may lead other scientists to suggest tweaks that may lead to even greater understanding of the emotional responses of animals. Enough work has been done now on a variety of mammals (and even crows!) to show emotions are a part of their brain activity and daily life. But what appeared to be almost a failure of dogs to recognize words led to a new insight:
“It may be that in a dog’s semantic space, actions and things are very close, which would explain why it was so difficult to teach the dogs the names of things. The semantic representation for ‘squirrel’ might be to ‘chase and kill,’ while ‘ball’ becomes ‘chase and retrieve.’…Human represent the world with nouns…it might require a shift in perspective—in this case, from a noun-based worldview to one based in action…In an action-based worldview, everything would be transactional.”
In one of the final chapters, called “A Death in Tasmania,” Berns tries something completely different. He writes of his experience traveling to Australia to view the habitat and scan the brain of an Tasmanian Tiger, a marsupial mammal species thought to be extinct. As an experience and as a piece of research, it is as different from his earlier work as studying the brains of placental mammals and marsupial mammals, two animals who evolved differently over millennia. Berns uses narrative nonfiction techniques to situate us visually, historically, physically in “one of the last great wildernesses on Earth…utterly unique and worthy of protection.”
The chapter on Tasmania really highlighted Berns’ special skills as a scientist—his ability to look beyond the lab to the wider meanings of neuroscience “for the rest of us,” as he emphasized in his final chapter on the “Dog Lab.” Working for so long on understanding the extent of animal cognition, consciousness, sentience, or self-awareness has led him to animal advocacy, if only for our own selfish reasons. “We, Homo sapiens, might soon be an animal in the eyes of our successors…” given our tinkering and experimentation with the human genome. One day unmodified humans may be considered undesirable, inferior.
Berns has skill in involving us, allowing us to follow his work. He would like to map the brains of the Earth’s megafauna with the best science and equipment available today.
“The WWF estimates that two-thirds of many species’ populations maybe gone by 2020. [Is 2020 a misprint?] Apart from the ecological catastrophe, scientific opportunities may be lost forever. It is imperative that we begin the archival process for all species, and especially for megafauna…”
There is something old fashioned about Helen Garner’s essays. We are therefore surprised to see a reference to Amy Winehouse makeup, Obama, or the bruThere is something old fashioned about Helen Garner’s essays. We are therefore surprised to see a reference to Amy Winehouse makeup, Obama, or the brutality of Russell Crowe films. It could be her work seems old fashioned because it is so exquisitely shaped: who would have picked out that particular incident or phrase out of all the incidents and phrases one experiences in a lifetime and held it up, gemlike, for us to admire? This restraint, clarity, exactitude is so rare in a world where everyone writes for a world audience every day.
Helen Garner may be a household name in her native Australia. I’d never heard of her until I came across a reference to her on Goodreads recently. She is an Australian novelist, essayist, journalist…let’s call her master wordsmith. Her essays jump into your life with two feet and settle in forever, never to be forgotten. Her voice is woman writ large. I adore her sense of entitlement to her own opinions, now she is in her seventies. If only Australia didn't keep its best to itself.
This collection of essays was published last year by Text Publishing of Melbourne, Australia. I wonder how that works nowadays, that a book published in Australia is sold in the United States. In any case, I am very grateful it is possible to have read these brave, crazy, funny, deeply interesting and beautifully written pieces on growing up in fifties and sixties Australia, writing for a living, marrying badly, being a grandmother to a boy who can calm down and relax when he can slip into his cowboy outfit after the stress of a vacation away.
These essays were all written in the last twenty years or so, but some look back: “In the late 1970’s I lived in Paris for awhile…” and “When I was in my forties I went on holiday to Vanuatu…” It is certain that we get the best of all possible worlds because these stories are the ones that float to the surface after a lifetime of writing, and because of that lifetime of writing the words are crafted with economy for clarity and meaning. Each idea is distilled so dramatically that we are mainlining experience—a short sharp shock of memory and what it meant in the context of a life.
Her curiosity inflames us. Garner has harbored a fascination with crime, not with psychopaths, but with ordinary folk under extraordinary pressure. Her essays and stories can be dark, but she is so intimate with her thinking, we get distracted into self-examination. She captures something that we, had we been careful, thoughtful, and honest, might recognize as the lesser side of being human: a kind of despair, confusion, uncertainty, and a search for quiet, clarity, stability, and love. She looks at our crisis moments and wonders, what caused this?
Garner looks for telling moments in her own life, and listens to what those moments tell her about herself, which she then conveys to us, making us laugh, sign, commiserate. She is tough on herself, and sometimes on others: one of her early essays tells of her long friendship with the Australian author Tim Winton. The younger man got more attention with his writing than she did, so she could sometimes rough him up a little for payback.
And Garner herself admits to being “scorched” by the journalist Janet Malcolm who apparently reviewed The First Stone: Some Questions of Sex and Power in The New Yorker (I can’t find that review, alas!). Malcolm was always Garner’s role model, the one “who has influenced and taught me more than any other.” Garner tells us of Malcolm’s phrase, “the rapture of firsthand encounters with another’s lived experience,” which describes perfectly what I feel when I read Garner’s essays.
New Yorker staff writer James Wood reviewed this collection of essays last year. If I had seen it then, I would have known of Garner a year earlier. Somehow that seems important. This collection I would love to have on my shelf to dip into again and again to see how she did that sense of immediacy and intimacy and personality.
