Miles Franklin Award

The winner of this year's Miles Franklin Award will be announced on June 18.

The list of five finalists for the Award is mildly controversial because all the writers are men. This is the list:

Breath by Tim Winton
Ice by Louis Nowra
The Pages by Murray Bail
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Wanting by Richard Flanagan

As someone commented, the titles are all very short. All very plain.

My choice for winner is The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, but as I've only read three of the five books I'm not in a position to judge, so let's say I'm barracking for The Slap. Whether it is judged to be the novel of the year which is 'of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases' (as the Award's web page notes), remains to be seen. I would certainly judge it to be of outstanding literary merit (if a wee bit too long) and definitely presenting Australian life in its contemporary phase among some families living in Melbourne. It's an ambitious realist novel with many different voices that move around questions of modern Australian sexual and family identity.

Life-long learning

I wonder how long it is since the idea of a 'workshop' as a learning setting came into our culture? Did it start up in the 1970s with therapy groups? Whatever the antecedents it is an idea that has gained full currency for learning all sorts of skills from fungi recognition, to crafts, yoga practices, spiritual development, growing or cooking food and writing. You name it and you can probably find a workshop about it.

I've been to a few workshops in my time, most of them connected with teaching and learning or with writing. I thought I'd given them up until I was tempted ('I can resist anything except temptation'), by one in the recent Castlemaine State Festival. It was a poetry workshop, 'Art into Poetry Now', held at the Castlemaine Art Gallery and conducted by poet Sandy Fitts. I was intrigued by the topic, the venue and the presenter, who had won the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. I also liked the price, a modest $30 (concession).

For that modest price our small group, about eight people, received four hours of professional attention from a poet and teacher who led us through a brief history of ekphrastic poetry and set us to write such a poem in relation to selected art works in the gallery.

Each of the particpants came up with their own special perspective on the paintings we looked at. There was plenty of choice in the subjects and each writer showed how pictures, especially those within our own culture, can set free so many rich and various ideas. Some carefully enunciated the images into words, another spoke of her situation today provoked by a scene in an old picture; someone attempted to draw them all together in an historical perspective, another took us on a journey to hidden depths inside a darkened vessel. We all listened and saw that there were the bones of a decent poem in every piece of writing.

'Life-long, collaborative learning' has been a powerful slogan for learning in adult education settings and also in schools where teachers try to equip their students for a future of learning. With a boom in workshops the time has come when our desire to go on learning, with others, can more easily be met.

Rich and Powerful

I've been loading The Camel with books for sale. I have a regular spot at the Trentham market, just across the road from my home, where I take books, mainly paperbacks, for sale. The next Trentham market is this coming Sunday, March 22, and the market is held every fourth Sunday of the month. Other markets coming up are the Blackwood Easter Woodchop Carnival which will be held at the beautiful Blackwood Sports Ground on Easter Saturday and the Clunes Booktown which will take place on May 2 and 3. At Clunes I will have a stall in the Wesley bluestone church.

As I collect books, I sometimes find ones that particularly interest me and I read them along the way. Recently I read two books about rich and powerful families. The first is The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It's a history of the two big American (Irish American) families who produced John Fitzgerald Kennedy who became President of the United States in 1961 and was assassinated in November 1963 in Dallas, Texas. He was forty-six when he died.

I was amazed to find that Jack Kennedy's father, Joseph Kennedy, 'demanded' that his son take up a political career after the death of the eldest son, Joe Junior, in a spectacular plane crash near the end of the second world war. Joe Junior was to be the one who would fulfil his father's dream of providing America with its first Irish-American, Catholic, president. When that dream crashed Jack stepped into his brother's shoes. He was well fitted out for the job. A war hero, Ivy League education, son of the American Ambassador to London, rich, confident, handsome, given every opportunity to shine despite his poor health that caused him pain most of his adult life. Jack was a member of a rich and powerful family that had arisen from poor Irish immigrants who made their way up and up in American society. Once they reached the top they had the resources to live full, rich and exciting lives, empowered to make contributions to society and to explore and develop their natural talents.

The Fitzgerald Kennedys became part of America's rich and powerful ruling class and they mixed with and married others from similar wealthy backgrounds. In England they attended Ascot, Covent Garden, the brilliant soirees of rich society women. I don't know if Joseph Kennedy Snr. ever met the American Wallis Simpson during his years in London, but her attachment to Edward, Prince of Wales, and briefly King of England before his abdication late in 1936, rocked the British establishment and their aristocratic alliances across the world. When the couple married in 1937 and became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, they embarked upon a life of exile from the upper, upper crust of the British Royals into the slighly lower echelons of the very rich and very famous, but less powerful elites. Think cruising holidays in fabulous yachts, long visits to the homes of various aristocrats and wealthy business tycoons, days of golf followed by cocktails, opera and glittering dinners, fabulous jewels, furs, hairdressers, manicurists,masseuses and servants attending to their every need.

