Trevor Cook

McGahern and John Williams' "Stoner"

Just a few notes about some favourites.

This weekend the annual John McGahern International Seminar takes place in Carrick on Shannon and Aughawillan (I hope to make it there one year).

This prompted a nice article in the Irish Independent last week. I loved this bit:

The people he lived among seem hardly surprised by the attention. On the day Margaret Thatcher's death was announced, it was a talking point as John Fox chatted to customers pumping diesel into plastic containers at his garage in Ballinamore.

A car was waiting for fuel at the pump, but John was good humoured as his work was interrupted – obviously not for the first time – with questions about the McGahern connection. On the demise of the Iron Lady, he remarked: "They won't be crying about her around here."

Having featured in not just one but two of McGahern's most celebrated works, Fox is probably resigned to the fact that even a glimpse of him filling petrol stops some people in their tracks.

When I visited Ballinamore a couple of years ago, I met John Fox in his petrol station and was similarly stopped in my tracks. It's a bit like meeting the actor in one of your favourite long-running TV dramas, you feel that you 'know them' but have to remind yourself that you know a fictionalised character, not the person standing in front of you. 

 When I was at the Fox garage he moved away after a brief conversation to serve a customer leaving me to talk with one of his younger colleagues. Before Fox left, we got to talking about the differences between Mohill and Ballinamore. I was sceptical that two towns so close together (about 25 kms from memory) could be very different. Fox's colleague told me (with a twinkle in his eye) that the black and tans had been stationed in Mohill and many of their descendants still lived there and "some of them haven't had the horns bred out of them yet".

See also this brief report of Roy Foster's opening address to the seminar.

One of McGahern's faourite novels was Stoner by John Williams. (McGahern also greatly admired The Great Gatsby and Jane Austen's Persuasion, which he said were the two most perfect novels in the english language).

Although ignored early on Stoner is now considered a classic. It has recently been translated into French, prompting this NPR story (thanks to Professor Jackson for the pointer):

Fast forward to today and the book is experiencing a renaissance of sorts. It is a best-seller across much of Europe, including the Netherlands, where it has been the best-selling novel for the past two months. But it is not the action-packed thriller or steamy romance you might expect to be topping the charts. It is a quiet, slim novel about a young man who leaves a hardscrabble farm in Missouri to become a literature professor in 1910.

"It sort of pays tribute to a man whose life is, in one sense, utterly ordinary, but, in another sense, rich as anyone's life can be," said Edwin Frank, who runs New York Review of Books Classics, which republished Stoner in 2006.

I love Stoner and highly recommend it.

Another McGahern favourite that I also love is Alistair MacLeod. MacLeod is a Canadian writer of Scottish highlander descent. His short stories, in particular, are very evocative.  

Related articles

McGahern's works characterised by 'revolutionary disillusionment'

Remembering John McGahern (12 November 1934 - 30 March 2006)

A visit to the John McGahern Library, Co. Leitrim, Ireland

Top 5 reasons to visit Co. Leitrim's Carrick on Shannon during its 400th Anniversary

Latham on rising living standards and the 'culture of complaint'

In the AFR this morning (paywalled), former ALP leader Mark Latham repeats part of the argument he put in his Quarterly Essay (published last week).

Essentially, Latham's idea is that the ALP is neither claiming, nor receiving, the credit its due because of the health of the Australian economy (he give way too much credit to Paul Keating for this economic health)

Latham uses previously published NATSEM statisitcis which point to a steady, and significant, rise in household incomes over the last two decades to suggest that the unhappiness of many Australians about their material well-being and prospects.

This gap between reality and perception, according to Latham, is the product of a 'culture of manufactured outrage'. Manufactured, that is, by media outlets and politicians (including Rudd at the 2007 election).

There can be no doubt that media and politicians have played on perceptions of declining material well-being in the electorate, for their own benefit. For instance, talkback radio stations (like Fox in the USA) have crafted business models around fueling these feelings of discontent and outrage.

Yet, it is difficult to believe that there is not some reality on which media and politicians feed.

Reading Matters: 2nd Australian literature month in April

Recently, I posted about how much better off we are these days when it comes to finding about novels.

Newspapers are much less central to the formation and enjoyment of a national literature.

