Saturday, December 11, 2010

Jessie, Louie, Frieda and D H Lawrence


AT last it is now holidays, and I have squeezed in some time to be re-reading D H Lawrence’s early days, especially his romances, the years from 1906-1912, when, starting in 1906 around the time of his 21st birthday, he began a 150 letters or so correspondence with an important early influence, Louie Burrows.
                                                                                                                   

Lawrence fell in love before he met Louie. His other significant ‘friendship’ during this period was with Jessie Chambers (Miriam in Sons & Lovers). He would visit Jessie and her family at their place in Nottingham called ‘Hagg’s Farm.’ He would always remember visiting the Hagg’s from when he was a boy. It made him feel alive and he had important friendships there with Jessie’s brothers and her parents as well. Mrs Lawrence never approved but the young David Lawrence would walk there from his home in Eastwood, and entertain the family with his wit and intelligence. He would share his love of botany and drawing and literature with the Chambers’ family, in particular Jessie. They would rebound ideas off each other and discuss French, Mathematics, and fashionable philosophers and writers of the day, and those of the past. Lawrence would always be asking Jessie to read books that he had just read, and she, in love with him, would dutifully respond. Then began a passionate friendship that developed further, but Lawrence was always dogged by sexual frustration. Of her time, Jessie, it seems, was a model of chastity. Their sometimes turbulent friendship is portrayed in much of Sons & Lovers in the guise of Paul and Miriam. This book cannot be taken as autobiography, however, as Jessie disagreed with much of it, and felt that she didn’t come out of it fairly or truthfully. It seems that at some point Lawrence knew that it would be wrong to go on seeing Jessie, alone at least. It comes, characteristically, from his mother, that Lawrence decided it would not do Jessie’s reputation, or prospects, any good if they were to go on being seen alone together, as their friendship continued past their late teens.

Lawrence had strong friendships with other women at this time. Some we know less about, like Agnes Holt and Blanche Jennings, others feature in surviving correspondence so we can track their level of involvement. Helen Corke was someone Lawrence met in teaching, and his second novel, ‘The Trespasser’ comes directly out of his relationship with her.


Of all the young relationships Lawrence had, it is the one with Louie Burrows that I find the most appealing. The Burrows lived in a lovely Nottinghamshire village called Cossall (Cossethay in ‘The Rainbow’- the Burrows family appear as the Brangwen’s in this novel). Their house was ‘Church Cottage’, still standing, with Louie’s name on a blue plaque out the front. Lawrence and Louie both trained as teachers in 1902, and both went on to study at University College in Nottingham in 1906 where their friendship was cemented. By late 1908 Lawrence found a job teaching in Croydon (where he would remain until he became too ill to teach in 1911), and Louie’s career path took her briefly to Leicester, and then eventually as Headmistress in a school in nearby Quorn. Subsequently, meetings took place mostly in the school holidays.

Lawrence and Louie became engaged at the end of 1910, six days before Mrs Lawrence died. Lawrence proposed to Louie on the train and considering the extent of devotion that existed between mother and son, one wonders at how rational Lawrence’s decision can be seen. Was this merely just a snatch at happiness, desperate to keep his sad emotions at bay? Perhaps Lawrence wanted his mother to see him as a happy, settled man before she died (notably with Louie, whom she liked, not with Jessie, whom she hated.)


Then came 1911, otherwise known as the ‘sick year’, a year in which Lawrence nearly died of pneumonia. On top of that, Lawrence knew painfully that he was not in a financial position to become married. He wasn’t able to fulfil his own personal expectation of being able to earn 120 pounds a year, with 100 pounds already in the bank.


By the beginning of 1912, as this all dawned on Lawrence, it became clear to him that the marriage was never going to happen. Lawrence’s letters became shorter. The perennial sense of sexual frustration never abated. Lawrence had again chosen a young woman with a strict code of manners. Poems written at this time discuss the repressed desire that Louie felt compelled to enforce:


‘Yet if I lay my hand in her breast,

She puts me away, like a saleswoman whose mart is

Endangered by the pilferer on his quest.’ (from Amores, 1916)


Lawrence also remarked to friends, perhaps in bitterness, that he felt that Louie was too inexperienced, too immature, this due to her unscarred youth. This idea of a lack of self-reliance is portrayed to some extent in Ursula in ‘The Rainbow.’


The relationship between the two began petering out, driven, by the end of 1911, and into 1912, partly by Lawrence’s precarious health. Unsatisfactory meetings continued, until a massive event in Lawrence’s life occurred that would put an end to their friendship altogether. Lawrence met the German wife of his former Professor of Languages and after meeting secretly at Charing Cross Station on May 3, 1912, Lawrence and Frieda crossed the Channel to Ostend to begin a new life together (although Frieda was not committed to a ‘new life’ with Lawrence at this early stage of their illicit relationship).


A couple of letters between Louie and Lawrence were exchanged during 1912, then neither heard from one another again. In the final letter Lawrence wrote to Louie, from Lake Garda in Italy, near the end of 1912, he spoke of the fact that he was ‘such a rotter’ to her, that she always treated him well, that he thinks of her with ‘gratitude and respect’ and that the ‘wrong’ is ‘all on my side.’ Then he comes out with this:


‘I am living here with a lady whom I love, and whom I shall marry when I come to England, if it is possible. We have been together as man and wife for six months, nearly, now, and I hope we shall always remain man and wife. I feel a beast writing this. But I do it because I think it is only fair to you. I never deceived you, whatever- or did I deceive you-? I may have done even that.- I have nothing to be proud of.-…The best thing you can do is to hate me. I loathe signing my name to this. D H Lawrence.’

(‘Lawrence In Love- Letters to LB from DHL’, Univ of Nottingham, 1968).


The final instalment in the story of Louie and Lawrence takes place in Vence, France in March, 1930. The depth of Louie’s affection for Lawrence can be guessed when we see that Louie twice visited Vence to see Lawrence’s grave, this despite the long period without contact. She was at this stage still unmarried and living with her parents in Quorn. Louie did eventually marry in 1940, and retired as Headmistress a year later. She died in 1962. Lawrence scholar, James T Boulton, says of Louie that ‘the wound received in 1912 had not healed in 1930.’


Jessie Chambers also married later, and she too never forgot Lawrence, not even remotely so. This can be seen in her book ‘D H Lawrence, A Personal Record’(1935) in which she states that she always saw in him ‘in the strictest sense of the word, immortal.’ Lawrence, too, always looked back fondly on Jessie and her family, writing a wonderfully tender and appreciative letter very late in life to Jessie’s brother about the unforgettable memories he had of Hagg’s Farm, and that his experiences there would remain with him forever.


It seems fitting that Lawrence ended up marrying the larger than life figure of Frieda Weekley. Some of the strength she must have embodied is suggested at by her preparedness to give up her family for a penniless, struggling author who she barely knew. Frieda had three young children when she ran off with Lawrence. She knew, as her former husband made clear, that this act meant the end of her relationship with them as a mother for the foreseeable future, maybe forever. She offered so much to Lawrence that the other women couldn’t match, and it is true that she benefitted from the daring, risky life he had to offer as well. She may have felt, however, that she had made a terrible mistake early on during their elopement. Lawrence found her bawling over photographs of her children, missing them terribly. He was frustrated by this sign of regret and told her to get over her decision in no uncertain terms, promptly ripping the photographs into pieces and storming off. A fierce, powerful, independent woman who perhaps had met her match.