This debut novel won the 2015 Victoria Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. Can you imagine the fantastic possibility of that? HarpThis debut novel won the 2015 Victoria Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. Can you imagine the fantastic possibility of that? Harper explains in an interview with Bookpage that she began writing the novel as part of a 12-week online novel writing class. It must be like getting blast out of a rocketship.
Americans have no doubt heard of the bushland fires Victoria state has experienced in the recent past. Weather patterns that leave huge portions of the Australian countryside water-starved can kill communities even before fire removes all signs of human habitation. People therefore rely on one another and suffer together when some members of the community experience hardship.
This fiction takes place in a country town experiencing drought conditions. Families as well as government-provided services and facilities are experiencing enormous stress. Author Harper brings Aaron Falk, a former resident, now a federal agent responsible for financial crimes in Melbourne, back to the bush to attend the funeral of a once-friend. He reminds townspeople of the reason he left so abruptly twenty years previously.
Two stories, one a long-unsolved cold case, are worked in this novel. The more recent crime is a spectacular triple murder-suicide of a family, sparing only an infant. The presumed killer is thought to be the father of the family unit, who died of a gunshot wound. Experienced crime readers will find small inconsistencies in what the characters reveal which can give clues to outcome.
I listened to the Macmillan Audio production of this mystery, very successfully read by Stephen Shanahan. Shanahan’s accent was very Australian but perfectly understandable, reminding readers that the setting is significantly different from an American experience. He managed to convey a wide range of emotions by both sexes without straying from a straightforward script. Good job all round....more
Gosh, I wasn't crazy about this. Godfrey-Smith is an Australian, Sydney native, teaching at City University in New York. He began studying octopus in Gosh, I wasn't crazy about this. Godfrey-Smith is an Australian, Sydney native, teaching at City University in New York. He began studying octopus in 2008 by following them around in scuba gear. He is a philosopher, not a scientist. I did not grasp that when we began. There were some very un-scientific notions presented that struck me as weird
"[Cephalopods and baboons] are both partial cases, unfinished, in a sense, though one should not think of evolution as goal-directed."
I should think not. There was some other strange stuff about a gentleman who became aphasic occasionally but still had to express himself, which he did by pointing. Godfrey-Smith thought the man's aphasia 'proved' the man no longer had the capacity for language...despite the man being mentally aware and was pointing to things. Just seems a notion the author is floating that doesn't really bear scrutiny.
Look, the man had some terrific times observing squid, giant cuttlefish, and octopus and has some terrific stories (and even some photos) to tell about them--the way they morph shape, texture, and color and look interested to be around humans. We learn that the cephalopods live about two years, which does seem exceptionally short, though Godfrey-Smith goes off on another philosophical tangent about why such a big-brained animal would live so short a time when the dopes of the animal kingdom live comparatively forever.
Australian novelist Rohan Wilson came roaring out of the starting block with his first novel, The Roving Party, published in 2011 in Australia, anAustralian novelist Rohan Wilson came roaring out of the starting block with his first novel, The Roving Party, published in 2011 in Australia, and in 2014 by Soho Press for the U.S. market. That first novel described the hunt for aboriginals still residing in Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost island state. In the 19th Century, white European settlers began to capture and eliminate to extinction the native black aborigines in Tasmania, calling this period The Black War. The Roving Party reimagines this period using real historical figures and accounts. The book was shortlisted or won several national and regional awards.
The main character in Wilson’s second novel, Thomas Toosey, was once a member of one of those roving bands, though what he learned in service was that blacks were residents there first, and that a knife is a powerful inducement. Toosey remembers his own family with longing, even though his wife sold his alcoholic self down the river for a few quid more than ten years previously. Living rough in Deloraine after leaving the convict town of Port Arthur, he learns via desperate letter from his son William that his wife has died.
The journey to Launceston and the search for his son, who has been living on the street since the death of his mother, reads like a fever dream: very visual, very sweaty, very terrifying. We are aghast to find Toosey has stolen banknotes from his friend Flynn, and caused a terrible accident to befall Flynn's daughter. Toosey had been looking for enough cash to start a new life away from Tasmania with his son.
Wilson’s special skill is making history come alive; he sets his personal drama within the context of an 1874 railroad protest in Launceston. He makes it epic: characters struggle with life or death, right or wrong, him or me, now or never, as though they ever had any agency and they were not just playthings for the gods. There are so many watchers and witnesses in this novel, they take on the character of a chorus in a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearean meme, able to shift the action minutely. Street urchins, hobos and tramps, hotel workers, cops—many folks are watching this personal struggle play out: Thomas Toosey seeking son William, trailed by revenge-seeking Flynn, in the middle of a city gone berserk.
The opening lines of this novel are visual enough to describe a film, or a manga comic.
"Her head hit the floorboard, bounced, and a fog of ash billowed, thrown so by the motion of her spade."
This is William’s mother falling down near-dead from a standing position while sweeping the grate. Her son, William, races in shortly after with a growler of stolen brewery beer to give her, only to discover he needs a doctor instead. Racing away to find a doctor, William is waylaid by a cop who wants to put the twelve-year-old away for the brewery theft.
Right here, right at the start of this novel, we can feel the tension Wilson sets up for us between a grisly realism and an absurd, immovable, buffoonish cop whose comic deafness derails the child’s plans and kills the mother. The rest of the book follows from this cruel dichotomy: absurd life, spectacular death, and the struggle between them. It almost seems if anyone stopped to think for just a second about what they were struggling for, the fight would go out of them, a legitimate philosophical stance and an accurate way to observe the human condition.
