<![CDATA[Family Life]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss en-au shawjonathan@mac.com Thu, 28 May 2009 12:46:44 +1000 Thu, 28 May 2009 12:47:35 +1000 iBlog 1.4.6 Jonathan Shaw Family Life A patchy journal: Alzheimers and other afflictions (and possibly adventures) in Annandale Jonathan Shaw shawjonathan@mac.com Family Life Arts & Entertainment <![CDATA[A fond adieu ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C891102405/E20090415164103/index.html Today at a moment of my own choosing I close down this blog. It's the sixth anniversary of my first blog entry, which was on the day of Peter Hollingworth's resignation as Governor General of Australia. I was in my early 50s, my mother-in-law Mollie was living with us, as well as with Alzheimer's. We had a cat, and both boys were living at home. Things have moved on.

iBlog, the software that introduced me to blogging, was produced by a one-man concern, and the one man has shut up shop. I've been a wee bit nervous continuing to use it knowing that Sarat wouldn't be there if it ever gave up the ghost, as it has before. Apple is about to stop supporting HomePage, the software that's integral to the site where I keep this blog. Again, I could keep on using the address, but even having irrelevant support leached away creates an unsettling insecurity.

So after six years, 1164 entries, 27,500+ hits and 1390 comments, I'm turning off the life support.

I will carry on blogging, though, on WordPress, in the best anagram I could manage of Family Life: Me Fail? I Fly! Please come over and say hello.

If this is your first visit here, by all means have a look around. Browse. Comment. My Google feed will keep me informed. ]]> Mon, 25 May 2009 07:41:03 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C891102405/E20090415164103/index.html <![CDATA[SWF: The weekend ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090429141202/index.html I suppose I have to admit I had a great time at the Writers' Festival, and that my initial negative take on the program turned out to be ill-founded. Mind you, I didn't go to the olive oil tasting. But there was a list as long as my arm that I wish I could have gone to -- the main instance being that I didn't get to a single Children's or YA event.

Before I talk about events as such, I should mention the exhibitions/slide shows:

• Sarah Rhodes had a series of photographs of Australian artists on the wall of the Heritage Pier -- if you missed them you can see them on her website. I love the one of Dorothy Napagnardi.

• There was a slide show of Juno Gemes's photos of writers. She's the official photographer-in-residence of the Festival.

• MTC Cronin had an intriguing installation: three of her poems on pillars alongside goldfish bowls containing objects that resonated with the poems, plus three paintings on easels. I believe there was a talk as well, but I missed that. This was presented by the Red Room Company, and they're planning three more such installations around Sydney over coming months.

• Poets Paint Words was a slide show based on an event at the Newcastle Art Gallery last year, where a number of poets read works inspired by or otherwise relevant to paintings in the gallery's collection. The paintings and poems in the slides were from last year's event, and it didn't work brilliantly when I saw it, because the slides for most of the poems clicked over well before I had time to read them. On the Gallery's web site, however, they can be read at leisure. Bob Adamson and Brett Whiteley make a great pair.

In the sessions proper, I had a bit of a Muslim day, starting with the wonderfully urbane Mohammed Hanif talking about A Case of Exploding Mangoes. Asked what led hi to write it, he explained that like all first novelists, he wrote it because he was bored in his day job. He explained, further, that like all first novelists, he wanted to write an autobiographical love story, but as his life had been very dull he had to find something else. First novels also have to have a mystery and a party, he said. He was almost as wonderful as the book. I asked my only audience question, and was very brief: I asked him if I was right in sensing that beneath the humour it was an angry novel. He said that, like all first novelists, he was too busy working out how to write each paragraph, figuring out what was going to happen next, and working out how to make everything work to have feelings like anger, but he went on, graciously, to say that if a reader found anger in the book it came from the repressed anger of the times it was set in. Or words to that effect. Probably his most interesting remark, though was in response to a question about how his book was received in Pakistan, given its homosexual content: he explained to us well meaning ignoramuses (my description, no his) that Pakistan is a very complex place, with a thriving civil society as well as the fundamentalism and tribalism that makes the headlines. In some parts of the countries, girl bands attract large, enthusiastic audiences; in others, women have been killed for singing in public.

And rushing across the road to our next session, we were the 101st and 102nd in line for Irfan Yusuf in Conversation, so failed to make it into the room, which was licensed for 100 people only. This wasn't a total disaster: we sat in the sun beside the water and listened to the conversation in considerable comfort. We did miss the visual element: Yusuf's interlocutor Sudil Banami introduced him as a political heavyweight, and to judge from he laughter he made a show of taking the remark as a reference to his bulk; there was a bit of chat about flesh coloured headsets, and only when I saw these beige headsets in later sessions did I realise that a visual joke was being made by these two quite dark men. Yusuf was funny and smart and emphatic about the need for everyone to recognise the diversity of Australia's Muslim community. We bought his memoir, Once Were Radicals, which opens with thanks for George W Bush for inventing the comedy-god term Islamofascist.

Then onward ever onward for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in conversation with Ramona Koval. We were right up in the gods. An interesting part of Chimamanda's talk was to inform us that Nigeria too has a functioning civil society. In response to one question, she reassured us that the US is also quite civil: that she doesn't expect to be stoned when her new book is released there next month.

In the late afternoon, we listened to Robert Wainwright and Paola Totaro discuss their book about Martin Bryant, Born or Bred, raising and failing to lay to rest the ethics, and indeed legalities of using as source material a manuscript they had been given as part of aborted ghost-writing negotiations. An interesting session all the same. One of those that leave you glad of what you've just learned but not necessarily wanting to read the book.

