tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80541383421517964672024-03-19T20:46:02.622+10:30Read, Think, WriteA blog about reading and writing by a reader and writer. There will also be some thinking.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.comBlogger171125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-29368272173225272912011-07-22T20:38:00.000+09:302011-07-22T20:38:58.654+09:30Barbara Hanrahan tributeIf you're in Adelaide next Wednesday evening and feel like taking in a little Culture, you could come to this event at the State Library. North Terrace, 6 for 6.30. (Click on the image to enlarge it. If you're lucky you might even be able to read the fine print.)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiEc_AEkTrQo_o3GNiBIJzVkpO6zCkXTfYNvbnsOCcXLXNBX-KuNExDyWyPleyTeShyz0wbNAVJTAmkYdhi9LLAs-oRsUnMCY9ZGJBV0rh0F8yPqRurdEAC_OggVbnw_us677T3CRYpS3D/s1600/Hanrahan+flyer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="400" width="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiEc_AEkTrQo_o3GNiBIJzVkpO6zCkXTfYNvbnsOCcXLXNBX-KuNExDyWyPleyTeShyz0wbNAVJTAmkYdhi9LLAs-oRsUnMCY9ZGJBV0rh0F8yPqRurdEAC_OggVbnw_us677T3CRYpS3D/s400/Hanrahan+flyer.jpg" /></a></div>Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-79638698696844714832011-07-22T09:51:00.001+09:302011-07-22T09:52:20.455+09:30In which the young Harper helps out the old HarperYesterday I posted on Facebook a link to an article about the fact that sales of <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> have increased over 100% since David and Victoria Beckham named their new baby daughter Harper after Harper Lee. The bub is in good company, with Paul Simon's son and Gregory Peck's grandson (and who knows how many other less well-connected infants) called Harper for the same reason.<br />
<br />
Someone commented at that Facebook link that she wondered what Harper Lee thought about it; my immediate thought, given my own joy when the annual modest but very welcome Public Lending Right and Education Lending Right cheques arrive chez moi every May, was that if Harper Lee was still alive then I bet she was as pleased as all get-out. A quick check with Wikipedia revealed that Lee is indeed still alive; she was born in April 1926 and is therefore 85 years old. <br />
<br />
Given its ubiquity and its staying power on literature courses in schools and universities ever since it was first published, I'm assuming that Lee's iconic novel has kept her in cat food and bananas all her life, but the boost to royalties from the Beckham input can surely, to an 85-year-old woman living in a country where people die daily because they can't afford medical treatment and care, be nothing but very welcome.<br />
<br />
I didn't know this lovely story from the Wikipedia entry about how <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> came to be written, so here it is. Props to Michael Brown or what? They don't make patrons like that any more.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>In 1949, a 23-year-old Lee arrived in New York City. She struggled for several years, working as a ticket agent for Eastern Airlines and for the British Overseas Air Corp (BOAC). While in the city, Lee was reunited with old friend Truman Capote, one of the literary rising stars of the time. She also befriended Broadway composer and lyricist Michael Brown and his wife Joy. Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. The following month at the Browns' East 50th townhouse, she received a gift of a year's wages from them with a note: "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas." She quit her job and devoted herself to her craft. Within a year, she had a first draft.</blockquote>Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-19919422424009184882011-06-17T07:37:00.003+09:302011-06-17T07:40:33.904+09:30In which Ian Rankin does something unusualHere's a little puzzle for people who habitually read literary journalism, especially in Australia.<br />
<br />
What is quite unusual about <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/jun/16/edinburgh-book-festival-ian-rankin?intcmp=239">this piece</a> by Ian Rankin? What does it have that we don't often see in articles about literary favourites and highlights, or indeed in literary journalism at all?<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Cross-posted at</i> <a href="http://stilllifewithcat.blogspot.com/">Still Life With Cat</a></span>Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-7564301491838872962011-06-03T12:43:00.001+09:302011-06-03T12:44:36.058+09:30Una selva oscuraThis morning I paid the princely sum of $10 for this new book:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHlweMjZyzNabz4PGW7TqYgzMDZUercgTfQh5FSAk1y20dnAnIDIUKdbVM3Q0er4CKXBmnDoERXGvmSqcpliZ6SBvtouag7AfhfBKWc6tGRVvrXe4h_RfWiGW9Kzi2JTp9y2KcuYFT7us/s1600/Penguin" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHlweMjZyzNabz4PGW7TqYgzMDZUercgTfQh5FSAk1y20dnAnIDIUKdbVM3Q0er4CKXBmnDoERXGvmSqcpliZ6SBvtouag7AfhfBKWc6tGRVvrXe4h_RfWiGW9Kzi2JTp9y2KcuYFT7us/s400/Penguin" width="244" /></a></div><br />
I was halfway to the bookshop counter, wallet at the ready, very possibly with <a href=http://minervasskirt.blogspot.com/2011/05/wood-of-suicides.html>Casey's recent lovely post about Dante</a> in the back of my mind and thinking $10 was a really good deal for one of the great classics of literature, even if I did have to read it in unsatisfactory translation (for I've never seen a translation of the opening three lines that seemed to me exactly right, and I don't even speak or read Italian, but I know what I like), when I idly opened it at random to check the print size and found to my great joy that what I was about to pay a pittance for was a parallel text, with Dante's exquisite, lucid, singing Italian opposite the translation.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitWb2zYT_n8x5ZnrLyNIby8WKQp9DxOK5avXNQwpTwcY4N71eKtDTAiXW5gYcTkn42bO_rNU0HjSwOxa8ElDHKCnS5w1UmWE2KW6Ic0jFr3g4ryS0is52TkHZOEiiyLs9iFrgHfdPG1hg/s1600/Dante+text.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitWb2zYT_n8x5ZnrLyNIby8WKQp9DxOK5avXNQwpTwcY4N71eKtDTAiXW5gYcTkn42bO_rNU0HjSwOxa8ElDHKCnS5w1UmWE2KW6Ic0jFr3g4ryS0is52TkHZOEiiyLs9iFrgHfdPG1hg/s400/Dante+text.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Five years of excellent teaching and intermittent hard slog at Adelaide Girls' High back in the mists of time has left me with the ability to nut out a little bit of German and quite a lot of French if it is put in front of me, but such Italian as has sunk in, ie almost none (though I still remember the Italian for the first phrase I ever consciously learned: <i>Posso provarlo?</i> 'May I try this on?') has done so by accident and through some sort of process of osmosis.<br />