"History is the art by which we lead our lives."
Once again Wilson has taken a historical moment in Tasmania, looked deeply into its components, and the whole thing bursts into life—into flame, as it were. We reimagine convict life in Port Arthur, the muddy streets of Deloraine, the bustle and insincerity of worldly Launceston…and real moral conundrum. Wilson has one of the ‘orphans’ stand in the shadows, observing the action, knowing more about motivations and outcomes than the combatants engaged in life or death struggle. That orphan can change everything. Will she?
"There is as much ruin comes from love as virtue…Do not follow that fool into his hole. He wanted more for you. You need to want more for yourself."
Wilson won another award for this novel, the 2015 Victoria Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. Definitely worthy of attention, his work is big: it encompasses large, important themes, and at the same time, is completely unique....more
Wow. This huge, powerful novel is so minutely observed that readers can be forgiven for occasionally missing the forest for the trees. Sex, race, and Wow. This huge, powerful novel is so minutely observed that readers can be forgiven for occasionally missing the forest for the trees. Sex, race, and class are backdrop here, setting and makeup for half-a-life of self-abnegation performed on a world stage. Dichotomies between first world/third world value sets, the insular self-preserving life of huge celebrities, the influence of money on impulses of every kind, the debts we owe another, how generosity manifests, who “family” really is— these life-critical issues are part of Zadie Smith’s latest novel. It bowled me over.
The story begins with two young girls, both fascinated with musical theatre and dance, as closely entwined as stems from the same seed, growing apart as they grew up together, the result of outsized talent and personality on one side, and a confusion of identities and timidity on the other. One takes a job dancing on stage, the other handmaiden to a dancer on a bigger stage. The confusion of identities is not challenged for years, during which time the handmaiden begins to observe cracks in the world she sought to manage.
She is nameless, the narrator. By dint of parental steering, she finished university and managed to find her way into managing logistics for a superstar, a singer/dancer. Descriptions of her work grow less enthralled as she ages out of the job ten years on, after discovering along the way that she may have been hired or kept on because she was a “woman of color” and filled a slot rather than for any perceived talent. In fact, the one time she does display an actual talent—for singing—her boss threatened to fire her.
Looking at a changed world without the prism supplied by the superstar, she realizes there is little she can take away from that time. The lessons she learned may not be ones she wants to keep, and she is not sure if she knows how to speak to a person dying, or how to be friends, or how to care, or how to make people around her feel benefit from her success.
Smith raises many issues in this novel but doesn’t solve many of them for us. The thing she does do so beautifully is poke a mixed London heritage and point to those little moments we recognize: anguish over unequal opportunity disguised as childish jealousy (Tracey); admiration for someone's ability to draw people into their orbit with generosity and joy (Hiwot in West Africa, her mother in London); how to be just who you are without designators like age or race or education or accomplishments (her father, James & Darryl in NYC).
The narrator is a shadow yet, in the beginning and at end of the novel, by her own admission, and not grown into her own persona. But we are there the moments she begins to see, to recognize who she is, what she believes, and what she has missed.
“Now everyone knows who you really are.”
We do, and we feel so many other things as well. She is vulnerable, but suddenly able to see, hear, think, feel. She is in danger, but instead of being frightened, she feels a tingle…that’s blood rushing. Why does it take so long for humans to develop their sense? She is on her way, and she’ll do fine. The last thing her mother says to her is that she would make a good mother. And she would. But so will many others, even those who look incapable of it. Even Tracey. Even Aimee. Even her. She did learn something about love after all.
“The future is the same as the past.”
What did Lamman mean when he said this to Fern? Perhaps he meant our future is in our past, or the future is created from the past or the past determines the future.
I listened to this novel, published by Penguin Random House Audio and read by Pippa Bennett-Warner. Bennett-Warner was amazing. She made a plethora of accents perfectly distinguishable, at least five London accents alone, two Australian, Jamaican, West African, along with NYC and generic American, male and female. That’s pretty grand, no matter how you cut it. I took my time over this, did not mark my place as I listened, so often listened twice to any section to catch up to my last heard scene. I was never bored. Smith packed so much seeing in each scene, I was thinking the entire time. Impressive in every way, and tons to talk about if readers choose this for a reading group. Which I recommend. ...more
The extraordinary sense of dislocation we experience in Maxine Beneba Clarke’s first short story collection is intentional. Every story describes a diThe extraordinary sense of dislocation we experience in Maxine Beneba Clarke’s first short story collection is intentional. Every story describes a different type of “foreignness.” Clarke takes on the voice and persona of every nationality of yellow, brown, black, or white person, those with red hair, blond, or soft black curls. Each story describes a pain, an experience, that is commonplace enough among the natives she describes to be recognizable. Clark makes us uncomfortable. Slipping on the cloak of “other” isn’t always convincing, but her work is always an interesting and effective challenge to readers.
Clarke writes from Australia, but from an Australia that feels unfamiliar even in its English. Her stories put us on the back foot, and make us query. We are constantly scouring the words she has given us to divine her meaning. It feels sometimes as though she left us clues, but the cultural markers are not the ones we are familiar using. We have the experience of being the “other.” I grew to admire the discomfort Clarke evoked in me, at how many unfamiliar incidents she forced me to look at closely. If she did an insufficient job of navigating and communicating that episode, why do I feel that way and how would I do it? Oh yes, she’s a clever one.
