The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, above all it is ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

I think that we should just ban golf altogether. Geilston Bay High School, Geilston Bay. November 2011.

Another couple of books finished this week, as I slowly make my way to the magic to the magical 100 for the year (I am currently sitting at 98*).

First up is Bodily Secrets by William Treevor. A slender collection of short stories by a fine writer, the collection revolves around the theme of relationships (and yes, ‘love’). At once tender and taut, it is a great little book that covers the whole gamut of emotions. Recommended.

Second up is Nobel Prizewinner Imre Kertész's Liquidation a very Central European dose of introspection that mixes quite radical departures in style (there is a a text-within-a-text-within-a-text) and some pretty heavy intellectual chicanery in the way that it constructs its existential dilemma in the face of the existence of Auschwitz.

There is a fair whack of self-reflexivity here, as once again Kertész mulls the weighty shadow of the camp that he spent part of his childhood. This is an intensely postmodern piece, fragmented to the point of distraction and filled with an incredibly morbid sadness. You can't help that the author is an incredibly unhappy man, unhappy in the way that constantly asserts that happiness is not actually possible. The immediate post-Communist Hungarian setting (and dark shadow of the Holocaust) adds to the claustrophobic atmosphere.

Not for the faint-hearted.

Comments

Kris McCracken said…

So what.

23 December 2011 at 13:59

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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