Lesley Truffle's Blog, page 15

I Want That Cake

 

I Want That Cake

The narrator of my novel, The Scandalous Life of Sasha Torte, was named in honour of a very famous cake. Sasha Torte is a world-class Tasmanian pastry chef and she establishes her magnificent cake emporium in Wolfftown, a fictional maritime port on the wild, wild West Coast of Tasmania.

I came up with the name Sasha Torte while gazing at a very elegant chocolate cake perched on its own silver stand in an expensive, chic cake shop. I recognized it as a Sacha-Torte and it spoke to me of fantastical creations and great temptations.

The Viennese take their cakes very seriously and in the early twentieth century legal battles were fought to decide who’d originally created the Sacher-Torte. Apparently the ‘original’ Sacher-Torte glaze contains a blend of three premium chocolates made exclusively for the torte.

Cake historians believe that in 1832, Prince Wenzel von Metternich ordered his personal chef to create an exceptional dessert for his very important guests. And then disaster struck. The Prince’s chef became ill and a nervous sixteen-year-old apprentice was hauled in to take over.

The Prince is reported to have declared: ‘Let there be no shame on me tonight!’  There wasn’t. Prince Wenzel von Metternich’s guests gleefully devoured what later became known as a Sacher-Torte. Young Franz Sacher not only survived his ordeal but went on to become an accomplished chef.

So what exactly is a Sacha-Torte? Franz Sacher created a simple concoction of luscious rich chocolate cake, bonded with sweet apricot preserve and slathered in chocolate icing. His recipe was later refined by his eldest son, Eduard Sacher.

Some pastry chefs insist that the trick to achieving a suitably glossy icing, comes down to getting the temperature right and by only using the very best  chocolate. The ebony glaze (schokoladeglasur) is smoothed over an underlayer of apricot jam. This enables the schokoladeglasur to remain glossy at any temperature.

Eduard Sacher initially made his pile in a tavern that provided private rooms enabling wealthy men to have discreet assignations with courtesans. These rooms – known to Parisians as Chambre separées – became a key feature of the Hotel Sacher that Eduard established in 1876 in Vienna. And the Sacha-Torte promptly became a culinary speciality of the hotel.

Eduard’s wife, Anna Maria Sacher, (photograph above) was the daughter of a butcher who quickly acquired a taste for expensive cigars and French bulldogs. She indulged excessively in both. Unfortunately, Eduard died young leaving his magnificent hotel in the very capable hands of his wife.

The Emperor Franz Joseph 1, refused to set foot in the Sacher Hotel. Historians believe that he regarded the Hotel Sacha as nothing more than a high-class brothel. Sadly the Emperor probably never got to sample the hotel’s other inhouse specialities, such as the delectable Sacher-Torte.

So sought after is the original Sacher-Torte, that the Hotel Sacher produces nearly 400,000 cakes a year, packages them up and sends them around the globe. The French, Germans, Italians, Americans and several Asian countries are deeply enamoured with the original Sacha-Torte.

I think it’s wonderful that a simple but elegant chocolate cake – created nearly two centuries ago by a young kitchen apprentice – has attained cult status globally.

 

by Lesley Truffle

 

Photograph: Grande Dame Anna Sacher with her bulldogs.1908

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Vive la France

 

Vive la France!

I’m thinking of taking a trip to Europe next year and Paris is already on the itinerary. I’ve been there a few times but too much Paris is never enough.

Cole Porter wrote the lyrics to I Love Paris and just about everyone recorded it. Frank Sinatra sang it for decades, in between all the other cities he judiciously  crooned about as he jetted around the world.

I love Paris in the spring time

I love Paris in the fall

I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles

I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles …

One of the first films I ever saw as a kid, was Billy Wilder’s Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn starring as Sabrina.  While studying cuisine in Paris, Sabrina evolves from being a simple girl next door type into a Givenchy-clad sophisticate.

When Sabrina returns home to New York, she has a beady-eyed, petite poodle tucked under her arm and her chic luggage is divine. But it was the poodle that killed me. It stamped Sabrina/Audrey as having acquired the style of a chic Parisienne.

After her transformation, Sabrina had no trouble dealing with the two wealthy brothers (Humphrey Bogart and William Holden) who quickly become rivals for her affections. So self-assured is Sabrina in her kitty-eared cocktail cap, that she gets away with tweaking the brim of Bogart’s hat. And coolly gives the cynical, wise guy a few manly fashion tips.