<br />
But it strikes me, not for the first time, that this verse is so beautiful one could teach oneself Italian simply by studying a page of this book a day. A dark wood, in which one has lost one's way: can you think of a better metaphor for middle age? <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidlJ0QmpX7aHnW5TGalMlmtBrY5H0PAJ8f43Vx7RMBFpVsAAGMyHfjSS1VctaXcR_6weGfSeGbFJnfFsPSWBnB96ThVWBUmmQ26YzLbKBTeFXVSCRfC5odj8_6NzRPyIpK1P1QC91S5B4/s1600/arthur-rackham-enter-the-two-brothers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidlJ0QmpX7aHnW5TGalMlmtBrY5H0PAJ8f43Vx7RMBFpVsAAGMyHfjSS1VctaXcR_6weGfSeGbFJnfFsPSWBnB96ThVWBUmmQ26YzLbKBTeFXVSCRfC5odj8_6NzRPyIpK1P1QC91S5B4/s400/arthur-rackham-enter-the-two-brothers.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br />
<blockquote>...Françoise sat down beside me with a volume of Dante and construed<br />
a few lines of the 'Inferno' to begin showing me how the language<br />
worked. '<i>Per mi si va tra la perduta gente</i>' - 'Through me you go<br />
among the lost people'. A line that crushed the heart, but in the<br />
middle you could say 'tra la'. It was music.</blockquote><span style="font-size: x-small;">– Clive James, <i>Falling Towards England</i></span><br />
<br />
The opening lines likewise crush the heart -- 'In the middle of this life we live, I became aware that I was in a dark wood, and the path was lost.' Or words to that effect. Also words to crush the heart, but look at the paper (or whatever it is) that they were written on.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Cross-posted at <i>Still Life With Cat</i></span>Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-71297293610257269352011-04-23T12:32:00.001+09:302011-04-23T12:34:07.570+09:30On not writing about the Miles Franklin Literary AwardPassing over the irony of the fact that the main reason I've been neglecting this blog is that I've been flat out writing a book, missing my first deadline but absolutely determined not to miss my second (and I didn't, either. It seems that it's still possible in your late fifties to work all night; who knew?) -- passing over, as I say, the irony of that, I've been thinking in the wake of the second Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist in three years to feature novels written exclusively by men about why the very thought of writing <a href=http://kerryn-goldsworthy.blogspot.com/2009/06/biblical-world-view-legitimised.html><i>another</i> post</a> about this (for if they're gonna keep doin' it then it is up to those of us to whom these things matter to keep callin' 'em on it) (God I love long sentences, I just love them to death) makes me want to lie down in my own bed in the foetal position with the doona over my head and my thumb in my mouth.<br />
<br />
The closest I've seen to an answer to this question is provided by theatre critic, poet and novelist Alison Croggon in some online discussion in the wake of her <a href=http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/57054.html>excellent piece on the subject</a> for the ABC's The Drum. Can't find that comment now but it was something to the effect that one way to get rid of pesky feminist critics was to force them to bore themselves to death explaining the same simple points over and over again. <br />
<br />
Examples of the simple points in question: What patriarchy is. What 'hegemony' means. Why the idea of 'literary merit' is not an absolute given. How the dominant culture works. Why it's not simply a matter of who has which set of bits. In a word, Feminism 101. <br />
<br />
Not only do I not want to bore myself to death going over these things in online arguments with men who think they already know everything, I also don't want to bore myself to death listening to or reading the magisterial pronouncements of people who haven't done the reading. For examples, see the comments thread on Alison Croggon's piece I linked to up there, if you can stomach it, which I bet you can't. And the comments on <a href=http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/a-closed-book-as-prize-list-leaves-women-on-outer-20110421-1dqgg.html>Jason Steger's piece on the subject</a> in <i>The Age</i> yesterday are much worse again. <br />
<br />
The reason one has to explain the same simple points over and over again is that, in general, blokes simply do not listen when women speak, and they do not read what women write. This is circular argument: they will say Oh but that's because what women say isn't good or interesting, and then you say Well that's because you're applying masculine values universally, and they say They're not masculine values, they're universal values, like for example everyone agrees on what literary merit is, and you say Well no we don't, women value some things differently, and they say Oh but what women say isn't good or interesting. <br />
<br />
Etc. <br />
<br />
I speak from the experience of (a) six years of blogging, in which activity I include reading and commenting on other blogs, (b) 20 years of university teaching and (c) 50+ years of arguing with my father. The exception is (some) male academics in the humanities, especially those under about 50: those who have actually read some of the theory, and into whom some of the theory has sunk. You can practically see the shining light bulbs above these men's heads. I am very fond of all of them.<br />
<br />
But as for the rest, I don't know how this is to be got over. Perhaps it isn't. See doona, foetal position, thumb, etc.<br />
<br />
Also, in the discussion of this year's Miles F round the online traps, I've been seeing two (in particular) other honourable exceptions to this: <i>The Australian</i>'s literary editor Stephen Romei, and novelist and critic James Bradley. So perhaps there is hope.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-31986334844282609722011-03-23T17:16:00.002+10:302011-03-23T17:16:56.693+10:30Apostrophe CornerI see there's some sort of genetic link between being a member of the Flat Earth Society and not knowing where to put your <a href=http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/23/3171486.htm>apostrophes</a>.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-31933318643873414852011-03-22T21:45:00.002+10:302011-03-22T21:47:02.109+10:30Be careful what you wish forI dreamed of a life in which I could make a living reading and writing, and do so independently: a life where I was in charge. I did a number of difficult things in order to make this come to pass. But tonight, years later, as I reap the fruits of same, my life is reminding me of something from my childhood.<br />