At night, the charmingly enthusiastic Annette Shun Wah compered International Voices, where we were read to by Philipp Meyer (who read in that US-literary trance-like manner that very quickly lulled this reader to sleep), Tash Aw (who woke me up again, reading from A Map of the Invisible World), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (whom someone should tell not to read the same passage twice on the same day), Cees Nooteboom (a lugubrious older Dutchman who was charm personified) and Mohammed Hanif (whoread a very funny passage which ended on a ringing note of that repressed rage he says he wasn't aware of during the writing). How sweet it was to be read to for an hour and a half by such company.

Today was gloom and doom day: George (The Next 100 Years) Friedman painted a picture of a very grim future in which the climate change challenge will be met but US based capitalism will continue to gouge us all, and wars cold and hot will continue to plague us (He didn't mention plagues); Emmanuel (War Child) Jal sang and danced and recited verse about his life as a boy soldier and the joy of his survival; Mark (The Philosopher and the Wolf) Rowlands managed to be opaque and philosophically grim about the 11 years he spent living with his pet wolf Brennan (sp?). The last competes with the Germaine Greer evening for the nadir of my Festival. My companion walked out with 10 minutes to spare. I stayed, for reasons I don't understand, but then I was glad I did, because the meant Professor Greer's hold on the prize was secure. Seeking to clarify a point he'd been making about hope as not an altogether good thing, Mark Rowlands told us of an occasion when Brennan was a puppy trying to get a pit bull named Rugger to play with him. Rugger pushed Brennan to the ground and clamped his jaws around his neck. Where another puppy might have yelped desperately, Brennan uttered a sonorous growl, and Rowlands thought to himself: 'That is exactly the sound I would like to make when I know that all hope is gone and I am doomed.'

We chatted to friends, filled in our evaluations, listened wistfully for a few seconds to the outside loudspeakered version of a conversation about Creating a Participation Society, and were home in time to walk the dog for whom all hope has long been gone, and who growls peremptorily at an puppy who seeks her out. ]]> Sun, 24 May 2009 23:32:02 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090429141202/index.html <![CDATA[SWF: More poets ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090429140526/index.html I'd planned to go to quite a few things at the Festival yesterday. I was going to listen to Chloe Hooper, David Marr, Benjamin Gilmour, and have another dose of Norman Doidge. But life and work got in the way. I did sneak off for the 10 o'clock Poetry Reading in the intimate Bangarra Mezzanine room, and the Harbour outside the louvres turned on a reasonably lovely downpour, a sweet accompaniment to the poems about storms that one of the readers treated us to.

Anthony Lawrence kicked off the session by telling us about the three men on the panel -- Lawrence, Bob Adamson and the younger US poet Devin Johnston -- going out fishing in the Hawkesbury last weekend in Adamson's boat, talking about poetry and butcher birds, throwing a piece of squid to a passing osprey, only to be regally ignored. My woman companion was delighted and touched by the obvious camaraderie and affection among the three of them. In fact, she commented on it during the brief question time at the end and asked if this was characteristic of poets, as opposed to, say, novelists. The reply had to acknowledge the famous feuds among poets including a recent one in which two of the members of our panel actually had an AVO taken out against them. But even that, Anthony Lawrence said, was fun, even if they were sending 80 harassing emails a day.

Back to the reading. If J S Harry cut a fine crone-like figure on Thursday morning, Bob Adamson has to be a male equivalent. He is an excellent performer, very natural and relaxed, and serving the poetry beautifully. Anthony Lawrence, apart from telling of the fishing trip, read us some notes about his take on nature poetry: he doesn't aim to describe things, animals, birds observed closely, but to write poetry in which (and I wrote this down as he said it) 'the subject is forced into the service of language'. He then read some intensely personal nature poems that made me realise I had no idea what he meant by that. Devin Johnson might have seemed like a ring-in, being from the USA and all, but he was clearly a huge fan of Adamson as well as a friend, and his poems about places like Chattanooga and the Wabash were in sweet harmony with the others. As he read, one of his hands would rise up as if of its own accord and conduct, sketching the rhythms of his lines in the air. He read a wonderful poem, 'Marco Polo', that moved seamlessly from his infant daughter babbling at the night sky to Marco Polo wandering the Mongolian desert. I can't find it on the web, and I didn't catch the name of the book it's in -- sorry!

I'm writing this on Saturday night after a full day at the Festival. But my report on today will have to wait. it's tiring work being a punter at an event like this. ]]> Sat, 23 May 2009 21:05:26 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090429140526/index.html <![CDATA[SWF: Poets, brains, artefacts and matriarchs ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090429140502/index.html Yesterday was immersion day for me at the Sydney Writers' Festival. We took the tram to Pyrmont Bay and walked through the Rocks, stopping at the clifftop next to Brett Whiteley's giant stork's egg for a hot drink before descending to Walsh Bay, where the combined heads of the punters were adding substantially to the albedo effect. Not that there's anything wrong with that! It was great to be at a place with so many grey heads lending distinction to the cause.

My festival day was bookended by glorious older women – J S Harry at the start with wild grey hair and arthritic gait belying the wit and grace of her reading, and Germaine Greer, stand up manquée seduced by her own charisma at the end. Together with Rabiah Hutchinson, the subject of a third session, they would make an impressive cast for a children's film featuring three scary but probably benign witches, say one based on a novel by Eve Ibbotson.