This morning I was thinking of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s brilliant film, Diva. Set principally in Paris it’s slick, stylish and established a film movement of the 80’s known as Cinema du look. This movement was all about outsiders and mavericks, operating outside the accepted conventions of society. Unpredictable but thrilling. Wickedly engrossing. Stunning to look at.

My favourite character is the mysterious Serge Gorodish who smokes cigars in his bathtub while plotting and scheming. But he also cooks beautifully – so sexy – and chops dinner onions wearing a scuba mask, thus avoiding onion tears.

Several scenes in Diva were filmed using a blue filter and stylistically it’s lovely to look at. I particularly love Gorodish’s vintage white Citroen that whisks Alba, Jules and Gorodish off to a remote lighthouse on the Normandy coast.

All this bizarre magnificence is set to the background of Alfredo Catalani’s magnificent opera, La Wally. The first time I saw Diva, I just wanted to disappear into the film and live forever in a  lighthouse overlooking the sea.

Vive Paris!

by Lesley Truffle

 

 

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Screaming Quietly

Screaming Quietly

 

The place is very well and quiet and the children only scream in a low voice.

                                                                                                Lord Byron 1813

 

The poet Lord George Byron was a rake and a hellraiser who also happened to enjoy his own company and the solace of silence. Apparently he wrote much of his poetry – in his head – while stomping around the English countryside with only his massive Newfoundland dog, Boatswain, for company. Then when he got back to his ancestral pile, he would write it all down in longhand, exactly as it was.

The need for peace and quiet is something that has been cropping up in a lot of conversations lately. I was engaging in small talk with a neighbour on the street when he glanced around, nodded blissfully and said, ‘Ah, it’s so quiet today.’

His comment struck me as humorous – because his household is the noisiest in our street – but he wasn’t being ironic. In my apartment block, the residents are forever complaining about how his three young children are driving them nuts with their screeching, yelling and crying.

During summer, the residents living either side of me become understandably distressed about the commotion that goes on all day and into the night. They hang out their open windows and vent freely about the noise, the smoky barbeque, the kids screeching and the adults all recreating at full volume.

Obviously my fellow apartment dwellers believe that they can be heard above the pandemonium going on next door. And I often wonder – do parents with noisy offspring inevitably have to master the art of simply not hearing them?

This is usually around the time that I put on my industrial strength builder’s ear muffs. No kidding, they’re great. And now that I’ve graduated to noise cancelling ear phones I’ll be able to listen to soothing music, instead of the clamour of everyone going insane in the summer heat.

As Tom Waits sang, ‘If you want a taste of madness, you’ll have to wait in line.’

However, next door’s ruckus is nothing compared to another inner-city apartment I lived in, where I had a neighbour I called the Midnight Rambler. He had the tasty habit of firing up his chain saw in the midnight hours. And for some reason he waited until night time, before going about home renovations such as the tearing up of his floorboards.

One fine day the Midnight Rambler set fire to a big pile of rubber tyres in his backyard and smoked us all out. I was hosting an outdoor luncheon at the time and the billowing black smoke was acrid and ominous. Everyone was terribly pleased when two fire trucks arrived with sirens blaring. My guests immediately rushed upstairs and leaned out the windows overlooking the street, waving their champagne glasses and cheering on our splendid firemen.

Noise is strange thing. Often how intensely you hear noise depends a lot on mood and location. In pubs when the cheery clientele are more than half-cut, mind blowing noise is easily tolerated. Yet the same number of decibels elsewhere will cause a near riot. And as high-density city living is increasing,  it’s not a problem that can easily be solved.

by Lesley Truffle

Photograph: ‘Lord Byron’ by William Essex 1844, after a painting by Thomas Phillips 1814.

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More chamapagne please

More champagne please

 

When I was a child, my mother used to play vintage movie songs and the lyrics to Gigi were:

The night they invented champagne

It’s plain as it can be

They thought of you and me

The night they invented champagne

They absolutely knew

That all we’d want to do is

Fly to the sky on champagne …

At the time, it seemed to me that becoming an adult must be a marvelous thing, because it would involve a lot of champagne and a considerable amount of hilarity. So by the time I could legally drink,  I’d already developed a predisposition to fine champagne.

At university most of my friends didn’t have the loot for French imported champagnes, so we made do with Australian sparkling wines. Many were first-rate but others were distinctly dodgy and tasted suspiciously of aerated fruit syrups. But when I found summer vacation work as a nightclub cocktail girl, I diligently applied myself to learning all about fine French champagnes and premium cocktails.