                                     Church Cottage, Cossal, Notts.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Andrew O'Hagan on the James Bulger Tragedy

IN an essay published in the London Review of Books in 1993, Scottish author and essayist, Andrew O'Hagan wrote about the tragedy that is/was the murder of James Bulger by two ten year old boys:

' The abduction and murder of James Bulger, a two-year-old boy from Liverpool, has caused unprecedented grief and anger. Hours before the two ten-year-old boys accused of the crime arrived at South Sefton Magistrates’ Court, a large, baying crowd had formed outside. As a pair of blue vans drew up, the crowd surged forward, bawling and screaming. A number of men tried to reach the vehicles, to get at the youths inside, and scuffles spilled onto the road. Some leapt over crash-barriers and burst through police cordons, lobbing rocks and banging on the sides of the vans. Many in the crowd – sick with condemnation – howled and spat and wept. Kenneth Clarke has promised measures to deal with ‘nasty, persistent juvenile little offenders’. Those two little offenders – if they were the offenders, the childish child-murderers from Walton – were caught on camera twice. First, on the security camera at the shopping precinct in Bootle where they lifted James, and again by the camera of a security firm on Breeze Hill, as they dragged James past – the child clearly in some distress.'

The whole shocking incident was sickening and I will always remember reading about it years ago. When I was in Maidstone in England in 2001, the Headmistress of the school I was teaching at spoke of the horror she felt in regards to the newest details- not that the two young offenders were going to be released into a society somewhere, but that the howls of contempt were rising from the British public again. I saw her condemnation of the latest hysterical hatred and derision as a voice of reason amidst the chaos in the tabloid news, and I thanked her for it.

It was a disgusting and sickening act. But as O'Hagan says, somewhere else in his essay, it was also a crime to release the names of the offenders- Venables and Thompson- because two more lives were destroyed as a result. Add to this Kenneth Clarke's comment quoted above- (promised measures to deal with) 'nasty, persistent juvenile little offenders' and we have enough revulsion for a lifetime.


Sunday, November 14, 2010

Winter's Bones: An American Independent Film


BESIDES being a well scripted, well acted and compelling film, Winter’s Bones provides an interesting education. As much as anything, it seems to be about the current state of the US economy, and in particular the way in which downward economies hurt the poor and dislocated people the most. The territory explored in the film is the area known as the Ozarks, a hilly and heavily wooded rural area of Missouri. A couple of the principal locations were specifically Christian County and Tayden County, evidently at the centre of the Missouri Bible Belt, a Republican stronghold since at least the end of the last world war.






Jennifer Lawrence has little film experience, but she does a convincing job of playing a stoic seventeen year old who has to grow up too quickly by being saddled with a psychologically damaged mother, who is virtually a non-entity, and a young brother and sister who are in desperate need of good parenting and good role models. Lawrence, called Ree in the film, provides some stark education for her young siblings in the possible advent that they might find themselves without her. She teaches them to shoot and skin squirrels- ‘do you want them fried or stewed?’, and how to use guns as well (the youngest, a six year old girl, helps Ree pull the trigger).



The people in this part of Missouri are not satirized in any way- in fact for all the bleakness that is explored as part of their predicament and condition, you get the feeling they would welcome this film as a sober message that might be sent to Barak Obama. However they may feel differently about previous attempts to capture their way of life: the satirical slap in the face that was the TV show, ‘The Beverley Hillbillies’, and the grim and shocking critique that was ‘Deliverance.’ There is tenacity in the people in Winter’s Bones that some may see as admirable. There are some warm scenes involving singing and banjo playing. Life is tough but people get on with it. However, dependence on drugs to make a living, the awful attitude of revenge, the lawlessness and ‘local rules’ that seem to be on display, are all seriously worrying signs for a community that is struggling to survive, let alone make it.



My favourite scene in the film is when Ree, desperately in need of money to support her family, visits the local army recruiting centre. I can imagine any number of local Missouri men and women fighting in Afghanistan. Ree is determined and practical, and it is absolutely right that she should be totally honest about admitting that her sole motivation for wanting to join is the money that she will receive. Happily, the recruiting officer, playing his real life role, interestingly enough, tells her that this is not a good reason alone for wanting to be a soldier, that she is too young, (being only seventeen), and that right now her mother and siblings all need her to be with them at home. It’s a relief to hear caring, sensible advice.



Winter’s Bones is stark and very gritty, and although I would have no interest in seeing it again- unlike, say, the multi-layered White Ribbon which was one of the last films I saw- I’m glad I did see it. It told me something about the people of the Ozark region, it brought to the screen a great new talent in Jennifer Lawrence, and it is an American film without the tackiness, cheapness, falseness and shallowness of a Hollywood film. No special effects. No gratuitous violence. No sexual assault. No excessive use of guns. No melodramatic chase sequences. So it’s great that it was even made.




Monday, October 25, 2010

10 Great Reading Experiences



The books that I have enjoyed the most are generally books that I read quickly. There is the ‘don’t want to put it down factor’. But equally relevant is the fact that I enjoy books so much more if I read them quickly, remembering plot links, subtle character development, listening to the author’s voice in one or two sittings. These books will stay with me forever because they are beautifully written, and because I will never forget the experience of having read them.




Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)    


        


Initially apprehensive because life was chaotic at the time, I approached Anna Karenina a little dubiously. I have read long books before- I remember the first one was ROOTS by Alex Haley- but not many of them. Anna Karenina had me involved from the start. I enjoyed following the dangers of a secret life between Anna and her Count, but as some others have said, it was Levin and Kitty that had me enthralled. I still remember the scene in which he proposed as being magical- and apparently from Tolstoy’s experience. Another incident in the story that I thought was beautifully written and absolutely wonderful was the section on Levin’s mowing of fields and his interest in agriculture. Different incidents involving trains were also captivating. This book put me in a good mood for many months.




Women In Love (D H Lawrence) 

                        



I have always loved Lawrence and have collected many books by and about him. Lawrence’s love of nature comes to the fore in this novel, as it does in most of his works. Women In Love is a kind of sequel to The Rainbow, and was written at a creative although turbulent period of his life. I read this novel in the car and will always remember the reading experience. I purchased a paperback copy whilst holiday in Adelaide, and began and finished it during the long eight drive from Adelaide to Melbourne. What a fantastic use of time! By the time I finished I was enthralled and besotted with certain scenes. I noticed, too, that my mind was incredibly lucid and that I suddenly had an enormous vocabulary, which sadly dissipated a few days later. In real life a woman drowned in Moorgreen Reservoir, near Eastwood, Nottingham where Lawrence grew up. I thought about this as I walked along the reservoir in 2001. The scene early on when the boating party, led by lanterns, looks for Diana in the darkened water, is memorable. Lawrence was fascinated with homoeroticism, as witnessed in The Rainbow with Miss Inger and Ursula, and that theme is prevalent here too in the case of Rupert and Gerald. The famous nude wrestling scene contains extremely powerful writing, as both strong men wrestle ferociously in the firelight, their loins glistening with sweat. Lawrence entered the psyche of his characters with more accuracy and intelligence that any other writer I know.