So, I started out with a poetry reading in the Bangarra Mezzanine, which at 10 o'clock in the morning is ideal for such an event. I found myself sitting beside Anne Bell, herself a fine poet for children, and possibly a contender for Fourth Witch (in her case, unambiguously benign). Judy Johnson and Stephen Edgar read beautifully, she in electric blue, he in academic beige. Then Jan Harry stole the show. I've found her poetry difficult on the page, but when she reads, it's delightful. She started with a 'nasty' piece on the 'pre-Rudd era', and among the other pieces was a stunning mock-heroic portrait of a security guard at a mall. Sorry, I didn't catch the name of either poem.

Norman Doidge was next, in conversation with Caroline Baum about The Brain That Changes Itself. We were in row AA, which is not right up the back behind row Z, in front of row A, so that our eyes were on a level with the artist's shoes -- and very fine shoes they were. Those who know me know that I rarely notice what people are wearing. This day was an exception -- though in this case I was helped not only by my angle of view but also by the woman on my right gasping, 'I want those shoes.' She didn't mean Norman's sensible brown buckled footwear, but Caroline's Pope-red zip boots. As if to rub salt in the wounds of the shoe enviers in the audience (and I found out later they were legion), she began the conversation by asking Norman why we should have come to his talk barefoot. Sadly he failed to decode the question as an invitation to talk about the bit in the book where he says that wearing shoes in urban environments leads one's brain to lose the ability to differentiate between areas on the sole, and answered that people probably came to the talk because they are interested in finding out about the world. That set the tone for the conversation: Caroline kept asking questions designed to evoke witty or profound responses, and Norman spoke quietly and seriously about whatever came to mind. I gave her full points for trying. And in fact, the conversation went well. I wold have liked more detail on exactly what a neuroplactician does that's different from other therapists, but it was wonderful to have my scepticism about the usefulness of drugs to cure 'mental illness' boosted by someone who is clearly a committed slave to the evidence.

This session gets my personal award for the Best. Audience. Question. Evah. I don't mean the very old man who asked if Dr Doidge would recommend his approach to restructuring the brain to someone over 90. I mean the one where a woman began by saying, 'I have a question, and it's something I feel very passionate about,' and went on, gloriously, with a plum in her mouth and not even a nod towards the notion of relevance:
I'm a dowser. Now you might not be aware that there are plans to build a desalination plant in Sydney, and it's completely udeless idea. I've written to Kevin Rudd and sent him twpo books explaining the value of dowsing, and he's returnied them withut even readaing them. I've also written to , you know, Midnight OIl, I don't remember his name, [on being helped out by a stunned looking Caroline Baum] yes, Peter Garrett, and he's also returned them unread. [On being patiently asked for her question] I do have a question, and it's this: What is wrong with the medical profession that they don't want to hear about dowsing? I've talked to one young doctor, and she just doesn't want to listen at all, even though her mother was a dowser.

At that point the microphone was kindly but firmly removed from her grasp. Dr Doidge, who had been looking a little bemused by all the attention, took on an even more introspective air. When Ms Baum asked him to give us five things to do to restructure our brains for the better, he bridled at the idea of telling us what to do, but relented enough to recommend exercise, learning a new language, doing posit science exercises for an hour a day -- though he seems to think that taking on a challenge you were passionate about (like blogging, perhaps?) would serve the purpose better than any Scientifically Proven Package. Find exemplary models, he said, and his final words of advice to this predominantly silver-haired audience: Dispense with foolish ideas that your learning days are over. I think that deserves a bit of bold face: Dispense with foolish ideas that your learning days are over.

But there's no time to sit and absorb. Half an hour later, having eaten a panino en route, I was sitting in a theatre to hear Philip Jones, of Ochre and Rust (which I think is superb), and Ross Gibson, of The Summer Exercises (which I haven't read) talk about the way they extract, deduce or invent stories about inanimate objects. Philip is a historian with an understanding of teh importance of narrative, Ross a fiction-writer with a profound respect for historical fidelity.

And with even less time to spare -- because this room filled up 20 minutes before the session was due to start -- I went to Sally Neighbour talking about The Mother of Mohammed, her biography of Rabiah Hutchinson, a scary convert to Islam. I managed to get past the door nazi, actually quite a nice person, by saying, truthfully that my friends were saving me a seat. 'I'll let you in.' she said, 'but you'd better not be putting one over. I've got teenage sons, you know, so I'm not easily fooled.' I was vaguely flattered. This was another interesting session, and of course the book is tempting. Sally Neighbour, Four Corners journalist, has written an earlier book about Islamic activists in Australia, and apparently Rabaiah was mentioned once in passing in that. This Australian woman had become something of a legend: she used to be among other things a donkey stoker [does anyone know what that means or do I have to read the book?], she converted to Islam, went off to do jihad, joining Jameer Islamiah and choosing to live with the Taliban, married seven husbands and used her detailed knowledge of Islamic law to divorce as needed. Sally Neighbour was fascinated, tracked her down and interviewed her at length. The resulting book makes a clear distinction between extremists and terrorists. Rabaiah is certainly the former – she sings the praises of the Taliban and once cowed the leader of Jameer Islamiah into getting rid of his cane chairs by berating him for departing from the floor-sitting ways of the Prophet. But she insists, and Sally Neighbour believes her, that she is not a terrorist and has never advocated violence. In response to the inevitable question/comment from the audience about how wearing a niqab is dangerous and is gives backing to terrorism, she talked about how having conversed with many women covering their faces in this way, she has become much less alarmed by it. Most women wearing a niqab in Australia, she said, are Austraoian, and most wear it of their own choice, not because someone is forcing them to. It is just a piece of clothing.

