Ben Peek's Blog, page 13
April 29, 2013
April 28, 2013
Annotated
I began work on Innocence, the second book of Children, last week by annotating Immolation.
I'd gotten it printed and bound out of Office Works, which always strikes me as a slightly lame thing to do, but binding is a hassle and they have all those big, industrious printers. The cost of it (forty bucks once it is printed and bound) is worth not having to do it myself, not to use up the ink at home, and not to have to print a document close to four hundred pages in length on a home printer.
Most of the annotating is world building in terms of places, environment, history. Once the book is published, it will become the bible for the world and I won't be able to change it unless the change is part of the narrative, so I figure that it is pretty important to have everything organised and easy to access. Besides, it is just good to have all this information sorted. One of the most time consuming parts of writing Immolation was the world's creation. It was easy to come up with an idea (ideas are not very difficult in general) but to implement it, to ensure that it kept the style of the book, and indeed series, consistent, took more time. Often, it involved going back, rewriting a scene, changing an influence, altering a destination, creating an environment. Social structures and society play were a close second. Weaving that and the plot of the book together was, easily, fifty percent of the time I spent writing. I expect (and perhaps I will be wrong in this) that I will spend less time creating the world of Innocence because I have rules, guides, and work to play off already. There's a lot of new things to make, but once you have the ground rules of any world created, I've decided, everything after comes more naturally and easier--at least, that is how it has worked in the Red Sun stories, in the other books. Even in the Dead American stories, which aren't founded in worlds, but rather an ideology.
I suspect the biggest challenge of Innocence will be working out how I want to structure it in terms of the series. Simultaneously it must build from the first and set up the third, yet maintain a strong sense of its own identity, and allow for it to be a complete reading experience.
Which, y'know, sounds simple, right?
I'd gotten it printed and bound out of Office Works, which always strikes me as a slightly lame thing to do, but binding is a hassle and they have all those big, industrious printers. The cost of it (forty bucks once it is printed and bound) is worth not having to do it myself, not to use up the ink at home, and not to have to print a document close to four hundred pages in length on a home printer.
Most of the annotating is world building in terms of places, environment, history. Once the book is published, it will become the bible for the world and I won't be able to change it unless the change is part of the narrative, so I figure that it is pretty important to have everything organised and easy to access. Besides, it is just good to have all this information sorted. One of the most time consuming parts of writing Immolation was the world's creation. It was easy to come up with an idea (ideas are not very difficult in general) but to implement it, to ensure that it kept the style of the book, and indeed series, consistent, took more time. Often, it involved going back, rewriting a scene, changing an influence, altering a destination, creating an environment. Social structures and society play were a close second. Weaving that and the plot of the book together was, easily, fifty percent of the time I spent writing. I expect (and perhaps I will be wrong in this) that I will spend less time creating the world of Innocence because I have rules, guides, and work to play off already. There's a lot of new things to make, but once you have the ground rules of any world created, I've decided, everything after comes more naturally and easier--at least, that is how it has worked in the Red Sun stories, in the other books. Even in the Dead American stories, which aren't founded in worlds, but rather an ideology.
I suspect the biggest challenge of Innocence will be working out how I want to structure it in terms of the series. Simultaneously it must build from the first and set up the third, yet maintain a strong sense of its own identity, and allow for it to be a complete reading experience.
Which, y'know, sounds simple, right?
April 22, 2013
And the Following Day
Yesterday, the announcement that Immolation was bought by Tor, who also signed on for another two books of Children, was released.
It happened last week, but before that, there was a week of waiting for the auction. I refrained from blogging or saying much online, for fear that I might cause it all to disappear if I spoke about it, and also to refrain from saying I had amazing news I couldn't share (or used the word Sekrit). Besides, I had N. to listen to running commentary on how it wouldn't work out, how no one would bid, and so on and so forth. Never mind the reality of the situation. I suspect that's why she gave me alcohol on the night bidding began, so I could drink and check my email every ten seconds. All the hard work was being done by my agent, which was good, because I was functionally useless after the first offer. The truth was, it was more money than I had made in eighteen years of publishing fiction.
Most of this post is about publicly thanking the people who made the sale happen and gave me the opportunity I now have. I am humbled by the fact that Julie Crisp bought the series and very thankful. My agent John Jarrold was superb, from comments on the book before submission, to the way he executed the whole sale. I'm fairly confident in saying that without him the outcome would not be nearly as favourable. Likewise, Tessa Kum's feedback was the book was excellent, as always, and she abused me for my stupidity when needed. Kyla Ward, who also read the book, was similarly disposed to pointing out my stupidity. I have imposed on both Tess and Kyla before for feedback, and I plan now to place them in cages and keep them safe and secure for all time, now. But, no, seriously: both have excellent instincts when it comes to fiction, and without either, the book would have been lesser.