Tender is the Night (F Scott Fitzgerald) 




This beautiful story from one of the best American writers the world has seen borrows its title from John Keats. Dick Diver, psychiatrist, marries one of his mental patients, and is doomed to a life fraught with uncomfortable public scenarios. Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, spent time in an asylum, and clearly real life provided rich fodder for his fiction, as it did for D H Lawrence and many others. Dick has a weakness for young girls, a la Humbert Humbert, and he has an uncomfortable experience passing a courthouse in which an older man is inside being tried for rape of a pubescent girl. Dick’s fancy is the enormously wealthy Rosemary Hoyt, many years his junior. In one memorable moment they kiss, and Dick gasps ‘You’re fun to kiss’, and we can well and truly believe that he means it. It is not surprising that this book means so much to me- even more so than the beautiful and brilliant Gatsby- because as a student at La Trobe University I prepared for Tender Is The Night for my second year exams. Due to a clerical error, the question for this novel was accidentally missing from the paper and I had to write on something else I barely knew. The Head of English later apologised and I was allocated a generous grade in compensation. The setting is the French Riviera, close by to where I almost had a car stolen many years later.


Lolita (Vladimir Nabakov) 

        
                                                            


Lolita was published in the 50’s and it is daring. Humbert Humbert makes no secret of his predatory nature as he reveals in first person his lust for a twelve year old girl. He manipulates Lolita’s mother in order to get close to her in the first place; he drugs Lolita so he can have total control of her whilst she is sleeping; he lies to her by telling her that her mother is in hospital when in fact she is really dead; he writes indescribable things about Lolita in his diary and jealously guards her against having any similar aged friends when she is at school. There are many other shameful things that Humbert involves himself in, including murder, and yet he is thoroughly likeable, which suggests the genius of Nabakov. He is very clever and very witty and one could say he develops a genuine affection for Lolita. When she refuses to run off with him, pregnant and hungry at the end, he cries inconsolably, and this is the stuff of tragedy. Quilty almost steals the show (he does in the Kubrick film, played by Peter Sellers). Quilty becomes three characters, the most deceitful of these being the man who steals Lolita from Humbert when she is in her hospital bed after making grand promises. But for me the most memorable episode in the whole novel takes place at the hotel in which Humbert is developing his plan for a vulnerable Lolita, fast asleep in his bed after a powerful sleeping draught. Quilty is an interested onlooker on the hotel’s balcony making quips about Humbert and his dirty, devious plans. Each time Quilty makes his dry, witty comment, when Humbert only half hears, he says something innocent to replace it, confusing Humbert by making it rhyme. Great detail and dialogue in English- not bad for a Russian émigré writing in a second language.


The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)



                                                              

 This was a long time ago, probably when I was 18, when I came across McCuller’s name via a short story collection of Southern writers. The Southern experience is very powerful in the novel, and bits of it remind me of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. It is a book that has largely left my memory, except for the fact that it was profound and gave voice to the under privileged and had incredible characters. The bits that I do remember include the deaf mute, John Singer, who dines in a café run by Biff. There is also a family called the Kelly’s in the neighbourhood. They have a daughter called Mick and a son called Bubber. In a chilling scene Bubber accidentally shoots another character in the head. I wish I remember more of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. I will have to read it again. There you are- I forget most of the narrative, but the memory of ‘feeling it’ has never left me.



The Heather Blazing (Colm Toibin)


                                                                            


I went aimlessly into Brunswick Street Bookstore one day in 1994, looking for a new book to read. There was a gap. The surname- Toibin- attracted me, with its Irish sound- having read a number of books by Irish writers in the past, and being interested in the politics of Northern Ireland. What a lovely title!- ‘The Heather Blazing.’ The cover was simple- some abstract brushstrokes- but pretty. The blurb told the story of a judge (Eamon Redmond) and his wife in the county of Wexford. I took it on a hunch as I began reading in the armchair in the lounge at home. Like the best experiences, it was a one sitting job. The prose was beautiful-‘aching restraint’ as one critic put it. Lots of references to the Irish countryside, so simple, so haunting, making the everyday seem dramatic. Later in the story the judge’s wife takes a walk and has a stroke and soils herself. They have never been close in their early old age, and now suddenly they will be reliant on each other, especially her on him. For someone who is so restrained, and awkward with emotions, and removed, the daily tasks of bathing his wife and feeding her and changing her will prove traumatic. But the judge does so. And bravely and lovingly.


 Conditions of Faith (Alex Miller)

                                                        


Emily Elder meets Georges in Melbourne, via Emily’s father. They dance lovingly in her parents’ Richmond home, he proposes, and suddenly they are off to Paris to begin a life together. Emily has devastated her father. She is young and precociously bright. To go to Paris to become a young mother and a housewife seems unbelievably wasteful. Once there Emily decides motherhood is not for her. Visiting Tunisia awakens the desire for academia and historical research. Alas, Emily is pregnant, due to a chance encounter in the beautiful cathedral at Chartres. Georges assumes he is the father, but Emily knows better. Worse still, the real father is a priest, and he is George’s family priest. The description is making the scenario sound sensational and melodramatic. But this is misleading because it’s not. It’s achingly sad and real. Emily spends long days and nights refusing to give up her research. She studies profusely at the Paris Biblioteque in freezing weather, heavily pregnant, and putting this unwanted baby at risk. We feel for Emily because it is a path unwanted. At the same time, Georges has dreams of his own, just as real. As an engineer, he wants to be a part of the tender to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge and he is working insane hours. He also loves Emily and loves the idea of fatherhood and dreams of settling as a father with Emily in Sydney. When the crunch comes, and it is time to go, Emily devastatingly tells Georges that she is not prepared to leave Europe- there is too much work to be done. This is AFTER the baby is born- she is abandoning her child because her work means so much to her. There are other layers in Conditions of Faith. Antoine and Sophie are beautiful characters, each filled with their own dreams. And Emily’s path cleverly echoes the path of a famous historical figure whose subject fascinates Emily.




Ragtime (E L Doctorow) 


                              


Doctorow is a New Yorker, and New York is for Doctorow what the Mississippi is for Samuel Clemens. All his books are set there, and Ragtime, set at the turn of the last century, is his best. I was enchanted by certain characters like Tateh and his little girl, poor emigrants who make their fortune with their ingenuity. Ragtime intriguingly centres around real life figures like Harry Houdini and Sigmund Freud. A memorable scene involves the defecation in the Rolls Royce of Coalhouse Walker’s car, by members of the NYC Fire Department. From memory, they are enraged by the fact that a black man can be so stylish and so wealthy. I read Ragtime in 1984 when I was supposed to be reading One Hundred Years of Solitude and Pale Fire. I also read Death in Venice at this time. I recall it as a time when I was open to so many things and just wanted to devour all the book references I came across. Funnily enough, I saw the film first- desperate for something different in 1982 when I was in Year 12- at the Greater Union Cinemas in Bourke Street. I was very impressed, and later bought the score on LP (by Randy Newman). Then of course I bought the novel which was even more moving.


