Max Barry/Syrup

I picked this up for a lightweight read after plowing (happily) through Philip Jones. Kimberley from my old work read and reviewed it a few years ago and she highly recommended it, but with the proviso that she doesn't really read any Australian fiction. This intrigued me as I didn't know anything about Max Barry, and also because Kimberley always has immaculate taste in books. But why not Australian?

It wasn't long before I understood how the book slipped through K's cultural cringe radar. Syrup is possibly the least 'Australian' book I've read this year, choosing instead to locate itself in California, and the cutthroat world of corporate marketing. Barry is a satirist, and chooses his victims well: superficial marketing execs, two-dimensional corporate wage slaves, money-hungry twenty-somethings, vacuous Hollywood stereotypes. It all revolves around the central character, Scat, and his belief that all of us have three million-dollar ideas per year. One of his is to invent a new type of cola, called FUKK, which he intends to market to Coca-Cola. He does this, and sets off a chain of events that allow him to exercise his great ideas in ever-increasingly farcical situations.

So, its a free-flowing and funky anti-establishment romp, with plenty of hip cultural references, an undercurrent of sex and fame, and a spattering of editorial-esque comments on the clandestine tools used by marketers, appearing in different fonts outside the text a la Douglas Coupland. And it was when this dawned on me that the experience started to sour. So much of Syrup has been said before, and better, by the cultural bowerbirds that preceded Max Barry - Bret Easton Ellis, William Gibson, and Coupland. I mention Gibson because Barry is remarkably prescient in some of the novel: written in 1999, it predicts the black Coke can of Coke Zero, the merging of advertising and media we see all around us nowadays, the propensity for celebrities to invent names to make them stand out from the crowd like Beyonce and Fifty Cent. But conversely the book almost feels like a dinosaur already - characters still use payphones and shoot film on 16mm stock - to the point where a member of Gen Y reading it could find some of the references quaint but not cool or clever like Barry tries to be.

This is no fault in itself - writers do not necessarily create for the generation that succeeds them - but it is a danger when the writer starts to riff on their own imagination and loses the reader. Even for a farce, the situations Scat and his partner 6 find themselves in are completely unbelievable, and Barry keeps ramping them up by placing even more unlikely obstacles in their path, and allowing his characters to overcome them, often through a brilliant 11th hour lightbulb moment. For some reason this seems to actually leech out the tension that he is trying to create - you start to expect the clever rebuttal or the cunning stunt - and this becomes boring. I read the book in just a couple of days; easy, because it lacks much in the way of description or analysis of the character's motivations and relies almost entirely on the plot and how it is played out. This smacks of an expected readership with a limited attention span, and this may be exactly who Barry wrote the book for. Funnily enough, his most recent project is a stream-of-consciousness style novel that he is writing then emailing to recipients one page at a time.

I don't know, maybe I'm just getting too old for clever, or just learning to prefer substance over style. I think Barry is a good writer, he can tell an engaging story and his jokes are pretty funny; but for the American market, where this book seems to be aimed, they already have Jonathan Franzen and David Sedaris and Chuck Palahniuk doing this really really well, while also saying some pretty important things. In this book, Max Barry reminds me a bit of Clive James, a writer I have never warmed to, who always seems to be the loudest person laughing at his own jokes.

The wrap-up:
Australian themes - We are all guilty of materialism in the first world, Australians as much as any, but its interesting that Barry didn't choose to set his book here, maybe we just aren't shallow enough?
Australian characters - There is a vague reference to Scat being born in Australia but these are all ultra-American figures, instantly recognisable.
Australian settings - The book is set completely in Los Angeles.
Australian voices - Can a non-American skewer Americans better than a native? The only Australian voice is the author's.
Australian focus - In the world of these characters, nations are just facets of the global market, and nationhood is just another button to be pushed.

I guess that's all fine, but why?

Okay I admit I've probably been avoiding this post - the raison d'etre, the justification, the explanation post - why am I doing this? Or, more precisely, what am I doing this for? Or even more exactly, what am I hoping to learn or gain by blogging my year-long Australian reading saga?