<br />
TIME: the present<br />
<br />
PLACE: my house<br />
<br />
CAST: <br />
<br />
Water ..... Words<br />
Brooms .... Books<br />
Mickey .... Moi<br />
<br />
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="430" height="230" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XChxLGnIwCU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-76215573788146618542011-03-06T14:46:00.001+10:302011-03-06T14:47:28.449+10:30And his ghost may be heard While I was writing the book about Adelaide (which is now finished and sent to the publisher as of last week; hallelujah and so on), I became acquainted with the magnificent <a href=http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/>Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program</a> being undertaken by the National Library of Australia. Much material of the livelier sort – merely corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative – comes straight from the Adelaide papers of the times, mainly the <i>Register</i> and the <i>Advertiser</i>.<br />
<br />
And here's something I just stumbled on (you do an awful lot of stumbling over treasure when you're noodling around at that site) a moment ago while looking for something quite different. It sounds eerily familiar. Nuriootpa is in the Barossa Valley. NOW READ ON ...<br />
<br />
From<i> The Advertiser</i>, 21 March 1908 <br />
<br />
<b>SWAGMAN DROWNED AT NURIOOTPA.</b><br />
<br />
NURIOOTPA, March 19. - An apple-packer, while passing over the North Para bridge, at 6.45 a.m. to-day, saw the body of a man floating in the river near Mr. C. Schelz's house. He called at Tolley's distillery and the police were communicated with by telephone. Mounted Constable Grosser soon arrived on the scene and with assistance took the body from the water. <br />
<br />
It was found to be that of a man about 75 years of age, and 5 ft. 5 in. in height. The deceased was toothless and had blue eyes, grey hair, and a grey goatee beard.<br />
<br />
The deceased arrived in this town on Tuesday night with a swag and was last seen alive late yesterday afternoon, when he was camping on the bank of the river near the spot where his body was found. He was a stranger in these parts. A paper found on him bore the name of Michael Whelan. The swag, which was neatly arranged, was attached to the body. An inquest was considered unnecessary, everything pointing to accidental death from drowning.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-28388047170684206452011-02-16T10:40:00.000+10:302011-02-16T10:40:36.459+10:30You keep using that wordJust in case anyone here is confused about the meaning of the word 'love', allow the Australian Christian Lobby to explain it to you:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Brigadier Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby has no qualms about the law. The head of the influential Christian pressure group said a church school should have the right to expel any openly gay child.<br />
<br />
"But I would expect any church that found itself in that situation to do that in the most loving way that it could for the child and to reduce absolutely any negative affects.<br />
<br />
"I think that you explain: this is a Christian school, that unless the child is prepared to accept that it is chaste, that it is searching for alternatives as well, that the school may decide that it might be better for the child as well that he goes somewhere else. I think it's a loving response."</blockquote><br />
If you're wondering, it's <a href="http://m.smh.com.au/national/education/appalling-law-lets-schools-expel-gay-students-20110211-1aqk2.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/D58LpHBnvsI" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe>Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-60801140289246017342011-02-14T10:50:00.000+10:302011-02-14T10:50:38.308+10:30Work: more smart, less hardIt was Oscar Wilde, I believe, who once said that he'd done a hard day's work: he'd spent the morning putting in a comma, and the afternoon taking it out. Whenever I have that sort of writing day, spent fruitlessly staring and tinkering and staring and tinkering, seeing a problem down a long vista of tunnel vision and failing comprehensively to solve it, it's Oscar Wilde who comes to mind.<br />
<br />
But this morning I'm reading Daniella Brodsky's <i>Vivian Rising</i> and I've just come across this:<br />
<blockquote>'... I'm not getting off the phone with you until I think of a good piece of advice.'<br />
<br />
'We might be here awhile. Remember the Pacific Seafood Extravaganza debacle?' I say, recalling the day I was out sick and Wendy stayed at the office till after midnight thinking up a good rhyme for <i>flounder</i>.<br />
<br />
'Right,' she says. 'I still don't know how your grandmother came up with "grab a pounder of flounder."'</blockquote>Next time I'm having a day like that, I won't describe it to myself as the insertion and removal of commas, but rather as an attempt to think of a rhyme for <i>flounder</i>. In my family, any pointless endeavour is known as 'calling a Burmese cat', but the search for an impossible rhyme is a more fitting metaphor with regard to the writing life.<br />
<br />
There are three different possible ways out of wasting a whole day in this manner, all of which involve reframing the problem rather than, erm, floundering around looking for a solution to the existing one, whatever it is, that you have idiotically set yourself:<br />
<br />
1) Come up with an outrageous Ogden Nashish solution, as per 'pounder of flounder'.<br />
<br />
2) Write blank verse.<br />
<br />
3) Think of a different fish, but not lobster or oyster. Whiting, say, or shark. Better still, eel.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-65741721107992736352011-01-27T11:25:00.001+10:302011-01-27T11:27:44.328+10:30More on self-editingWhich actually sounds kind of rude, but is in fact the opposite of any form of self-indulgence; one must be strict with oneself. Here, as of this morning, are the red-pen annotations on the hard copy of what I sincerely hope will be the penultimate draft of the section of the Adelaide book that deals with Don Dunstan and his Pink Shorts, strung together, in the order in which they appear, for your entertainment. Like the parlour game of Consequences, they do in fact provide a surprisingly coherent narrative, thus:<br />
<br />