My favourite after work cocktail was a Golden Dream: Galliano, cream, Cointreau and freshly squeezed orange juice. Made by one of my heavy-handed bar buddies, it shot out of the shaker resembling a tangerine milkshake. Served in a ritzy cocktail glass, it hit my bloodstream at a gallop. I wasn’t a seasoned drinker and usually hadn’t eaten for hours, so after a couple of Golden Dreams, I’d get home in a daze and fall asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

Après work drinks with the barmen, led me to obtaining a master’s degree in top-shelf alcohol. A couple of the barmen had developed a taste for amphetamines, which meant as the night wore on there would inevitably be cock-ups in the drinks orders. One barman in particular sometimes lost control of his cocktail shaker when he flipped it up into the air and failed to catch it again.

The manager turned a blind eye to such infrequent mishaps because his charming, handsome employee was catnip to our female clientele. These young ladies hunted in packs and they arrived wearing lovely evening dresses and stiletto heels. They expected  – and indeed demanded – the barman’s mind-paralysing cocktails and cheeky wit. Subsequently, our man was never short of a late night ‘date’. It was an open secret that the ladies were usually the initiators in these arrangements.

I was in heaven when I was promoted to creating the cocktails, instead of having to walk the floor armed only with a flimsy tray, fending off the advances of inebriated males.  Working alongside the barmen and having a good half metre width of polished oak between me and the clientele changed the game. Under the dim lights and the glittering backlit liqueur bottles, with a silver cocktail shaker firmly in hand – I felt like I’d finally attained adulthood. Boy, did I get that wrong.

Summer is heading our way right now and the first of the warmer spring days have arrived. Already friends’ thoughts are lightly turning to the Christmas holidays. And somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking – should it be a trekking, sweating, getting lost, travelling sort of holiday? Or would it be more fun to slink off somewhere with a lovely aqua blue outdoor pool, cabana service and Resort Hour champagne cocktails?

I guess these are the sort of sly thoughts that adults indulge themselves with.

by Lesley Truffle

 

 

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We are amused

 

We Are Amused

 

What is it that strikes a spark of humor from a man?

It is the effort to throw off, to fight back the burden of grief that i s laid on each one of us.                                                                                                                       

                                                                                      Mark Twain 

Humour is a strange thing. I have a close friend I’ve known since high school but our senses of humour are totally different. When she tells me that she particularly loathed a comedic film and was bored senseless, I just can’t wait to hustle over to the movie theatre and see it for myself. Especially if she found it mind-numbingly tedious and dull. It’s the best review she could have given me. Why? Because I know that there’s an excellent chance that I will find it hilarious.

Director Wes Anderson is one of my favourite film makers. There are three of his films that I adore and never tire of watching, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Darjeeling Limited. But even though I love these films, I’ve met a few people who just don’t get Anderson’s brand of humour.

What is it that makes something funny? And how is that that taste in humour is so variable, even among close friends who have similar tastes in just about everything else?

Mark Twain – American writer, humourist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer – was a very busy gentleman who spent a lot of time thinking about what made people laugh. He kick started his incredibly successful writing career with a deceptively simple story about jumping frogs.

It was first published in New York’s Saturday Press in 1865 and then it developed a life of its own and was reprinted right across the country. For some reason jumping frogs really tickled America’s funny bone and after that folk just couldn’t get enough of Twain.  Unfortunately Twain had many setbacks and failures in life. Having made his pile he promptly became addicted to risk and invested in dodgy enterprises that failed and cost him millions. But he never lost his sense of humour.

When I was randomly researching humour, the connection between sorrow/grief and humour kept coming up.  American comic, Jim Carrey, who is currently starring in a new show titled Kidding, once stated that, ‘My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.’

I came across professionals who’d researched humour and there was some consensus in their results. Apparently, those of us who are suspected of possessing a sense of humour, tend to see the world through a different lens and we’re also attuned to the absurdities of life.

But defining what makes something universally funny, becomes as slippery as an oiled eel.  As Peter McGraw Director of the University of Colorado’s Humor Research Lab put it,

‘The very same joke can make one person laugh, another person yawn, and another person cry. That is, there are these vast cultural differences in what people find funny … Gender is a terrible predictor of who’s going to be funny … The one good predictor of who is funny is intelligence … ‘

McGraw went on to say that people who are emotionally intelligent are in touch with their own experiences, as well as the experiences of others. Apparently they have the ability to combine seemingly unconnected ideas in a way that generates laughter.