In that earlier post, I mentioned Kim Forrester's Reading Matters blog and her efforts to promote Australian literature, as well as a broader appreciation of contemporary novels.

So I'm glad to see that she is going to have a 2nd Australian literature month in April.

To get people started she has put forward a pretty strong list of sources on Australian novels:

• A list of all the novels reviewed as part of last year's Australian Literature Month

• My reviews of novels and non-fiction set in Australia

• My top 10 novels about Australia

• Lisa Hill's ANZLitLovers LitBlog (This list of books you must read is particularly good)

• Perry Middlemiss's Australian Literature website

• 50 Must Read Australian Novels (excellent list on the Booktopia Blog)

• Past winners of the Miles Franklin Literary Award

• Past winners of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards

• List of popular Australian authors on Good Reads

• An essay about Australian novels on the Australian Government website

• Australian Women Writers website

• Free ebooks on the Project Gutenberg Australiana page

• 10 Aussie books to read before you die

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Australian Literature Month begins!

The best time ever for Australian booklovers

Australian Literature Month: April 2013

Monday musings on Australian literature: The Stella Prize longlist

The best time ever for Australian booklovers

This is a great time for book lovers.

Books are more plentiful and cheaper than ever before.

The rise of online bookshops, notably Amazon and the Book Depository, have helped Australian readers avoid costs associated with the outrageous protection of Australian publishers (one of the Rudd Government's sillier decisions); the main exception being new and recent Australian titles which are still very expensive. The advent of ebooks and ebook readers has not only seen book prices fall further, but now I can also read a book review in the NY Times, for instance, and then download and start reading it straight away. 

I used to be a more frequent habitue of bookshops around Australia, particularly Readings, Gleebooks and Berkelouws - but many others besides. 

I still visit these places, but where they were once exciting now they are more often a little sad and disappointing (not too mention expensive). The range is limited by comparison with the huge online databases that I regularly trawl through and the serendipidity I used to relish on dusty shelves I now find from a myriad of online sources.

Online sources for finding out about books have also proliferated from social networking sites like goodreads to highly successful blogs like Reading Matters, run by London based Australian journalist, Kim Forrester.  

The world's best literary review magazines can now be read on a Tablet for about the cost of a couple of newspapers, see for instance the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the Asian Literary Review and the Boston Review. Many of my favourite magazines are also moving to make the most of the new tablet / mobile environment. For instance, the New Yorker and the newly re-launched New Republic. There are many more. Not only are these magazines good for finding out about books, they also contain some of the best long-form journalism available anywhere. 

As well as these old favourites from a pre-existing paper-only world there are also some emerging online only titles. Notably, the remarkably succcessful Los Angeles Review of Books and back home a new entrant in the form of the Sydney Review of Books. 

Australians now have cheap and ready access to a global literary culture, which seems to be expanding rapidly. 

Overall the Internet has been a boon but it is not without its regrets. Walking down Pitt Street south of Town Hall in Sydney the other day I felt a little sad remembering the great little second hand bookshops that used to be located around here. These were the places I went to get a cheap copy of my next Orwell, Waugh, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, Greene, Kerouac etc. But this is just nostalgia.

With our easier access to global culture from far away Australia, do we risk losing a national literature?

Sybil Nolan and Matthew Ricketson seem to suggest the answer is probably yes in a recent article in the Sydney Review of Books. They seem to think that the future of a vibrant Australian literary culture depends a lot on the fate of the Fairfax newspapers and the space they devote to book reviews.

If you look on places like Reading Matters you can find a lot of coverage of Australian books. Similarly, a lot of Australians are active on goodreads and a lot of Australian books are being reviewed and rated there.

I would like to see a follow-up analysis to that of Nolan and Ricketson which looks at the extent to which the Internet might be providing new ways of creating a national literary culture in Australia.

But at the end of the day, I admit I don't care much. The access to cheap books and places to find out about them online is just too exciting.

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Antonino D'Ambrosio - A heartbreak and a guitar: Johnny Cash and the making of Bitter Tears

I picked this little gem up from the bargain table at Gleebooks. Bargain tables give you the chance to try a book you might have passed over at the full cover price.