Lastly, I have to thank my girlfriend, Nikilyn Nevins. Not only did she read the book multiple times and offer fine feedback (she is and always will be amazingly well read) but she also listened to me as I worked through an endless series of scenarios that wouldn't work. I wouldn't find a new agent, I wouldn't sell the book, I wouldn't have anyone bid. She will no doubt have to listen to more as No One Will Read It and I Will Never Finish This Second Book come up. They have no basis in reality, but this appears to be the way of things. Love, in many ways, is about patiently living through moments that make you want to strangle your partner, and for this, I cannot offer enough thanks.
Her latest photo book review is, incidentally, of A Confederacy of Dunces, which features our cat, Lily.
The cat, however, gets no thanks, on account of the fact that the other day she licked my eyeball to wake me up and feed her.
It happened last week, but before that, there was a week of waiting for the auction. I refrained from blogging or saying much online, for fear that I might cause it all to disappear if I spoke about it, and also to refrain from saying I had amazing news I couldn't share (or used the word Sekrit). Besides, I had N. to listen to running commentary on how it wouldn't work out, how no one would bid, and so on and so forth. Never mind the reality of the situation. I suspect that's why she gave me alcohol on the night bidding began, so I could drink and check my email every ten seconds. All the hard work was being done by my agent, which was good, because I was functionally useless after the first offer. The truth was, it was more money than I had made in eighteen years of publishing fiction.
Most of this post is about publicly thanking the people who made the sale happen and gave me the opportunity I now have. I am humbled by the fact that Julie Crisp bought the series and very thankful. My agent John Jarrold was superb, from comments on the book before submission, to the way he executed the whole sale. I'm fairly confident in saying that without him the outcome would not be nearly as favourable. Likewise, Tessa Kum's feedback was the book was excellent, as always, and she abused me for my stupidity when needed. Kyla Ward, who also read the book, was similarly disposed to pointing out my stupidity. I have imposed on both Tess and Kyla before for feedback, and I plan now to place them in cages and keep them safe and secure for all time, now. But, no, seriously: both have excellent instincts when it comes to fiction, and without either, the book would have been lesser.
Lastly, I have to thank my girlfriend, Nikilyn Nevins. Not only did she read the book multiple times and offer fine feedback (she is and always will be amazingly well read) but she also listened to me as I worked through an endless series of scenarios that wouldn't work. I wouldn't find a new agent, I wouldn't sell the book, I wouldn't have anyone bid. She will no doubt have to listen to more as No One Will Read It and I Will Never Finish This Second Book come up. They have no basis in reality, but this appears to be the way of things. Love, in many ways, is about patiently living through moments that make you want to strangle your partner, and for this, I cannot offer enough thanks.
Her latest photo book review is, incidentally, of A Confederacy of Dunces, which features our cat, Lily.
The cat, however, gets no thanks, on account of the fact that the other day she licked my eyeball to wake me up and feed her.
Series Sold to Tor UK
So, here's the big news:
I thought I'd have profound things to add, but mostly I'm just humbled by the entire thing, so I'll let this stand and leave it as is until tomorrow and such.
(EDIT: The title of this post originally said 'Children Sold to Tor UK', which seemed good until otherwise, but it's still funny, so I'll leave it as a postscript here for the chuckle.)
Australian author Ben Peek’s first epic fantasy novel and two sequels have been acquired by Julie Crisp, Editorial Director at Tor UK, in a six-figure world-rights deal with agent John Jarroldafter a hard-fought auction. She set a floor, which she exercised at the end of the auction for a six-figure sum. The under-bidder was Hana Osman of Michael Joseph/Penguin UK. The first novel, titled IMMOLATION, will be published in spring 2014.
The trilogy is called ‘Children’—books two and three are entitled INNOCENCE and INCARNATION. IMMOLATION is set fifteen thousand years after the War of the Gods. The bodies of the gods now lie across the world, slowly dying as men and women awake with strange powers that are derived from their bodies. Ayae, a young cartographer’s apprentice, is attacked and discovers she cannot be harmed by fire. Her new power makes her a target for an army that is marching on her home. With the help of the immortal Zaifyr, she is taught the awful history of ‘cursed’ men and women, coming to grips with her new powers and the enemies they make. The saboteur Bueralan infiltrates the army that is approaching her home to learn its terrible secret. Split between the three points of view, Immolation‘s narrative reaches its conclusion during an epic siege, where Ayae, Zaifyr and Bueralan are forced not just into conflict with those invading, but with those inside the city who wish to do them harm.
Julie Crisp said: ‘I read Ben Peek’s IMMOLATION with the same sense of mounting excitement as to when first reading Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns, or Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself. Fantastic action and pace mixed with original characters and storyline. I’m so pleased to welcome Ben to the Tor UK list.’
