Out of Copley Street: A working-class boyhood

by Geoff Goodfellow

Australian literary icon Geoff Goodfellow is renowned for his brutally evocative poetry: famously performed on building sites, at factories and jails, and in mental institutions, as well as the traditional schools and literary festivals. Martin Flanagan says he reads ‘like an angry red nerve’.

But this playful, tender, richly realised childhood memoir – his first prose collection – reveals the vulnerable side of the working-class boy from Copley Street. Growing up in Adelaide’s inner-northern suburbs, Geoff inherits a quick mind and quicksilver tongue from his father, a tender but troubled war veteran (and talented glassblower) who struggled with alcoholism. Geoff’s dad teaches him to make things with his hands, staunch loyalty to family, to charm and cajole – and perhaps most enduringly, to tell stories.

So we follow young Geoff as he takes his first job as a milkman’s assistant, aged five, fixes up his first motorbike aged eleven, flirts with housewives (and punches out his boss for insulting his dad) in his first job as an apprentice butcher aged fifteen, and hitchhikes to Mount Gambier to work on oil rigs aged seventeen.

This is a poignant snapshot of working-class Australian life in the 1950s and 60s, expertly rendered with the vivid lived detail and wry knockabout humour that Geoff Goodfellow is famous for.

176 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2020

Reviews

[notgettingenough]

I'm afraid I'm going to undersell this. It's a wonderful book, indispensably adding to the theme of growing up in Australia.

It's my second five star book in a row, the first by Helen Garner and now this, with Garner's words on the cover: 'a dry, sparkling clarity, a pure tone that hovers on the edge of laughter: these stories are a revelation'.

It is frequently observed that part of Garner's attraction is the way she writes about Melbourne. One could say the same of Goodfellow about Adelaide, the difference being that she is looking and he is being. It's his life, not hers.

For me, ten years younger than Goodfellow, raised in an asbestos Housing Trust house in an area full of them, on the outskirts of the city, this was memory lane, but it doesn't need to be that. I don't see why anybody wouldn't be entranced by this collection of a now-gone way of life written with a poet's understanding of keeping it simple and focussed. It's a delight to read for its own sake. But it's also important that we preserve history this way, if only to give life to research like Adelaide Housing and Planning 1946-1959.

It took a few hours to read this, but I will treasure it for a long time to come. A report on his poetry to come.

[Daniel]

THE GENESIS for this childhood memoir Out of Copley Street: A Working-Class Boyhood was incepted by American author Ken Kesey some three decades prior to its publication. In 1986 Kesey, a big fan of Goodfellow’s work but cognisant of the difficulty of making a living as a poet, urged him to, “stop writing poetry and write a goddamned novel.” (p1). Goodfellow self-deprecatingly suggests he must be a ‘slow learner’ but ‘just bloody stubborn’ would be a far more apt descriptor.

Copley Street’s opener, ‘Bluey Gets a Start’ sees five-year-old Geoff venture out of the family home to assist the local milkman on his neighbourhood delivery run. Eleven chapters and twelve years later, Geoff is thumbing a ride ‘Out of Copley Street’ to Mount Gambier for a job on an oilrig. On the pages between, young Bluey learns lessons from his father, fixes up a motorbike, and begins work as a butcher’s apprentice. Amongst it all, Goodfellow’s (both figurative and literal) voice is there, in every line of every page – imbued into the ink.

In a literary career spanning thirty-plus years, this is Goodfellow’s first full-scale foray outside of poetry. One could easily reach the determination that Out of Copley Street marks a significant departure for the working-class writer; however, all the hallmarks of Goodfellow’s poetry have more-than survived the transition to prose. His fondness for playing with language is as present as ever with clever puns, rhyming slang and similes aplenty. There’s also attention to detail, dry wit and humorous insight, understatement, and - yes - his trademark brutal honesty. An economical writer, Goodfellow efficiently orients the reader at the start of each story and ends each anecdote with a punchy closing line. Above all, there are the stories of people, postcodes and professions that aren’t always given their fair share of shelf space in Australia’s library.

Out of Copley Street boasts cover quotes from Australian literary luminaries Helen Garner and Tim Winton - as well as American literary icon Ken Kesey. Goodfellow’s admirers include, among others, the likes of H.G. Nelson, Martin Flanagan, Hunters & Collectors’ frontman Mark Seymour and The Hon. Chris Kourakis, Chief Justice of S.A. - all judicious users and lovers of language. A recommendation from this reviewer feels redundant.

Three decades ago, Kesey told his friend to, “write about little things and to invest them with interest.” (p2). In his own rebellious way, Geoff Goodfellow has very obediently done just that.

[Brooke]

I came upon this book in the library.
I remembered Geoff visiting my regional high school decades ago.
The book is well written and heartfelt.

[Hamish Verco]

Easy reading, great imagery, takes you to a place of nostalgia, of a raw & simple life