I couldn't find a pic of the book but this is the author.

So the inside jacket blurb of this book describes the narrator as “a pitiless gormandizer” and says that “at one level Memoirs of an Old Bastard is a Rabelaisian satire of a New World city…”

Now how the hell could I possibly improve on this summary? I’m not even going to try.

The ‘New World city’ referred to is Melbourne, but this is not the Melbourne we are used to reading about. It’s twisted, and gothic, and filled to the brim with ridiculous-yet-not-entirely-inaccurate caricatures of the city’s cultural elite. There are flaring tempers, the physical ramifications of said flaring tempers, characters who wear a pince-nez, a nurse who goes by the nickname Booze Bus, and truly awful poets. Threading through the narrative are fragments of a letter from the millionaire narrator to his lost mystery daughter.  It could be sweet if it weren’t for the fleeting references to Nabokov and waifs. It’s not as wrong as it sounds. But then, it is.

Literary name puns and overbearing satire aside, Hibberd’s novel is sharply funny. One has the impression, when wading through the elaborately adorned sentences, that the author intentionally wanted to sound as wanky as humanely possible. You could get annoyed by this, or you could sit back, pause, and just revel in the utter, utter absurdity of it all. What better way to take the piss out of the cultural capital of Australia than to truly embody the aspects of it that you’re targeting?

Hibberd is an Australian playwright whose work I was unfamiliar with, being the theatre noob that I am (plays include the Brain Rot series [1967-68], Dimboola [1969], and The Les Darcy Show [1974] to name a few). While I’m not going to be tearing down the mountainous stacks of books at Gould’s Second-hand Bookshop to find the sequels to Memoirs (The Life of Riley and Perdita), this man is one serious Australian theatre veteran so his plays are on my TBR list.

This blog was my creative crutch for over a year. I was working part-time hours for a publishing company that specialised in non-fiction books I had no interest in ever reading.

A few weeks ago I started my publishing internship with a fiction imprint of a much bigger house. I’m surrounded by beautiful books and writing all day. I’m reading for work, and for pleasure, and, to be honest, the brain is getting too full.

This, if you hadn’t realised, is my pathetic excuse of an apology for the lack of posts lately. With a few reviews in the pipeline, I’ll take this opportunity to show off my book loot from an impulse book-buying frenzy that occurred a couple of hours ago.

Do you work with books night and day? Is this fatigue common or am I just weak, with a soft-spot for trashy tv?

* 2666 by Roberto Bolano

* Revenge of the Lawn, The Abortion & So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away by Richard Brautigan (3-in-1. Score!)

* Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

* The Trial by Franz Kafka

* Atomised by Michel Houellebecq

Giramondo Publishing

2007

The relationship between parent and child has driven many pens to paper, and the results waver greatly from mediocre to masterful. The same could be said about Holocaust stories, or stories of love, loss, grief, and memory.

Mireille Juchau’s second novel, Burning In, deals with all of these themes, keeping their inherently tragic beauty intact. In Burning In, Martine, Australian photographer of German descent, leaves behind Australia, and her mother, Lotte, and heads to New York.

Now this is where writing this review gets hard. Because just thinking back to the book is making me sad again. Martine has had a daughter, after living in New York nearly a decade, and her daughter goes missing in Central Park. But the book is exquisitely sad even before that event takes place. Martine’s strained relationship with her worried mother leaves the reader sympathising equally with each character: the complexities of Lotte’s dark past and the fears that are borne of this, and the yearning that a young, seemingly capable woman has to spread her wings, having never experienced the same displacement or family separation as her parent. Juchau’s characterisation of Martine, detached and numb as it is, only heightens the emotional depth of situation.

Martine enters the kitchen, holds up a can of coffee, in the other hand, tea, raises an eyebrow. Her silence makes the place austere, turns them reverential. Lusk nods his head at coffee, Joanie points feebly at tea. They’re waiting now, for her to set the tone. She lights the cigarette, watches Joanie’s quiet surprise. And doesn’t know anymore which part of what she does is performance, which part’s real. Grief is a floating world, though nothing about it is gentle. (p183)

Juchau’s writing, to me, seems like it’s bursting with literary juices. Each sentence drips with intricately set up scenes, and nuanced character descriptions. Something in the words feels like the same black and white photos Martine carries with her when she embarks on the next part of her journey, tracing her family back to Berlin. Despite the impossibly sad tones that are present throughout, there is also a playfulness that emerges in strange moments, when Martine interacts with her mother, and in the way she observes her friends’ reactions to her delicate psychological state.

