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28Jan

Shirley Hazzard’s CLIFFS OF FALL

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“Elizabeth got used to the sound of her own laughter, which she had at first found faintly improper.”

(From “Cliffs of Fall”.)

Ugh, I hate reviewing Shirley Hazzard’s CLIFFS OF FALL. What words can be used to describe such beautiful, lyrical, bittersweet, intelligent writing? Better, surely, to just read the words themselves. And I think you should, you should really read CLIFFS OF FALL because it is sad and beautiful and bittersweet, and Shirley Hazzard *should be more read*. She even made me want to use phrases like ‘our Shirley Hazzard’ or ‘one of Australia’s best exports’, taking refuge in cliche to hide from the dazzling brilliance of her writing. I’m so glad she’s written this book, this collection of, well, not even short stories, but of *moments*, sparkling moments chipped from a colossal diamond that Hazzard probably keeps in her apartment. (I’m not sure which apartment, either the one in New York or the one in Capri. A citizen of the world, she was born in Australia.)

There are themes uniting Hazzard’s works: yearning and sadness, maturity, society, femininity, duty. Relationships. What is said and what it means. What is not said.

None of which would have attracted me to the collection, I admit, unless someone I respected had told me, “Shirley Hazzard is one of the best short story writers working today.” So I will just say to you: Shirley Hazzard is one of the best short story writers working today. But, again, be aware she’s not dealing in narrative. She’s dealing in moment. In emotion, finely expressed and exquisitely, attentively observed.

Some motifs return, such as the aloof male partner, the “meekly attentive” female partner (description quoted from “In One’s Own House”), the social expectations surrounding them from his mother to the people they were at the party with. And there is so much careful detail, almost casually presented, that you have the sense you are there, I mean, really *there* in the 1950s/60s, in an elegant house wearing elegant clothes and swapping witticisms with dreadfully refined men and women at an exquisite ‘do’, while Hazzard’s characters give controlled smiles to everyone they meet (while secretly harbouring complex emotions and reactions which would have them turfed from said party if they dared speak them out loud).

I thought at first Hazzard’s greatest power was the remarkable balance and efficiency of her prose, the moments of sly wit. Lines like this:

“He linked across the lock a small gilt chain in which May had complete confidence.”

(From “A Place in the Country”.)

Doesn’t that just say it all? A security chain on the back of the door, a slight measure in which most of us have ‘complete confidence’. Except it doesn’t. It doesn’t say it all. Because then I realised that the real power of this sentence on its own isn’t felt, that the true impact is not from the innate wryness of tone but relies on it’s equally balanced and efficient context. Because the ‘he’ in that sentence is May’s husband. And the reason May’s confidence is so very ironic is because the true danger in the story doesn’t come from without. It’s already inside, as May’s husband locks the door against social judgement and resumes the affair he’s been having with May’s young cousin.

*Now* read that sentence, & see how much power and meaning Hazzard has packed into it:

“He linked across the lock a small gilt chain in which May had complete confidence.”

Are you thinking ‘poor May’? Let me assure you, that’s because you haven’t met her. Or maybe it’s because you read all the way to the end, because by then Hazzard has given you enough insight into every character that you will find yourself warming to the cold, methodical May in ways you hadn’t anticipated. And she’ll do that, again, in a sentence.

I admit that Hazzard’s characters have a sameness of affect (or even effect), so much so it’s occasionally hard to tell one long-suffering woman from another, or one intelligent-but-emotionall-distant man from another. But the pace of the pitch-perfect prose is enough to keep you reading, and the fact, again, that the stories are *moments* means in the end they feel as if they might even add up to one story, one set of circumstances for one set of characters – an observation that is only obvious when the stories are collected together in this one, slim volume.

Which I strongly urge you to read.

“For the fact was that they were not really suited to one another, which he would have discovered if he had ever tried to understand her properly.”

(From “The Picnic”.)

 

—–

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief‘

 

This review is part of the AWWC2012 challenge & is cross posted on Goodreads.com.

21Jan

Via The Hairpin on the book ‘Are Women People?’

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Brilliant! Via Matt Cheney’s post at The Mumpsimus, which links to Lilli Loofbourow’s post at The Hairpin on the book ARE WOMEN PEOPLE? by Alice Duer Miller comes, eventually, this poem:

 

Women (With rather insincere apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling.)