We'd been intending to go to the next session in that room, but the line was already dauntingly long, so we grazed in the bookshop, persuaded our friend to buy a copy of Seven Seasons in Aurukun, and had a relatively leisurely dinner before An Evening with Professor Germaine Greer up town.

Professor Greer was advertised as presenting a lecture on ‘The Australian Way: The Influence of Australia and Australians on British Politics and Politicians.' As one audience member asked at the end, 'Why should we care?' That question wasn't answered. Professor Greer walked onto the stage to sustained applause, and evidently took that as an invitation to self-indulgence, or at least to indulge in attacks on Kevin Rudd (some on his policies, some on his supposed egotism, one on his upper lip), an the English (their housing, their weather, their Universities, so inferior to Australian ones in the 60s), on the superannuation system (which she was noticeably misinformed about), on the idea of home ownership. She's a very smart woman. She was witty, even sometimes funny, the audience kept bursting into applause. And if she'd presented her material as stand-up, it would have been excellent: 'If there is a double dissolution and an election, my bumper sticker will red simply, MALCOLM TURNBULL IS A BANKER'; 'Where I live in south-east Queensland there are no decent newspapers, so I have to get the Australian. They're still questioning the reality of climate change. They carry on debating it all by themselves!' 'Australians are resourceful. My workforce live on stale finger buns from the hot bread shop.' That last remark, not an exact quote, but close, prompted me to ask, but not so she'd hear me from my perch in the gods, 'Why don't you pay them?' IN fact, given that she referred to her 'workforce' a number of times as evidence for what 'Australians' think about various things, she really ought to pay them researchers fees. The man next to me asked, in a European accent of some kind, what she was a professor of. I said I thought it was English literature. 'Does she come from a very wealthy background?' he asked. I said I didn't think so. I guess he was trying to understand her loose-cannon arrogance.

I wish she'd talked about Shakespeare. ]]> Fri, 22 May 2009 08:05:02 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090429140502/index.html <![CDATA[Launches ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C891102405/E20090520131414/index.html I was resolved not to mention this until actual publication, but there's good reason to break that resolve: the forthcoming edition of the excellent, stylish, hip Going Down Swinging will include two poems by me. The issue will be launched at the Northcote Social Club in Melbourne on 10 June in what looks like being a nice night out. There's a slim chance that I'll get there, but if I do have any readers in the Athens of the South, I ecourage you to attend -- the price of admission will help this particular part of the Australian little magazine scene.



There will also be a Sydney launch, 8 o'clock on 15 June at 1/475 King Street, Newtown as part of the Penguin Plays Rough night. (That link should take you to the PPR facebook page. If you're not an fber, here's the Sydney Writers' Festival blurb on their evening for the festival.)

]]> Wed, 20 May 2009 13:14:14 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C891102405/E20090520131414/index.html <![CDATA[SWF: Alleyway Honour ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090429140151/index.html My personal Sydney Writers' Festival technically started last night with the Premiers' Literary Awards, and the opening address is tomorrow night, but tonight felt like the start to me, probably because it's the first event I've been to with my best Festival-going pal, PJ. Alleyway Honour was in the Bankstown Town Hall, and we -- three of us -- had a delicious, though rushed, Lebanese meal before the show, at the Summerland Restaurant just half a block from the Town Hall.

The show, in which 'five Western Sydney emerging artists weave in and out of stories from Bankstown’s heart', was excellent. Unlike most readings, it was tightly directed -- no umming and ahing, no pause for applause, no self-deprecatory or metatextual introductions, just five people sitting in a row, each with a light overhead, standing to read their pieces in thoughtfully contrapuntal order. Ivor Indyk, of Heat and Giramondo fame, had a hand in it, and so did impressive theatre all-rounder Roslyn Oades. But the moving spirit behind the show and its most dynamic performer was Michael Mohammed Ahmad, who read a long short story about a bit of suburban biff with great aplomb: it was broken up by soft, reflective poems by Fiona Wright and rapidfire surreal pieces by Luke Carman. The other readers were Andy Ko and Peter Polites. Together they kept us alert and alive for the full ninety minutes. Evidently they intend to take the show on the road, although it looks like being a very short road, with maybe only one stop on it. But they do plan to keep doing this sort of thing. I know it makes sense to have staged this in Bankstown, because the work was mainly reflective of the Western Sydney region, but I'm sure it would work well with the much larger (though older, more sedate and less veiled) audiences at the main Festival venue.

I'm daring to hope that my original sense of foreboding about this year's program was ill founded. ]]> Tue, 19 May 2009 22:01:51 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090429140151/index.html <![CDATA[Bookblog #68: The joys of non-fiction ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090515095740/index.html Bernhard Schlink, Guilt about the Past (UQP 2009)
Theodore Seifert, Snow White: Life Almost Lost (©1983, translation into English, Chiron Publications Illinois 1986)


I've read somewhere that it's a scientifically proven fact that as men get older they prefer non-fiction to fiction. I hesitate to say anything of the kind is scientifically proven about me in particular, but anecdotal evidence indicates that this collection of lectures by Bernhardt Schlink thrills me much more than The Reader did some years ago. The Reader was a bloody good, thought provoking read. Guilt about the Past strikes sparks from my brain with just about every paragraph.