This is a literary novel. The plot is in there somewhere, but it doesn’t drive the story. And there is enough of it for you to find yourself absorbed in the mood and the characters, and all of a sudden find that Martine’s story has travelled quite far without you noticing. I happen to love stories that do this. Not everybody does.

A rare occasion. No, not the book launch attendance. And no, not the gate-crashing of the post-launch drinks affair with the posse of Burgers and Tweeps (although, technically, if you ask the author “can I crash the post-launch drinks?” it doesn’t count as gate-crashing).

The rareness came from actually going to a  book launch for an author whose books I’ve read. And whose blogs, tweets, and high-brow journalism articles I’ve read. And you know, whose writing has had such an impact on my own worldview and writer-like aspirations.

Mr. Birmingham knows how to talk. But more importantly, he holds his own. I mistook the stool that held the microphone for an interviewer’s seat, and so was surprised when he pulled the chair over and sat down alone, and told us about the writing process for his Axis of Time trilogy, as well as After America and its preceding book Without Warning. And when he peppered this talk with advice for baby writers (although if you read Mr Birmingham’s blogs, he’ll always take an opportunity to share wisdom with the baby writers). He’s also good at answering questions. The first question of the  night came from a young gentlemen who, with an accusatory tone, asked Mr. Birmingham what made him go from blogs (and yes, Felafel was a blog of sorts), to “trashy airport novels”, and the response was dignified, and even a little defensive of the doomed first-question-asker, who had elicited outbursts of disapproval from the devoted crowd. The question reeked of wank. Not because he used the word ‘trashy’, but because of the tone behind the question. And I have low tolerance for irritating questions at author events.

And after learning that scathing literary reviewers of Mr. Birmingham’s books apparently go onto a list, and are ruthlessly murdered in the next part of the series, I’m actually tempted to read After America and post a meanypoo bitter review of it. Just to see what happens. Not that I consider my reviews here to be that high on anyone’s radar, but it’s a worthy aspiration, right?

He’s a proud father, and didn’t miss an opportunity, given the arse-kicking aspect of his fiction books, to boast a little about his daughter’s mean ju jitsu skills. I don’t know her name, but as a result of his anecdote, have come to think of her as Yoshimi (a la the Flaming Lips song, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots).

The next part of this write-up refers to something that is not so much a rare, but rather a common occurrence. I have essentially no  money to my name. And as such, I lined up, like a douchebag, to say “hello, I have nothing for you to sign”. This being a book launch and all, the writer was able to relate to my situation all too well, and despite being stocked up on the free wine, I was shouted a couple of drinks at the post-launch do. I promise you, reader, that these free drinks had no bearing on this post, apart from the obvious alcoholic residue that I like to occasionally use to polish my book launch posts.

So if some poor sod ever decides to pay me for a piece of writing, that pay cheque is going to go first and foremost towards paying back Mr. Birmingham.

Oh and I have one complaint of the evening. The toddler-sized stools that they expected us to sit on over at Ariel. I stood during the event because I knew that to be seated would tempt the gods of breaking chairs, and  my red face wouldn’t just be a result of too much wine.

I wish I could tell you the Sydney harvest launch at Berkelouw’s Newtown was a fantastic affair. All I can tell you is that the last five minutes of Ryan O’Neill’s reading from his fiction piece “The Eunuch in the Harem” was pretty damn funny. Which I already knew, because I scored my copy of Issue Five earlier in the week (seriously, my nostrils, meaning the inside of my nose, were stained with coffee as a result of reading O’Neill’s story). All I can tell you is that people were lining up to have editor Davina Bell sign their pretty-like-a-patchwork-quilt copy of harvest after the formalities had come to a close. All I can tell you is that, arriving late due to an unprecedented gridlock that gripped the CBD and an ignorant decision to choose bus as my mode of transport, I stood out in the freezing doorway, looking in on toasty warm launch-groupies and literary enthusiasts as they enjoyed frivolous festivities.

So that was Sydney launch.

harvest issue five opens with an article by Davina Bell urging her “precious snowflakes” (baby writers) to disregard Ted Genoway’s article in Mother Jones, which instructs said baby writers to “swear off navel-gazing”. Davina’s article essentially defends the younger generation of writers, who have not experienced world-shaking events to shake up their/(our?*) lives and world views.