Bitter tears: Ballads of the American Indian was a controversial album (radio stations refused to play it, magazines refused to review it) made by Johnny Cash and released in 1964 after he became a star and had already had major hits with iconic tracks like "I walk the line" and "Ring of Fire". 

The focus of the controversy was a track called "Ballad of Ira Hayes", written by folk singer Peter La Farge. The track has also been recorded by Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Kinky Friedman. 

Cash's recording of Ballad of Ira Hayes finally made it into the charts after a concerted advertising and direct marketing campaign by Cash and some supporters.

The life and fate of Ira Hayes was an indictment of complacent post-war America. 

Hayes was a Pima indian from Arizona who returned from WW2 to a hero's welcome because he was one of the marines that featured in the famous Iwo Jima photo. After battles with prejudice, despair and alcohol he died in a ditch about a decade after he came to national attention.

This is a captivating tale that embraces the struggles of Native peoples in America, the 1960s New York folk scene, the birth of country music, Johnny Cash, Peter La Farge, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and much more all set in the dramatic context of social and political upheaval in America in the 1950s and 1960s.

I've read about the relationship between Cash and Dylan before - but it still impresses and amazes me. Neither man wanted to have their art pigeon-holded by fans or corporate profit seekers. Unlike many in the popular music field, they took their art seriously. Cash went into bat for Dylan when Columbia were sceptical after lacklustre sales for Bob's debut album.

Cash also took his politics seriously. It took him many years to get his prison album idea accepted by record company executives - who thought it a mad idea. They weren't too impressed with the Bitter Tears album either. Cash apparently once gave up a $10k gig to do a free concert at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota (site of the Wounded Knee massacre of Sioux women and children by the US Army).

It's an important story in many different ways, it's well-told and readable - look out for it.

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Music History #11: "The Ballad of Ira Hayes"

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The Slap: Christos Tsiolkas

This is one of the most talked about books (and TV series) in Australia in recent years. 

I initially didn't read it because I thought it was going to be yet another worthy indictment of the evils of child abuse, I got this impression from a radio interview at the time of its release. The problem of taking reviews too seriously. I decided to read the book because I enjoyed the TV series so much.

Of course, it is not about child abuse. And it is well balanced in terms of the way it presents views on appropriate child discipline and punishment.

Moreover, the slap is only the focal point that brings together what can be read as 8 brief novellas about 8 very different characters. The characters act as sort of representative types for a diverse Australia. This is a very clever structure and makes for a very readable novel.

The novel is, overall, about how people struggle to establish identities (and realities) for themselves in a world that is increasingly complex. It follows them as they fight for those realities in the face of the oppositional realities put forward by other characters.

Sadly, these struggles are almost always disappointing for the characters concerned and often involve compromises. 

Also a little disappointing is that the characters sometimes seem like cut-outs, they don't quite make it to the level of great characters - people that could live outside the text (as Harold Bloom argued). Sometimes the scenes and dialogue are a little too obvious and cliched.

But for all that it is a very enjoyable novel with much of value to say about contemporary Australia.

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Maxine McKew: Tales from a modest past and the death of Napoleon

And so another 'kiss and tell' insider account by a former politician hits the stands promoted heavily by a shocking revelation. 

In McKew's case the 'revelation' is even thinner than usual. Some unnamed ALP MP reckons there was a conspiracy to get Rudd, reckons Julia was involved.

This is hardly news. It wasn't even news at the time. Dennis Shanahan in the Australian had column after column suggesting leadership rumbles in the caucus. I thought it was ridiculous specualtion at the time.

Was Gillard involved?

Does it matter?

Well it does if you're a gotcha horse race journalist whose blood boils at the idea that a politician lied, or dissembled or whatever.

New style twitterati journos particularly like this stuff along the lines of breathless updates throughout the day in the mode of 'PM refuses to deny'.

I thought getting rid of Rudd was a mistake, I said so at the time, I think Rudd would have won the 2010 election.

But there you go.

Two years have come and gone. 

Gillard is way ahead of Abbott in the polls and the ALP is also basking in little glimmers of hope.

If Rudd couldn't win a caucus ballot in February, why on earth would he win now?

Rudd was the first first-term ALP PM to be outed by his own party. 

It must hurt him and his small band of loyal followers like Maxine McKew.

The pain is understandable.

But how in the hell do they think their cause is being aided by continually raking over the coals.