Ben’s earlier work has mostly been published by smaller presses. Of Above/Below (co-written with Stephanie Campisi), John Scalzi wrote that it presses “The nerd pleasure centers of my brain.” Published by Twelfth Planet Press, it was critically acclaimed and nominated for a Ditmar Award. His first novel, Black Sheep, caused Paul DiFilippo to write, “With the gravitas of a Margaret Atwood or Kazuo Ishiguro, Peek, in his debut novel, Black Sheep, crafts a quietly horrifying world displaced from ours by a century of time and an implosion of globalist attitudes.” Since its publication by Prime Books, Black Sheep has been taught at Universities in Australia and used in the final English exam of German High School, the Abitur (since then it has been reprinted in an average of two educational supplements per year). Of his second novel, Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth, Jeff VanderMeer wrote, “Ben Peek is a writer I fully expect to blunder out into the scene like a run-away brontosaurus one of these days. He has titanic talent generally leashed to micro-detail projects when his true canvas is probably something much wider and deeper.” Published by Wheatland Press, it has been taught in American colleges.
In 2014, his first short story collection, Dead Americans, will be published by ChiZine Publications. It is comprised of fiction from anthologies such Steampunk: Revolution, edited by Ann VanderMeer; Forever Shores, edited by Peter McNamara and Margaret Winch; Paper Cities, edited by Ekaterina Sedia; Leviathan Four: Cities, by Forest Aquirre; and Polyphony, edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake. His short fiction has also appeared in magazines such as Overland, Aurealis, Clarkesworld, and Fantasy Magazine. In addition, his fiction has been often printed in various Year’s Best editions.
Peek is also the creator of The Urban Sprawl Project, a psychogeography pamphlet that he wrote and took photographs for. It was given out in the suburbs of Sydney for free. With artist Anna Brown he created the autobiographical comic, Nowhere Near Savannah. He is also the creator of the first Australian Science Fiction Author and Artist Snapshot, a huge undertaking of interviews done every two to three years of people working in the local genre scene in Australia. He has also written reviews for Overland, Strange Horizons and various street presses.
I thought I'd have profound things to add, but mostly I'm just humbled by the entire thing, so I'll let this stand and leave it as is until tomorrow and such.
(EDIT: The title of this post originally said 'Children Sold to Tor UK', which seemed good until otherwise, but it's still funny, so I'll leave it as a postscript here for the chuckle.)
April 21, 2013
The Right of Asylum
In case anyone is confused about this, the answer is none.
Do you know why?
Because seeking asylum is not illegal.
April 15, 2013
The Joy of Racism
Ah, racism, you never go out of style.
For those of you who may not have seen this image yet, it is a newly released advertisement from the Liberal Party in preparation for the September election. It has a whole heap of problems, but the most obvious one is that crime is a State issue, and in NSW, the Liberal Party is in fact in charge.
Unfortunately, that fact is lost in the design of the image. Instead, it is a blatant attempt to link refugees to crime, which Senator Doug Cameron called dog whistling, but which I prefer to call by its old fashioned name, racism. There's no evidence of this, but then the Liberal Party itself has difficulty accepting the fact that refugees are not illegal (Labor is closely following this trend, so it is not as if one is better than the other here). However, as it was pointed out by more than one commentator, there are more sitting senators with criminal charges against them than there are refugees with charges, so it is more apt to call for politicians to be watched, for your neighbours to be told when a politician moves in next to you, and for fear and hate to generate when one walks down the street before you. Instead, however, we have this poster, which blatantly tries to link refugees to crime in Western Sydney, by politely putting a yellow boat beneath the text. A very subtle message that yellow. It isn't racist at all.
Never let it be said that I haven't called this entire image nothing but a lie and nothing but racism, because it is. It is a lie and it is racist. It is the latter as I have told you, but it is also the former because there is not a crime problem in Western Sydney. In an article responding to the ad, Tony Wright wrote:
The aforementioned NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research has pulled together the facts, and they prove awkward.
The bureau's voluminous ''Trends in recorded criminal incidents, violent and property offences over the 60 months to September 2012, NSW Metropolitan statistical subdivisions'', shows that crime in western Sydney has actually reduced – or at the worst remained stable – on average every year for the past five years.
Unlike politicians and large sections of the media, the bureau doesn't simply declare western Sydney to be one amorphous mass, either.
It splits it into seven separate areas: Canterbury-Bankstown, Fairfield-Liverpool, Outer Western Sydney, Outer South-West Sydney, Inner Western Sydney, Central Western Sydney and Blacktown.
Turns out that both violent and property crime has remained stable over the past five years in Canterbury-Bankstown, and violent crime has remained stable in Fairfield-Liverpool, Outer Western Sydney and Blacktown.
In all but Canterbury-Blacktown (stable on the property ledger), both violence and property crime has reduced on average each year in every one of the other statistical subdivisions by factors ranging from 2 per cent to 5.6 per cent.
And indeed, because I am a nice person, I will also provide a link to the Bureau of Crime Statistics, where you can do your own research if you'd like.
Because, y'know, facts are good for you.
April 14, 2013
Looper
Looper, Looper...