Death in Venice (Thomas Mann)       


   



This is a sad and solemn little story (a novella) about intense longing and a tragic lack of fulfilment. The narrator, Gustav von Aschenbach, is an accomplished middle-aged writer who becomes bewitched by a beautiful fourteen year old Polish boy called Tadzio, who has porcelain skin and soft blonde hair. He follows him around Venice and as cruelly tortured by the sight of him each morning at the breakfast table of the hotel they are staying at. It is in some ways like an all male version of Lolita, except von Aschenbach is a very different and less decadent and opportunistic character than Humbert Humbert. He is said to be modelled on Mann himself. Like many great books, a great film followed, and I will always remember the accompanying soundtrack, Mahler’s 5th symphony. So the book led me onto the film, and therefore Bertolluci and Mahler, and so on and so forth, so all the connections are a great thing. Death In Venice is a brief novel, yet it gave me the feeling of having read something full and rich and significant.


The Catcher In The Rye (J D Salinger)  

     



I read this at the perfect age- that is, seventeen, which is the age Holden Caulfield is when he tells the famous story of his breakdown whilst in New York. It captures the time perfectly- what it is like to be seventeen- what it is like (from what I have read) to be a young, white affluent male in the USA in 1950- and the cadences and idiom of the language of that time- all those goddamn adventures and frustrations. Post-war, the world is not an easy place to live in, and Holden can’t think of anyone or anything that he likes. His sister, Phoebe, is absolutely beautiful in her pubescent innocence, yet the world Holden encounters is sharp and cynical, with pimps and prostitutes wanting you to trip up, adults squirting highballs at each other in bathtubs, showy phonies like Ernie and Stradlater, and opportunistic flits like Carl Luce, and ‘f- you’ written on footpaths and walls (something that one of Holden’s heroes, Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby, sees outside Gatsby’s house, incidentally). I read this in one sitting in the lounge because I had to as it was part of the Year 11 Literature course. It has stayed with me forever, but is sadly hit or miss with students nowadays. When my family went to Sorrento (Vic) for a day trip once, my father devised a way of entering the premises, for free, through the back door of the cafeteria, and gleefully told the rest of us about it. I was full of Holden’s passion and scorn, having just read the novel, and full of indignation for days as to the blatant cheating involved in such an activity. It was an example for me of a cynical world and even worse, a cynical parent. I love the idea, which I read somewhere, of Sylvia Plath reading this novel to her new husband, Ted Hughes, in the mid 50’s.











Thursday, October 7, 2010

Parent Musings

                                                                                                                        September 21 2010




ON BEING A FATHER







BEING a father is fabulous but it can be terrifying. Today I caught the bus with my 2 year old daughter to Northland Shopping Centre. We began getting ready to go out at 8:00. I dressed her easily- there are no objections to particular clothes wearing at her age. I chose a white singlet, a burgundy skivvy, another red top over that, a red-flecked jumper, scarlet- coloured tights, red jeans, red shoes and a blue zip up jacket. She insisted on wearing a faded pink hat which was luckily quite suitable for the cool, inclement weather. I packed some sliced apple and a small box of sultanas. She wanted to take her water in a trendy green plastic cup-shaped container which leaks- I insisted on a plain plastic mini water bottle with a pop up lid, and she easily acquiesced.



We both got ready quickly. I threw the nappy bag contents into the bottom of the pram. A. climbed happily into the pram after I put the brake on, and then we were out the door.



It is a short walk to the newsagent. There wasn’t anyone in the line so I was able to obtain a bus pass quickly. As we strolled out of the newsagency, I could see our orange bus- the ‘smartbus’ which travels from Altona to Mordialloc every day- waiting a hundred yards away at the lights. It would have been a bit of a blow to miss it as it would have meant a tiresome half hour wait in the cold. Luckily, after we raced across the lights at the flashing red man, we were able to stumble onto the bus without a second to lose.



I felt light-headed and gay on the bus because things were going well. I told A. about every person who came onto the bus-mostly older women- at each stop on the way. A. happily sucked on her apple pieces, and ate the whole small box of sultanas. She felt light-headed as well and was happy to sit in her pram all the way, perhaps just starting to show some signs of restlessness as were entered the Northland car park.



The purpose of the trip was to buy some clothes for my wife for our wedding anniversary, a hat for me, some pasta for our dinner, and to sit down and have a cappuccino and a scone between us. The first port of call was Myer. I found a brown trilby-style hat within minutes that felt comfortable and looked good. A successful start. Still in Myer, I found J a purple (her favourite colour) top that has some attractive frills on the sleeves and the bottom. Perfect- ‘and she can always take it back’, I thought out loud. Meanwhile, A. was being the epitome of a perfect child, leaning back languorously in her pram, almost chortling away, fascinated by all around her. I decided it was time for some fun of her own, so I took her to ‘Toys R Us’. I showed her some heavy breathing snakes and dinosaurs, which weren’t really her thing. Not surprisingly, she preferred the dolls- ‘Baba’ she called some of them- and I allowed her to cradle a ‘Hello Kitty’ cat for a little while- she gladly handed it back when I said we had to leave. Just nearing the exit, the inevitable happened: she saw some ‘In The Night Garden’ dolls out of the corner of her eye. I allowed her to handle one- what choice did I have?’ and she really livened up and she began trying to rip it out of the box. ‘Getting that one back on the shelf won’t be easy’ I thought to myself- but I was wrong. When I said we couldn’t take it because you have to pay for it, she simply handed it back and we were on our way.



As an almost subliminal or unconscious reward, I then wheeled our way over to a coffee outlet and ordered us baby cino, cappuccino, and scone. I took A. out of the pram for the first time, and we sat merrily together on a couch. She declined the scone and jam and cream, but woofed the baby cino down, and with strategically placed napkins, I managed to avoid a milky chocolate mess.



She wanted to walk- fair enough- so I held her hand with my right hand, and pushed the pram with my left. On the way to the bus stop again, to make our way home, ever alert A. noticed a little indoor roundabout, which are everywhere and difficult to avoid- this one with characters from ‘Sesame Street’ painted all over it. It was in mid transit with other children on it, so we waited patiently, then I slipped a $2 coin in. Observing the machine initially, I noticed that it flew around in circles fairly quickly, and had a safety wall on the inside, but no security latch on the outside. I wondered hesitantly whether or not A would be able to hang on as it whizzed around. Then I anticipated that it might be hard to keep up with her whizzing, if I took the precaution to place a steady hand on her left shoulder. So it was with some trepidation that I pressed the ‘Start’ button. As it turned out, my fears were thankfully not realised as it wasn’t going quickly enough for a) A. to fall out and over -at any rate, she kept a vice-like grip on Elmo’s head as I requested, and b) I was easily able to manoeuvre my way around the machine as I over estimated its speed in the first place.



Happily, we went off to wait for the next Altona ‘smartbus’ to take us home. The red neon sign said Altona bus in ’10 minutes’, which was fine because I had forgotten the pasta. We went back inside, to Safeway nearby, bought the pasta, and had only 4 uneventful minutes to wait. This time on the way home, A. sat on the same seat as her father, constant, steadfast, secure and happy, observing the world around her and fairly near sleep. We crossed the busy road at Bell Street at the lights, and walked in the door right on twelve o’clock. A quick glass of milk, and tuna and cheese sandwich, and A was almost begging to be given the chance to fall asleep.



