Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.

Pointing south. Bellerive boardwalk. October 2011.

Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes was written in 1958 and details the emergence of the ‘mod’ and explores uneasy race relations in inner-city London in the lead up to the swinging sixties.

I initially found it a frustrating read, as the (unnamed) teenage narrator speaks with a litany of (now-) clichéd slang and puns, but once I reminded myself that in many respects MacInnes is recording this language in print for the first time I decided to roll with it.

As such, it is an interesting snapshot of a very specific time and place, and the story rollicks along at a cracking pace to a decent conclusion. Recommended.

I will be frank and admit that I did not find the same thing with Women As Lovers by Elfriede Jelinek. In the novel, Jelinek – an Austrian novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004 (a seemingly controversial choice) – employs an ‘interesting’ style. She avoids capitalisation entirely (including proper nouns). Each sentence is given a paragraph break, regardless of length. Sentences are, for the most part, short.

Complementing (compounding?) the experimental nature of the novel is the fact that the courses of the lives of two women are told against each other. One chapter we are with Bbrigette who hates Hheinz but loves the idea of marrying him because he represents her best chance at material wealth and ‘the good life’; and the next chapter we are with Ppaula, who follows her heart and dreams rather than conforming to society’s conception of that very same ‘good life’.

As an exercise in creatively eviscerating the place of ‘woman’ in society through a Marxist/ feminist lens, it is a great success. Class and gender are effectively explored and critiqued through the narrative. As an exercise of skilful writing and storytelling, I’m less convinced. While I’d not go so far as denounce Jelinek as a fraud or of completely lacking in talent, I didn’t enjoy the act of reading as I usually do. It felt like a chore, and that’s rarely a recommendation.

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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