At one point while I was watching Looper, a fantasy began to occur to me. In it, I kidnap Rian Johnson, the writer and director of the film. I throw a bag over his head. I tie the script to Looper around his body. Then I throw him into my time machine and Joseph Gordon-Levitt shoots him.
And the script.
Looper, set in the vague future, has a pretty neat idea. In it, assassins (loopers) are paid to go and stand at a certain place at a certain time and kill the man or woman who appears there. These men and women appear from the future and have silver bars attached to their back. If, as with what happens in the film, you yourself are sent back in time, you kill yourself and earn a ton of gold bars. It is, like I said, a neat idea. To fully appreciate it you have to get past that the vague future of Johnson's film is ill defined, with guns reduced to blunderbuss' and gats, and a vague, ill defined sense of poverty throughout. Some people ride hover bikes, but most don't. Most drive cars and live in neighbourhoods pretty much like the ones you and I live in now. What, then, happened to all the guns that we own now is never explained. That's probably a good thing, since any definition would be lame, and only serve to highlight what feels like a passing attempt to leach out some sense of style from steampunk.
Unfortunately, as Looper continues, the bad becomes more dominant than the good. Gordon-Levitt's looper Joe, unsurprisingly, finds himself face to face with Bruce Willis, the older version of himself. Willis, perhaps aware of the fact that Gordon-Levitt is nothing like him as a younger actor, hurls a golden brick at his face, knocks him out and goes on the run. He, that is Willis' old Joe, is here to stop the Rainmaker from reaching power, and killing all retired loopers by sending them back in time to be killed by themselves. It is funny to think of the whole thing is a vague allegory to Hollywood. Doing that even allows you to explain why the Rainmaker's goons look like Coptic Jews. The reason would be a growing sense of anti-Semitism in Johnson, and who knows if he is or isn't, but this was the only good time I had in the film. Bruce Willis hurling gold bars at Joseph Gordon-Levitt and evil Jews running Hollywood. That's enough reason to go back and kill some children, I figure. The actual plot--that Old Joe's wife has been killed when he was taken--is servicable, but if you don't have this hilarious symbolism to entertain you, what you have is Old Joe in the past with a set of numbers. The numbers are the birth date of the Rainmaker, and Old Joe has hit the road to kill the kid, change time, save his wife--
And, really?
Really, this is your plot, Johnson?
Johnson tries to solve the problem of that plot with a conversation in a diner between Old and Young Joe, wherein Willis states that he doesn't want to get into all that time travel debate shit, that everything is just a possibility now. You groan a little, because you wish one would throw a gold bar at the other in the traditional Hollywood sense, but instead, you find yourself watching as the poorly thought out aspects of the film begin to pile up faster and faster. It becomes a pool in fact, a rising tide that begins to drown all in the film when Emily Blunt and her freaky kid Cid are introduced. No great shakes in figuring out who Cid is, especially since Young Joe ripped the date off Old Joe to get there, and no great shakes in figuring out that the vague telekinesis in the film is, well, not vague in Cid. Of course, he's so goddamn freaky and unpleasant that you want Willis to come up and shoot him in the head, but that would take away from the theme that Johnson establishes: that every bad child will turn out good if they just have a loving mother beside them.
Yes, good family values will save the day.
Yes, all you need is love.
Towards the end, when Looper was well and truly drowning in its own filth, I wondered if I might change my fantasy. Might it not be possible that I could be thrown back in time. That I might be shot before the film began to play. That I could appear with an old time blunderbuss and blow myself away. That I might be spared the wasted idea, the bad dialogue, the simple moralising...
But, no.
No, I was not.
At one point while I was watching Looper, a fantasy began to occur to me. In it, I kidnap Rian Johnson, the writer and director of the film. I throw a bag over his head. I tie the script to Looper around his body. Then I throw him into my time machine and Joseph Gordon-Levitt shoots him.
And the script.
Looper, set in the vague future, has a pretty neat idea. In it, assassins (loopers) are paid to go and stand at a certain place at a certain time and kill the man or woman who appears there. These men and women appear from the future and have silver bars attached to their back. If, as with what happens in the film, you yourself are sent back in time, you kill yourself and earn a ton of gold bars. It is, like I said, a neat idea. To fully appreciate it you have to get past that the vague future of Johnson's film is ill defined, with guns reduced to blunderbuss' and gats, and a vague, ill defined sense of poverty throughout. Some people ride hover bikes, but most don't. Most drive cars and live in neighbourhoods pretty much like the ones you and I live in now. What, then, happened to all the guns that we own now is never explained. That's probably a good thing, since any definition would be lame, and only serve to highlight what feels like a passing attempt to leach out some sense of style from steampunk.