I've been developing answers to this question over the past few months of reading, and I've come up with some. . . questions. Hopefully by the end of the reading year I'll be able to answer them for myself, and provide a suitable reason for all this. Not that its a chore: I've really liked almost everything so far, and it has fulfilled an earlier justification to give some form to my previously chaotic book-choosing method. But I'm now almost three months in, and reaching ten books, so here are some conclusive questions for me (and you, maybe) to consider. I may add to this list later as more questions arise.

In order of questions coming to mind:

1. Is there a distinct Australian writing "voice" that could be discerned even if you didn't know the nationality of the author?

2. Can we read as widely as we like, covering many literary forms and categories, while still staying within one geographical setting?

3. Do Australian writers pay credit to their birth or adopted country in their books? And should they?

4. Are Australian writers as "good" as their international counterparts?

5. What leads some readers to love Australian writers and read them avidly, and others to consciously avoid them?

Now, back to reading!

Philip Jones/Ochre and Rust

Written by a curator and historian from the South Australian Museum, this excellent book was the winner of the Non-fiction category in the 2008 Prime Minister's Literary Awards. Philip Jones obviously has a deep fascination for Aboriginal culture and history, and, married with his comprehensive knowledge of the Museum and its collection, is in a prime position to unearth some of the less well-known episodes in early Aboriginal-European contact.

He does this through the simple but powerful device of starting each of the nine chapters of the book with a photograph of one item from the Museum's collection, and using this item to provide a flashpoint for the historical events surrounding it. There are weapons and artefacts, of course, but also some unexpected items, like an early artistic work by Albert Namatjira and one of the dresses belonging to outback heroine/eccentric Daisy Bates. Jones chooses his items well to present his thesis that objects themselves can become historical examples of the grey area where one culture overlaps another. Each chapter is embellished with many more images of further items, documents, geographical settings, and most evocatively for me, contemporary photos of Aboriginal people peering hauntingly at the camera in some of our most remote locations. Much like the recent photo book First Australians, which accompanied the TV series of the same name, these photos are almost incredible records of that time when the photographers were stealing their subjects' souls while their countrymen were likewise stealing the very ground the people sat on.

Jones writes, however, with great restraint. For this is a scholarly work, despite the user-friendly images reproduced within the text and the helpful maps of the areas discussed, and he refrains from judgements of either side in these often bloody cultural struggles, saving his criticism for professional misconduct like the greed and insincerity of some of the Lutheran missionaries and the questionable map-making methods of some explorers. But while Jones always remains objective and thus humble I could not help but be impressed by his familiarity with so many disciplines. He jumps effortlessly from ethnography to historiography to anthropology to art history to lexicography to cartography and even to pyrography, the process of burning designs on wood or leather, in case you don't know what that is (I didn't). This makes for a fairly focussed reading effort, but as I said it is amply leavened with images and other prompts.

Not that the events he describes need a whole lot of "sexing-up". Every chapter reveals more and more obscure episodes from Australia's early settlement history; all of them fascinating if only for the extreme conditions faced by the Europeans, and the poignancy of what we know to have occurred as a result of European occupation of this country. Its hard to chose a favourite vignette, but the ochre-gathering expeditions that were once a staple annual event for the peoples of the Central desert and eventually warded then killed off by selfish white landowners came close for me. This chapter opens with a photo of a luminous, almost other-worldly lozenge of ochre collected around the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century, and it is that powerful image that keeps intruding on my thoughts, of how dust from a rock can be such a potent symbol of one civilisation's long decline and another's usurpation. The word Jones keeps coming back to is syncretism - the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles or practices - and the elephant in the room is that it has been always the earlier, less aggressive culture that has had to give way. Like a one-man museum himself, with Ochre and Rust Philip Jones successfully saves some of these items, people, and episodes from oblivion.

The wrap-up:
Australian themes - Covers some of the most important Australian themes - our connection to country, our shared history, our stained future.
Australian characters - Features unforgettable but largely forgotten Australian characters like the doomed Cubadgee, linguist John Bennett, and first curator of the South Australian Museum Edward Stirling.
Australian settings - Here you will find language group maps, photographs, and extensive cultural backgrounds of vast areas of Australia often passed over in popular Australian colonial history writing: the Central Desert, Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia.
Australian voices - Always fascinating, Jones reproduces many letters, scientific articles and journal entries to enhance his book with the weight of primary sources.
Australian focus - It is refreshing to read something so unapologetically focussed on the Australian experience, giving equal importance to the contributions of the colonisers and the first Australians.

