A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason.

You heard! St Johns Park, New Town. June 2011.

Week two into the new job, and I'm slowly picking up reading time. One really top book this week, Tom Keneally's Gossip from the Forest, a novel which reconstructs the minutia of the negotiations surrounding the declaration of an Armistice at the end of World War I. Now don’t let that concept fool you, as this is an engaging and impressive work.

Kenneally paints vivid portraits of the key characters, and infuses a humanity that is often absent in this kind of work. The novel is a fantastic study of the profound challenge of ending a conflict that featured such brutality. As might be expected, the real interest can be found in the vanquished, rather than the victors.

This is magnified as the key Allied negotiators - vain French Marshall Foch and cold British Admiral Weymes - relish their roles as conquerors (even though the the reality was somewhat more complex than that) and that the Germans were something approaching evil incarnate. Compounding the triumphalism, the German aristocratic elite declined to show up and sent four men to face the wrathful victors to bring about a peace. Keneally superbly reconstructs these four, who were sent to plead mercy and were ill-equipped to face such immense anger.

In choosing as its central figure the German head of delegation, secretary of state Matthias Erzberger – a proletarian, civilian, Catholic member of the Centre Party and critic of both German Imperialism and the conduct of the war – the novel explores the individual experience at moments of historical import. The result is both an incredibly human story and an effective novel.

This is a rewarding book, and I’d encourage anyone to give it a go.

Comments

Carola said…

It's a joke? How is owning this?

24 June 2011 at 22:45

Kris McCracken said…

I have no idea who owns this pole.

28 June 2011 at 09:04

Roddy said…

Private poles belong to private builders. They also belong to farmers. Find out if there are any builders in the area and you should have your answer.

28 June 2011 at 16:10

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. ...

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

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...

This will hurt me...

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