A beautiful morning, and I allowed myself some time to think about what could have gone wrong:

____________________________________________________________________________



The day could have started with A. refusing to put on the sensible clothes I had selected for her. She may have angrily thrown the singlet and jumper across the room and complained in her child-like way that I had chosen too much red. She may have been totally impractical and chose thin weedy socks, a threadbare top that we’d had for several years, cold translucent flannelette-like jeans, a thin summer cotton hat (or no hat at all), and summer sandals with all baby toes exposed.



We may have left with an argument in which A. refused to settle into her pram. This would have meant I probably would have left the pram behind, and made the back-breaking decision to carry her most of the day. The newsagent may have said ‘we used to sell Metcards but we don’t do so any more- there is a newsagent the next suburb along that still sells them.’



The ‘smartbus’ that we luckily caught just on time may have suddenly left as the lights changed prematurely just before our arrival. That would have meant a half hour wait in the cold air, and it may have even rained. A. may have become very prickly and fidgety in no time. This would not be a good scenario, waiting as it were alongside Bell Street, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the whole of Melbourne.



A. may not have wanted to sit with her father on the ‘smartbus’ once it finally arrived. Opening the bag to desperately search for a remedy, I may have noticed that I stupidly forgot to pack a few little snacks to keep her preoccupied- and devastatingly worse- the nappy bag with its nappies and baby wipes- essential for any outing with a 2 year old.



Upon entering Northland, A. may have expected to be carried, an attitude that would probably last the whole back breaking trip. The dreaded pooh may have occurred at that very moment- Murphy’s Law’- and it would have been a very embarrassing and frantic search for a nappy outlet, and subsequent toilets. On top of that, a tantrum might have ensued, in which A. may have aggressively tested her lungs on the grounds that a) she had an uncomfortable bottom, b) she was hungry and in desperate need for a snack, and c) she was bored already and tired and just wanted to go home, ‘right now!’



Bottom and stomach eventually fulfilled, the hat and anniversary clothes for the wife may have proved totally elusive. The risky visit to ‘Toys R Us’ may have proved fatal with tantrum after tantrum over apparitions of ‘Night Garden’ dolls, ‘Barbie’ dolls and ‘Dora’ figurines meaning that my wallet would have quickly become empty after several acts of hasty appeasement.



It is easy to work out how the coffee shop visitation could have turned sour. Coffee milk all over everything without a change of clothes. Broken glass all over the floor and looks of contempt. Even worse, coffee burns up either arms and a child in traumatic pain.



The most obvious final disaster that could have taken place was with the innocuous looking little roundabout with ‘Sesame Street’ plastered all over it. The ‘whizz’ may have been far more powerful that at first discerned, and little A. may have found herself being hurtled at great pace across the Northland floor. She may have cracked her head on the handrail that encircles Big Bird’s ugly head. She may have received unfortunate giddy motion sickness after whirling around and around, and thrown up all over litigious-looking parents and their children waiting patiently for the next ride.



Of course the ‘smartbus’ heading west and home again may have been delayed due to a broken fan belt, and the wait for the next one could have been excruciating. Father and daughter could have been at serious loggerheads by then. Another pooh in the pants, this one a deliberate smarty-pants one, might have ensued. It’s not worth contemplating what might have happened later on, exiting from the bus with a tantrum frenzied child, along the treacherous Bell Street at the end of the journey home…



Fortunately, it was the former, not the latter, that did occur, and I thank A. for a lovely morning, writing all this down as she contentedly sleeps.

                                                         

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

KATHERINE MANSFIELD: A NEW BIOGRAPHY

KATHLEEN Jones is the author of a new biography about Katherine Mansfield. There is also a large section of research devoted to the life of John middleton Murry, particularly the turbulent years following Mansfield's death. Following is a letter of appreciation to the author, and following that is the author's emailed reply.


LETTER TO KATHLEEN JONES- SEPT 29 2010




Dear Kathleen,



This is a quick note to thank you for the recently published biography of the intriguing Katherine Mansfield which has greatly preoccupied me the last few days, until 6:00 PM tonight when I finished it. It is fresh in my mind and I felt that I would like to send you some impressions from a humble school teacher of High School English living in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.



I first encountered KM, the writer, when I completed Year 12. She, and other brave, unorthodox women like Sylvia Plath and Kate Chopin, interested me more than the male writers that I was studying at that time at university. I remember Carson McCullers was another. I read the Bliss and Garden Party collections, and this naturally led on to an interest in writers in her circle, like Virginia Woolf, Huxley, and D H Lawrence in particular. Then I read Gillian Boddy’s beautifully photographed text, as well as the revised Alpers. I thought the Alpers biography was dry and a bit disconnected, and I realise now that it may be because of a lack of knowledge in his subject, and a difficulty on his part to locate and utilise enough resources.



I showed Bliss (the story) to an intelligent Literature bunch at school many years ago, and we were all fascinated by it, and became involved in trying to interpret its symbolism. I have now visited the birthplace cottage in Wellington, and proudly carry my KM key ring with me everywhere- the Alexander Turnbull library awaits. A few years ago I also had the opportunity to purchase the three slim volumes of The Signature which I can see from my bookcase shelf as I write. I collect books nowadays- most of them are by or about DHL, but I have three Constable first editions with wrappers n fine condition- Something Childish, The Scrapbook and Novels & Novelists. I saw Dove’s Nest in similar condition in London at Ulysses Bookshop, but couldn’t afford it.



So KM is someone that I have kept at the back of my mind throughout my reading life. An excellent short story writer and an equally fascinating subject. Your book has resuscitated a great interest in her, and I thank you for it, although it has come at a bad time in that I am about to go back to work, after holidays, hopelessly underprepared. It is the most detailed and enthralling book I have encountered about her, and it is better than many biographies I have read on other literary subjects. Your hard work has paid off and here are some of the qualities I have enjoyed:



- You haven’t created a ‘saint’ in KM, in that you fully explore her foibles and weaknesses- her damaging episodes of indecision, her inexperience upon arriving in London, her unfortunate ability to create mess after mess in her private life and her difficulty in being honest and the need to constantly wear a mask (which frustrated those like Kot who truly loved her).

- At the same time, KM comes across as unconventional, determined, incredibly brave and prepared to give up so much for (to use a cliché), ‘her art.’ We can see in the more conventional lives that her sisters led how easily it would have been to stay in NZ, or marry and live respectfully in England, and be popular with her wealthy, aristocratic parents. The number of house changes, and the amount of times she lived in cold and almost decrepit conditions, makes you shiver as a reader. On top of her brave battle with her all encompassing illness and her desperate search for better health, I can see why she has become greatly admired.

- There must be a temptation to not only glorify KM, but to also demonise some of those around her, especially DHL, who we associate with KM so much. But while acknowledging the awful moments- probably the worst being the ‘stewing in consumption’ quote, you also acknowledge the undoubted generosity, seen in such moments as the simple postcard from Wellington, and especially the beautiful and tender letter he sent her after the death of her beloved brother, Leslie. No, Lawrence doesn’t come under anywhere near as much dark scrutiny as Murry (and to a lesser extent, LM) , which seems to me fair.