Unfortunately, as Looper continues, the bad becomes more dominant than the good. Gordon-Levitt's looper Joe, unsurprisingly, finds himself face to face with Bruce Willis, the older version of himself. Willis, perhaps aware of the fact that Gordon-Levitt is nothing like him as a younger actor, hurls a golden brick at his face, knocks him out and goes on the run. He, that is Willis' old Joe, is here to stop the Rainmaker from reaching power, and killing all retired loopers by sending them back in time to be killed by themselves. It is funny to think of the whole thing is a vague allegory to Hollywood. Doing that even allows you to explain why the Rainmaker's goons look like Coptic Jews. The reason would be a growing sense of anti-Semitism in Johnson, and who knows if he is or isn't, but this was the only good time I had in the film. Bruce Willis hurling gold bars at Joseph Gordon-Levitt and evil Jews running Hollywood. That's enough reason to go back and kill some children, I figure. The actual plot--that Old Joe's wife has been killed when he was taken--is servicable, but if you don't have this hilarious symbolism to entertain you, what you have is Old Joe in the past with a set of numbers. The numbers are the birth date of the Rainmaker, and Old Joe has hit the road to kill the kid, change time, save his wife--
And, really?
Really, this is your plot, Johnson?
Johnson tries to solve the problem of that plot with a conversation in a diner between Old and Young Joe, wherein Willis states that he doesn't want to get into all that time travel debate shit, that everything is just a possibility now. You groan a little, because you wish one would throw a gold bar at the other in the traditional Hollywood sense, but instead, you find yourself watching as the poorly thought out aspects of the film begin to pile up faster and faster. It becomes a pool in fact, a rising tide that begins to drown all in the film when Emily Blunt and her freaky kid Cid are introduced. No great shakes in figuring out who Cid is, especially since Young Joe ripped the date off Old Joe to get there, and no great shakes in figuring out that the vague telekinesis in the film is, well, not vague in Cid. Of course, he's so goddamn freaky and unpleasant that you want Willis to come up and shoot him in the head, but that would take away from the theme that Johnson establishes: that every bad child will turn out good if they just have a loving mother beside them.
Yes, good family values will save the day.
Yes, all you need is love.
Towards the end, when Looper was well and truly drowning in its own filth, I wondered if I might change my fantasy. Might it not be possible that I could be thrown back in time. That I might be shot before the film began to play. That I could appear with an old time blunderbuss and blow myself away. That I might be spared the wasted idea, the bad dialogue, the simple moralising...
But, no.
No, I was not.
April 8, 2013
Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
J.M. Coetzee's 1999 novel, Disgrace, is an excellent, at times emotionally confronting and frustrating, novel.
It is the first novel of Coetzee's that I have read, though I have no reason for why it has taken me so long. Born in South Africa, where Disgrace is set, Coetzee moved to Australia in 2002, married his partner and now lives in Adelaide, where he, like all famous authors in Australia, can live in relative obscurity because no book of his yet has been turned into a football or cricket bat. And, at the age of seventy-three, he is unlikely to begin said sports career that would lead him to fame and fortune in his adopted country. Given his reported desire to keep a low public profile, you have to wonder in what other country could a two time Booker winner author with a Nobel Prize attain such a nice, media free zone?
Amusement aside, Disgrace is a decidedly serious novel. In it, David Lurie, a disenchanted literature professor who, in his fifties, is losing his looks, professional motivation, and place within his preconceived world. After he is rejected by the prostitute that he has visited for a year (he crosses the line between private and public), he begins an relationship with a young student where the sex is 'not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core' and, as it reaches its awful end, is fired and ends up visiting his daughter, a single woman trying to make a life on a farm. Building on what he has established in Lurie's earlier interactions, both he and his daughter are attacked by three black men. The terrible truth of this attack and its reprehensible repercussions, when revealed, tie the novel into the political and racial changes in a post-apartheid South Africa.
Disgrace is a novel of difficult ideas, a novel that will be very difficult for some readers in term of content, but for all the weight in its ideas and themes, Coetzee's prose is not weighed down and difficult to read. Strangely, even, Coetzee's sparse, at times minimalist style, renders the novel as a swift one, and though the narrative of it tends to have a very languid and undefined path until the final acts when it is tied together, it reads quickly. In the hands of a different author, one whose style was more dense, who layered more visually in each scene, Disgrace would be a much larger novel, and one that, I suspect, would be a much more of a slog in places. I found it interesting, in fact, to imagine Disgrace in terms of its theme, characters, and arc, in the hands of different authors, and imagining how much more emotionally exhausting and less effective it would be to read a book of twice its length. How it would have been different in the hands of an author that did not trust in the unspoken spaces between the words to convey its meaning.
Much, I decided, of what Coetzee does happens between the words, in the empty spaces of the books. A good deal is left unsaid, and Coetzee trusts that the reader will interpret that, trusts that restraint, that implication, will resonate better than if he simply stated his intent. It leaves the subtext of men's treatment of women--of their cruelty, their disgraces--the be explored not aloud by Lurie, but in his relationship with his studies of Byron and his wife. It leaves the question of Lurie's daughter, Lucy, and her relationship with Petraus to walk between the lines of white guilt, of a statement of the racial tension, distrust, and hostility that exists in South Africa. It leaves the animals in the shelter to be both metaphors for Lurie, creatures of our sympathy, and representations of how class and government divides.