The most absorbing and impelling, while still not entirely comforting, was the title story, “Foreign Soil.” An Australian hairdresser falls for a client and accompanies him back to Uganda. Cultural habits learned from childhood start seeping into his behaviors before he is even out of the airport. By the time she discovers she is pregnant, she knows she is not going to marry this man.
Many of Clarke’s stories could easily be turned into a classic horror stories. They have that feel. We grow afraid to peer around the next page, wondering what damage will be done to her characters in the meantime. Even in “Foreign Soil” we wonder if the wife won’t be walled up, literally and forever, inside the doctor’s quiet, lonely compound in Africa.
The story “Shu Yi” likewise has a horror pedigree reminiscent of Shirley Jackson, or other horror greats. An Asian immigrant without good language skills must navigate a white middle school which hosts one black adolescent. The black student is asked to interface the two groups, but is unwilling to risk her position of safety, an invisibility she feels she has earned. Observing, or putting ourselves in place of the black student—any road will get you there—deliver unto us the most vivid discomfiture.
Some of the stories are interlocking, or self-referencing. For instance, we may discover one of the stories being discussed later in the collection, as in “The Sukiyaki Book Club.” The emergence into metafiction is entirely consistent with the self-acknowledging feel of the whole work. Clearly no one author could have experienced, or even known people who experienced, all these different lives.
The stories, therefore, are a suggestion, a question-mark, an initial attempt to understand what others’ lives are. Readers are meant to take the fútbôl and run with it, changing what needs to be changed, adding flourishes and corrections until we finish up together, panting and laughing and sure we did our best, win or lose.
An example of an early story which put the wind up was “Harlem Jones,” about a young angry black man determined to make his mark in a London demonstration, even to the point of “cutting off his nose to spite his face.” This story did not seem to quite capture the mind of a young man: there was not enough fear and, at the same time, immortality in it.
Dissatisfied, I moved on, only to discover this was a thread, a kind of authorial technique. Clarke wanders in over her head, and looks to us. I grew to like her relying on us to think, to add our own understanding and our own spices. I did, though, also see room for greater clarity in style. Writing as a profession presumes we have something to say, but also that we say it well, and clearly, so that it is not mistaken. There was room for greater clarity, even supposing Australian and American are two different languages.
Clarke is a slam poetry artist, Australian, of Afro-Caribbean descent. Her Australia is unlike any I have encountered before. She has three books of poetry published or shortly due out, won awards for this story collection even before it was published, and has a memoir, The Hate Race, just published August 2016 in Australia. She has talent and plenty of room to run with it. Expect to hear more from her. 3.5 stars....more
Coetzee’s quiet skill shows us how an old bible story parallels events that happen today in every country—the dislocation of migration for instance—maCoetzee’s quiet skill shows us how an old bible story parallels events that happen today in every country—the dislocation of migration for instance—making us scour the landscape for examples of God working through us. By telling the old story in a new way, we think anew about Christian values—charity, kindness, and love for instance—and what they really mean in practice.
The city Estrella to which Davíd, Inés and Simón escape sounds remarkably like Australia when spoken. Davíd attends a school without regular classes, called the Dance Academy, which teaches numbers through dance by calling the numerals down from the stars. His teacher, Ana Magdalena, is a beautiful woman. After she is horribly attacked by a man who claims to love her, Davíd discovers her body.
The cast of characters is more transparent than the earlier book, though were I to go back to that earlier piece now, having read this one, I’m sure I would find more in it that fits into the myth. What we find ourselves contemplating is the lack of stability in the world, and our need for the society of others. We learn the difference between passion and love between people (passion is selfish while love is unselfish), but also the perhaps contradictory need for passion when choosing a field of study.
We learn that there is evil, that sometimes people do evil things. There is something…something along the lines of “pay attention” that makes the point that we must not be careless with our actions, but should have reasons for what we do. Until the heart of a bear can be put into a human being, Simón tells Davíd, people will have to take responsibility for their actions. “I don’t know why” is no kind of an excuse for bad behavior. We’ll find out in the next installment what happens to those who knowingly do things that will harm others.
Coetzee is such a master. His descriptions of children’s speech and actions are so perceptive—like the dog Bolívar’s swagger—that we trust his descriptions of the sisters on the farm, and Señor Arroyo’s sister Mercedes, who finally teaches Simón to dance, to remember, and maybe to get his passion back.
I like everything about this series. Coetzee gives it to us in installments rather than trying to make one big book of it. As a result, the stories are slim things, which allows us to read with attention. After all, the underlying story is going to be familiar to most of the world. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim believers have all learned the life of Jesus.
The book is available in audio, produced by HighBridge and read by James Cameron Stewart. It is listening to Stewart’s very British accent that I discovered that Estrella sounds so much like Australia. We know Simón and family learned Spanish when they left Novilla, but I'm going to guess the accent you have in your head for this family is not British. No matter. Stewart does a magnificent job. Read or listen, this layered novel is a real treat.