In a recent  interview (The AGE Oct 11 2018) Jim Carrey talked about his ability to attend social functions or sit at the dinner table with friends and be the person who senses the unspoken – the elephant in the room. That is, he intuitively knows what’s on everybody’s mind at a particular moment.

Carrey describes it like being like a cliff diver, he makes a snap decision about whether to seize the moment and make an impromptu jest – or simply let it go.

‘Basically that’s where I live. It’s either people are really going to admire what I said or I’m done.’

by Lesley Truffle

Photograph: movie poster for The Grand Budapest Hotel.

If only it were possible to take the funicular railway – or even better a black vintage Rolls Royce – to the Grand Budapest Hotel. And upon arrival, be invited to dine with Monsieur Gustave H, Dmitri Desgoffe und Taxis, Madame Celine Villeneuve Desgoffe und Taxis, Agatha, Zero, the Young Author and Monsieur Chuck.

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Mirka’s Story

 

Mirka Mora 1928-2018

‘Every time you show your work, you really show your soul.’

                                                                                                    Mirka

I never met Mirka Mora, but she became one of my most favourite people. I only know Mirka through her paintings and her wonderful autobiography, Wicked but Virtuous; My Life.

Whenever I stop to look at Mirka’s murals – they can  be seen around Melbourne – the word joy comes to mind. And I wonder how it came to be that she escaped the darkness and terror of WW2 to spend a lifetime providing joy, humour, wit and wisdom to those around her.

Mirka lived an amazing life for 90 years. Having narrowly avoided being sent to Auschwitz as a child during the Second World War, she then married a French Resistance fighter, Georges Mora, and emigrated to Melbourne. The city was staid and something of a provincial backwater in 1951. And the Moras were among the first to give it a taste of European cuisine and French bohemian style.

Mirka and Georges established a European style café-restaurant that soon became the place for intellectuals, writers, creatives, dancers and politicians. And although many of them were unknown at the time, they later became famous.

Mirka’s unconventional autobiography, Wicked but Virtuous, is never dull and frequently humorous. She lived life to the full and she wrote about those around her with insight and compassion. She was not afraid to talk about the extreme lows in her life, and the reader gains an insight into her life in bohemian circles. Mirka’s autobiography also provides a window into the way an artist works and the way life itself can feed and fuel an artist’s work.

Georges became an art dealer and he and Mirka were central to the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art at Heide. The Moras also established the Mirka Café in 1954, Café Balzac in 1957 and Tolarno Bistro in 1965. Mirka created her drawings and paintings and then went on to create murals, mosaics, dolls, and fabric designs for fashionable clothing.

Mirka’s wit and sense of fun never dimmed. Her lingerie provided her with a prop when she wanted to be risqué and shock people a little. Occasionally when things were a tad dull she would flash her knickers or considerably more. And she had been known on occasion to rip off her bra when farewelling guests and wave it in the air like a flag. She loved making others laugh and being the centre of attention. Her irreverence and humour extended to planting her face in birthday cakes just for the hell of it. Children were just as delighted with Mirka as she was with them. They understood each other.

Mirka was the child of a French Resistance fighter and her early life was fraught with danger. She narrowly managed to escape being sent to Auschwitz at the age of thirteen. On the cattle truck that transported Mirka, her mother and two sisters, she quickly jotted down the names of the stations as they went past. Mirka then stuffed the paper into an unstamped envelope, addressed it to her father and shoved it through a crack.

Fortunately a stranger found the letter and posted it to her father, Leon Zelik, who tracked them down. Zelik persuaded the Nazi authorities to release his family because his wife was a required worker in the making of Nazi uniforms. Not true but it worked.

Mirka acknowledged that the wide, sad eyes of the doomed children in the Nazi camp morphed into the angel children she painted all her life. And she never stopped being grateful to the anonymous person who had stamped and posted her letter. The kindness of strangers.

The Moras story has also been told in Philippe Mora’s documentary film, Monsieur Mayonnaise. Apparently, Georges Mora and Marcel Marceau disguised themselves as nuns in order to smuggle Jewish children over the border. Cunningly they slathered mayonnaise all over their secret documents, so that Nazi officials wouldn’t touch them – in case they got their gloves dirty.