Peter Singer/Pushing Time Away

As Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and one of the world's best-known modern philosophers I knew of Peter Singer but didn't actually know he was an Aussie. Pushing Time Away is only one of his many publications - including Practical Ethics, How Are We To Live?, and Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals, published in 1975, regarded as the starting point for the worldwide animal liberation movement. So, this is pretty illustrious company. I love my meat and haven't read anything else by Singer, but very much enjoyed this peculiar little conceit. A conceit because its not really a memoir, or hard history, or even an extended obituary - while being a good example of all three.

Singer's approach is simple enough - he never knew his maternal grandfather and discovers some letters that pique his interest seventy years after his grandfather dies. What he discovers is possibly what many of us wish to discover, that his grandfather was an intriguing, successful individual, revered in his own time. What he also discovers is what most of us can never hope to - his grandfather was similar to his grandson in many ways, was a celebrated writer, thinker and teacher, and was a contemporary and a confidante of Sigmund Freud, no less. Singer is a humble man, though, and seemingly grounded about his own success, so refrains from holding his grandfather in awe, and relates the story of his chequered life with sincerity, strong research, and, at times, comedy. This last quality is noteworthy because his grandfather, David Oppenheim's final years and fate are devastating, and hard to read after the illustrious ears of his youth and early professional life.

Oppenheim was a teacher and intellectual in early 20th century Austria - a period experienced by many as a Golden Age of thought, enlightenment and culture when Vienna was at the forefront of these prospects. We now know that this was a chimera - it took a world war to prove this - and David is one of the many walking casualties of that horrible war. He returns a decorated soldier but distant, chased by memories of carnage and loss. And things get progressively worse. He loses the inspiration to write, is frustrated professionally, and eventually becomes an enemy and ultimately a victim of the Nazi regime. David is a Jew in the darkest period of Jewish history, and all the more pathetic for his inability to see the dangers of the political situation as it steadily declines. Singer is proud of David's intellectual achievements, but he bemoans his scholarly remoteness: "in the hour when he needed it most, David's understanding of his fellow human beings failed him". David Oppenheim dies unheralded in the walled town/camp of Theresienstadt, Poland, one of the many millions.

His wife, Amalie, survives Theresienstadt and emigrates to Australia, bringing with her the many letters written to her by David throughout his life, and thus giving Singer the primary sources for his book. They provide a fascinating insight into he courtship, marriage and life of David and Amalie. In fact, for me they are the strongest part of the book. Singer touches on many historic moments but never belabours the historical detail, allowing the letters to specify one family's experience. He returns to some of the places of his grandparents' life, including, in one memorable passage, the school in Vienna where David taught classical languages and culture. It must have taken great restraint and sensitivity for Singer to relate the circumstances of his grandfather's demise without reverting to bitterness - although it may have just been a resignedness; it being pointless to begrudge the past really.

The most telling factor, that Singer keeps returning to, and which inspired him to write the book, is the closeness in intellectual rigour and even ethical positioning between David Oppenheim and himself. Considering he had never read any of his grandfather's writings or spoken to anyone in his family about his leanings, they arrive at an uncannily similar place. So, this is history, striated with family legend, and informed by a burning desire to understand humanity shared by two practical philosophers who never meet. It is not a light 'read', by any means, but a worthy project by a very confident and informed writer who is unforgivingly human. And if only we all had such a wealth of letters and published material from our own families, we might all be tempted to 'push time away' and find the things that bind us across the generations.

The wrap-up:
Australian themes - As a memoir, this book is written by an Australian emigre who is unconcerned by Australian themes.
Australian characters - Not so relevant in non-fiction, but the apparently tough-minded immigration officials who hinder the Oppenheim's emigration to Australia and thus seal their fate are chillingly real.
Australian settings - The Australia that the family members who do make it out come to is only thinly drawn.
Australian voices - Is there something particularly Australian about trying to delve into one's past?
Australian focus - Singer's focus is clear and Australia is just the end point.

Christos Tsiolkas/The Slap

Having been seriously affected by this novel, I haven't written anything or even read much for a week now. I've also changed jobs in the interim so The Slap will always stand out as the book that bridged two very different careers.