It is, as I have said, an excellent novel.
It is the first novel of Coetzee's that I have read, though I have no reason for why it has taken me so long. Born in South Africa, where Disgrace is set, Coetzee moved to Australia in 2002, married his partner and now lives in Adelaide, where he, like all famous authors in Australia, can live in relative obscurity because no book of his yet has been turned into a football or cricket bat. And, at the age of seventy-three, he is unlikely to begin said sports career that would lead him to fame and fortune in his adopted country. Given his reported desire to keep a low public profile, you have to wonder in what other country could a two time Booker winner author with a Nobel Prize attain such a nice, media free zone?
Amusement aside, Disgrace is a decidedly serious novel. In it, David Lurie, a disenchanted literature professor who, in his fifties, is losing his looks, professional motivation, and place within his preconceived world. After he is rejected by the prostitute that he has visited for a year (he crosses the line between private and public), he begins an relationship with a young student where the sex is 'not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core' and, as it reaches its awful end, is fired and ends up visiting his daughter, a single woman trying to make a life on a farm. Building on what he has established in Lurie's earlier interactions, both he and his daughter are attacked by three black men. The terrible truth of this attack and its reprehensible repercussions, when revealed, tie the novel into the political and racial changes in a post-apartheid South Africa.
Disgrace is a novel of difficult ideas, a novel that will be very difficult for some readers in term of content, but for all the weight in its ideas and themes, Coetzee's prose is not weighed down and difficult to read. Strangely, even, Coetzee's sparse, at times minimalist style, renders the novel as a swift one, and though the narrative of it tends to have a very languid and undefined path until the final acts when it is tied together, it reads quickly. In the hands of a different author, one whose style was more dense, who layered more visually in each scene, Disgrace would be a much larger novel, and one that, I suspect, would be a much more of a slog in places. I found it interesting, in fact, to imagine Disgrace in terms of its theme, characters, and arc, in the hands of different authors, and imagining how much more emotionally exhausting and less effective it would be to read a book of twice its length. How it would have been different in the hands of an author that did not trust in the unspoken spaces between the words to convey its meaning.
Much, I decided, of what Coetzee does happens between the words, in the empty spaces of the books. A good deal is left unsaid, and Coetzee trusts that the reader will interpret that, trusts that restraint, that implication, will resonate better than if he simply stated his intent. It leaves the subtext of men's treatment of women--of their cruelty, their disgraces--the be explored not aloud by Lurie, but in his relationship with his studies of Byron and his wife. It leaves the question of Lurie's daughter, Lucy, and her relationship with Petraus to walk between the lines of white guilt, of a statement of the racial tension, distrust, and hostility that exists in South Africa. It leaves the animals in the shelter to be both metaphors for Lurie, creatures of our sympathy, and representations of how class and government divides.
It is, as I have said, an excellent novel.
March 31, 2013
Crandolin, Anna Tambour
Anna Tambour's Crandolin is her second novel, her third book after the short story collection, Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales &, and the novel, Spotted Lily. As with all of Tambour's fiction, Crandolin remains a deft, well written, complex and demanding creature.
As an author in her home country of Australia, Tambour has skated beneath the radar, publishing to critical acclaim mostly in the States and UK. Her new novel, published by the independent press Chomu continues that trend. The recent release of award shortlists for Australian work is notable for the fact that Tambour is absent. While awards are reflective of the people who run them, rather than any merit of quality, it still remains a shame that Tambour's very fine Crandolin is not upon it, to garner more attention and press for a work that is intelligent and uncompromising and adult. There are authors worthy or support, of nationalist pride, of securing a position to ensure that such fine work is in a position to continue, and it would not be beneath Australia to support Anna Tambour more, if I may be as blunt to say.
Crandolin is a difficult novel to give a quick, one line synopsis of. It begins with the discovery of a medieval cookbook by Nick Kippax, a food critic, who notes a stain upon it. The stain is made from quince, rose, grains of paradise, ambergris, pearl, cinnamon and, of course, the blood of a virgin. After tasting the stain, Kippax is fractured and hurled through time and space. The narrative fractures with him to follow a honey merchant in the Middle East, a pregnant cook in Russia, literary inspirations, a train driver and, naturally, a man who collects the pubic hair of virgins. Except, you know, he is being somewhat thwarted by elderly women with good hair dye. Drawn along by its narrators, Tambour's narrative draws on themes of inspiration and creation, of the ownership of art, of love and responsibility, and of notions of truth. The latter, in particular, is explored in one of the books many highlights in Russia.
