reeling and writhing

FIVE DAYS!!

...till M.J. Hyland's newie. (Via my very own comments in a previous post. That's what happens when your friend from way back says your blog is 'overwhelming' - you become completely self-referential.)
Talk of exploding wheels rolling down thoroughfares. This is going to be great.

And in other news, which I forgot to mention when I posted about MJH  this morning - it is true that I will be reviewing less and writing a little less often here.

However I have inserted a widget on the right, down the column quite a bit, which shows things I've starred for reading from the newsfeeds I comb through most days.

This is updated regularly - so if you come by every week, you could still catch a bunch of fairly good links to things you might not otherwise know about. (Though of course all the readers here are a well-informed crowd. Natch.)

If you want to 'Read More', the link at the bottom of that widget will take you to pages of my starred items in Google Reader; otherwise each link takes you to the original item in its own home.

So, enjoy.

*Update, December 2009 - The feeds I refer to above now live here: scroll down to subscribe to a slightly different list of blogs from my reader.

telling a terrible story and it doesn't diminish his glory

'Bill always said examine the writer, not the man. But I am emotional and I can’t help examining both.'

Bukowski, unplugged. Oh, man, it's good. Hurray for Maud Newton and her mighty blog. There are a couple more excerpts from the source, here.

we lied about being outdoor types

A little while back Lee Bemrose of Twobluefish posted his correspondence with Les Murray over the rejection of a story of his by Quadrant.
I came across it not long after reading some of Mr Murray's comments on an early poem of Chris Wallace-Crabbe's in manuscript at the remarkable Independent Type exhibition at the State Library of Victoria.

It is well worth visiting the exhibition just to read Murray's wry comments on the CWC poem. I would have loved to snap it but hey. You should see the whole thing.

I have skated around it once, and have ample opportunity to return as it will be with us till October. It then nips around regional centres, five weeks here, five weeks there - so I am hoping they take exceptionally good care of Marcus Clarke's lovely cabbage tree hat with its delectably raffish scarf (which looks to be silk. I think it must be silk.)

 Other thrills include Henry Handel Richardson's typewriter, a very flattering portrait of same by Rupert Bunny, Sonya Hartnett's letters to publishers and her Astrid Lindgren award, an issue of Gino Nibbi's magazine Stream from the thirties, bits of the Jerilderie letter from Ned, and plenty of other ingenious lovely things. There's a raft of events organised around the exhibition for the months up till October 25, with extended opening hours and events on Thursday evenings. Enjoy.

fifteen in fifteen minutes

From Carrie Frye, blogger in residence at Terry Teachout's blog on the arts in New York City, About Last Night. The rules are that one lists books that will stick with you, in fifteen minutes. No revising, and take no longer than fifteen minutes.

The Recognitions, William Gaddis.
Ruth Park's biography in 2 vols.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce.
Shakespeare - Complete works
Gray, Robert, The Land I Came Through Last
The Prelude, William Wordsworth
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
Collected Poems, T.S. Eliot
Selected Poems, Ezra Pound
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
The Great World, David Malouf
The Sportswriter, Richard Ford.
The Siege, Clara Claiborne Park
Collected Poems, W.B.Yeats.
I for Isobel, Amy Witting/Carpentaria, Alexis Wright tie for the finish.

("The Lord of the RIGNS?" my son says, incredulously, walking by.)

Did it in about six. Took another four to tidy it up. Obviously. Would love to do it again and slip Invisible But Enduring Lilacs by Gerald Murnane in, but rules are rules.
I think I could easily do a new one though. I'm going to pour a glass of wine and do this again. My husband is quietly enjoying watching Collingwood while our son is at a drive-in, for God's sake - the carers had only been to the drive-in once before, so they took the Interchange group again. Such a novelty!

My time starts - now.

Defying Hitler, by Sebastian Haffner.
Travelling to Freedom, edited Tony Stone and Peter Stone (I'll post on that one day, actually).
Invisible But Enduring Lilacs, Gerald Murnane.
Winton, Tim. The Riders.
Kureishi, Hanif. The Black Album.
Toibin, Colm. The Master
Chatwin, Bruce. The Songlines.
Garner, Helen. The Children's Bach.
Fitzgerald, Penelope. The Blue Flower.
Ingalls Wilder, Laura. The Long Winter.
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down.
Nehamas, Alexander. A Promise Of Happiness.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment.
The first half of Roy Foster's History of Ireland, 1600-1970. ( I intend to read it all. I have to buy it first.)
Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy.