The essays/lectures deal with the question of collective guilt: is it a legitimate concept, and if so what is to be done about it? Who has the right to forgive? How can a valid reconciliation be achieved between those who inherit a shared history of monstrous deeds in which their forebears were perpetrators and objects respectively? Bernhard Schlink has recent German history in mind and refrains from talking about his subject in universal terms, but what he manages to articulate is powerfully relevant to all manner of situations. He talks in terms of law, and morality where it's not covered by law. I won't try to write a proper review here, but recommend that you read the book. It's short, clear, and lively. Every time I picked it up, as I flicked through the pages looking for my place, sentences would leap out at me. At random:
'The notion that the past could be brought into form and order is foreign to the law.'
'... simply stated, everyone whose relationships have been damaged can reconcile. While forgiveness lifts the burden of guilt from the guilty parties, reconciliation merely makes it a bit lighter.'
'... understanding does not have only positive connotations.'
'... my mother was right. If a person does not believe in a forgiving God, then they have to live with their guilt when they can no longer obtain forgiveness from the person they injured.'
The book is very readable, but I'll need to re-read it and meditate on it.

Snow White: Life Almost Lost, on the other hand, does the meditating for you. It's a discussion of the fairy story from the point of view of a Jungian therapist. Much wisdom is dispensed about the challenges of the inner life, and the Grimm Brothers' 1859 version of the tale provides a mostly plausible springboard for it, but Herr Seifert surely sets record of some kind by taking 32 pages of discussion to get us through the first 45 words of the story – and that's without any attention to 'Once upon a time'! The words themselves, in case you need reminding: 'Once upon a time in the middle of winter, snowflakes were falling like feathers from heaven; a queen was sitting at a window that had a frame of black ebony, and she was sewing. As she sewed and looked up at the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle.' You'll have to read to book to discover what profundities about life and death, hope and despair, belief, imagination, love, law and deprivation they contain -- I'm assuming that like me you can't see these profundities unaided.

My favourite couple of sentences, from much later in the book (remember there is no married couple in the story, until the wedding in its last paragraph):
Even after many years of marriage, going to bed at different times is still a problem for many couples. Every evening they suffer the same irritation: The one has to go now, the other can't go yet. Each always experiences this as a form of a seeming demand; and without exception the mate is accused. We talk only of what the other did to us; we do not talk of our own lack of readiness to risk corresponding conflict and stand up for our own wishes. Ultimately all these poisoned thoughts suffocate our soul, just as the bodice laces suffocated Snow White.

Leaving aside the incomprehensible phrases, which can probably be laid at the translator's door, this measures up fabulously against some of the most ingenious of mediaeval biblical hermeneutics. And for all that, and for all the preoccupation with marriage as the one road to a fully human life, I have come away from the book with a much deeper appreciation of the Snow White story. ]]> Tue, 19 May 2009 11:57:40 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090515095740/index.html <![CDATA[PLA Dinner ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C891102405/E20090429135603/index.html Once again tonight writers, translators, illustrators, publishers, agents and fans put on their glad rags and turned up for a glittering evening in the Art Gallery. The occasion was the annual NSW Premier's Literary Awards dinner. This year's dinner cost $15 more than last year's. (My friend, former colleague and fellow-blogger J Ridge wasn't there, but thanks to the joys of Twitter she had blogged about the dinner before I got home. I've got more detail.)

In previous years the dinner has been organised by staff of the Ministry of Arts. This year it was in the hands of the Department of Arts, Sport and Recreation. The transition was seamless, though there was a slightly awkward moment when the Department's Director General, who was our MC, said we were doing very well for an arts event and only running half an hour late. There was no hiss of indrawn breath, but I did think it indicated she was much more familiar with sporting events than with arty ones, where my experience has been there is an obsession with punctuality. And at times, as she urged us to resume our seats after a break, her tone was reminiscent of what one would hear over the loudspeaker at, say, a Netball tournament. But these were amusing foibles that in no way took away from the pleasure of the evening.

Nathan Rees, more famous for his stint as a garbo and for having inherited a train wreck of a government than for his Eng Lit Hons degree and likeability, gave the impression that this was the kind of thing he would much rather be presiding at than the bear pit of politics. In his welcome (which followed Aunty Sylvia welcome to country, in which she said, 'Your books let me travel'), he spoke of his own passion for books, including some that left him cold, surely a mark of a genuine book lover. And he said, interestingly, 'The examined life is only ever the turn of a page away.'

This was the thirtieth year of the awards, and there was slightly more reminiscence than usual. Neville Wran, the first Premier of the Literary Awards, was there and gave a brief talk on their genesis. SUccess has many parents, he reminded us, but failure is always an orphan. Of the many people who have claimed m/paternity of these awards, he assured us in his ruined voice, the one who could truly claim parenthood was his wife Jill, who insisted that Sydney should have a writers' festival distinguished by literary awards. He mentioned the legendary Night of the Bread Rolls in 1985 when the guest speaker Morris West was pelted with bakery products. I'd heard that it was because he droned. One of my dinner companions was there on that night, and he assured us that it was because the literary types were envious of Morris West's best-seller status.

Marieke Hardy, of Reasons You Will Hate Me, gave the Address, with a tattoo on each shoulder and a large red flower behind one ear. She spoke of Twitter and quoted Stephen Fry to good effect. I the past, I've referred to these dinners as the Oscars of the introverted. Marieke went several steps better and, referring to booklovers out and proud, called it 'our Mardi Gras'.