I’d been pronouncing Coetzee’s name wrong for years, so I copy the wiki for you: John Maxwell "J. M." Coetzee ([kutˈseː], kuut-SEE. It occurred to me that I would not be afraid to meet Coetzee, though I am rather timid when I consider meeting other authors I admire. Somehow I imagine he would be kind, and neither he nor I would need to perform....more
McCall Smith could write a story about two flies crawling up a wall. He'd be the perfect storyteller for a child wanting a[n original] story before beMcCall Smith could write a story about two flies crawling up a wall. He'd be the perfect storyteller for a child wanting a[n original] story before bed. In this book he takes five orphaned photographs and creates a backstory. I loved the idea and wanted to see how he managed.
The only thing that kept me from total involvement was that when I studied the photographs - one needs to in order to get clues to plausibility - I came up with different stories which clashed a bit with McCall's. When I would resign myself to buckle down and go with his direction, I found myself a little further on again questioning the direction of a thread he wanted to follow and elaborate.
There must be a lesson in this. Perhaps all fiction begins in the way this book does--with a scrap of thought or an image or a theme--but because we don't know where the book comes from we do not try to invent alongside the author. We merely accept what they have given us as a kind of gospel or truth.
When we know the author is inventing from an image, we argue a little in our heads and cannot stop ourselves from wanting to take over the story. It was an interesting exercise for McCall Smith. I am not entirely sure it worked as well for readers....more
Orthofer lives in New York currently and was founder in 1999 of the complete review, a website dedicated to reviews of recent literature from around tOrthofer lives in New York currently and was founder in 1999 of the complete review, a website dedicated to reviews of recent literature from around the world. In 2002 Orthofer included a blog, The Literary Saloon, which carries news from interviews, reviews, and notes on awards, publication, items of interest from around the internet. Orthofer has been updating it nearly every day.
The reach of Orthofer’s interests is nothing short of astounding. In this compendium of contemporary world literature he tries to include short mention of the work of leading litterateurs around the world and includes dates of publication and translation when a work is mentioned. This is an indispensable guide for those interested in world literature for it introduces readers to new authors and commonalities among authors either in genre or style that allow us to find what suits our own voracious reading habits.
This work can be read for itself, but it is more likely to be used as a reference text for readers interested in contemporary world literature. It can be downloaded as an ebook or referenced from the hardcopy. Continents are broken into constituent parts and each countries’ authors are mentioned with reference to their major works. While I have always thought myself interested in “world literature,” the range of this work makes me realize how parochial my reading has been, mostly limited to the overseas imaginings of writers of English. I note a recent entry in The Literary Saloon claims there has been a huge outpouring of translations of contemporary Arabic literature, a trend surely long awaited.
North American literature is not included in this work because the author is pointing to the need for American readers to vary their diet and expand their horizons:
”Because American authors provide an enormous amount and variety of work, American readers are arguably spoiled for choice even without resorting to fiction from abroad…In almost every other country, foreign literature occupies a central and prominent position, but in the United States it seems to sit far more precariously on the fringes…foreign literature can offer entirely new dimension and perspectives…great literature knows no borders.
When I founded the Complete Review (complete-review.com) in 1999, one of my goals to to take advantage of the Internet’s tremendous reach and connectivity…Ironically, though, one of the shortcomings of this and most other Internet resources is its tremendous scope…[This book] provides an entry point and more general overview various nations’ literatures, as well as a foundation to help readers navigate what is available on the Internet.” —from the Introduction
Orthofer has attempted something most of us might consider impossible, and he has done a convincing job of it. If it lacks anything, it is up to us to help straighten it out. I highly recommend everyone have a look at this book to see what you are missing. If it seems overwhelming, I sympathize. Imagine how Orthofer felt when he began....more
If I had one book to give someone interested in understanding ISIS and the threats we now face from Islamic militancy, it would be this one. PublishedIf I had one book to give someone interested in understanding ISIS and the threats we now face from Islamic militancy, it would be this one. Published in August 2015, this book includes material through the summer of that year, but also digests and explains some of the earlier reports coming out of Syria, the Middle East, and South Asia. Burke also addresses the threat of home-grown terrorism that is most real to Western communities and governments.
Burke began reporting on events relating to the change in the Islamic character of the Middle East and South Asia as a journalist in the 1990s and he has refined his understanding of the changes in those regions ever since. His grasp is both deep and wide—he wishes he could have included more about the movement in South and Southeast Asia because, in his conclusions at the end, he believes that could be the next area to source individuals committed to jihad.
Burke reiterates over the course of his narrative that terrorism is meant to force leaders to act quickly, make mistakes, and take action they ordinarily would not do, destabilizing their governments. Terror is meant to make individuals disrupt their daily routines, causing follow-on economic repercussions. And terror is meant to cause the populace to polarize: people to question their relationships, fear their neighbors, challenge their government, and consider violence. One might argue terror has already caused irremediable changes in the fabric of world society. Burke replies that we must become resilient, savvy, and knowledgeable. Terrorism in the Middle East may have already run its course, but the seeds are everywhere.