It's become so pathetic it just reminds you of Peter Costello's sporadic outbursts of leadership speculation.

It didn't do Costello or the Coalition any good, and it's not doing Rudd or the ALP any good this time round.

Of course, these regular bursts of speculation are more the product of the cosy relationships Rudd and Costello enjoy with some journalists, than any genuine movement in their respective party rooms. 

The whole insider thing.

Rudd, like Costello, presumably hopes that some media speculation will lead to some momentum which will sway nervous backbenchers.

Didn't work for Costello and there is no sign that it is doing Rudd any favours either.

I believe Maxine McKew is not widely regarded in ALP circles.

She blew in, enjoyed a great moment on election night and then all too soon it was over.

(Disclosure: I got a bit caught up too, I think it would be good for the caucus to broaden its DNA pool so I made a tidy donation to the McKew election campaign)

Arguably, McKew got too caught up in the Rudd hype - she was a key organiser of the disapppointing (and silly) 20/20 summit which did so much to define the Rudd premiership - lots of hype, lots of policy suggestions but bugger all follow through. 

Some blame McKew's laziness and lack of commitment to her electorate for the loss of Bennelong in 2010.

Her poorly timed, apparently bitter, book will not win her any respect in the ALP - and it will reflect poorly on Rudd.

McKew's journo mates are lapping it up. Maxine gets another moment in the spotlight. 

Rudd sits in Brisvegas, like Napoleon on St Helena, hoping for one more shot.

Kevin could do worse than to read Simon Leys' novella "The death of Napoleon" before he makes further plans.

Stoner by John Williams

What is incomprehensible and mysterious about Stoner is that he loves the worlds that words make in books. In the English Department at the University of Missouri between 1920 and 1960, where he passes his days, this love is neither well-known nor highly regarded. That he lives only to read, to write, and to talk about literature makes him an academic failure in the company of career-makers who care nothing for words and ideas.

via blogs.usyd.edu.au

Michael Jackson has put up a good review of one my favourite novels.  

Sadly, academics who love their subjects simply for their own sake are often few and far between and they don't often do particularly well. But for all the disappointment in Stoner's life he is to me a sort of hero because he never loses that sense of love of learning that first propelled him to want to study literature.  Over the last few years many people have asked me why I wanted to do a phd when, obviously, at my stage in life it's not a sound career move (in the sense that the investment from foregone income is unlikely to be recouped).  

The answers are complex I guess but in the mix is the opportunity to do something that is challenging and to do just do it for it's own sake. Most of us don't get too many opportunities to do that in life. Stoner being a poor farm boy is an unlikely character to devote his working life to a study of romantic poets, it would have been far more sensible to follow the crowd, make the compromises, and pursue a 'practical' career.  Williams shows that there are no happy endings in Stoner's choice, yet he is clear that Stoner made the right choice - that's the strength and beauty of this remarkable novel.  

Anna Funder, All that I am

This is a stunning novel. It's a long-time since I've enjoyed a new novel quite as much. The story is fantastic (I had no idea), and the tone is just right. It is fast-paced and gripping but also deeply revealing about human motives. I rarely think that novelists 'get' politics - they either romanticise it or demonise it. But Funder has a deep appreciation. The sense of time and place - the atmospherics - are wonderful. Her descriptions are precise and evocative, and never become cloying or atificial. As the blurb says the novel is 'intelligent'. As a writer, Funder is masterful her control is remarkable. You've got to read it.

The joy of anonymity

First published on the Drum in 2008.

We are in the midst of an obsession with celebrity. Mistakenly, many people think fame, real or vicarious, will enrich them spiritually as well as materially. But, the joy of being anonymous in a large city is one of the great achievements of modern civilisation. So why are most people desperate to ignore this source of liberty and joyous engagement with the world around them?

Anonymity is a comparatively recent phenomenon in human history. Most of our ancestors knew everyone they came into contact with on a daily basis. And everyone knew them. In a village or a nomadic tribe, everyone knows you and your business. There is no such thing as privacy, everything you do, every move you make, is subject to scrutiny.

When a villager or tribesmen doesn't know someone, that person is a stranger - a mysterious person with possibly harmful intentions. Before the emergence of large cities, everyone was on alert in the presence of a stranger. And for many people this sense of strangeness has been transferred to the city itself and the crowds that fill it.