One newspaper described them as 'flesh-pink'. They had a point, and I wasn't sure about it either. CHECK AND FIX THIS. Add something from the PhD on food and drink? You need to paraphrase this info and conflate it with DD's own portrait. MASH UP. Make more of a song & dance about this. Get DJO's permission. There was also a dash of leftover Cold War paranoia, and another of unreconstructed British imperialism. And to have been a little outraged that it was possible for any Englishman to be sacked by an Australian, even the head of the government that had employed him: 'My loyalty,' he said, apparently under the impression that he had come to work in one of Her Majesty's colonies, 'is to the Crown.' NO LEAVE THIS BIT OUT. As Dunstan had written about a different matter. Factor in dates of Royal Commission. ... the reforms in matters of sexual freedom, particularly the decriminalisation of homosexuality ... Say where photo is. Find name of song -- PERMISSION! (Which had made it possible for him to turn up there in shorts in the first place.)Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-45153510630629213702011-01-21T09:19:00.002+10:302011-01-21T09:29:36.450+10:30Alfred Lord Tennyson and the Zombies of Sex-CoburgApparently now writers aren't allowed to behave badly or they will be <a href="http://blog.bookviewcafe.com/2011/01/18/a-riff-on-the-harper-contract/">punished</a>. I wonder if this new boilerplate contract contains the phrase 'damages our brand'.<br />
<br />
Well, there goes Oscar Wilde. There go Jane Bowles and Jean Rhys. There go Verlaine and Rimbaud, Dylan Thomas, Jack Kerouac, Colette, Percy and Mary Shelley, John Ashbery and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. There goes Norman Mailer and there, in spades, go William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson. Add your own. It's a long list, as long as a piece of string.<br />
<br />
(There, it might even be argued, goes Virginia Woolf, for here she is, <a href="http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/the-dreadnought-hoax/">fooling His Majesty's Navy</a>. That's her on the left-hand end: click on the photo to enlarge, or, as we say in the blogosphere, embiggen. Has anyone ever done a proper academic feminist/postcolonial analysis of this affair, against the background of British/African relations c. 1910? I think there's a thesis in it.)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh76CvJoD1M7rkXoF2D4egteIQdhwbv_nVG6Og5KpmbjUpIs2xctEQ-6XUvg20pPJ7Qychk13OpIWnxErLpx-FMwGRLvkdaGZr_-CVAG20a6a0R4GNN28-5R92KOvyXM0MZX_Zf2lGQlTvX/s1600/dradnoughtpic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh76CvJoD1M7rkXoF2D4egteIQdhwbv_nVG6Og5KpmbjUpIs2xctEQ-6XUvg20pPJ7Qychk13OpIWnxErLpx-FMwGRLvkdaGZr_-CVAG20a6a0R4GNN28-5R92KOvyXM0MZX_Zf2lGQlTvX/s320/dradnoughtpic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-5594402027307789832011-01-18T09:39:00.000+10:302011-01-18T09:39:07.504+10:30After computers: the art of second-guessingThe idea of book-as-baby is a common trope, and it applies not only to books but to any piece of writing that is going to be read by someone other than you. You labour to bring forth the object, and then send it out into the world. <br />
<br />
In order to prepare a child for the world, you do your best to second-guess the hazards she might encounter. You nourish her, vaccinate her and educate her. Does the parallel with writing still hold? Why yes. It does. <br />
<br />
My earliest forays into publication, back in the early 1980s when newspapers and books were still edited wholly by literate human beings and not largely by American grammar-checking programs, involved the then literary editor of <i>The Age</i> (not the current one) parcelling up volumes of poetry in fours and fives and asking me to write 500-word reviews covering all of them. This as you can imagine was no easy task, though it provided valuable early training in the art of saying something useful in a tiny space. (Which may be why I love to bang on at such length <i>en blog</i>. It's because I can.)<br />
<br />
This was fine until I realised that as often as not, on publication, the final paragraph had simply disappeared. Which was another valuable lesson in the fact that in the production of newspapers, the measurement of column inches takes precedence over meaning -- as it must; space, like money, is measurable and finite, and doesn't magically expand just because one feels the need to calibrate one's nuances more finely. (As with money, again.)<br />
<br />
And some sub-editors, I discovered, will simply physically trim the edges off your copy as though it were cookie dough, sorry, biscuit dough. I developed a strategy of writing penultimate paragraphs that would, if called upon, serve as final ones, for the times when the 500 words I had been asked for and provided happened not to fit into the space around the advertising -- for which the books pages were, then as now, desperate in order to justify their existence to a stern and pragmatic management, and the sub found it easiest simply to lop off the last little bit. It felt - no, don't go there.<br />
<br />
I was reminded of this last night when I wrote a sentence I quite liked, comparing Don Dunstan's pink shorts to Cinderella's glass slipper, 'unwearable by all but one.'<br />
<br />
The spell-checker promptly 'corrected' <i>unwearable</i> to <i>unbearable</i>.<br />
<br />
I constantly see things in print, and I bet you do too, that appear to make no sense until it dawns on me that Word has 'corrected' something and no human eye and hand have intervened to correct it back. And everyone even remotely connected with writing and publishing knows that sometimes literals creep in, or amendments somehow fail to be taken in, or corrections are somehow not corrected back. I had a vivid mental picture of readers sitting down with the book and puzzling over the notion that the Pink Shorts were unbearable to all but one. <br />
<br />
(Which has its own strange charm, as notions go, but which we know not to be true.)<br />
<br />
And so I have changed the sentence to something less satisfactory but stronger proof against the processes, as they now are, of publishing. The child is now safe from the measles, but one sheds a parental tear over the pinprick of broken skin.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6rD8XtVVjP6GPgprhfrlNBXlP5HcbyRKo6bSTVuIr8yp05SiCIetaU8eTzWCXFRfmjAsqvc9iDDoFdlHzakg9KJmx6XQLtcvDXb3ZmyF80us7HyiKo1f_GOX8PocbXZ1pr-qrcp2x7qIm/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6rD8XtVVjP6GPgprhfrlNBXlP5HcbyRKo6bSTVuIr8yp05SiCIetaU8eTzWCXFRfmjAsqvc9iDDoFdlHzakg9KJmx6XQLtcvDXb3ZmyF80us7HyiKo1f_GOX8PocbXZ1pr-qrcp2x7qIm/s400/images.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-85415449737044267322011-01-10T15:13:00.000+10:302011-01-10T15:13:53.411+10:30Self-editingAs I think I may have blogged about before, either here or at <a href=http://stilllifewithcat.blogspot.com>t'other blog</a>, I learned after many years of chronically costive writing practices that if I hit a snag in a sentence or a paragraph, what I should do instead of painstakingly rearranging the grammar or rebooting the paragraph or Googling down the highways and byways of the virtual world in search of confirmation or denial before moving on to the next glacially slow sentence was simply to write a short note to myself in the text, saying what needed to be done, and to write it in caps inside square brackets for clear demarcation and easy spotting. <br />