I freely admit to doing the first fifteen earlier, like they do on cooking shows. I suppose they do things like this on LibraryThing all the time, do they?

this garden universe vibrates complete

Dena Kahan has an exhibition, Strange Garden, opening on the 17th of June at Red Gallery in North Fitzroy

Another opportunity to report on the work of someone who has gone on to more exciting things since we studied lit together, and a show to visit! - and a beautiful picture for this blog to display (photo by Ian Hall).

'Dena Kahan’s paintings of miniature glass marine specimens address the historical relationship between art and science.

These most recent works are based on photographs taken by the artist while visiting specialist glassware collections in the United Kingdom, and are an extension of her previous work with the Victoria and Albert museum in London. Strange Garden reveals the shifts in translation incurred in the movement between objects and representations, softly prying apart the paradoxes inherent to taxonomy and systems of museum display.' (www.redgallery.com.au)

Strange Garden will be at:
Red Gallery
157 St George's Rd.
North Fitzroy 3068
tel: 9482 3550
17 June – 4 July . Opening hours Wednesday – Saturday, 11 – 5.

some remarks on Susan Varga's novel, Headlong (with reference to The Spare Room)

Susan Varga, Headlong. University of Western Australia Press, 2009. Review copy provided.

Recently Helen Garner was criticised by some for using her outstanding novel, The Spare Room, to describe the brutal reality of dealing with anger and grief while caring, for daring to approach that side of caring that we like to pretend doesn't exist: she was criticised for being truthful about that within fiction, for refusing to make her fiction about caring 'pretty enough', and for being honest about her real-life sources.

Susan Varga is successful at invoking that kind of brutal reality purely through the immediacy of detail she provides and the speed with which it is accumulated. Sometimes she moves too quickly to the next stage without giving enough attention to 'inscaping' the force of those details. Things move so fast in the first half of the book that it is difficult to pause for a minute and absorb the horrifying rapidity with which Julia, recently widowed, succumbs to the grip of incapacitating, severe depression.

On page 73, therefore, I could not quite keep up with her daughter Kati as she baldly states her belief that she will soon assist Julia to die. Some of that necessary detail is filled in at a completely different pace in part two of the book, giving it a structure that swings open and shut from the middle like an artist's handmade book.

I can't think of a precedent for such a structure and it seemed risky to me, making this book provoking in two ways; one is listening endlessly to people seeking answers to life and death questions throughout, while also asking, can Varga pull this challenge off?and flipping back to the beginning chapters while reading the second half.

It's worth reading Headlong just to see how she figures that out, but also this book is very compelling simply for the portrayal of the frightening collapse of Julia after her husband's death.

beanie season at Artisan Books

Artisan Books, one of my favourite stops on the way into the CBD, advises that their annual Beanie Exhibition is open now.

Do click on their other exhibition invites to the right of the homepage to see what other beautiful things are able to be viewed there, apart from a constantly magnificent selection of books on art, textiles, photography, design, gardens and all manner of crafts

The lovely piece on the invitation is the work of Margaret Lanne.

Emerging Writers' Festival - this wheel shall explode

The zine fair that was once the total Festival has truly emerged -

sitting alongside our usual cultural icons in this Marvellous City of Literature and GT Fords.

A very fine ten day festival, and I  only got to a tiny bit of it. The wrap at Arts Hub reports director David Ryding expressing delight at a 55 year old writer's ability to get four publishers interested in her work due to contacts made at the festival.

People are, justifiably, making very agreeable noises all over - Estelle has given some great reports on 3000 Books especially - leaving me scratching my head saying, "Who IS David Ryding?" (apart from being the nice man who answered my complaint about the proposed change to the name of the Scrabble event some time last year, after my emerging comedian took part in it.)

Anyway. Early last year enterprising young theatre blogger Chris Summers of Theatargh went head to head with Ryding  about what he is hoping to achieve as festival director, and I feel is close to realising after only two years in the seat. It's a fine interview, and captures the feel of EWF in lots of ways - Ryding turns the interview format on its head and asks a few questions of his own, in much the same way his festivals do.

The program advisory committee has also played its part - with people of this calibre on board, a good result's guaranteed.