- I found the chapters about Murry fascinating, particularly the ones post- Katherine. In these stages of the book you must have been tempted to acknowledge Murry in the title. Perhaps it was an afterthought to include so much research on Murry? Or is it because KM is strangely enough so much still a spiritual force in Murry’s life, right up until his death? I didn’t know any of the details about Murry and this nightmare existence with Betty, and the incredibly sad details of the lives of his children, and the terrible outcome of his marriage to Violet. Murry is such an intriguing character, and the intensity of his life with DHL has been written about numerous times before. There seems to me something in the history of Murry and KM’s life that is repeated in the story of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and how her memory came to equally haunt him. DHL’s comments about him being a ‘dirty worm’ seem reasonable on balance don’t they?

- Your knowledge, too, of KM’s creative life, not just her personal life, is very good. I would have preferred a bit more analysis of her writing- after all, what she wrote comes from her, and tells us just as much about her than what she actually did- the best biography I have read in this regard- in which we come to intimately know the author though his actual writing- is the DHL biography by Mark Kinkead- Weekes (the second CUP biography). Nevertheless I really appreciated commentary on a number of stories and journal fragments, and it has led me to want to rediscover her work.

- Finally, the way you evoke the time- England, NZ and Europe in the period up to and after the war- is brilliantly done. We must remember the social mores were very different then- Murry hiding when visitors come around! The unfortunate episode when KM thinks she has to contact George Bowden- the ‘incomprehensible decision’- and the ever increasing threat of war, especially in the poignant moment in Paris when sees a zeppelin when staying in Carco’s flat.

My wife and I visited Fontainebleau for the express purpose of seeing KM’s grave. We were rushed for time and fortunately it was about the sixth or seventh headstone I scanned. I didn’t know as much about the journey then, s I wish I could go again now. I have seen some of the houses from the outside- ones in Hampstead Heath, the Acacia Road house. Alas, I never went to Bandol, but a beautiful experience was seeing Lawrence and Frieda’s Villa Mirenda in Florence. I thought that Frieda and KM had a better relationship displayed in your book, but you have altered this perception. KM’s sad and bitter experience in the end gives us all some hope- just as much a ‘savage pilgrimage’ surely, as Lawrence. Thank you once again- I am sure that KM, and your book, will stay with me forever.



Darren Harrison.

                                                                         
Kathleen Jones' reply:


Dear Darren


Your letter gave me so much pleasure. I can't tell you how much it means to an author to have such a detailed, enthusiastic response from their readers. I didn't write the book as an academic exercise, but because I'm passionate about KM's work and fascinated by her life and it's good to know that some of that communicates.



Thank you very, very much for letting me know that you enjoyed the book. Biography isn't doing so well in Europe at the moment - hit by the economic downturn. Good to know that the odd copy is selling in Australia!

best wishes

Kathleen Jones



www.kathleenjones.co.uk

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

PORT DOUGLAS, QLD 4877: June 30-July 10

THE beach is almost as I remember it from a few years ago. Four miles long, clear and blue water, dark green hills, except the sand near the foreshore seems yellower than I remember it. The sand away from the foreshore is the soft and familiar lovely white. A great expanse of beach. Thinking of Joel Cohen, the US director, who apparently stayed at Port Douglas a couple of years ago. And thinking about D H Lawrence and his family coastal holidays at Robin Hood's Bay, Yorkshire. And Virginia and the Woolf's at St Ive's, Cornwall.

Macrossan Street is the main strip. There briefly at 8:00 tonight. An older couple talking about tax and superannuation. Families in shorts and singlets. We came from Melbourne yesterday, and rain and wind and 12 degrees. But tonight, difficult. A vomiting child. All about us, palm trees, tropical vegation. Almost expect to see monkeys swinging from trees. There is a lovely saltwater pool here. A Danish couple, with their two young boys. Two Swedish films on DVD in my suitcase. Finished the five hour version of 'Fanny & Alexander' the other night.
_____________________________________________________

THIS morning we left our front gate after seeing the Danes again, and getting to know them better. Along Mowbray Street, around the corner, is the Clink Theatre, nothing showing. I looked through the window- saw row after row of red chairs. The facade is weatherboard, with a wide verandah. A lovely, modest, community theatre looking empty and abandoned.  I thought about Ingmar Bergman, and how excited he might have been, as an incidental visitor to Port Douglas. The play I ran through in my mind was an historical play, in which the fifth act spills out onto the street, the actors traversing the lawns.

Macrossan Street was filled as usual with tourists like ourselves, and art galleries, restaurants, clothing shops. I heard some American voices. Later I ran the full length of the beach, into a hot, strong wind. I went past the gentle, left leaning curve, around the right, sharp bend, past the expert kite fliers, well beyond sunbakers, idle walkers, to isolated parts where the space between the foreshore and the mangrove swamps is dangerously narrow. Marvin Gaye finished singing 'Mercy, Mercy' in the iPod, and there in front of me, some six metres away, lies a baby crocodie, seemingly basking in the sun. I stood exhausted, stunned. Several curses escaped my mouth and my heart leapt. Facing me but not moving. Its eyes sunken and looking dead. I retreated swiftly and counted my blessings to get out of there alive.
I walked with the two kids from one end of the rtail precinct to the other. At the western end of Macrossan Street you find the simple park with a slide an a solitary swing. Behind the swing, about thirty metres beyond, is the beautiful blue water, with boats gliding frequently into the marina. Enclosed in the park is a majestic and humble white weatherboard church, which features inside a square view of the blue water and purple hills beyond.

Tonight at 8:30 PM we are sitting in a cold air-conditioned lounge, whist outside the air temperature is balmy and warm and perfect.

__________________________________________________
On the beach this morning, S waltzed up to a tall tanned woman wearing a white sarong and cradling a tiny guitar. Something about this woman intrigued S. Shw was from NZ and was warm and friendly, proffering pieces of under ripe coconut fresh from its shell. When the woman began strumming her guitar, a couple of other children gathered around. Suddenly the beach was warm and convivial and the verses of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' spontaneously broke out.

____________________________________________________

THE Port Douglas foreshore was covered with people today. A nice, communal feeling wandering around the extensive weekend market. The marina, later, is good for fish 'n' chips and beer.

__________________________________________________

THE beach was beautiful today, for running. The usual drag of the hot gusty wind on the way- dogged pererverance, mostly. No crocodiles. But on the way back, exhiliration. The breeze dead. Rain sheeting down. People in the water. Long quality songs. After more than a dozen kilometres, steaming along to Joni Mitchell's 'Song For Sharon'- a great feeling, and finsishing with momentum, spilling onto Macrossan Street, down its east side.