<br />
In practice, almost all such interjections consist of either [CHECK], which usually means 'fact-check', or [FIX THIS], which can mean anything from a clumsily structured paragraph through a bungled segue to a sentence that has simply lost its way and its will to live, and has lain down in the dust to die.<br />
<br />
But the book on Adelaide that I am currently hustling to finish is both much longer and much more complicated than most of the stuff I write, and the manuscript as it exists at the moment, while indeed full of [CHECK] and [FIX THIS], also has a few longer and more exotic interjections in it. My two favourites to date are [GAH, JESUS, SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT -- REWRITE THIS WHOLE SENTENCE] and [NO YOU FUCKWIT, HARDLY ANYBODY KNOWS ABOUT THIS, WHAT YOU'VE WRITTEN HERE IS JUST COMPLETELY WRONG].<br />
<br />
One can only hope that in one's hurry one does not send one of these early drafts to the publisher by mistake.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-91386638406894869062011-01-04T13:15:00.000+10:302011-01-04T13:15:36.562+10:30Australian novels: a quizThe multi-talented <a href=http://ampersandduck.blogspot.com>Ampersand Duck</a> has put together a quiz about favorite Australian novels. I was surprised by how hard I had to think about some of these. It's a magnificent bit of procrastination for those struggling to get back into a work groove, especially seeing that most of the people who read this would probably be able to justify it as work. Sort of. More or less. The quiz is <a href=http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/e9zbyS2/Whats-your-fav-book-by-these-Australian-authors>here</a>.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-61625701048745798002010-12-06T01:13:00.000+10:302010-12-06T01:13:08.865+10:30Great 2010 autobiographies and Christmas presents<a href=http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/51942/225449>Richards</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href=http://www.suite101.com/content/how-to-make-gravy-review-of-paul-kelly-memoir-a301017>Kelly</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/books/review/Senior-t.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes>Hitchens</a>.<br />
<br />
But where are the women?<br />
<br />
Were they not admitted to the echelons where you can have the sort of life you write this sort of book about? Did they write a book but fail to persuade a publisher? Were they too busy pairing socks?<br />
<br />
Askin'.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-13939732250654727062010-11-28T21:49:00.000+10:302010-11-28T21:49:50.851+10:30A new name for booksSome time in the early 1980s I was introduced by a friend to the work of US cartoonist Garry Trudeau, the first cartoonist ever to win a Pulitzer. I immediately became, and have remained, a rusted-on devotee, reading the cartoons daily, saving favourites, buying the collections and, since <i>Doonesbury</i> went online, reading the strip every day. Most of what I know about the US is stuff that I have learned, or deduced, or intuited, from reading Trudeau's cartoons and the responses to them in the Blowback section of <a href="http://www.doonesbury.com/">the website</a>.<br />
<br />
A friend in Abu Dhabi, apparently as reliant on the BBC World Service as several other Anglophone friends in non-Anglophone countries have been over the years and therefore likely to hear all kinds of good stuff, said today that she'd heard Trudeau being interviewed recently and recommended it. It's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/interview">here</a>. I recommend it too.<br />
<br />
I see at the Doonesbury site that there's a de luxe publication out to mark the 40th anniversary of the strip. Like a lot of the advertising of Trudeau's books in the past, the ad subverts itself and works as a kind of extension of the strip by touting Doonesbury merchandise in mock down-market advertising language, today including a new synonym for 'books': <i>old-media ownables</i>.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-6712899411680700722010-11-20T09:02:00.001+10:302010-11-20T09:10:23.318+10:30Clarification: not a serious suggestionA <a href=http://kerryn-goldsworthy.blogspot.com/2010/09/abandoning-good-ship-apostrophe.html>few posts back</a> I made an observation about apostrophes that seems in the discussion to have escalated into a war about editors and authors. In the course of this discussion I said 'If I were a publisher and were hiring an editor either in-house or on contract, I would give him or her a test sheet to edit with thirty different deliberate errors on it, and nobody who got less than 30/30 would ever get a job.'<br />
<br />
<b>Please note: I was not seriously suggesting that this actually, in the real world, be done.</b><br />
<br />
This remark was made in the context of a point about changes in education policy and practice over the last 30-40 years that have resulted in professional editors occasionally not having certain kinds of knowledge or skills that would have been taken for granted in that profession thirty years ago. I saw this generation come through university year by year, regularly getting bumptious with me for insisting that skills and understanding with the mechanics of written language (spelling, grammar, punctuation) were important if they wanted a degree in English. Yes yes, I know, it sounds absurd now.<br />
<br />
I fear the remark has been taken literally, and it has escalated. This is partly my fault for my partly tongue-in-cheek defence of the proposition in the discussion. Note to self: tone is important.<br />
<br />
It was a comment made at the same level of facetiousness as a favourite utopian fantasy of mine, viz: 'When I'm queen of the world, I'm going ensure that every boy, the day after his fifteenth birthday, is confined in a luxury facility with private five-star suites, personal trainers, limitless sports facilities, regularly updated state-of-the-art personal computer equipment for all, six gourmet meals a day and hot and cold running sex workers, and he won't be let out until he's 40.' (The Bloke: 'But darling, why would he want to get out?')<br />
