It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

The sun also rises. St George’s Church, Battery Point; as seen from Queen Street, Sandy Bay. September 2011.

A couple of books this week, of decidedly mixed resonance (and indeed esteem).

First up, the good! I read John Braine’s debut Room at the Top a few weeks ago and enjoyed it very much. Set ten years from the events of that novel, Life at the Top chronicles the life and trials of Joe Lampton, a once ambitious man of humble origins who has discovered that ‘life at the top’ (well, in the upper middle classes) is not all it was cracked up to be.

A fantastic snapshot of a certain time and place (England’s industrial north in the early-1960s), of a certain class consciousness (a rising proletariat and declining landed gentry) and a shifting gender and sexual politics. Life at the Top was seemingly lost in the rush of ‘angry young men’ novels that emerged in the UK in the late-1950s and seems now long forgotten. This is a shame, because it’s definitely a worthwhile addition to the canon and a worthy sequel to a fine debut from Braine.

The plot could have easily degenerated into the clichéd kitchen sink realism and soap opera, but I certainly think that Braine’s portrayal of one man’s mid-life crisis – at 35!!! – is a convincing and affecting one. I’d recommend this highly, and even more so when read in conjunction with the first novel.

Second up this week is the highly regarded work of Japanese Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata. Snow Country is widely regarded as Kawabata’s ‘masterpiece’, which is very much the reason that decided to read it!

Unfortunately, I can only assume that something has been lost in the translation – either linguistically or culturally. It is apparent that this is a book infused with atmosphere and resonating with cultural meaning for the Japanese man. As a decidedly-non Japanese man, I found it rather tedious and utterly devoid of emotion and charm.

Obviously there is a certain degree of lyrical beauty in the vivid (and l – o – n – g) descriptions of the snowy mountain country, but these elements cannot overcome the the utter lack of characterisation or plot. No more is this evident than the climax of the novel – which involves a death – as we the reader is left cold. Perhaps this is a deliberate aesthetic device, but (for me) this makes for very poor reading.

Give it a miss, unless you are a Buddhist aesthete for whom time and being is nothing.

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...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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