The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

Morning glory. Geilston Bay. April 2012..

Two books to have a look at this Good Friday (not a bad day weather-wise). The first is German author Elke Schmitter's Mrs Sartoris. A subtle, but very dark, novel that explores the life of an ordinary - but spurned - titular character. For a text that revolves around the boredom of suburban life in a small German city, it is surprisingly engaging.

As an exploration of marriage, motherhood, sensuality and bourgeois morality in the post-war period, this is a well-composed and balanced novel about the ways in which a wronged woman might choose to hit back. Recommended.

The second - Guilt About the Past - is by another German, author and jurist Bernhard Schlink. Now, readers of Schlink's fiction will know that most of his books are in some way about reconciling the past with the present. This book is a series of essays (based upon a series of lectures) that explores the concepts of collective guilt; how we might use history to motivate individual moral behaviour; how to reconcile a guilt-laden past; the role of the legal process in all of this; before settling on how the theme of guilt influences fiction.

Written in an authoritative but accessible style, it should be read by anyone keen to explore the concepts of remembering and forgetting in the aftermath of terrible events and how we might forgive and reconcile the various legacies of the past. Highly recommended!

Comments

Roddy said…

At first I thought you had another bushfire in the area. Fantastic reds.

6 April 2012 at 12:25

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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