Wallis: Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor suggests Mrs Simpson's liking for the fascist elites of Europe (she impressed Hitler) and the security risk she, and the Duke, presented during the days leading up to the second world war when several rich and powerful British, European and American families were in favour of an alliance with Germany against the dreaded communists in Russia.

Reading about these wealthy families alerts me to the powerful class structures that exist in our world and the enormous benefit (to themselves mainly) that such power affords in terms of the life opportunities given to its members. It's a world away, a parallel universe away, from the daily struggle of most of us. Thanks to our writers and historians, we can glimpse into that world of the rich and powerful.

At the Book Camel, these books are for sale.

Details:
Doris Kearns Goodwin,The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys-An American Saga, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987, Ist Edition, hardback, dustcover, excellent condition. $25, plus postage and packaging.

Charles Higham, Wallis - Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1988, 1st Edition, Hardback, dustcover, excellent condition. $16, plus p and p.

Firestorm

Everyone I speak to feels shaken by the terrible firestorms that hit Victoria a few days ago. Those of us who live in forested areas may be feeling more worried and more vulnerable than those who live in the city, but I have the feeling that the whole community, the whole country even, is in mourning. I feel shocked and numbed by the pictures and sounds of destruction and horror that I've read in the newspapers, and seen on TV and heard on the radio. Sometimes I cannot look at another photograph, or hear another report or watch vision of burnt out landscapes. The scale of human suffering is immense. Nor must we forget the suffering of animals, birds and other sentient beings. This tragedy close to home also reminds us of the suffering of others in wars where burning people with bombs is actually intended!

We turn to each other to test our feelings and to put them into words that we exchange. We turn to the poets, writers and artists of all kinds to hear what they can say for us, what visions emerge from the ashes. I remembered this poem by Marie E. J. Pitt, a Victorian woman who was born near Bairnsdale in 1869 and grew up on a farm there.

A Gallop of Fire

When the north wind moans through the blind creek courses
And revels with harsh, hot sand,
I loose the horses, the wild, red horses
I loose the horses, the mad, red horses,
And terror is on the land.

With prophetic murmur the hills are humming,
The forest-kings bend and blow;
With hoofs of brass on the baked earth drumming,
O brave red horses, they hear us coming,
And the legions of Death lean low.

O'er the wooded height, and the sandy hollow
Where the boles to the axe have rung,
Though they fly the foeman as flies the swallow,
The fierce red horses, my horses, follow
With flanks to the faint earth flung.

Or with frenzied hieroglyphs, fear embossing
Night's sable horizon bars,
Through tangled mazes of death-darts crossing,
I swing my leaders and watch them tossing
Their red manes against the stars.

But when South winds sob in the drowned creek courses
And whisper to hard wet sand,
I hold the horses, the spent red horses,
I hold the horses, the tired red horses,
And silence is on the land.

Yea, the South wind sobs 'mong the drowned creek courses
For sorrows no man shall bind-
Ah, God! for the horses, the black plumed horses,
Dear God! for the horses, Death's own pale horses,
That raced in the tracks behind.

Learning more

When I wrote my poem about Benazir Bhutto I read books about her and about Pakistan. There are three books well worth reading that I can recommend.

The first is Benazir Bhutto's autobiography 'Daughter of the East'. It was first published in 1988 and is available in paperback published in 2007, the year Benazir was assassinated. The book ends with an update on Benazir's return to Pakistan in 2007. She acknowledges the dangers that she faces and quotes one of her heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King, as an inspiration for her determination to continue as a political leader:
'Our lives begin to end the day we remain silent on things that matter,'
Benazir was certainly not one who chose to remain silent and the autobiography traces the influences and great events that shaped her.

On the morning of her assassination Benazir finished the final edits of her new book 'Reconciliation- Islam, Democracy, and the West'. (Pub. 2008, Simon & Schuster) In it she defends her faith against politicisation and exploitation by extremists and fanatics. She looks at the history of the Muslim countries as she argues the question is Islam incompatible with democracy? She does not back away from pointing to many faults within Muslim countries but also points out that:
'The so-called incompatibility of Islam and democratic governance is used to divert attention from the sad history of Western political intervention in the Muslim world, which has been a major impediment to the growth of democracy in Islamic nations.'
This 'sad history' is discussed in relation to a number of specific countries across the world. The history of Pakistan is covered at length.