Most of us merely tolerate difference to a greater or lesser degree. We still by and large prefer the congenial company of those who are like us. Our friendships tend to reflect us in many ways in class, religion, sexual orientation, marital status and so on. We congregate together, in small groups, like villagers amid a sea of unknown, and strange, humanity.

This resistance in the face of strangeness is one reason for the popularity of celebrity. Celebrity seems to work by convincing us that we are just like lots of other people and that they are just like us. Celebrity reassures us that we are not alone or isolated. We imitate the clothes and opinions of the famous to solemnise our connection with them.

Celebrity is a false promise for the observer and it can be catastrophic for the celebrated.

The observer must cling to the illusion that there is a village-like connection where none can possibly exist. To the commercial beneficiaries of celebrity, the observers' hopes are not important. They are only important as consumers of movies, clothes and music.

For most of us, the illusion that we may yet enjoy some sort of relationship with our confected heroes dies with fading youth and our interest in the famous may settle down to a harmless past time. If it doesn't, it may morph into the sort of insanity that drove Mark Chapman to murder John Lennon. In fact, the famous are often stalked by deranged fans clinging to the illusion of some 'relationship' too literally.

Many of the famous do not cope well. They rage and lash out like animals caged in a bizarre zoo. Think of Britney Spears. Or the sadness of Heath Ledger, rich and lonely in Manhattan. Or the public disintegration of Australian football stars like Ben Cousins, Andrew Johns and Wayne Carey.

The famous can never take a step outside their gilded prisons. They are under scrutiny. A simple walk to the park or a local shop is out of the question. Any indiscretion or personal misfortune is liable to be intensified through front page coverage. The shekel-seeking photographers are ever present, eager for the 'money shot' that conveys some drama like Britney freaking out yet again.

In this celebrity culture being anonymous, or unknown, conveys the sense of missing out on something important that our civilisation has to offer.

But for those of us who can do so, walking through cities observing the beauty and drama all around us is an intellectually and spiritually enriching pleasure that has only recently been available to humanity.

In 19th century Paris, the great poet, Charles Baudelaire helped to popularise, in certain circles, the idea of the flaneur. The flaneur, from the French word meaning 'to stroll', was traditionally a rich gentleman who displayed his wealth through idle walks in Parisian cafes.

As 'flaneur' became a literary concept it came to mean someone who engages emotionally and intellectually with the unknown crowd around them; the literary flaneur observes the people he encounters with interest and empathy, not with fear and resistance.

Many of these literary flaneurs were, and are, novelists. Dickens was a frequent and extensive walker and his novels are filled with his evocative observations of people and places like the Cheapside market visited by Pip in Great Expectations: "all asmear with filth and fat and blood... the great black dome of St Paul's bulging at me."

Perhaps the greatest, and most famous, of flaneurs in modern literature is James Joyce's Leopold Bloom. Bloom is perfect because he is a citizen of Dublin but, being jewish, also an outsider. He is known by many of those he meets but as a lower middle class seller of newspaper advertisements he is essentially inconsequential. He is free.

Joyce gives us Dublin through Bloom. His most important character is interested in every aspect of the city's life as it unfolds around him. He is empathetic with the people around him; he seeks to understand, he wonders how it feels to be other people, to live other lives. He wonders about the connections between his observations and everything he already knows.

Bloom, or any flaneur, is only possible because our major cities allow most of us to move about freely subject to only to a minimum of scrutiny and interest from those around us.

Our cities today are, in many ways, far more diverse, complex and interesting than the Dublin of 1904 or even Victorian London. Yet, most people rush through the crowds getting between point A and point B almost oblivious to the wonders of the world around them and unable to shed their feelings of strangeness.

The sights, smells and sounds on any day, in any major city are fantastic and far surpass anything that could be encountered through a screen. You don't need to be a Baudelaire, Dickens or Joyce to revel in it. You just need to engage - to observe and think for yourself.

Sadly, many people believe the famous, and the lives of the famous, must be so much more interesting than themselves and their own lives. That's, perhaps, the most horrible by-product of our celebrity age. It's an illusion sustained by our failure to engage fully with the life going on all around us in these incredible cities.