As in past years, it's my pleasure to list the winners with random observations:

The UTS Prize for new writing: Nam Le - The Boat
There's no short list for this prize, so the announcement was a bit of a surprise. It's a wonderful book. The award was accepted by Nam Le's publisher, who read out a short speech Nam had sent him from Italy.

The Gleebooks Prize for an outstanding book of critical writing: David Love - Unfinished Business: Paul Keating's interrupted revolution
Nathan 's script described this as an accessible account of important economic matters. I'm afraid I didn't understand a word of the brief acceptance speech after the initial , 'This is one for the true believers!'

The Community Relations Commission Award : Eric Richards - Destination Australia: migration to Australia since 1901
Eric Richards spoke of how Australia's immigration program has been an outstanding success, yet has been and is still a cause of widespread anxiety. He was expecting the book to provoke 'historical warfare', but so far there has been none.

The Translation Prize and PEN Trophy: David Colmer
He seems to be a nice man -- he translates from Dutch.

The Play Award: Daniel Keene - The Serpent's Teeth
I saw the STC production of these plays, and was less than impressed by the production, though the plays as written seemed to be marvellous. I approve.

The Script Writing Award: Louis Nowra and Rachel Perkins and Beck Cole - First Australians
In announcing this prize the Premier said, quite rightly, that it was hard to go past this show, but then he went and spoiled the moment by feminising Mr Nowra's first name. When Rachel Perkins took the mike she pointed out the error. Our Nathan looked suitably abashed, and Louis clearly couldn't help himself: 'How long do you plan to stay in government?' he asked, trying to make it sound good-natured. Ow!

The Kenneth Slessor Prize for a book of poems or for a single poem of substantial length published in book form: LK Holt - Man Wolf Man
Possibly intimidated by the compere's reminders of the importance of being brief, LK Holt simply thanked her publisher and took her prize. She did stand at teh microphone long enough to enable those of us close enough to read the enigmatic tattoo on her left shoulder: 'MCMLXN'.

The Ethel Turner Prize for a work written for young people of secondary school level: Michelle Cooper - A Brief History of Montmaray
At this stage I began to feel very under-read.

The Patricia Wrightson Prize for a work for children up to secondary school level: Ursula Dubosarsky & Tohby Riddle - The Word Spy
And then I started to feel like an insider again. Tohby and Ursula have both worked at The School Magazine. I read this book in its first incarnations as a series of columns in the magazine, and I was sitting at the same table as both of them -- along with two other generations of Ursula's family and Tohby's wife Sally. This is the fifth gong Ursula has collected from NSW Premiers! Though, it's no longer a gong. To mark the 30th anniversary, a new trophy has been created, by Dinosaur Designs: a hefty, transparent, book-shaped objet.

The Douglas Stewart Prize for a prose work other than a work of fiction: Chloe Hooper - The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island
I've read this too, and think it deserves any prize anyone want to give it.

The Christina Stead Prize for a book of fiction: Joan London - The Good Parents
I haven't read this, but it's been very well reviewed in my house. Joan London gave a sweet speech, acknowledging , among other things, her debt to her children.

The People's Choice Award: Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole
I hadn't voted, because I'd only read two of the books, and this wasn't one of the ones I'd read. The same man who had accepted Nam Le's award accepted this one, but Steve Toltz, who couldn't be there, hadn't tweeted him anything to say, so he just looked pleased.

Book of the Year: Nam Le - The Boat
Then the poor guy had to get up for the third time, and gave us the second half of Nam Le's emailed acceptance speech, in which he thanked his readers, 'both professional and normal'. As one who used to be a professional read who is striving to attain normality, I loved this.

The Special Award: Katharine Brisbane
Katharine was my first employer, when he was Managing Editor at Currency Press, and I couldn't be more pleased at her receiving this recognition. She adlibbed an elegant speech about the importance of recognising achievement in the arts. She has received a number of awards in her time, she said, but this is the first one to come with money attached. She closed by saying that she too had been there in 1985. 'We pelted Morris West with bread rolls because he warned us that we had to be prepared for bad things. The Baader Meinhofs were in the news, and he was warning us against terrorism. We thought he was ridiculous, but he was right.'

And then it was all over bar the networking ...

... and the journey home. As I was walking back towards the city from the Art Gallery, I drew alongside a rough looking man going in the same direction. He said hello and asked how the evening had gone. 'We're homeless, you see, we sleep just beside the porch there.' We chatted for a couple of minutes. He told me who had won the People's Choice at the Archibald. I tired to ell him about the Literary Awards, but I think he still thought I'd been at something to do with paintings. As we parted, he said, in an eerie echo of Nathan Rees's comment about the examined life: 'People don't realise it, but you're always just one step away from the gutter,' and we wished each other good night and good luck. ]]> Mon, 18 May 2009 20:56:03 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C891102405/E20090429135603/index.html <![CDATA[Two openings ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C891102405/E20090516181649/index.html At lunchtime yesterday we drove some Ks west of our comfort zone for an event at Banksia Road Primary School staged by the Greenacre Communities for Kids Project. It made me realise what a white-bread neighbourhood I live in. Eighty percent of the women and quite a few young girls wore hijabs, and a noticeable percentage of the European faces spoke with east European accents. Our reason for visiting was the opening of an exhibition of paintings that resulted from Yulla Bulla, a project where adults and children of Arabic background met with an Aboriginal artist and an Iraqi calligrapher and produced work that incorporated motifs from both traditions. No photos, sorry, because I cleverly left my camera at home, so you'll have to take my word that the images were fascinating. I was particularly impressed by a painting of a kangaroo, whose slightly odd outlines were explained by their spelling out the Arabic for kangaroo. The calligraphy teacher was there -- apologies again, I didn't catch his name. When I said, intending it as a confession of profound ignorance, that I looked at the Arabic script on the paintings and saw just beautiful shapes, he was delighted -- because of course calligraphy is not handwriting, but an art, which he was keen to demonstrate. He did two beautiful versions of my name. The first says Jonathan Shaw (reading right to left); the second, in much more elaborate script, simply Jonathan.