The book is not long, and those of you already well-schooled in the history of ISIS may not feel you need to reread the beginning, though I found Burke’s finesse added a depth to my own understanding of the region, besides being the tightest, clearest history I’ve yet seen. Burke adds to the work done previously by making cogent comment on others’ conclusions. For years I’d been wondering about the families of suicide bombers, their apparent acquiescence causing me to question my own understanding of family ties. Burke addresses this directly:
"Suicide bombing is neither a cheap weapon, as often said, nor the spontaneous, organic expression of the inchoate rage of a people. It is a tactic, adopted for specific strategic reasons by terrorists, and which involves the commitment of significant resources if it is going to be successful. The extremist organizations that pioneered the use of the tactic—such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers—rapidly learned that few communities naturally accept the voluntary death of their teenagers. The individual who becomes a human bomb may cost an organization less than a missile but any militant hoping to reply suicide attackers needs to invest heavily and systematically in propaganda designed to build and then maintain a ‘cult of the martyr’ if they are avoid a backlash from relatives, friends and their wider circle. It is not natural for a mother or a father to celebrate the death of a child, and the idea that young men, or increasingly women, should kill themselves in order to kill others, often civilians, has to be normalized…in practical terms, meanwhile, the families of ‘martyrs’ need to be looked after; funerals organized and paid for, valedictory films produced and broadcast; a dedicated infrastructure to find, isolate and condition ‘martyrs’ set up and run. This effort must be constant and places a considerable strain on a groups’ resources. Many Islamic extremist organizations, including IS, make disproportionate use of foreign volunteers as suicide attackers. One reason may well be to make a powerful statement about the extent of their support around the globe. But another may simply be that foreigners are cheaper."
Burke briefly traces the history and methods of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, their differences and similarities, and their current state of play, including their affiliates around the world. He then discusses the threat to the West, drawing on the most important conclusions of Western analysts regarding what has been called home-grown terror or “lone wolves.” He first focuses on terror incidents in Britain and Europe, which I found particularly enlightening. With regards to America, Burke focuses most intensely on the Marathon Bombers in Boston.
Burke takes issue with the notion of ‘lone wolf,’ arguing that the similarities of the public statements of those with wearing this label use many of the same words and concepts, implying an underlying global community that extends far beyond their individual actions. “These men were formed, conditioned and prepared for their ultimate acts over years, if not decades, by an entire culture of extremist activism.”
An interesting outcome of the Arab Spring, Burke notes, is that several relatively Westernized pro-democracy activists turned to Islamic militancy when they were disillusioned during the fifty months from 2011 to 2015 when regimes collapsed, governments failed, and the international community did little to stave off deprivation for citizens facing war or displacement. He speaks of the gangland ethos among converts to Islamic militancy, the ‘jihadi cool,’ and 'jihad meets The Sweeney meets the gangsta.’ There is exploitable weakness there, for both the converts and for the main terror group.
In the final chapter on the future of terror, Burke discusses several completely fascinating long-term surveys or polls done in huge swathes of Islamic territory. The U.S.-based Pew Center published one in 2013 which revealed that support for suicide bombing remains limited, concerns about extremism are high, and levels of support for Al Qaeda remain low, but that perceptions of Western society are are increasingly negative, including views of Christians and Jews. On the Western side, we don't need to go further than our newspapers and TV reports to know that perceptions of Muslims are tanking.
Burke’s final chapter is one readers will not want to miss. In it Burke describes the outcomes of this history of terror—the divisions we see in our societies, the retrenchments in rights, the fear, the polarity—despite the relative lack of physical impact of terror on Western communities. “The real impact of Islamic militancy…is in the Islamic world where the monthly death toll frequently exceeds the total in the West over the past decade.” But the West has had costs: by focusing on terror we did not focus on climate change, the relationships between the West and Arab or Islamic populations have become poisonous, and our own communities have divisions that are destroying us from within. How we deal with the threats we face will define us long into the future.
This book has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2016....more
Legions of reviewers have found this love story between two sociologists working in New Guinea to be completely involving. If I felt less so it may siLegions of reviewers have found this love story between two sociologists working in New Guinea to be completely involving. If I felt less so it may simply be because of the work sociologists do which is faithfully recorded in this novel. The work, the training it requires, the efforts one must make to fulfill one’s mission, exhaust me. In a way, I wish King had made me more involved with the tribes rather than with Nell Stone, her husband Fen, and Andrew Bankson. Now that would be groundbreaking. I felt sympatico with Bankson who was ready to throw his research and his life into the river when he comes upon the other two, fleeing for their lives.
As a love story, there was perhaps a little too much restraint for my taste. I don’t mean I need explicit sex scenes, but societal disapproval could hold little sway for folks living for years in New Guinea among tribes. For people living on the edge of their lives, it seemed a little unlikely. Of course, there was always the unreasonable Fen the lovers had to face…yes, there was that.
Anyway, I loved the ending to this novel. It was sad and brutal, and suited my mood perfectly. King got that part completely right.
I listened to the Blackstone audio production of this title, beautifully read by Simon Vance and Xe Sands. ...more
However, I tried this novel several times, finally going with audio. Do yThe opening haiku by Basho was so gorgeous:
A bee staggers out of the peony.
However, I tried this novel several times, finally going with audio. Do you know what? I still hated it. When I got to the romance part of the novel I just had enough. It sounded so wrong. I think we are done here. And while we are at it, Flanagan had the cachet for me of something very unusual but I can't say I ever really completely "got" him.
Radio and TV coverage of the Snowden leaks were spotty. This book helped to fill in the details, background, and what happened since Snowden showed upRadio and TV coverage of the Snowden leaks were spotty. This book helped to fill in the details, background, and what happened since Snowden showed up in Moscow. Snowden himself, and his girlfriend Lindsay Mills, are fleshed out a little more, and I learned why an American would go to British journalists, the Guardian, with the information he had purloined. It turns out the British, specifically their top-secret telecommunications monitoring arm, GCHQ, collaborated with the NSA: “We have the brains: they have the money. It’s a collaboration that’s worked very well.” [Sir David Omand, Former GCHQ Director] No shortage of egoism and despotism to go around, then.