<br />
As with the 30-point editing test, it's possible to think that's a genuinely excellent idea without seriously advocating it in the real world.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-46114978959240029422010-11-16T12:40:00.002+10:302010-11-16T12:46:50.577+10:30Patrick White Award, prizes, lists, elephant stamps and so onThe brilliant David Foster has won the 2010 <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_White_Award>Patrick White Award</a>, and used his acceptance speech, as he is wont to do whenever he wins something, to <a href=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/foster-slams-no-class-coetzee/story-e6frg8n6-1225952891510>attack something or somebody else</a>.<br />
<br />
Sigh. Apart from anything else, it's not usually a matter of writers 'putting their hands up' for prizes and awards; usually it's the publishers who put books in for prizes and awards, and I'm guessing the publishers would scream blue murder, and I can understand why, if a writer (a good writer, anyway) these days said No no, leave me out of it. It might even be in some of their contracts. All very well for Patrick White, whose publishers were British and didn't give a toss what was going on in Aw-stralia. Times have changed.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the guy is a genius. There are many Australian writers whose work I admire and some whose work I love, but for sheer power and originality of vision and style I think Foster is up there with (to list them in order of birthdate) Joseph Furphy, Christina Stead, Patrick White, David Ireland, Les Murray, Gerald Murnane, Barbara Hanrahan and Alexis Wright. There's them, and then there's everyone else. And all of them, apart from Alexis Wright, who's lovely, were and/or are known for their intermittently difficult, prickly, eccentric, combative and/or contrary-Mary moments. So I suppose it goes with the territory.<br />
<br />
This is my Aust Lit List <i>of writers</i> -- not of 'favourites', for my favourites list is quite different, but of people I think were or are genuine originals and geniuses -- and I can just imagine the trouble it could get me into, but here I stand, etc. <br />
<br />
And it's an opportunity to explore a different issue that has been bothering me more and more in the wake of the publication last year of the <i>Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature</i>, which with the exception of such actual scholars of Australian literature as Professors Ivor Indyk and Peter Pierce seemed to be read by critics and commentators not for what was actually there, but rather almost exclusively in terms of who did or did not get an elephant stamp to say they'd been picked for the First Eleven.<br />
<br />
But for me, and I'm guessing for most or all of my fellow editors, it was far less a matter of 'who was in and who was out' than of <i>what</i> was in, and what it was <i>for</i>, and how it fitted together with all the other things that were in, within the stern constraints of our word limits.<br />
<br />
So while that's my personal Who's Who list up there, my personal What's What list of poems, stories and novels is quite different: individual works that, for whatever reason, and almost independently of their writers, are simply scarily, eerily good, that move and startle and resonate and go on resonating, in a way that defies analysis. If I could teach an Aust Lit course based solely on the texts that I personally think are magical in this way -- not 'representative' of anything or anyone, not there for any educative or ideological purpose, just magical, like a swirling snow globe or a glowing old-fashioned night light -- it would look like this:<br />
<br />
Jessica Anderson, <i>The Commandant</i> <br />
Thea Astley, <i>A Kindness Cup</i><br />
Marjorie Barnard, 'The Persimmon Tree'<br />
Charmian Clift, <i>Images in Aspic</i> <br />
Delia Falconer, 'Republic of Love' <br />
Helen Garner, <i>The Children's Bach</i><br />
Jack Hibberd, <i>A Stretch of the Imagination</i><br />
Elizabeth Jolley, <i>My Father's Moon</i><br />
Baz Luhrmann, <i>Strictly Ballroom</i><br />
David Marr, <i>Patrick White: A Life</i><br />
Olga Masters, 'The Christmas Parcel'<br />
Les Murray, 'The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle'<br />
John Shaw Nielsen, 'Let Your Song be Delicate'<br />
Kenneth Slessor, 'Five Bells'<br />
Ethel Turner, <i>Seven Little Australians</i><br />
Don Walker and Steve Prestwich, 'Flame Trees'<br />
Peter Weir, <i>Picnic at Hanging Rock</i>Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-33845334793297497562010-11-11T12:44:00.002+10:302010-11-11T19:04:01.418+10:30Bad writing, bad readingAfter reading Tim Dunlop's carefully written, very nuanced, complex but clearly explained piece about books, the internet and changing times at the ABC's <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40960.html">The Drum</a> this morning I was astonished, and not in a good way, to read some of the comments. <br />
<br />
Those who see themselves as Defenders of the Book (ahem: Tim was not <i>attacking</i> the book, as he went to great lengths to explain in his opening paragraphs) are most likely to fulminate about one or both of two things: either the 'impermanence' of online writing, or the argument that goes 'the internet is full of dross'.<br />
<br />
The first makes you wonder whether they have any understanding of the internet at all, or whether they've heard of fire, flood and silverfish, and suggests that they are confusing or conflating permanence with materiality, which in turn suggests that they haven't read <i>Fahrenheit 451</i> which in turn makes you wonder whether they are as hard-core in their bibliophilia as they would have you believe. <br />
<br />
As for the second: well, yes. <i>Of course</i> the internet is full of dross, if by 'dross' you mean the sound of people talking to each other. If you don't want to listen to this sound, the thing to do is develop the skills that will enable you to find, quickly and easily, the particular non-dross that you want. Typing 'Charles Dickens' or 'Virginia Woolf' into the Google box should do it. The 'internet, dross' argument also implies that material published on paper is, by contrast, <i>not</i> full of dross, which in turn suggests that these people have never been in a newsagent's shop or an airport bookshop, or indeed don't read the papers. The <i>paper</i> papers, that is to say.<br />
