As soon as liberty is complete, it dies in anarchy.

Calverts Beach, oh Calverts Beach, I still hear your sea winds blowin'… Calverts Beach, South Arm. December 2010.

We discoverd a new beach (for us) a couple of weeks back: Calverts Beach, which is down off the beaten track on the South Arm Peninsula. If it ever spots raining, we might get down there again soon!

Panorama of Calverts Beach. Calverts Beach, South Arm. December 2010.

But today isn't Friday BEACH Club, and I am meant to be talking books. The past week saw me finish We can remember it for you wholesale, which is volume five of Philip K. Dick’s collected short stories,

Do you like science fiction? If so, this collection has science fiction leaking out of every pore. As a (very) casual reader of science fiction, I found this collection somewhat uneven. Some of the stories are great, many so-so. One thing that you can be guaranteed, Mr Dick had an almighty imagination…

The other book I read this week was The Takeover by Muriel Spark. As ever, Spark manages to construct an array of odd and intriguing characters. Set amongst a group of wealthy expatriates (and locals) in Italy through the 1970s, once again Spark explores the clash of modernity with ‘traditional’ values, and the pernicious influence of money.

In all, it’s a breezy tale of the undeserving, complacent rich being ripped-off by chancers. As one might expect, every character is free of any authentic moral framework. A decent read, but when all of the characters are so unlikable, it didn’t really grab me.

Calverts Beach, oh Calverts Beach, I still hear your sea waves crashing… Calverts Beach, South Arm. December 2010.

One thing that did grab me though was the description of a particular character (a real specialty of Spark's), as it adequately sums up a lot of people I've met in life, so I wanted to share it with you:

As a specimen, Letizia at eighteen was rounded-off and complete; the finishing touches were already put, there was no room for further contention between character and contours, there was scope only, now, for wear and tear. She was much as she would be, she though much as she would think, and looked not much different from what she would look, at forty-eight.

Comments

Kris McCracken said…

People don’t like the book reviews, or the beach!

18 January 2011 at 13:32

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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