Curiously, about halfway through, we come to Dan Bigna’s reader’s guide to writing like Charles Bukowski, who happens to be an author I quite admire. I say curiously, because Bigna’s piece points out Bukowski’s remarkable similarity to his Post Office protagonist Henry Chinaski, on account of Bukowski’s soul destroying stint as a mailroom clerk. “Bukowski shows us that artistic expression can transcend the dullness of a constricted life, and give hope to the rest of us who might find ourselves in the same kinds of situation as the embattled Henry Chinaski.” Navel-gazing much? Stick that in your pipe and smoke it Mr. Genoway!

These two pieces in particular, along with Anthony Levin’s deconstruction of a poem, form the corner posts of this issue which suggest to me that harvest is no longer just a hip literary magazine with freshly plucked talent and pretty pages and fun household games such as “Literopoly”, but is growing into a medium through which relevant discussion about the culture of the written wor(l)d. In this case, the inward-gazing, self-reflective prose of young writers that seems to have formed generational gaps in the writing community, if Genoway’s article is to be taken as absolute truth.

Chris Flynn closes issue five with “Rethinking the Australian Literary Identity”. While it’s a highly topical subject (i.e. writing locally for a global readership and diminishing significance of determining a national literary identity), I found nothing groundbreaking in Flynn’s commentary and will say no more on the matter (because harvest have encouraged responses to this piece, and I’ma save a more articulate version of my thoughts for that).

(*I don’t know if I count as a baby writer. Embryonic, more like.)

So, ahh, this September is Book Blogger Appreciation Week. The third one, in fact. And it’s getting bigger and stronger and they changed a whole lot of rules this year.

Namely, bloggers need to self-nominate for categories. Head to www.bookbloggerappreciationweek.com for more information. Publishers in particular, note that your blogs are now a nominate-able category. I’d be interested to see which blogs emerge from this section.

So, uh, my five posts that represent me best as a Niche Blog:

Known Unknowns by Emmett Stinson (Review)

Trio by Dorothy Baker (Review)

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte (Review)

An Affair to Remember – Writing the Past (event: NSW Writers’ Centre History Festival)

‘Sif You’d Get Paid for Blogging

And, on a whim, I’ve nominated myself for the Best Written Book Blog category. Just to see what happens, really. The five posts for these are:

The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (Review)

Snowed Under by Antje Ravic Strubel (Review)

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Review)

On Writing Reviews

How to Read While Walking (and not hit things)

Off I go to wash the stench of shameless self-promotion off my skin.

The jaded, unnamed narrator, dumped by his beautiful, Japanese lover, screws up his story about an ice-cold sombrero into a ball of paper and throws it in the bin at the beginning of Richard Brautigan’s 1976 novel, “Sombrero Fallout”. While he pines pathetically over a single lost strand of her hair, we, the readers, travel through the room and towards the wastepaper basket, over to the printed, screwed up ball, where we learn that this mysterious sombrero has fallen from the sky, at minus 24 degrees, and somehow results in a town going mad. I mean really mad. The townspeople start wailing on each other. First with fists, then with knives, then with live ammunition. They eventually overrun the town police. And the sombrero sits innocently on the pavement, ignored by all.

Meanwhile, the narrator, evidently a writer (so of course emotionally unstable and quite insecure), reminisces the history of what he deems his great love affair. He recalls their first act of love, the stunning first impression she made on him, disclosing that she’d read all his books but (kindly) refusing to ever speak to him about them, and of course, her curtain of straight black hair. He trawls through his phonebook and imagines imperfect scenarios, and doesn’t give the sombrero, or the angry mob, a second thought.

And while he does all this, his Japanese lover sleeps. She sleeps because it’s the only place she can see her suicidal father’s grave again, and the only place where everything is right in her world.

And while she sleeps, and he pines, and the townspeople riot, I feel my heart, piece by piece, giving itself wholly and unreservedly to Brautigan’s strange and alluring prose. Its effortless comedy, as displayed through the town librarian whose ears are shot off, and its careful melancholy tone, as the Japanese woman remembers the suicide of her father when she was still a girl, are woven together impeccably.

But the narrator and protagonist, our dumped writer (ironically a famous American humourist), is pathetic. Enigmatic, complex, but ultimately, pathetic. His mind wanders often and he processes his thoughts obtusely.

Sometimes he talked to himself a lot and he was talking to himself about the absence of eggs in his apartment.