For another view on the history of Pakistan I read 'Frontline Pakistan' by Zahid Hussain, the Pakistan correspondent for 'The Times' of London, the 'Wall Street Journal' and 'Newsweek'. (Pub. 2008, Tauris & Co.) Based on interviews, newspaper reports and agency reports and investigations, the book gives a clear indication of the forces that have made Pakistan into a volatile and dangerous place on the front line of war between the West and al-Qaeda.

Reading these books has made me better informed about the politics and history of Pakistan, a country that will continue to play a major role in the future of our world and the struggle for a peaceful planet. Each of them was available for loan from my local library.

Finding books to read

As I was saying before I was so pleasantly interrupted by Christmas, New Year et. al....isn't it fascinating how readers find the next book they want to read? I find good reads mainly through bookish magazines and newspapers and by talking to friends. Sometimes a new book gets a buzz in the zeitgeist.

'The Slap' by Christos Tsiolkas has achieved that this summer around Melbourne with lots of people reading it and talking about it. I tried to borrow a copy from my local library but other keen readers were onto it before me so I'll have to wait my turn. (I did read one chapter when I was babysitting the other night and I can't wait to read the rest.) With 'The Slap' unavailable, I decided to read Tsiolkas's first novel instead and I'm very glad I did.

'Loaded' proceeds at a furious pace through the eyes of a substance-fuelled,young, Greek, bisexual,music-loving, lover, brother, son, friend who rushes around Melbourne in a long, speed-driven, orgy. Naturally I loved it. I can't believe it's taken me so long to getting around to reading this book - 'Loaded' was first published in 1995. A really wonderful, poetic, first novel. Now 'The Slap' promises a lot of interesting reflections about modern life in Melbourne coming from its potent central event of an adult slapping another couple's kid at a backyard barbecue. Child protection/abuse and all their moral accoutrements are indeed contested subjects in our society - think Bill Henson.

Another good read was 'The Ferocious Summer:Palmer's Penguins and the Warming of Antarctica' by Australian writer Meredith Hooper. (Published 2007) This book is an account of the author's days spent on the Antarctic Peninsula over the summer of 2001-2002. She especially recounts the work of the 'birders' who have studied the habits of the Adelie penguins in the Peninsula area since the 1970s. The book gives a marvellous insight into how science is done and the build up of evidence about climate change from the sharp end in Antarctica. I found a recommendation for it in a 'best reads' column in the 'Australian Book Review'.

My third read was also clearly in the zeitgeist. I finally got a fix on it when I read the last Quarterly Essay, 'American Revolution: The Fall of Wall Street and the Rise of Barrack Obama', also by an Australian author, Kate Jennings. Sometime along in the essay, when Jennings is chasing the daily story of Obama's campaign and the simultaneous machinations on Wall Street, she writes this:

'The VIX reaches its highest point ever: 81.7. I turn off the television and read 'The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo', a mystery by Swedish writer Steig Larsson. Timely as hell because it has a financial scandal as part of the plot. The Swedes know a thing or two about financial implosions because they had to nationalise their banks back in 1992 when the housing bubble burst. When the banks had stabilised they were privatised again: taxpayers got their money back.'

What interested me was the 'mystery' book that Jennings was reading; it sounded exciting given the fascination of the political and financial dramas she was tracking. I wasn't disappointed, 'The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo' turned out to be a good old page-turner mystery with a sufficiently sex-crazed denouement to satisfy the weirdest imagination (pretty funny stuff!) Plus a nice addition of anger about financial rip-off artists and their weak-kneed apologists in the media and some great characters.

'The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo' is the first book in the Millennium series (second part just published in English in Jan. 2009). Steig Larsson was an investigative journalist who specialised in stories about neo- Nazis. He was also fascinated by the crime genre in writing and he delivered his 'Millennium Series' to his publisher just before he died. He did not live to see the worldwide success of his novel.

I've moved on with my reading now since early summer. Nobody gave me a book for Christmas this year but I've fallen on a pile of stuff about Benazir Bhutto and what's going on in Pakistan.

Good on Bendigo library. All the books I've mentioned are available in their collection and I can order them from home over the net and then have them delivered to the nearest branch library.

Christmas Shopping

Alas, Santa Kev hasn't visited me with a bonus.

However I decided to keep on keeping on with another year of Christmas shopping.

I can't give away the exact detail of my purchases (who knows, the children might be listening in), but I can reveal the secret structure to my modest investments into the economy.

This year I've decided to invest in these industries: 1. Books (surprise, surprise!!) 2. Wine (ditto) 3. Yoga 4.Theatre and music. 5. Tea.

All Aussie and homegrown (except the tea).

Email me for tips.