After an excellent cheap lunch at the An Restaurant ('So pho so good') we returned to the inner city and I headed off to another opening, of 'Preposterous Saints: The saints the church didn't want you to know about ', paintings by Chaia Fein, a friend whom I've recently met again after more than 30 years. When I last saw her she was embarking on a career as a jeweller. Since then she has lived for years in Italy and England, working as jeweller, painter, sculptor. This exhibition has been brewing since her time in Naples when she – a 'good Jewish girl' – was fascinated by the multiplicity of saints. Her preposterous saints are a world apart from the irreverent piety of LOLSaints, but they are wonderfully alive and various, even chaotic, in the manner of Hindu gods or ... Catholic saints. There's a painting for every month, each of at least one saint, and a short 'Life' of each of the featured saints with a list of all the saints whose feasts occur during the month. January has the Unwholesome Trinity of St Nephrophagous, St Cadaverous and St Posthumous; October has the Seven Deadly Saints, including Saints Malicious, Querulous and Tedious. My birthday saint, St Scandalous, didn't merit a painting or a "Life", but if I had to choose a patron it would have to be June's saint, St Oblivious, who walked through life unaware of the temptations that assailed him and finally sank quietly into his grave without ever realising that constantly throughout his life his village had been the scene of appalling atrocities. This is "Saint Oblivious Plagued by Demons":



All but one of the paintings was sold by the time I arrived at the opening, which must be some kind of record. Chaia is planning a book.

The exhibition is at Gallery HM in Redfern. ]]> Sun, 17 May 2009 13:55:49 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C891102405/E20090516181649/index.html <![CDATA[Did they know? ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090514133551/index.html In the vast taxonomy of fairy tales, the Snow White type, with its murderous jealousy, talking mirror and glass coffin, is known as AT type 709. A google of "AT 709 fairy" produces this as one of the top hits:



Could this be coincidence or was someone in the High Heel Store in Tennessee sending a message in code about the deadly potential of certain fashion statements: platform shoe as glass coffin? ]]> Thu, 14 May 2009 13:35:51 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090514133551/index.html <![CDATA[Sucked in, Jonathan! ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C265678293/E20090510160135/index.html We've driven past these posters any number of times in the last week or so, and found them increasingly disturbing as their message has sunk in.



Sorry it's not exactly legible. I couldn't do any better with the software on this computer. The yellow poster says, 'Drug dealers hassling your kids?' and the purple one says, 'Cops can't help with your problems?' They both have a fairly crude graphic of a fist smashing towards the viewer, then a mobile number, which I won't reproduce here, and a web site -- joehunter(dot)com(dot)au.

Could this be what it seems to be? IS someone really advertising vigilante services? As the GFC worsens, will we see more of this kind of thing? I was concerned enough to go to the web site, thinking I might actually stir myself far enough to draw this fairly worrying development to someone's attention.

I got to the website and felt just a bit silly. ]]> Sun, 10 May 2009 16:01:35 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C265678293/E20090510160135/index.html <![CDATA[No corner shop in time for the resurrection ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C265678293/E20090508175913/index.html I ran into Rod the corner shop reviver the other day and asked him if Revolver would be open for Resurrection Day. 'When's that?' he asked. When I told him it was forty days after Easter, he replied in the emphatic negative. Shortly after that conversation, this notice appeared in the window:




In case you can't read it because of the lovely suburban sunset glare, it says:
I know, the last one was the "last" update ...
But this one is YOUR fault ... you guys keep telling me you like
them .. so I now like writing them
So ... THIS IS THE LAST UPDATE!!
The cafe is nearly finished (so am I!). Thanks again for everyone
who gave words of encouragement ... it really helped me. The reason it has
taken so long is ... LACK OF MONEY (not passion). Now we are just
doing finishing touches ... then finding staff, suppliers, etc ... Hang in there
it will be worth it ... People ask me, 'What style will it be?' Well not to
give too much away but it's an eclectiv mix of antique beauty with a hiphop street
beat ... Food will be simple (I hate pretentious food) ... awesum coffee and all local
friendly staff ... can't say any more ...even tho I want to.
Oh and as for when will al this finally happen? ... SOON!!! Or else they will be reopening Callan Park just for me!!!
Much love again
Rod

Cute little lights have appeared at the front of the shop



The balcony is built, complete with bullnose awning. Iron lace and railing are stacked on the veranda, not visible here:



Rod and Chie the owners, have made their mark in the footpath outside the converted butcher shop next door



And just because it's there, here's a tiny replica of Michelangelo's Moses that passes for a garden gnome in this part of the world.

]]> Fri, 08 May 2009 17:59:13 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C265678293/E20090508175913/index.html <![CDATA[Other Dog ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C891102405/E20090505091001/index.html

Thanks to roflbot.