“Where are those eggs?” he said to himself. “They must be here somewhere,” and all the time knowing that there were no eggs in the kitchen.

He was just starting to think about looking for them in other rooms, perhaps the bedroom, when a lightning bolt of despair suddenly fried his brain into thousands of pieces of dancing bacon. He remembered his love for the Japanese woman.” p95

Well, I guess he had only been dumped that very evening. So perhaps I’m being a hardarse.

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but of all the awesome reasons I love my blog, one of the top three has to be the opportunity it gives me to show off all the amazingly talented and artistic friends I have.

Lingsi is one such friend. She can paint and draw and takes amazing photos, and with her Diana F+ too!

A couple of weekends ago Lingsi, Pam (another rad photochick) and myself (Diana mini noob) hit up the Sydney Biennale at Cockatoo Island. Some of the shots below are from that trip, but Lingsi’s one hepcat Lomo-er so some are from her other lomo day excursions.

from Vivid Sydney

Cue show off fanfare.

Lingsi also wrote an interesting post over at her blog comparing digital and film photography. She says: “in this digital era where people have no idea to function their cameras and put everything on ‘auto’, it can get a bit impersonal and brainless, whereas lomography is more of an artistic and creative process of capturing moments.”

I think this could also apply to my recent typewriter adventures. The way one writes on a manual, sometimes sticky-keyed old typewriters is so much more careful and deliberate. At first it’s frustrating that

my fingers cannot keep up with my brain, and I realised how much I take the ‘delete’ key for granted. But there’s something soothing in the hard punching motion of the keys, and something a little more rewarding when the end result is a hard copy piece of text.

Lingsi doesn’t discount digital photography, which I think is quite thoughtful (and lucky for us, given that she’s also a gifted digital photographer!); rather, she compares the two types of photography: the widened artistic scope that is made possible by the digital medium, as well asthe accidental beauty that can stem from mistakes in lomography. You can see more of her photos at Lingsi’s Flickr site.

Have you ever finished reading a book and immediately felt the bottom of your stomach drop upon turning the final page? It’s not simply a case of being sad from reaching the end of a story, but more of a need to dive back into that world, and to make sure everything will still be alright.

I blame Charley. Charley Thompson did this to me. He’s fifteen, alone, and has taken a job helping the grumpyfuck Del look after his racehorses down at the track. If a person could read this book without their heart breaking for Charley, I would be surprised. And slightly suspicious. Charley and one of Del’s horses, Lean on Pete, form a beautiful friendship that results in a trans-American escape. You know how I said Charley was alone? There’s one exception, his aunty, who was told to piss off by Charley’s father. And she’s the only person in the world that Charley’s placed hope in. So Charley and Lean on Pete are off to find her.

Sometimes when you’ve been reading too much Bronte or Proust, you can sort of get caught up in the literary fanciful goodies that great writing can contain. Vlautin’s writing sort of brings you crashing back to reality. There’s something incredibly raw about his writing, completely devoid of bullshit. Charley narrates honestly. He finds himself in all sorts of scrapes, forced to shoplift band-aids for his injury, siphoning petrol from other cars with his mouth, to fuel his stolen truck, you get the idea.

Charley runs. He hides. He cries. He’s the most real fifteen-year-old boy I’ve known, and through the hopeless situations he finds himself in, he never gives up.

Vlautin’s no-bullshit, straight, clean prose echoes Charley’s loneliness. The one-sided conversations Charley has with Pete leave him exposed and vulnerable, and well, they made me want to reach into the pages and grab him and hug him and tell him everything was going to be alright.

As Richard Fidler brought up in an interview with Vlautin at the Sydney Writers’ Fest, there is something very Huckleberry Finn about “Lean On Pete”, and to me, something wholly American about it. When I say American, I refer to the themes I’ve commonly found in American contemporary fiction: the rough journey, that physical and emotional rollercoaster that sees the protagonist fall, and then rise, and then fall again, where the reward at the end is comfort, or security, or family. It’s impossibly sad, yet at his lowest moments, Charley continues his narration in a matter-of-fact voice. His drive, and ability to retain an essence of childhood despite the trials of his journey, keep a sense of hope alive throughout the book.

There are times when it’s difficult to fathom the absence of any caring adult in Charley’s life. And he has a tendency to make the frustratingly wrong choice. But this is, again, the raw human element that Charley possesses (as does Vlautin’s writing).

I’m almost afraid to read his other novels. What if they’re not nearly as involving and hugable as this one?