_______________________________________________

UP at 3:00 AM for the bus to go to Cairns airport. American's from Pennsylvania. A haircut earler in the day. The barber says he hates Americans. Big, loud mouths, especially the ones from the mid-west. A final time at the beach as well. The family walking along the shore line. All of us wanting time to stand still- with work and routine beckoning. A nice surprise to have the St Kilda Football Club on the plane with us going home.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Flawed but compelling: Ingmar Bergman's 'The Serpent's Egg'


THE SERPENT’S EGG


I am threading my way through Ingmar Bergman’s entire film catalogue, and have been watching countless dramas with a small number of characters (chamber pieces) set on Faro island off the Swedish coast, in these latter films, home to Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman. Naturally Liv Ullman is the star of these films, along with Max Von Sydow invariably, filmed by Sven Nykvist, naturally. Very few people, living in claustrophobic and desolate conditions along the coast, mysterious elements at work, black and white film stock, all about the oppression of the mind, madness, evil, bleakness, experimentation. I am thinking of films like Hour Of The Wolf, Shame and The Passion of Anna, all from the late sixties. They are good films, but they will not be remembered like earlier ones such as Through A Glass Darkly and Persona (also on Faro), and Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, all of which made Bergman’s name. Nevertheless they are intriguing and impeccably acted and harrowing in lots of ways.

So after further chamber pieces with modest budgets in the early seventies, such as Scenes from A Marriage and Cries & Whispers (both masterpieces), comes something totally different and totally unexpected: ‘The Serpent’s Egg’.

Part of the reason we have something completely different is because of the drastic change in Bergman’s living conditions, brought on by trouble with the police and a nervous breakdown. His company was aggressively examined for tax evasion by the Swedish government in the mid seventies. Bergman was virtually arrested and treated like a criminal whilst preparing for a play at his local theatre. Subsequently, he angrily took his work elsewhere- to Berlin to make The Serpent’s Egg.

The Serpent’s Egg is in my mind Bergman’s most horrific film. It’s almost universally derided, although critics rightly see plenty of good things in it (Bergman scholar, Robert Emmet Long, is a notable exception: ‘The film is an embarrassment and was a commercial disaster.’) The latter may be true, but I find aspects of it riveting all the same.

The Serpent’s Egg is a complete shift for Bergman for many reasons. First of all he had American backing for the first time (Dino De Laurentis produced it). The film is set and filmed in Germany, not Sweden. There are a large number of people in the film, including hundreds of extras. The production crew, with the exception of Sven Nykvist, is all new to Bergman. Besides the familiarity of Liv Ullman, Bergman employed German actors he had never worked with before, as well as an American lead for the first time, in David Carradine. There is a lot of risqué language in the film as well as daring sex scenes (well surpassing The Silence in its confrontational nature), and the violence is more extreme and unnerving, including a scene showing a live animal getting flesh hacked off from its back. Finally, for the first time in a Bergman film, the language is English.

The Serpent’s Egg is surely Bergman’s bleakest film. The film starts with Abel Rosenberg (Carradine) finding his brother Max in bed, a bullet in his head and blood splayed over the walls. Abel, Max and his sister Manuela (Ullman). Abel visits Manuela at a small time cabaret venue, and they agree to continue to support each other. Abel finds himself being questioned and briefly held by the police, suspected of multiple murders. He suspects the negative attention is coming about because he is Jewish, and he may well be right. The police force him to try and identify several bloody cadavers at the morgue. The film is set in Berlin in 1923, and Germany is in a depressing state. There are Nazi thugs lurking in the streets and the currency no longer has any value. There are shadows everywhere, the streets are murky and dangerous, and Rosenberg is continually drinking and finding himself faced with many horrors, usually with a bewildered expression on his face. Almost equally unstable is Manuela who spends a lot of time crying or merely trying to survive, like Abel. Poverty is sickening and men spend their time seeing prostitutes and drinking themselves into oblivion. Rosenburg has an understandable paranoia, and like in a Kafka novel, there is always the sense that he is on the verge of some awful suffocating predicament, brought on by the State. The most sinister character in the film is a scientist called Vergerus, who has a secret headquarters in St Anna’s Clinic in which he spends his time conducting bizarre and cruel experiments on people. He gets pleasure out of seeing how people react to extreme physical or psychological stress- sometimes they suicide. Abel knew Vergerus from childhood in Amalfi, where Abel remembers that Vergerus once caught a cat and cut it open when it was alive so they could all see its naked heart beat, ‘fast...fast.’

This is Germany at the time of Hitler positioning himself for power, and the world of Berlin is frightening and disturbing in the extreme. The only optimistic part of the whole film is that Rosenberg escapes his confinement and is wandering loosely at the end of the film. However we are still left with the sense that he will not avoid a destructive end.

There are some impressive scenes and compelling moments:

- Abel becomes impatient whilst waiting at the police station, and seemingly unhinged, he makes a manic and useless attempt to escape the maze of cold steel bars and cold railings along endless corridors. Being a trapeze artist, Abel is fit and agile, and the camerawork is frenzied and frantic, and the movement is compelling. Bergman has characteristically resisted having music in the background, and you obtain an incredible sense of Abel’s claustrophobic predicament. It has been said that Bergman, unlike Hitchcock, is not good with ‘action’, but this scene belies this. Eventually cornered, Abel cowers like a trapped animal, shrieking, and is savagely beaten with truncheons.

- Manuela’s cabaret is raided by whistle blowing Nazi thugs. The camera pans across the faces of concerned onlookers as some kind of proclamation is read out on stage in German. The Jewish man Abel has been talking to is single out, and a Nazi gently removes his glasses, and folds them carefully and neatly into his shirt pocket. He then places a hand behind the Jewish man’s head, and begins pounding his face onto a wooden table. Abel and Manuela look on in close up. Then the whistle blows again and the whole place is lit up in flames.

- The little films that Vergerus shows Abel near the end of the film are shockingly compelling. A woman goes insane because she is subjected to the prolonged crying of a baby. A man is given a dose of a drug called Thanatoxin that places him in unbearable agony. A revolver has been placed at his disposal, but at the moment when the man feels compelled to use it, he places it into his mouth to discover it isn’t loaded.




The Serpent’s Egg is grim but in its vision of Berlin in the 1920’s, when conditions are so shockingly poor, and the fabric of society is completely torn, it provides us with a chilling explanation for why the country would soon be ripe for someone like Adolf Hitler.



‘And therefore think him as a serpent's egg

Which hatch'd, would, as his kind grow mischievous;

And kill him in the shell.’

(Julius Caesar)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-G6iPqPHDg

Monday, May 24, 2010

colm toibin in melbourne


MY friend Tristan and I met in Rose Street, near Essendon Station. Tristan teaches at a local girls’ school. He was halfway through a coffee at a cafe so I joined him. Together we read some of The Age, then boarded a train with a friend we bumped into, and headed for the city. Colm was due to start at 6:30, so at 5:00 we were very early. The night was slightly balmy and very clear- beautiful walking weather. There were a lot of people in the city, which there generally is at this time. The mood was positive, although it did seem that people were rushing, walking against lights. I saw two people slip right to the ground when standing on the same street corner. They got up quickly and tried to look nonchalant, as you do in that situation.


Tristan and I misjudged the location of the talk. We thought it was around the corner from the State Library in Lt Lonsdale Street, in a place called The Wheeler Centre, who were the people promoting the talk in the newspaper. So we didn’t want to drift too far from there, and decided to eat at an indoor shopping mall opposite. The food was terrible, but I didn’t care. Expectation was building. We ate and we could see that we still had quite a bit of time so further south down Lt Lonsdale Street we walked towards a little pub/ bistro for a quick beer. On the way we met the third person on this excursion, Bridget (originally from Co. Clare), a friend from work.