But I'm stalling. What to say about Christos Tsiolkas and The Slap? In a few words, it's one of the best Australian novels this century, possibly one of the greatest novels about contemporary Australian life ever written, and definitely my favourite in this reading year thus far. The book is at once clever and matter-of-fact, Tsiolkas's writing style so familiar, so authentic, that the characters and situations leap off the page and cross your path in the street. The eponymous slap, for instance, is so visceral yet almost expected, longed-for by the reader; but then it puts in train such a devastating series of events that you want it taken back, want the book rewound to the sunny, innocent moments before the slap occurred. Like the first scene of Cloudstreet, the slap scene is frightfully necessary.

It takes place in a suburban backyard in Melbourne, surrounded by a cast of players Tsiolkas allows us to get to know by astutely, and thrillingly, entering the lives of eight of them as he takes on their voice for each of the eight chapters of the novel. Each voice is distinct, and this would be an achievement in itself, but Tsiolkas takes it further by using these personas to pin down modern Australia, our preoccupations and presumptions, as precisely and as triumphantly as a butterfly collector. It must be said, that it is more middle class society that is his concern, but that particular Australian middle class that sags and sways over the definitions of other classes like a bloated belly over a belt. For Tsiolkas knows what makes us tick. His keen ear for our narcissistic speech, and eye for our foibles sometimes shock with the recognition of our own inner lives. is Christos looking over my shoulder right now? How can he see what I'm thinking?

And this is not just me, a middle-class, middle-aged middle Australian: he successfully masquerades as a seventeen-year-old gay boy, a seventy-year-old Greek grandfather, a troubled English immigrant, a thirty-something female Australian-Indian veterinarian. There are no excuses for this conscious multiculturalism either. As he says in his brilliant conversation with Sophie Cunningham on SlowTV he felt that this story was not being told on Australian pages - and he's right, not this way anyway. Our writers tend to either mask their multicultural background, like Alex Miller or Bryce Courtenay, or revel in it, like David Malouf or Nam Le. Authors are celebrated as "gay" writers, or "indigenous" writers, and rightly so, but Christos Tsiolkas takes on a new mantle: he is an Australian author, writing about the Australia he sees, and it is populated with third and fourth generation and new immigrants, gays, lesbians, Muslims, Christians, socialists, capitalists, white people, people of colour, the whole lot. I keep saying brave in these reviews but I do believe he is incredibly brave, or maybe just bold, in looking at Australia with an unflinching vision; he is political without needing to become personal.

This is where this novel succeeds so well compared to Richard Flanagan's dire attempt of a few posts ago. The Australia Tsiolkas presents is not always nice, and Howard's years do loom large over the novel in parts, but it is in the daily passage of ordinary people that politics has its most potent manifestations. There is no need for overblown characterisations: we live and love and fuck and feel in this time we are living, and, for my money, novels that recognise and celebrate this will always stun us, make us speak up at barbeques, remind us to keep a healthy perspective on ourselves, our world, and our immediate milieu. The people in this novel are all flawed, like us, and like us, they have within them the seeds for redemption.

I haven't said too much about the novel this time, sorry, but I urge you to just read it, discuss it with others, watch the SlowTV conversation, and let the issues and the urgent comments on our society pervade your life as I have. Can novels change you? Have I changed? Cover blurbs regularly insist that books will do this for you but I'm seldom convinced. Like the old joke about the social workers and the lightglobe, you have to want to change.

The wrap-up:
Australian themes - There are loads of themes here due mainly to the eight-way conversation with the reader, but also because that's the sort of writer Tsiolkas is - he cares about ideas and wants to toss them up in the air and see how they fall. The Australian way, no?
Australian characters - I challenge you to find more authentic Australian characters, more authentically characterised, in any recent novel.
Australian settings - The action is focussed on Melbourne. I was concerned at the outset that I might be in for another Melbourne-as-the-centre-of-the-universe diatribe but it actually made me miss the place.
Australian voices - The speech and thoughts of the characters in this book are devastatingly familiar. Keep watch for your own semantic demons.
Australian focus - Interesting. This book is certainly about Australia, and could only be set in Australia, but the concerns are deeply Human. Christos Tsiolkas is latter-day a Greek-Australian Homer: his words will cross boundaries.