Due to the nature of Tambour's narrative structure, Crandolin is demanding in terms of a reader who expects a linear plot, or for every character to fold against the other immediately. Her chapters, kept uniformly short so as better to stitch her cast together, succeed in maintaining a short, punchy flow to the work that offsets the fact that no clear narrative flow (either plot or thematic) is apparent. It creates a different sense to it than the book I was reminded of in the early pages, which was Bulgakov's the Master and Margarita. While Tambour's book is not a mirror or even directly inspired by it--in as far as I know--there remains a similar quality about it when the main narrative with the Devil splits off to the narrative of Pontius Pilate. Yet, whereas Bulgakov is happy to allow long chapters to unfold his narrative, Tambour, her own never as clearly related as the formers, uses the shorter chapters to hold the reader in place, to ensure that they are never allowed enough narrative rope to lose their way.
It is a complex trick and I would argue that despite holding it together for the majority of Crandolin, Tambour stumbles in the final pages of the book. I will leave for others to decide if they agree with that, rather than to discuss it entirely, because to do so is a fairly sold spoiling of the end of the book. Sufficient to say that the end isn't as successful or, to be more precise, isn't what I wanted. There will be others, I suspect, who like how it the end arrives--and let me be honest, there's nothing wrong with it from a technique point of view, or from the construction of a narrative, but yet if I had to speak of a part of Crandolin where I was let down but just, it was the end. Nevertheless, that did not distract from the very excellent work that proceeded it, from the writing that was, at times, whimsical, funny, romantic, madcap, and beautifully written.
Crandolin is a novel I fully recommend to people. It is the work of an original, interesting, and important voice in fiction, an Australian who deserves more readers than what she has.
As an author in her home country of Australia, Tambour has skated beneath the radar, publishing to critical acclaim mostly in the States and UK. Her new novel, published by the independent press Chomu continues that trend. The recent release of award shortlists for Australian work is notable for the fact that Tambour is absent. While awards are reflective of the people who run them, rather than any merit of quality, it still remains a shame that Tambour's very fine Crandolin is not upon it, to garner more attention and press for a work that is intelligent and uncompromising and adult. There are authors worthy or support, of nationalist pride, of securing a position to ensure that such fine work is in a position to continue, and it would not be beneath Australia to support Anna Tambour more, if I may be as blunt to say.
Crandolin is a difficult novel to give a quick, one line synopsis of. It begins with the discovery of a medieval cookbook by Nick Kippax, a food critic, who notes a stain upon it. The stain is made from quince, rose, grains of paradise, ambergris, pearl, cinnamon and, of course, the blood of a virgin. After tasting the stain, Kippax is fractured and hurled through time and space. The narrative fractures with him to follow a honey merchant in the Middle East, a pregnant cook in Russia, literary inspirations, a train driver and, naturally, a man who collects the pubic hair of virgins. Except, you know, he is being somewhat thwarted by elderly women with good hair dye. Drawn along by its narrators, Tambour's narrative draws on themes of inspiration and creation, of the ownership of art, of love and responsibility, and of notions of truth. The latter, in particular, is explored in one of the books many highlights in Russia.
Due to the nature of Tambour's narrative structure, Crandolin is demanding in terms of a reader who expects a linear plot, or for every character to fold against the other immediately. Her chapters, kept uniformly short so as better to stitch her cast together, succeed in maintaining a short, punchy flow to the work that offsets the fact that no clear narrative flow (either plot or thematic) is apparent. It creates a different sense to it than the book I was reminded of in the early pages, which was Bulgakov's the Master and Margarita. While Tambour's book is not a mirror or even directly inspired by it--in as far as I know--there remains a similar quality about it when the main narrative with the Devil splits off to the narrative of Pontius Pilate. Yet, whereas Bulgakov is happy to allow long chapters to unfold his narrative, Tambour, her own never as clearly related as the formers, uses the shorter chapters to hold the reader in place, to ensure that they are never allowed enough narrative rope to lose their way.
It is a complex trick and I would argue that despite holding it together for the majority of Crandolin, Tambour stumbles in the final pages of the book. I will leave for others to decide if they agree with that, rather than to discuss it entirely, because to do so is a fairly sold spoiling of the end of the book. Sufficient to say that the end isn't as successful or, to be more precise, isn't what I wanted. There will be others, I suspect, who like how it the end arrives--and let me be honest, there's nothing wrong with it from a technique point of view, or from the construction of a narrative, but yet if I had to speak of a part of Crandolin where I was let down but just, it was the end. Nevertheless, that did not distract from the very excellent work that proceeded it, from the writing that was, at times, whimsical, funny, romantic, madcap, and beautifully written.
Crandolin is a novel I fully recommend to people. It is the work of an original, interesting, and important voice in fiction, an Australian who deserves more readers than what she has.
March 21, 2013
A Messy Suicide
Yesterday, in the midst of yet another leadership challenge (the one that didn't happen), I said to N., "This is kind of like watching someone cut their wrists by going across the veins, rather than with the veins."