At Mirka’s memorial, Carrillo Gantner narrated that after Mirka told him how she escaped being sent to Auschwitz, she burst into raucous laughter. They were in a quiet public art gallery and Mirka’s laughter seemed incongruous, but he understood it when she said quietly,

‘I am laughing at death. What else can we do?’

And it was with this spirit that she lived her life. At her memorial, those who knew Mirka, affirmed that she was a joyful spirit with an abundance of joie de vivre, a child-like curiosity, and a sense of wonder. And that her concerns always involved the arts, fine cuisine, family, friends and above all compassion and love.

Photograph: Mirka Mora, early days in Melbourne. At one point the Moras lived at the top end of Collins Street, it was known locally as The Paris end.

 

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Home Sweet Home

 

One of the questions I’ve often been asked is – how autobiographical is The Scandalous Life of Sasha Torte? Given that Sasha Torte is sabotaged by abusive and neglectful parenting, escalating depression and a later addiction to opium, laudanum, champagne, piratical men and hard liquor, the question becomes loaded and decidedly bizarre.

Edward St Aubyn has written five novels about the fictional Melrose family. In the final novel, At Last, Patrick Melrose struggles to comes to terms with his damaged relationship with his parents and the gothic brutality of his upbringing.

The traumatic events that occurred in  the Melrose family home can be a hard read at times, because they are predominately crimes against women and children. However, Patrick’s childhood abuse does help the reader understand his later self-destructive behaviour.

Edward St Aubyn’s personal connection to his material has been discussed in some book reviews. But asking outright if St Aubyn’s family is as narcissistic, dysfunctional or as sadomasochistic as the Melrose Family, is not something most journalists choose to address. Although one reviewer did manage to conclude that St Aubyn’s family can’t have been all that bad – given that St Aubyn dedicated one of his novels to his mother.

As brilliantly played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the television series,  Patrick Melrose,  Patrick is a member of the financially distressed British aristocracy. He’s a witty intellectual, an observer with a satirical bent and he has the ability to see through adult hypocrisies. Having survived a gothic childhood of extreme emotional and sexual abuse he’s also acquired a few bad habits – namely alcohol, cocaine, Quaaludes and heroin.

Cumberbatch described playing Patrick Melrose in an interview with Erik Hedegaard (Rolling Stone, May 2018):

“What’s key to me,” he says, “is the psychology of the need, the hunger, the appetite, the want of chaos, the want of a mother’s embrace, the embrace of heroin, the want of pushing himself to the edge of injecting cocaine, that jet engine rush of citadels of glass shattering as you’re speeding through at 100 miles an hour, and how that’s a near seizure for your body to deal with.”

As Dr Drew Pinsky – a professional addictionologist – pointed out in a recent interview (IndieWire, June 2018), Patrick Melrose had a psychopath for a father and an alcoholic mother who not only failed protect her son but then abandoned him.

‘Childhood trauma is the rocket fuel for addictive pathology, and this fundamental truth is laid bare in Patrick Melrose. Add to this enchanting recipe the genetic potential for alcoholism, which he inherited from his mother, and you have a perfect formula for the creation of an opiate addict.’

However, St Aubyn wasn’t just writing about dysfunctional families and addiction in the Melrose novels. He also analyses the British class system and the way humans struggle to relate to each other. His cutting wit dissects both the established aristocracy and the newly rich. The writing is disturbing and dark but frequently it’s also comedic.

And even though I think St Aubyn’s fictional children are unreal, immensely irritating and way too knowing for their age, I find his Melrose family novels engaging, fiercely satirical, brilliantly humorous and quite moving.

by Lesley Truffle

Photograph: Book Cover from  At Last by Edward St Aubyn. Published by Picador 2011.

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Dangerous Books

 

I’ve frequently been asked by other writers and readers – what are the books that meant a lot to me growing up? And which particular books are my standout, all-time favourites?

This is an extremely difficult question because there are so many books that I love! And when things get a tad tricky and I need an evening at home – so I can escape into a good book – I often revisit the books that I already know are going to transport me. In winter it’s especially delicious to slide under a feather doona just to read in blissful solitude. When I was a kid I used to keep a torch on standby so I could continue reading under the quilt once the lights went out.

So, I’ve picked four of my favourite books off the top of my head, and have listed them in no particular order of merit.

Eloise in Paris by Kay Thompson (with drawings by Hilary Knight).

