There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

What would Bon Scott do? Lindisfarne Village, Lindisfarne. November 2011.

Just managed to complete the one book this week, and what a disappointment it proved to be.

Hans Keilson’s The Death of the Adversary is an odd little portrait of a nameless young man tracking an unnamed “adversary” whom he watches rise to power in an unnamed country in the 1930s. Keilson – a German Jew – wrote the book while in hiding in the Netherlands during World War Two. Interestingly, the novel itself has been lauded as a ‘lost’ masterpiece in the last few years.

Now, I shall be frank and confess that although I think that the book is a really interesting piece of history, as a literary work it seems a little uneven to me. Perhaps it is a deliberate narrative device, but the jarring (and repetitive) series of notes ruminating on the rise of Hitler, his motives, personality, as well as the nature and causes of the rise of fascism and anti-Semitism is clumsy and wooden (perhaps this might be a poor translation) and worst of all: intensely dull.

I wouldn’t bother if I were you.

Comments

Roddy said…

Probably drink another bottle of scotch.

15 November 2011 at 18:47

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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