<br />
But never mind the arguments themselves, as they have been and will continue to be amply rehearsed, over and over, everywhere you look. The point is that the people so eager to jump into the comments box to defend something that is not being attacked, and in so doing try to demonstrate what literature-lovers they are themselves, are revealing themselves as bad, careless, sloppy readers.<br />
<br />
This seems to be because they're in thrall to the siren song of the false dichotomy. But it's not a matter of either/or. Tim explains very clearly in that article that that's not what he thinks -- so clearly, in fact, that you can see he has anticipated this sort of response and has tried, with only middling success if the comments thread so far is anything to go by, to head it off at the pass.<br />
<br />
If I have any serious beef with the internet, it's not that it's 'full of dross' (those who make this argument seem to be complaining that some imagined all-powerful cosmic editor has not fixed all the spelling and typing errors made by teenagers communicating with each other, or by male academics for whom it is a point of pride, typing being a girly skill as everybody knows, that they don't know where the shift key is), but that it has revealed to me a number of things about human nature that I didn't want to know.<br />
<br />
One of those things is that when a writer trying to make an argument agonises for hours over micro-details in a piece of writing -- diction, rhythm, sentence structure, clarity of argument and position -- it has in the case of most readers been a total waste of time. Because the other thing is the way that readers like some of those commenting on that post at <i>The Drum</i> respond not by taking in what's been said and responding to it point by point, but by skim-reading and then rushing to mindless tribalism. Which is one of the many enemies of truth.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-8028741537458018192010-10-16T07:52:00.000+10:302010-10-16T07:52:12.216+10:30For academics, ex-academics and would-be academics: required readingBecause I am <s>supposed to be</s> writing a book and the deadline looms, which is also the reason why this blog has been so neglected -- no time to write posts of any substance even when the ideas are there -- I have suspended all forms of income-gathering apart from my regular reviewing job with the <i>SMH</i>, with one exception. The exception is an annual gig acting as second examiner of Honours theses in a university near you, which I am doing again this year for a number of reasons not least of which is to stay in touch with what's actually going on in my discipline in universities; examining Honours theses is a pretty reliable cage canary in this respect. Yesterday I had an email from the co-ordinator saying that they had been handed in and were en route to me.<br />
<br />
So I can't work out whether the gods were laughing kindly or unkindly when a link to this blog post turned up this morning on Facebook to a blog whose title all PhDs will get immediately: <a href="http://notthatkindofdoctor.com/2010/10/the-five-stages-of-grading/">Not That Kind of Doctor</a>.<br />
<br />
The Stage One part is particularly accurate, and has shot down in flames my plan that if I spend all of every morning examining theses, all of every afternoon working on the book and all of every evening reading the fiction that must be reviewed, I should meet all of the deadlines for each of the tasks.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-80136478336109608822010-09-18T15:16:00.000+09:302010-09-18T15:16:01.852+09:30Abandoning the good ship ApostropheSo, which major Australian publisher's website contains the following, in a bio of one of its fiction writers? <blockquote>[Insert name of author here] lives in a partially renovated house in the Dandenong's.</blockquote><br />
Now, butchers and fruit and veg merchants and so on don't make their living from reading and writing. One expects them to commit the odd apostrophe howler on their specials boards. But a howler as egregiously wrongity-wrong-from-Wrongtown as this on a publisher's website really is not a good look. There's no point in spending a lot of money on classy web design if you can't get someone fully literate to write the copy for it.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-34645367640492377992010-09-17T20:55:00.001+09:302010-09-17T20:57:37.968+09:30Books to the right of me, books to the left of me For the last three and a half years my reading has been what my editor Susan Wyndham of the <i>SMH</i> calls 'purpose-driven'; when you read four novels a week for review, pausing only to shoehorn in the entire oeuvre of Peter Temple in order to interview him for Writers' Week, or to write a full-length review or essay, or to read a book written by a friend, it leaves you very little time to read anything else apart from a few pages of crime fiction every night, for Reading in Bed Before the Light Goes Out is sacred to books read entirely for pleasure, although I must say I prefer Val McDermid's Tony Hill books to this new one, and am looking forward to moving on to Tana French and Reginald Hill. <br />
<br />
In spite of which, the house is full to bursting with books, but like most people who live in such houses, it doesn't stop me buying more books, and today I went a bit mad and bought or borrowed about ten, including (against my better judgement) a new Kathy Reichs, a rather sensational-looking history of true crime in Australia, the Salman Rushdie collection of essays and criticism <i>Imaginary Homelands</i>, and the most wonderful history of photography in South Australia from the 1840s to the 1940s, which features a double fold-out reproduction of Townsend Duryea's magnificent fourteen-plate <a href=http://www.history.sa.gov.au/history/duryea_panorama.htm><i>Panorama of Adelaide</i></a> from 1865. <br />
<br />
[NB this definitely counts as work done on the Adelaide book, especially since the Barr Smith Library has changed beyond recognition since the last time I was in it and it took me ages to find things and figure out how to work unfamiliar machines and so on. Barcode schmarcode.]<br />
<br />
<i>Anyway</i>, from among this largesse, the award for Quotation of the Day has to go to Peter Morton from Flinders U for this observation from <i>After Light: A History of the City of Adelaide and its Council, 1878-1928</i>. Of the period pre-1898, he writes: <br />