Her name's Matilda, and at least one flesh and blood dog does her the honour of barking at her when he passes. ]]> Tue, 05 May 2009 09:10:01 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C891102405/E20090505091001/index.html <![CDATA[Bookblog #67: Gravitas and verve ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090502181011/index.html Ivor Indyk, editor, Heat 19: Trappers Way (Giramondo 2009)
Davina Bell, Julia Carlomagno and Rachael Howlett. editors, Harvest 2 (Col. Mustard Productions 2009)

A couple of nights ago I had a hugely reassuring phone call from one of the editors of a literary magazine -- not one of these -- that has accepted a couple of my poems (notice how casually I slipped that information in!). 'We like your poems very much,' said the editor, 'but the proofreader said we had to contact you about a problem with the syntax.' I'm tempted to tell you every word of the conversation, but I'll settle for saying that I love that proofreader (really a copy editor, I think), not just for challenging my syntax but also for recognising her or his own importance in the scheme of things.

With each new issue of Heat, I worry that such confident checkers are a dying breed, or at least that such checking isn't valued enough to allow adequate time and resource for it. How else do Taiwain or rigourous slip through, or punctuation that veers from Mr (correct in Australia) to Mr. (correct in the USA) between one story and the next, and even within a single story? I'm sure my proofreader would have intervened if I'd started a sentence, 'As a boy my grandmother would ...', as Mark Mordue does here in 'Dead Women', an otherwise magical piece of writing about his childhood.

Compulsive grumpy-old-editor comments aside, there's a lot to enjoy in this issue. [I first wrote, 'there's a lot of joy in this issue,' but actually it's a bit grim all round: much death, disability, betrayal, violence and despair.] I like the way Ivor Indyk makes himself almost invisible. There's no word from him, no editorial note telling us how to read what he has put together. Even the phrase that serves as the title for each volume seems to be chosen more or less at random from among the first couple of items. In this case, Trappers Way is the street where Judith Beveridge and the late Dorothy Porter lived for some months in the 1980s, as narrated in the former's elegiac memoir, 'Remembering Dorothy', the most directly personal and effective piece in this issue. It's not the only memorable piece. Roslyn Jolly shares the pleasures of a literary academic visiting Malta for the first time and visiting sites she knows from the Acts of the Apostles, John Henry Newman's letters and the Odyssey, while her husband mutters ('helpfully'): 'It's not real.' There are a number of memoirs and stories of childhood: Mark Mordue's triptych is wonderful; Mark O'Flynn's 'The Milkman's Horse' and Mandy Sayer's 'The Meaning of Life', both fiction, are utterly convincing portrayals of a child's experience participating in a parent's work life, though the former has a final surprise moment that is not so much a twist as wilful sabotage; David Walker's memoir of his mother, 'Beautiful Strength', feels in some way unfinished, as if it's a reworking of notes for a larger project, but if that's what it is the larger thing promises to be worth the wait. Dorothy Johnson's 'Quicksilver's Ride', probably the best thing by her that I've read, is narrated by an old disabled man who is bullied by a group of young teenagers, but it too manages to convey something of the terrors and joys of childhood. [The links in this paragraph are to the online versions of the pieces on the Heat web site.]

I believe that Heat arose partly as a righteous response to The Hand that Signed the Paper's winning the Miles Franklin Award, revealing – as some see it – the parochial ignorance of parts of Australia's literary establishment. It still has a kind of straight-backed commitment to diversity and excellence, dare I say a Baby-Boomer seriousness. 'Oh,' one can say, 'I haven't read The White Tiger, but I've read Aravind Adiga's pieces in Heat.' Harvest had a different germination, and largely gives voice to a younger generation. In Heat, writers of a certain age mine their childhood memories for lost treasure; in Harvest, it's possible to speak of the beginning of a relationship as a happy ending, and the pleasures of Cairo Jim are remembered as from the recent past.

Every story in Harvest is kicked off with a full page four-colour illustration, and there's barely a spread without an elegant visual splash. There's plenty of white space, so the writing has room to breathe. In the list of contributors, the editors describe their interview/chat with first-time novelist Anya Ulinich as having happened amid 'loud country music, clanking coffee cups and wayward accents', and the whole journal has a little of that feel. Not that it's noisy or clanking, but it does feel as if it's grown from a confident literary community. I especially like that it has a featured poet in each issue, with a personal commentary by Geoff Lemon, the poetry editor. ]]> Mon, 04 May 2009 22:10:11 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090502181011/index.html <![CDATA[Magic ]]> http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090504182634/index.html When I was young I wanted to be a magician, and spent hours practising coin and card tricks, shaking my hands at the end of my wrists and doing everything the book my parents gave me said to do. Alas, so far this ambition has come to nothing, but I still love that there are magicians in the world. These days I've got an extra reason for loving it: they are generally the staunchest enemies of the irrationalism that's rampant these days. The Amazing James Randi, for example, demonstrated how to bend a spoon at a time when Uri Geller had the press convinced that he could do it by his mind alone, and, with donations from fellow skeptics and sceptics, has put up a 1.1 million dollar prize for anyone who can demonstrate genuine paranormal powers.

So I was totally delighted by this, a TED lecture from 2004. I love the TED site's description of Keith Barry as a hacker of the human brain:

]]> Mon, 04 May 2009 18:26:34 +1000 http://homepage.mac.com/shawjonathan/iblog/C1020611578/E20090504182634/index.html