“I remembered only the good and loveable things about him, not the wretchedness he caused me, and the dope, and the resentments and silence and the half-crazy outbursts.”

Bass Strait is blue today. Sisters Beach, Tasmania. January 2021.

Monkey Grip by Helen Garner

Credit must go to Helen Garner for her frank reflections on her own choices and desires in this semi-autobiographical novel. She conjures up a Melbourne long-since gone, and a world of a bohemian vision of life filled with excess, collectivism and the withering away of norms like monogamy, patriarchy and the jingoistic nature of Australians.

As I say, this is a time long gone. Garner writes well and with frankness and empathy that is to be admired.

Yet despite her best efforts, the appeal of Javo – which is the central premise driving the book – utterly eluded me. I could see nothing of the charm, beauty, intelligence or love in the man. Even in the frank descriptions of the sex – and there is no shortage of fucking in this book, with Javo and others in this milieu of rootless artists – didn’t help explain the obsession.

The novel consists of days repeating days. Swimming and drugs and sex and drugs and sex and sex and drugs and swimming and then a gig followed by sex and drugs and gigging and fucking and getting stones. Oh, we can laugh about it now, but I’m not sure how it must have felt at the time. There’s not a lot of joy to be found in this tale of communal living.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Comments

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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