Yesterday was another day of bad politics. I saw a number of people link it to Julia Gillard and an anti female take, but while the media and, to an extent, the Opposition Party, have made a lot of mileage out attacking Gillard, and women in general, the Labor Party leadership speculation has always had a different place of origin, at least in my mind. There is no doubt that days like yesterday feed into the narrative of misogyny, but to accept that as the reason for it is to ignore the deep divisions in the Labor Party, and the lingering resentment over how Kevin Rudd was originally removed. In a certain way, if Labor had replaced Gillard with Rudd over the fear of media reform laws and the power of the press, there would have been a certain sense of coming full circle, given that it was the changes to mining taxes that finally tipped people into changing Rudd. That he was deserving of his loss is not in question: his actions since then in the forms of his media presence, the undermining, and such, have only served to demonstrate the destructive influence he was having within his own Party. I add that because I don't want people to think that I actually think Rudd would be a good choice as Prime Minster, though I do like it when suicide is done properly, and without this lingering mess and stitches to hold the skin in place.
Yesterday was a farce. Whether Simon Crean thought a leadership change was on the cards, or if he was just sinking Rudd for his own, and his party's benefit, will be decided later. In an interview he gave to Leigh Sales later, Crean certainly didn't look as if he had regrets, or that he thought he'd done something wrong, though he should have. Calling for a spill while a national apology to people of enforced adoption was taking place was a particularly unpleasant thing to witness, with the selfishness and self centreness of the politics in general on display. It was hard, afterwards, to hear much complaint about how the political farce being played was ruining a day that was important for a lot of Australians, and there was certainly no attempt to give them a voice to be angry about it. Instead, Abbott looked as if he had been given a gift, and took it, and the rest of us watched the media and the Labor Party try to talk up Kevin Rudd, none of them mentioning how it would be nothing short of political suicide to change their leader, now. Never mind what polls say: the fallout would be a disaster in terms of front benches, the independents would drop support for the government like sun hot change, and there would be an election called almost immediately. If you believed for a moment that the majority of Australians would turn to Rudd with open arms after all that, you're probably running that knife the wrong way across your wrists as well.
As they say, no one respects a messy suicide.
I can't imagine Labor winning, or even doing well, in September. I doubt many others can--and lets face it, it isn't just yesterday. The list of examples to be disenchanted by are huge and massive. If you're a left leaning individual who has always seen Labor as the lesser of two evils, your lesser is turning into something else, it is probably time to begin looking for a new lesser. The Greens, for example.
Yesterday was another day of bad politics. I saw a number of people link it to Julia Gillard and an anti female take, but while the media and, to an extent, the Opposition Party, have made a lot of mileage out attacking Gillard, and women in general, the Labor Party leadership speculation has always had a different place of origin, at least in my mind. There is no doubt that days like yesterday feed into the narrative of misogyny, but to accept that as the reason for it is to ignore the deep divisions in the Labor Party, and the lingering resentment over how Kevin Rudd was originally removed. In a certain way, if Labor had replaced Gillard with Rudd over the fear of media reform laws and the power of the press, there would have been a certain sense of coming full circle, given that it was the changes to mining taxes that finally tipped people into changing Rudd. That he was deserving of his loss is not in question: his actions since then in the forms of his media presence, the undermining, and such, have only served to demonstrate the destructive influence he was having within his own Party. I add that because I don't want people to think that I actually think Rudd would be a good choice as Prime Minster, though I do like it when suicide is done properly, and without this lingering mess and stitches to hold the skin in place.
Yesterday was a farce. Whether Simon Crean thought a leadership change was on the cards, or if he was just sinking Rudd for his own, and his party's benefit, will be decided later. In an interview he gave to Leigh Sales later, Crean certainly didn't look as if he had regrets, or that he thought he'd done something wrong, though he should have. Calling for a spill while a national apology to people of enforced adoption was taking place was a particularly unpleasant thing to witness, with the selfishness and self centreness of the politics in general on display. It was hard, afterwards, to hear much complaint about how the political farce being played was ruining a day that was important for a lot of Australians, and there was certainly no attempt to give them a voice to be angry about it. Instead, Abbott looked as if he had been given a gift, and took it, and the rest of us watched the media and the Labor Party try to talk up Kevin Rudd, none of them mentioning how it would be nothing short of political suicide to change their leader, now. Never mind what polls say: the fallout would be a disaster in terms of front benches, the independents would drop support for the government like sun hot change, and there would be an election called almost immediately. If you believed for a moment that the majority of Australians would turn to Rudd with open arms after all that, you're probably running that knife the wrong way across your wrists as well.
As they say, no one respects a messy suicide.
I can't imagine Labor winning, or even doing well, in September. I doubt many others can--and lets face it, it isn't just yesterday. The list of examples to be disenchanted by are huge and massive. If you're a left leaning individual who has always seen Labor as the lesser of two evils, your lesser is turning into something else, it is probably time to begin looking for a new lesser. The Greens, for example.