At seven I discovered six-year-old Eloise, parent-free, running amuck in the Plaza NY and Paris with Nanny, a pug and a turtle. I didn’t find it strange that Eloise exercised with champagne bottles, as my sister and I had hidden a bottle of Sweet Marsala under my bed. It was delectable topped with cream. When ‘you cawn’t get a good cup of tea’, Eloise simply had to devour a peach languishing in champagne.

I was smitten.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 

At twelve I discovered Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff living on the wild English moors. I promptly identified Heathcliff as the wicked but irresistible villain. I was terribly disappointed in Cathy when she fell for the decent but deadly dull Edgar Linton – who also happened to be filthy rich. It was the outrageous drama that appealed to me: the lustful overheated emotions, histrionics, stricken moors, bitter winds and soul-destroying generational hatreds.

I yearned to acquire Cathy’s burning, yearning uncontrollable fever. Then I’d have an excuse to tear a feather pillow apart – with my bare teeth.

Ada Or Ardor: A Family Chronicle by Vladimir Nabokov

I devoured Nabokov’s Lolita at about fifteen – then came Ada.

Narrated by Dr Van Veen, it’s ostensibly an erotic love story. But Ada is much more than Veen’s lover; she’s his muse, devious tormenter and co-writer. Further erotic complications involve Ada’s decadent little sister, Lucette. I still love this book. For each time I read Ada I find that there’s another layer to discover – the nature of time, sci-fi elements and humorous asides about great art. It’s been said that Ada is uneven and not as accessible as Lolita – but I don’t agree. For one thing Ada lacks the disturbing cruelty of Lolita and it’s much more lyrical.

I greatly admire Lolita – the first sentence is decadent and perfect – but Ada completely captivates me.

‘Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.’

History of My Life by Giacomo Casanova

(version: unabridged & translated by Willard R. Trask)

Casanova brilliantly narrates his traveller’s tales. It’s a wild ride because he had many professions including: violinist, priest and gambler. While living the high life amongst European royalty and nobility he also befriended scoundrels, conmen, thieves and creatives.

Casanova met just about everyone who had power or reputation in 18th century Europe including: Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, Rousseau, d’Alembert and Crebillon in Paris, King George III, Louis XV, Catherine the Great and Frederick the Great.

Unfortunately, Casanova’s name has become synonymous with womanizers, man whores, philanderers and rakes everywhere. He openly admits in History of my Life, to being ‘an unrepentant libertine’.

In Casanova’s memoirs there are many incidents when he recalls unleashing his charm, with the sole intention of bedding a woman. I’m using the term bedding somewhat loosely, given Casanova’s ability to fornicate just about anywhere. Frequently the situations he finds himself in are comedic, but he had the ability to laugh at himself and his wicked sense of humour permeates his writing.

He usually accepted women as equals, made sure they were satisfied sexually and was remarkably nonjudgmental – unless his lover or mistress was stupid enough to double cross him.

I revisit Casanova when insomnia grips me and he sweeps me back to the 1700’s. His was an elegant life of beauty, excitement, danger, wit, intellect and daring.

 

by Lesley Truffle

Photograph: collage by Lesley Truffle

 

 

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A Room of One’s Own and other Catastrophes

 

In a recent interview journalist and former editor, Michael Gawenda, said of his son Husky Gawenda,

‘He can spend a lot of time by himself in his room. If you’re going to be a writer you have to be lonely in some way.’

(from ‘The Two of Us’. The AGE Good Weekend, 11August  2018).

A room of one’s own has been quite the done thing ever since 1929, when Virginia Woolf wrote about female writers needing a respectable amount of money to live on and a room all to themselves. The Brontë sisters – Emily, Charlotte and Anne – were dedicated writers and they had no trouble staying in their rooms and getting on with the job of writing.

The Brontës social life on the Yorkshire Moors wasn’t terribly exciting and most of their time was either spent at their father’s parsonage or out working as governesses. However, the sisters had very active inner lives and the scope of their writing took them well beyond the Haworth Village parsonage. Their novels are still in print and Emily’s extraordinary novel, Wuthering Heights – first published in 1847 – became an English cult classic.

On the other hand, their brother Branwell Brontë spent less time in his room and he produced two short works – one of which was titled, And the Weary are at Rest. Branwell’s ambitions of being a successful poet and a painter were never realized. He set up an artist’s studio in nearby Bradford, made friends with other creatives and established a social life in pubs.