I went to ask my government
if they would set me free,
They gave a pardoned crook a vote,
but hadn’t one for me;

The men about me laughed and frowned
and said: “Go home, because
We really can’t be bothered
when we’re busy making laws.”

Oh, it’s women this, and women that and women have no sense,
But it’s pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense,
It comes to the expense, my dears, it comes to the expense,
It’s pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense.

I went into a factory
to earn my daily bread:
Men said: “The home is woman’s sphere.”
“I have no home,” I said.

But when the men all marched to war,
they cried to wife and maid,
“Oh, never mind about the home,
but save the export trade.”

For it’s women this and women that, and home’s the place for you,
But it’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do,
There’s outside work to do, my dears, there’s outside work to do,
It’s patriotic angels when there’s outside work to do.

We are not really senseless,
and we are not angels, too,
But very human beings,
human just as much as you.

It’s hard upon occasions
to be forceful and sublime
When you’re treated as incompetents
three-quarters of the time.

But it’s women this and women that, and woman’s like a hen,
But it’s do the country’s work alone, when war takes off the men,

And it’s women this and women that and everything you please,
But woman is observant, and be sure that woman sees.

05Jan

A plus

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Wow. I had to blog this straight away because … wow.

Ever been disappointed with the whole plus-size-model thing? Felt like something wasn’t quite right?

Here’s something that’s right.

How stunning — and, importantly, how *modern* — do these women look? No more freaking ‘rubenesque’, apologetic plus-size photo shoots, thanks, world media! From now on only exciting in-your-face photos like these.

That is all.

13Dec

Readers and writers and short stories

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Honestly? I got into short stories because it seemed like a good way to learn to write. It’s become much more than that, of course, but I’ve not paused very often to think about what place they do have for me, and further what place they have for readers.

I’ve been surprised by the amount of interest in A Book of Endings, for example, and overwhelmed by the response of readers. Enough of my friends not only bought the book but *read* it to make me think people actually are interested in the short form. When challenged, plenty of my friends were adamant that yes, they really did like reading short stories even before my book came along and yes, they weren’t just buying it out of sympathy (though I suspect some of them were!) that I thought I’d overlooked something.

I admit I always thought short stories were rather esoteric, enjoyed more by writers than readers. Short stories are often a harder read than novels, I think. Because you have to pay attention the whole way through. Novels you can drift in and out, doze off on a daybed, miss a few words because the hammock is swinging too hard — all those hiccups that occur in perfect reading fantasies. But overall it’s easier to keep track of a novel because even if you miss bits the narrative spine will hopefully pull you through.

So I was still surprised when I read this in the Syd Uni Alumni magazine review of A Book of Endings: “Biancotti is further proof of why readers enjoy the short story, even though publishers prefer to pretend we don’t.”

And over here at the Guardian, some discussion about why women, in particular, are being recognised in the short story field (are they? well, isn’t that good news).

Short stories, on the other hand, are famously uncommercial; that, coupled with the perceived exactingness of the form and its heavyweight literary lineage, means that short stories by women are taken seriously – and awarded accordingly.

That would be ironic if true: women gain more recognition in short stories because short stories aren’t coveted by publishers either. ;)

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09Dec

Caved in

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I’ve always enjoyed Nick Cave’s music, in much the same way I’ve always enjoyed Meatloaf’s music. Yes, really. In essence they’re two sides of the same coin: Cave’s music is a kind of slowed-down cock-rock, equally melodramatic in its imagery and just as catchy as the music of his colleague Meatloaf — but slightly more suited to your more mournful moods.

Yes, it is weird to read a post from me about music, isn’t it? Perhaps you’re wondering what on earth possessed me to try it this time.

Well, Anwyn Crawford possessed me, because over at Overland she busts a few myths about Nick Cave’s music & exposes some of what’s been bugging me about his position as a mainstream-acceptable misogynist.

To reaffirm my position as musically naive, let me say that I first came across Nick Cave when he teamed up with that bastion of esoteric musicality, Kylie Minogue, on the album Murder Ballads in 1996. This is somewhere over 20 years after Cave began his musical career (wikipedia informs me), so clearly I’m not fast on the uptake. But ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ got my attention. Quite simply, I loved how it sounded. Also pleasing: the lyrics, foreshortened by the limited vocal ranges of Minogue and Cave, make for an easy sing-along.