<blockquote>Then there were the massive problems of contaminated food and drink, and especially water, meat and milk. The quality of all three in the city was so dubious that it seemed the only citizen likely to live a natural span was a beer-drinking vegetarian.</blockquote>Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-73009480517209530142010-09-14T08:14:00.001+09:302010-09-14T08:25:46.691+09:30StorytellingAs anyone who's ever tried to write anything knows, there is no substitute for slog. And yet the amount of time spent on something doesn't necessarily equate to the amount of progress you've made with it. Sometimes sitting at a desk wrestling a paragraph to the deck is like wading through a swamp of used chewing gum. And at other times, a decision you make or a revelation that's delivered to you by the writing fairies will mean massive progress in the blink of an eye.<br />
<br />
That bit in that last post down there, for example, about the 'four types' of writing, and the decision (more of a realisation, really) that this Adelaide book should and would be a Narration-and-Description sort of book, is going to save me an awful lot of floundering around.<br />
<br />
When you're writing about a city you keep drifting back into the uncertain notion that you should be giving statistics, dates and facts about drainage and trams and so on. But it's not a history book. Sure I'll give the dates of things like gaslight and explorers' expeditions. But bearing in mind that the thing that has captured the public imagination about Matthew Flinders most enduringly is the story of his cat, I'll be concentrating more on stories: on the way that Edward John Eyre is remembered outside of Australia chiefly as a brutal, murdering bastard who caused the leading intellectual lights of Victorian England to line up on opposing sides and had a lasting effect on the development of international law; on why Captain Charles Sturt gets unkindly called 'a born loser' in his <i>ADB</i> entry; on the evidence that Colonel William Light was a crazy-brave soldier, artist and linguist as well as a surveyor; and on how Robert Gouger was one of the two people who cooked up the whole idea of a convict-free colony in South Australia while they were both in jail themselves.<br />
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(All but one of these people were broken in health by the effort and stress of establishing South Australia and died young. The alleged brutal, murdering bastard was the one who <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_John_Eyre">lived to a ripe old age</a>; make of that what you will.)Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8054138342151796467.post-3667072811944566482010-09-13T12:53:00.001+09:302010-09-13T14:53:41.406+09:30Book progress FAILThe attempt to chart the progress on the writing of the Adelaide book tanked almost before it drew breath, as you can see. But progress has in fact been made, albeit in less tangible ways than counting words. My dear friend Lyn was in town on Friday and as is so often the case I found the use of a sympathetic and enthusiastic sounding board a wonderful way to get ideas into shape.<br />
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Apropos the book, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how very much of writing, all writing, is a matter of solving problems of technique. What material to use, and which of it to put where, and why. What sort of narrative voice to establish and how to maintain it. For no good reason I found myself thinking of the tenets of Rhetoric as taught in the US, and the notion of the Four Types -- narration, description, argumentation and exposition -- and how useful that conceptual framework is as a way of deciding what you want or need to say and how you want or need to say it. With this book there will of necessity be a certain amount of exposition, but it'll be mostly narrative and description: stories and images of my city.<br />
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I don't think enough writers think enough about technique, especially these days when there's a whole generation of writers who spent their education being taught that grammar and syntax and spelling didn't matter, all that mattered was to Be Creative. This and other forces have conspired to convince that whole generation -- or at least this is the case if the general standard of written expression online is anything to go by -- that content is all and technique doesn't matter, and that it's perfectly possible to be a Great Writer even if you have no idea what you're doing when you write a sentence.<br />
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Yes of course the inspiration of the moment is important, as are emotional sources and the workings of the unconscious, and indeed all those things are playing a large part in the writing of this book. Similarly, a book like this needs to maintain adequate levels of ideological awareness, understanding and thoughtfulness; power and money flow around a city along complex but predictable channels. And then there's the material itself, the endless texts and facts. <br />
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But all those things need to balance each other, to have a shape, to be contained, to be arranged so that some form of continuum emerges, suggests connections between different stories and images and ideas, and provides a navigable pathway from one idea to the next. And they need to be expressed by a consistent and believable voice, be told in a way that's beautiful and reader-friendly.<br />
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And all of that means making lists, charts and diagrams, and doing some serious thought about word choice and sentence structure, right down to the rhythm of individual sentences -- which is something I think about a lot, and will often search for a synonym with its stress on a different syllable so that the sentence will be less bumpy and more lilting, or work away at a sentence structure that will end the sentence on a satisfyingly strong stressed syllable. (Unlike that one.)<br />
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It's all as far away as it could possibly be from the capital-R Romantic view of writing: that it all comes gushing forth unmediated and unchecked from one's heart, gut, brain and so on. That's all very well as a metaphor, but on a literal level, the stuff that comes gushing forth from one's various internal organs is usually not very nice. And more to the point, that's the stuff that your body wants to get rid of, not the stuff that it wants to keep.Kerryn Goldsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11270814460793882309noreply@blogger.com4