Snowden was a right-wing libertarian in early writings on the web as a user he called ‘TheTrueHOOHA’. It was frankly unsettling for me to read/listen to his thinking as a teen, and see his progression to action. To use his words, he would like to be viewed as a patriot who believes in the right to privacy enshrined in the U.S. constitution. When I’d first learned of his leaks, I was startled. Listening to his first interview on TV, I was admiring. After reading this book, I am unsettled.
Luke Harding, a Guardian reporter, outlines the Snowden action for us with a minimum of sensationalism but with some incredulity at the scope of the revelations. And the news is pretty sensational. Harding gives a little background into Snowden’s early development, and his foray into working as a U.S. government contractor specializing in the protection of U.S. government communications. Snowden’s amazed and amazing reach into the lives of others via their private data transfers must vindicate the paranoid. While I have my doubts that any world leader or business executive thought their telecommunications were truly secret, Snowden’s revelations are startling in the scope of the data collection and in the holes in the system, e.g., a relatively low-level contractor had access to the material.
I should probably state from the get-go that I do not fear my government. I grew up in an age where inaction was much more to be expected than action; incompetence and bureaucratic bungling was much more common than overreach. I was not subject to the kind of totalitarian control experienced in Eastern Bloc countries, the Soviet Union, or China, but we have those examples to know it can happen. I believe the president and his minions who claim that the government is not listening to the communications of private citizens. They simply do not have the capacity, nor the interest, to do that. However, they now apparently have the means, and individuals within governments can have a deleterious effect upon the stated objectives of government. Snowden has shown us a place where an individual might have an outsized effect to his purported role.
Knowing just what I know now, if I had to make a judgment on Snowden’s fate, I might say he should go to court congruently with the leadership of the NSA and the GCHQ. I don’t think it would have been possible for him to “go up the chain of command” to protest this data collection. It is ridiculous to contemplate that anyone would have listened to him, given the reaction from our fearless leaders upon learning of his revelations. But I wish things had gone differently…for him and for us.
I listened to the Random House Audio version of this title, very ably read by Nicholas Guy Smith. I had a look at the paper copy as well, and found it concise enough that the momentum never lagged. Since Guardian reporters were the ones that initially broke this story, it is reasonable that they are the ones to write the details of what happened and the follow-up. I can’t imagine there is a person out there who wouldn’t be interested in this topic. Inform yourselves. This is going to be a political topic for some years to come. ...more
Grand in scope, filled with human yearning, arrogance, and development, this 2007 novel captures the long stretch of 100 years in the history of AustrGrand in scope, filled with human yearning, arrogance, and development, this 2007 novel captures the long stretch of 100 years in the history of Australia, 1900 to 2000, beginning with the Snowy River flowing free and ending with the staging of the Sydney Olympics.
The boy Wilfred Lampe, the eponymous trout in his scaffolding of wood and wire and his skin of hessian and tin, opens the novel, stumbling about the streets of Dalgety in costume on his way to stage The Trout Opera. The opera never comes off; only later do we realize this is foreshadowing for what is to come to the Snowy River and its ecosystem.¹
“The world’s a stage” for Wilfred as the story progresses, and indeed he is asked to the world stage for the 2000 Olympic Games as the Old Man from Snowy River, a nod to the poem (Man from Snowy River by Banjo Paterson) that many think represents Australian values and attitudes (e.g., talent, skill, grit, and determination).
But while Wilfred lived his entire life by the Snowy River in the house where he was born in a landscape some considered little changed in one hundred years, the rest of Australia changed unimaginably in that same time. We have glimpses of the lives of others through the voices and experiences of his grand-niece who had so little connection with her family that she felt cast adrift.
In an interview, Condon says that he wrote the book after meeting an eighty-year-old man, Ray Reid, who remembered the great Snowy before the dams were built, which reduced river flow to 1% of its earlier strength. Condon found himself contrasting the beauty of the land with the urban and suburban lives of modern Australians.
The Trout Opera is Condon’s first novel, and he started it without all the skills he needed to finish it. But that very lack of expertise leaves readers with something rare: a story large in scope, size, and heart which encompasses his imaginings about the nature of family, the importance of wealth, indeed, the meaning of life…with Australia and the Snowy Mountains as backdrop. It gives readers glimpses into the national dialogue, the place of Australia in the world, and finally, an understanding of the rich heritage they have to preserve.
One prominent and unforgettable character is Graham Featherstone, nighttime radio host, who listened to the dreams and failures of countless sleepless folks who want to hear the voice of another in the night. Featherstone lets loose one night with his own despair and preoccupations about the state of civility and the loss of a national character, using all the woes he has heard and felt over the years to deliver one long rant. His cynicism and smarts is noted by his listeners, and he is asked to play another role as investigative journalist into the abduction of Old Man Snowy.
That is how he comes to be in the mountains at the source of Snowy, refreshed and relaxed, when the stupendous opening ceremony of the Sydney Games commences. The story has no ending, and indeed, ends with a word that signifies no ending. Life will go on, and it is up to each of us to search for those places and people that make our lives meaningful, wherever we may find them.