But I also remember being struck by the tension between the satisfyingly moody music with its brooding theme of destructive desire, and the portrayal of Minogue — this very successful (at least locally, at least by then) woman who allowed herself to be portrayed quite literally as an object. A dead object, by the end of the video, but no less pretty for that.

Isn’t it wonderful how death can preserve an attractive young woman? And not at all fantastical.

(Kiddies, I jest: there is no such thing as a beautiful corpse.)

The romantic setting and the horror of the slow-dawning discovery of just what, exactly, is going on in the video do provide a delightful frisson of pending disaster. Mmm, delicious! But the moment the snake (Freud would be pleased) slides suggestively across the crotch of Minogue’s virginally-white-dressed corpse (Freud would be ecstatically pleased, then he would need to smoke a cigarette and doze off for a time), I do remember thinking that you didn’t need a degree in symbolism to see through the obtuse phallic meaningfulness of the piece. Surely, I thought, they’re having a laugh? Surely there is some tongue-in-cheek or ironic *thing* going on here that I just wasn’t getting? Clearly I wasn’t in on the joke. Instead of mistrusting the appellation ‘ironic’, I mistrusted my own, apparently silly and over-sensitive reaction.

‘How odd,’ I thought, and continued to find the song and the singers (Cave for his coffin-chic earnestness and Minogue for her passive subjugation) fascinating. In effect, then, the song achieved what it set out to do. I bought some Cave music and each time I noticed the video on TV, I leaned in a little closer — looking for the punchline.

As to *that* book cover shown here in a more tasteful variation of the Australian version hilariously discussed over here (on a new favourite blog!), I did find myself drawn to the cover — and yet repelled when I spied the author’s name. But I couldn’t explain *what* it was about Nick Cave that repulsed and intrigued me. I kept thinking that Cave was so very mainstream, so very every-fcking-where, that I just wasn’t getting it. He writes music, and books, and stageplays, and movies. What *was* it that made me so suspicious? I could never quite put my finger on it.

But this is what interests me even more about Crawford’s essay:

His snobbery and towering ego both feed into our lingering cultural cringe: we think he’s smart because he’s popular in Europe, and we admire him because his bullish self-confidence is so different to the ritual self-deprecation that marks many Australian artists. He reads books! He lives in Brighton! The man’s a genius! In reality, Cave’s cartoon profanity is no more sophisticated or evolved than the bump’n’grind of gangsta rap

Because I’m beginning to wonder myself what price we’re paying in Australia for our tall-poppy syndrome? Through our self-deprecating approach, are we turning our artists, ourselves, into the burger-and-fries of the artistic world? Are we making it easy for the ego-maniacs to outwit us?

And would Nick Cave be any more attractive by Meatloaf’s dashboard lights?

26Jul

Not a problem

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Recently I’ve been having a problem. And that problem is Fiji.

Well, to be more precise, that problem is that I agreed last Christmas to go to Fiji this year & now that the time is rolling close, I find I’m really depressed by it. Okay, not depressed. More like stressed, upset & annoyed.

And why, you’re wondering, am I annoyed about a trip to a tropical island that I, as a grown woman, agreed to? Yes, it’s a good question, isn’t it, & I myself have spent the last month wondering what the hell the answer is & what is wrong with me & whether I’m quite sane.

But then Friday after 2 glasses (could’ve been 3) of red wine & some of my favourite cider from one of my favourite pubs, it hit me with all the sudden clarity that alcohol, in its raw animal wisdom, can invoke.

The *reason*, you see, that I agreed to go to Fiji is that it’s the place where my grandfather spent part of WWII as an engineer for the Colonial Sugar Refinery Company (CSR) in Lautoka. And it’s where my grandparents were married. And given this is Female Appreciation Month, I can confess to you, gentle reader, that nothing has been the same since my grandmother died in, was it 2001? It’s a blur, really, because in a way her death has never stopped happening for me.

So, no, I don’t quite appear to be sane!

And if my travel companion, my mother, is as unnerved by this trip as I am, it could probably explain why SHE herself appears to be limping forward with the planning that I’ve been trying to avoid! But by god we’ll get this trip sorted & we’ll visit that damned church in Lautoka (er, I’m not sure which one, but I’m assuming NOT the Sri Krishna Temple) & — by god — we’ll have ourselves a tropical holiday if the damn thing nearly kills us!