The three of us talked about books in this quaint pub. I had never been here before, and with its bohemian style, and its foreign beers, records and turntable, and European decor, I suddenly felt I was in a different country. For me this kind of atmosphere added to my anticipation. We left with not a lot of time left, and I walked imagining I was in Colm’s shoes, a foreigner embracing the excitement of a new and unfamiliar city.


The complication of the evening took place outside The Wheeler Centre, in that I suddenly realised it wasn’t the venue at all, and we quickly walked up Exhibition Street to Collins Street, and the Collins Street Baptist Church, anxious suddenly about the time. What was I thinking? I knew the talk was going to take place here. A true snapshot of my usual muddled forward planning.


The reverence of the church with its lovely white walls seemed fitting somehow for Colm Toibin’s talk. This was my third occasion with him, and I knew what to expect. A beautiful rich Irish voice, a warm and engaging manner, an unpretentious casualness, humorous and slightly self conscious, open and honest, and above all, interesting and intelligent. We were almost late- as a result, we were sitting in the balcony seats, ‘up in the gods’, like a rock concert with its large volume of people. I felt impressed and pleased for him that a quiet one- off visit to Melbourne would attract this much attention.


Colm was here primarily to promote his more or less recent novel, Brooklyn. Throughout the course of an hour, he completed three readings from it. The two that I best remember concerned the main character, and immigrant from Co. Wexford making the most of a forced situation, living in America. This was of an early chapter in which Eilish is sad and feels trapped because it is designated that she is the family member going to America, when she desperately would prefer it was her older sister, Rose. Eilish thinks of her packed suitcase forlornly, and reflects on the fact that the next time the suitcase will be opened, it will be in a new, unfamiliar country. It would be so much easier for her to continue her safe, ordinary life in Ireland.


Another reading Colm chose was of a time in the novel in which the poor people of Brooklyn are celebrating Christmas, 1951, in a charity house run by Father Flood, who introduced Eilish to Brooklyn in the first place. Eilish is working here this day, serving customers meals with friends. She suddenly sees a man that she momentarily mistakes for her father, and there is an odd little connection here, as the old man sings to the congregation and calls Eilish out of the crowd to share it with him.


Colm covered a disparate range of topics, some of which were familiar to me from interviews heard or read previously. He spoke of the challenges of teaching writing as an Irishman in America. He spoke of the difficulty of ‘getting somewhere’ as an Irishman in England, compared to the relative ease of finding something good in America (he put this down to the class system, not mentioning the Troubles). He spoke of the cheek some Irish people have when complaining about newly arrived Polish or Nigerian émigrés, because of the diaspora of Irish people all over the world for many years. Colm is apparently feeling more enamoured toward the Church again these days.


Colm spoke freely as well about the writing of his book. He was keen to create a strong, sympathetic priest in Brooklyn, as a kind of homage to the priests in former years who have helped immigrants settle in foreign countries ( a variation, he says, on the usual sordid association we read about in the papers almost daily). He created a lesbian passage (in the change rooms of Eilish’s department store) because he ‘couldn’t resist.’


The evening flew by. I watched my Irish friend’s face as he spoke of Ireland, and wondered if she was suddenly homesick at hearing tales of her former homeland in a warm and familiar accent. I looked around at others and marvelled at the shared experience and wondered what they had read and what they knew. There was time for a solitary question before it was wrapped up. I wanted to ask which parts of Brooklyn were the most difficult to write and why, but lacked the courage. A man in front somewhere asked whether or not the magical clothes dumping scene in the Venetian waters in The Master was true, and Colm explained that apparently it was, and was something he heard from a contemporary of Henry James on a radio programme somewhere many years ago. It is amazing how writers pick up little bits of information to use. Colm is using this technique of being alert to outside information in his new book, apparently, which is based on an anecdote from Lady Gregory’s diaries. Apparently James had a good idea for a story which didn’t eventuate, and Colm is going to do or has done something with it.


The evening ended with a long queue for book signing. I had three hardback works that hadn’t been signed and queued patiently. As I got to the front, I wasn’t absolutely sure I would be recognised. It had been at least a couple of years we had last met. Suddenly I saw a glimmer of recognition in his eye. He rose and tousled my hair commenting on how short it now was, and then asked how the kids were. I wanted to stay and talk but I felt the pressure of those waiting behind me, and tumbled outside, half running towards Parliament Station, exhilarated. A nice, warm night. Nothing too dramatic and no epiphany or sense of wonder. But exhilaration all the same at meeting, once again, one of the best writers of our generation.


May, 2010.









Monday, May 17, 2010

The bleak and very real life in a small village in The White Ribbon




MUCH has been written about this film already so it seems superfluous to reproduce all the facts here. Just a few comments, then, on things I noticed, from a personal point of view.


Firstly, it was captivating and charming, and brutal and disturbing, and thoroughly believable. It took a long time for the casting people to choose the children (who play a large part), and it is time well spent. The children are astonishingly good and seem very much like they belong to another time (the film is set just before World War 1 in Germany). I saw a photo of the children at Cannes in colour, and yes they look more modern, but also innocent and, to an extent, of another time, still.

The film reminded me of Bergman’s Fanny & Alexander- perhaps because of the emphasis on children, and the contrast with the adult world. I read today that the look of the film is inspired by Bergman/ Nykvist- the use of light in Bergman’s black & white films a big influence. This can be seen in shots in churches and involving the pastor, as in the Bergman film Winter Light.

There was one scene in particular that reminded me I was watching something special. The children of the puritanical pastor are walking morosely into the kitchen to receive their corporal punishment, and the enforcement of the wearing of the white ribbons. We see them only from behind and have a long shot of the closed door of the kitchen. I am in the cinema secretly hoping that the camera stays on this side of the door- that the whole scene is understated and we hear the cries of the poor children through the door, without having to unnecessarily see the awful actions. And this is what happened. The door remained shut, there was a long silence and the camera lingered on the door for quite some time. A comparison can be made here with the caning that Alexander receives from the Bishop in Fanny & Alexander- each of the ten brutal swishes is heard sharply, but we don't see the cane of Alexander, or the Bishop- we feel it in the horror on Fanny's face.





A lovely scene for its warm human interaction took place between the farmer’s son and his nanny. She is patiently answering the little boy’s questions about death, all done in a sensitive and subtle way which proves confusing for the boy. He wants to know if his nanny will die, if his father will die, if his mother has died, and whether or not he will die. His repeated questions are touching and reveal his limited understanding.

Towards the end of the film, the Baroness explains why she wants to leave her husband, the Baron. It is because she has found a better, more secure place for herself and her children elsewhere. It is all perfectly reasonable, but naturally not to him. She gives her reasons: the violence, the constant persecution, and so on- and it all may have been said by a Jewish woman to a friend on why she wants to get out of Germany in 1939.

The White Ribbon recreates the old world powerfully and stays with you a long time because the world it depicts seems so real and truthful. It depicts oppressed life in a small village, a village that is so crippled that it finds it cannot solve any of its enormous problems.