¹The Australian Alps in southern Australia, with peaks exceeding 6,600 feet, and are comprised of the Snowy Mountains and the Victoria Alps, and are the only bioregion of Australia where snow falls annually. With the effects of global warming, lower regions are experiencing a change in snowfall. The original damming project began in 1949 and ended in 1974, and decreased flows to the Snowy River by 99%, as measured at Jindabyne. Only later did political opposition and environmental awareness force a reassessment, to increase flows to a target 15% by 2009, and 21% by 2012. ...more
My favorite Sedaris bits come when he is talking about his experiences travelling or learning a new language. In this new book he has a section about My favorite Sedaris bits come when he is talking about his experiences travelling or learning a new language. In this new book he has a section about taking planes that had me shaking with laughter…how people, especially Americans, put on their most ragged clothes to travel across the world or across the country mystifies both him and me. “I want to be comfortable,” I have heard travelers wearing worn sweat pants explain, as though wearing silks and cashmere is not comfortable. Cost is not really an issue: anyone flying to China or Australia can certainly spring for a new sweater.
But I was also surprised this time how some of Sedaris’ jokes felt edgy, jagged, and hurtful. I realize that beating up on his Dad is one of his schticks. And if what he says in the beginning of this series of routines were true, about his Dad beating him and blaspheming him as a kid, then I guess his Dad is getting off easy by being the brunt of his jokes as Sedaris travels around the world broadcasting to everyone who will listen. But I long ago learned that hurtful things said “in jest” are not really funny to anyone but the jester.
Sedaris talks a little about how he makes up his routines by keeping a journal as he travels. He spends time taking brief notes when something strikes him as remarkable, and then he spends a lot of time typing it up into what was so remarkable about it so that he can remember it clearly. His endless stories are not things “that just come to mind:” he really works at it, even if it means he doesn’t have time to see all the sights in those great places he visits.
My least favorite part of this book was a special section he created because he discovered that young people liked to use his work as dramatic monologues. He didn’t think his previous work had enough of the elements that would make a dramatic monologue successful, so he set about making something new just for those folks interested to try it themselves. I thought perhaps these would be better with someone else doing the reading…a droll young woman, perhaps, or a dull young boy.
Anyway, Sedaris is always interesting for what he sees about the world and dares to speak. ...more
This haunting debut by Rohan Wilson is a grim but beautifully written and evocative retelling of the clearing of Van Diemen’s Land for white settlers.This haunting debut by Rohan Wilson is a grim but beautifully written and evocative retelling of the clearing of Van Diemen’s Land for white settlers. Darkly imagined and unblinkingly told, Wilson features a black man raised white as one of two central characters. He is called Black Bill, or The Vandemonian. Vandemonian is a term white settlers of Van Dieman’s Land called themselves. Bill travels with and aids the ‘roving party’ as they seek to kill or capture aborigines in the area that came to be called Tasmania.
The other is major character is Batman, John Batman, a historical figure born in Sydney of British parents and who settled in Tasmania’s northeast. Batman led roving parties over a period of years during the ‘Black Wars’ that is the subject of this novel. The roving party has two more black scouts, both from Parramatta near Sydney, who join for payment. Much of the rest of the group are poor damned men, recently released white convicts who seek government pardons for their efforts.
Wilson balances on a knife’s edge in re-creating the real life that fills this story, rounding out his two main characters by instilling in them a steely-eyed savagery, an ability to coldly reason and plot their advantages, and a blessed and unexpected charity. Rich language and complex characterizations makes this tragedy the marvel it is, and Wilson is positively Shakespearean in adding comic relief with the occasional buffoonery of some of the rovers.
The raid depicted in this novel is a recorded event that took place in September 1829. Batman led an attack on a large group of Plindermairhemener clan aborigines who were headed by the witch Manalargena.
"Foremost among that singular horde was Manalargena who carried across his shoulder a waddy shaped from blackwood and stained with the filth of war…his wife had ochred his hair into long ringlets as precise as woven rope…the beard on his chin was matted, and the lank twists as red as a rooster’s wattle jiggled as he walked about…"
[image]
On this raid, Batman takes hostage a young mother and her child. He sends the mother off to the penal colony down south while he keeping the child in his own household. But it is Black Bill we watch with such terrible intensity throughout the novel, praying that his motivation becomes, if not acceptable, at least understandable. He knows Manalargena, and hosted his band at his home.
There is very little modern-day sensibility here and we feel transported to a different time. Whatever dislocation non-Australians might feel with the language, the weapons, the plants and animals unique to the continent ‘down under’, one knows in one’s heart and gut the bald truth of the white man’s sense of ‘manifest destiny’: What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine. That each of our continents experienced it makes this terrible tale no less potent.
Originally published by Allen & Unwin in Australia in 2011, this book won the Vogel Literary Award there in that year. It has also won the 2013 Tasmania Literary Award Margaret Scott Prize, and the 2012 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. It was shortlisted for the numerous other awards. It deserves all this attention for as a debut this is an extraordinary achievement. For more history of the time and place recorded in this fiction, see this Wikipedia entry for Ben Lomond Mountain in northeast Tasmania.
It turns out that Black Bill was real, too. His name was William Ponsonby. Rohan Wilson shares with us the experience of writing his first novel and winning the Vogel Prize. His writing schedule and methods are revealed here in an interview.
This book is being released in the United States in February 2014 by Soho Publishing and is available for pre-order. I was given a copy for review. ...more
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