Branwell’s jobs tended to end badly. It’s believed that he was sacked from his last tutoring position, following an affair with the lady of the house. Subsequently the last three years of his life were spent back at the parsonage with his three sisters. Branwell died in 1848 of tuberculosis and possible complications bought on by alcohol, laudanum or opium.

The question is – how important is it for a writer to spend time in solitude in order to get the writing done? Some writers can only write if there is noise and they seek out cafes and public places in which to work. Other writers require deep silence to maintain concentration. Personally, I need peace and quiet in my garret while writing. When the triplets next door start chucking tantrums and their racket rises to the top floor, I put on my industrial strength builders’ earmuffs and achieve monastic silence. Quelle relief!

I’ve just finished Jeffrey Meyers fine biography of Scott Fitzgerald. Apparently Fitzgerald  struggled to get his writing done and was easily distracted. Mostly he spent his time churning out short stories for magazine publication, because these stories were popular and extremely lucrative. He used the money to travel, throw wild weekend parties and support his wife Zelda and their only child. Providing for Zelda became a major expense once she was committed to a series of exclusive psychiatric clinics. Increasingly, alcoholism became a major impediment to getting the writing done, as was Fitzgerald’s hectic social life. He didn’t enjoy solitude and was rarely alone.

Ernest Hemingway made several cruel remarks about Fitzgerald’s inability to sit quietly in his room and write his novels. But given that Fitzgerald based his fiction on himself, his life with Zelda and the Jazz Age, perhaps he needed to be out and amongst it in order to create his novels? His material was lifted directly from his life, he had many friends and he was a man of great loyalty.

In short, could Fitzgerald have achieved such classics as, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night if he’d spent his life sitting in solitude in his room?

by Lesley Truffle

Photograph: Collage by Lesley Truffle

 

 

 

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On Being Zen

‘The key to a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about what is true and immediate and important.’

Mark Manson

Despite its screaming orange cover and witty title, Mark Manson’s book is essentially about old school values fused with traditional Buddhist concepts. How the two fuse together comes down to the author’s unique and humorous take on what constitutes a life well lived.

Manson states that how contented we are with our lives, is directly related to the metrics/values we choose to base our actions on. So, if for example we place mega value on things like pleasure, material success, always being right and staying positive – in order to deny our negative emotions – then we are quite likely to end up being thoroughly miserable.

He often references Buddhist concepts including the acceptance of suffering and non-attachment. And perceives our daily lives as being pedestrian, tedious, painful and dispiriting. Manson emphasizes that how we choose to deal with this reality, will determine what happens to us in the future. And that it is our suffering and willingness to deal with our anxieties, problems and fears that enable us to gain courage and build resilience.

‘Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.’

Manson also states that we need to accept that we are not special and we should dump any sense of entitlement. Instead we should focus on acquiring worthwhile values – in other words, only giving a fuck about what it true and important. What happens to us is usually well beyond our control – but how we choose to react is what defines us.

This made me think of Andy Warhol and his So What theory. Unlike Manson, Warhol wasn’t keen on Buddhist principles. He openly admitted that he really loved money, material possessions, beautiful people and furthermore, he shamelessly revelled in superficiality, his own fame and other celebrities. His favourite things were inevitably shallow, fashionable, wildly funny and not very Zen.

‘I think it would be terribly glamourous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor’s finger’.

In his pursuit of wealth, Warhol developed some dodgy business principles. At his NY studio – The Factory – the artists, photographers and artisans who laboured to complete his artworks as ‘studio assistants’ were often poorly or never paid and their contributions were rarely acknowledged.

Warhol admitted to being anxious and fearful, particularly when he was younger. But he also claimed that once he’d formulated his So What theory, he felt significantly better. The principle of his So What theory is that you simply stop giving a fuck about events that leave you feeling wretched and unloved.

In The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, he wrote,

‘Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, ‘So what.’

‘My mother didn’t love me.’ So what.

‘My husband won’t ball me.’ So what.

‘I’m a success but I’m still alone.’ So what.

I don’t know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.’

For the past week or so I’ve been giving Warhol’s So What theory an experimental trial run. What bought this on was a string of unfortunate events that I had no control over and these events were driving me crazy.

I concluded that Warhol’s So What theory does recalibrate the mind a little. But I should also mention that meditation – when I do it regularly! – has a more lasting effect and makes me feel decidedly more cheerful.

So what, says the cheeky sparrow drying his wings on my window ledge.

 

 

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