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18Jul

More Women in Music

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Today, Lucinda Williams, for that distinctive raw, Nashville, bluesy voice of hers that always makes me want to wake up in a different life in a whiskey bottle in a bar someplace remote (as if that could possibly be a good thing):

World Without Tears
If we lived in a world withought tears
How would bruises find
The face to lie upon
How would scars find skin
To etch themselves into
How would broken find the bones

If we lived in a world without tears
How would heartbeats
Know when to stop
How would blood know
Which body to flow outside of
How would bullets find the guns

If we lived in a world without tears
How would misery know
Which back door to walk through
How would trouble know
Which mind to live inside of
How would sorrow find a home

If we lived in a world without tears
How would bruises find
The face to lie upon
How would scars find skin
To etch themselves into
How would broken find the bones

If we lived in a world without tears
How would bruises find
The face to lie upon
How would scars find skin
To etch themselves into
How would broken find the bones

How would broken find the bones
How would broken find the bones

Goddamn, if you only do one thing I tell you to in your life, listen to Lucinda Williams.

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17Jul

Women in Music Month

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I’ve talked about music before (usually to say, ‘I don’t know much about music’), but in honour of Women in Music month, I thought it time to talk some more!

So I’m going to mention Deborah Conway as a musical hero. Not only because she is a fabulous musical talent, but also because she founded the Broad Festival, which is itself a celebration of Australian women singers & musicians. She’s awesome for her folksy, raw music, her gigantic grin, and her lyrics. Amongst some of my favourites are lines like:

Somewhere between the swamp and the mountain
Somewhere between sex and fear
Somewhere between God and the devil passion lurks
The way there is sudden the way back is worse
– Deborah Conway, For All the Wrong Reasons

And then there’s songs with titles such as ‘Will You Miss Me When You’re Sober’ and ‘Alive and Brilliant’: gorgeous, raunchy, suggestive, strong, luscious songs.

I’ve tried to play it open-handed
I’ve tried to make a fist of this
Even when the questions are candid
My arrows miss
I’ve heard about your fragile ego
Your shield, your sword
What am I expected to do!?
Shout Man Overboard!
– Do-Re-Mi, Man Overboard

And here’s something you might’ve thought you’d never see: two of Australian’s gutsiest singers performing Love Hurts.

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01Apr

Covering up

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OK, so I’m getting a little obsessed with cover art (ever since Nick Stathopoulos turned in the fabulous A Book of Endings cover!). Yesterday I spent a couple hours staring at these sites:

http://www.thebookdesignreview.com
http://shelvedbooks.blogspot.com
http://henryseneyee.blogspot.com

I also followed various links, finding myself in a world of cover debate. Including a link to a rant by Stuart Evers on the good side of bad books:

After a promising first page, which actually made me laugh, Low Alcohol descended into the kind of literary hell most readers would hesitate to enter, even led by a Dickens or an Austen, let alone a debut novelist sniffing like a mangy dog around the arse end of Martin Amis. Derivative, unfunny, nasty and puerile, the whole shabby affair – concerning the life and loves of Doug Down – was an ill-conceived disaster. And I’m glad I read it before it fell out of print.

See, I’m not convinced there’s a value in that. Surely life is too short for bad books in the same way it’s too short for bad coffee, bad food and bad love affairs…?

Over at The Guardian, Alison Flood asks the question “are we really going to admit to judging books by their covers?” To which the answer must be ‘yes’. Even in an age when more & more of us are looking at electronic solutions for our libraries, it’s probably useful not to stray TOO far from your content with a misleading cover.

(This presented a particular problem for the cover of my own antho, as I find myself moving further away from genre into just a kind of ‘weird urban’ storytelling. Which — I hope! — the Stathopoulos cover captured rather brilliantly!)

Please-god, spare me from ever having a chicklit cover! Or from finding myself in the ‘chicklit’ section of Barnes & Noble (seriously, does that exist?). Somewhere I’ve seen chicklit referred to as the ‘buying shoes in the big city’ genre. Which reminds me, I think I *did* write a story about buying shoes in a big city once. But I like to think it was only because I needed shoes. And live in a city.

I digress. Let’s leave the final word on that one to author Janelle Brown, ““Chick lit” is a catch all for everything that’s not “hard” literature written by a woman. It implies that the male experience is universal, while the female experience is something only other women would be interested in.””

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