Illywhacker and the blue yabby

I’ve just discovered what a yabby* is.  

I’ve been reading Illywhacker (good title, don’t you think?), one of Peter Carey’s earlier novels. Brimming with Australian flora, fauna and psyche, it tells the tale of Herbert Badgery: aviator, jailbird, teller of tall tales and patriarch (of sorts).

Cheating before sitting down to nut out my own thoughts about it, I did a bit of a Google search (because I love finding out what a book’s about after I’ve read it…). Apparently it’s about the Australian national character. Yeah, I guess. But I kind of think it’s also about writing and the writer as ‘illywhacker’ (a trickster or con-man).

It’s not just Herbert Badgery who spins a good yarn and whose narrative you’re never sure you can believe. It’s not just his family who put themselves in cages for the public to gawk at. It’s Peter Carey, puppet master, ultimate illywhacker…

Too much? Okay well then. In case you’re interested it’s a neato book. Step up, take a look. Ladies and gentlemen, in the pages of this outlandish yarn you’ll find everything you ever dreamed possible. Perhaps more… disappearing Chinamen, electric chastity belts, outback-dwelling lesbians, the marvellous snake trick, a socialist dancer – is she woman or emu?, the clawed progeny of goanna and woman,  a severed finger, bush-tucker, the Great Depression (how great was it?) and much, much more. Oh and yabbies.

*A friend who grew up in Perth had one as a pet. Hers, she tells me, was blue. Illywhacker?

Hand me down your Kiwi book picks

A couple of weeks ago, I was back in En Zed and my Mum was kind enough to lend me her copy of NZ author Lloyd Jones’ latest novel Hand Me Down World.  It’s told by all the different people who encounter an illegal immigrant on her way through a variety of European countries (so each, ummm, you know, hands the story on to the next). It’s a fairly good book, I enjoyed it while I was reading it. It’s got a few flaws (I’m not sure whether it’s admirable or misguided to persist in writing novels about young black women when it’s so very far off the mark from your own reality) and some of the voices felt a bit similar, but overall worth a look.

It got me thinking about all the choice as kiwi books I’ve read in the past. From the tales of Donaldson’s Dairy’s canine scamp Hairy Maclary to Elizabeth Knox’s The Vintner’s Luck. So I’ve created a dubious rating system based on a beloved kiwi fruit (not the kiwi fruit) and dropped a few kiwi authored books that rang my bell in below.  Right then, grab a slice of Vogel’s, wash it back with that world famous in New Zealand beverage and feast your eyes on these little beauties.

And if you’ve got kiwi leanings, go on then, tell me your favourites. Or should I say… hand me down your Kiwi book picks.

The book: The Shag Incident; Stephanie Johnson

The case: A Comedy of Errors Auckland styles. A reclusive All Black, a case of mistaken identity, a Waiheke funeral and a poorly behaved dog. Laugh-out-loud satire.

Four out of five feijoas

The book: My Name was Judas; C.K Stead

The case: When your best mate is a bit of a narcissist, not to mention the self proclaimed Son of God what’s a bloke to do? C.K Stead’s calm, measured take on the Jesus story is a brilliant retelling from Judas’ perspective.
Four and a half out of five feijoas

The book: The Ten PM Question; Kate De Goldi

The case: A kids’ book that definitely crosses the children’s/adult fiction divide. Frankie’s got a lot to worry about: the end of the world, the strange shaped spot on his chest, where his bus fare’s going to come from and his agoraphobic, cake-baking Ma... 

Four out of five feijoas

The book: Tarzan Presely; Nigel Cox

The case: Sadly Nigel Cox passed away in 2006. Sadly, the Tarzan people decided to enforce their copyright and the book is no longer available (though you can get it second hand). It’s a fantastic read (in both senses). Brought up in the jungles of New Zealand (yeah, right), Tarzan Presley battles giant wetas (yeah right), saves Jane  (maybe) and moves to Memphis to record some of the world’s most popular rock n’ roll (yeah, right). Sounds like an ad for an average tasting beer? Nope. Totally unbelievable? Yes. But brilliantly executed.
Five out of five feijoas

And the smallest of all the stars in the Milky Way screamed out ‘Now Peter’...

I’ve just re-read my best book. It’s Peter Pan and it begins ‘All children, except one, grow up...’

I haven’t read it properly, cover to cover, since I was seven. So I’m relieved to report it’s still wonderful – packed with the things I loved as a child: adventure, pirates, Indians, mermaids, fairy-dust induced flight and, of course, a tick-tocking croc.

It’s also packed with some stuff I now love as a grown up (I flinch a little as I type the ‘g’ word Peter loves to hate). It’s bursting with a charming, wistful sort of humour. The villainous Hook – and only a truly black-hearted sort of person could wish to smoke two cigars at once – went to public school. There’s a kiss in the corner of Mrs Darling’s mouth that none of her children, or even Mr Darling , can quite reach. Tiger Lily, doesn’t want to be Peter’s mother but something else – who can say quite what – heartless boy.

Suffice to say J.M Barrie is fabulous and after years of refusing my Dad’s entreaties to read Barrie’s biography of his mother Margaret Ogilvy, I think I’ll graciously give in and do it. Even Hook would have to agree that’s only good form.

And if I ever have children I most certainly will be getting a Newfoundland dog to look after them.

I also have to say I felt a little teary as I read the final sentence and put my sellotape bound copy of the book down.  Not just because it was over but because I’m grown up. I’ll admit that I’ve never been able to fly (no really, never) but I did have lots of Neverlandish (Michael Jackson has ruined that name for us all) dreams about flying. I haven’t had a single one in what suddenly seems a long time.

But ooooh it was a good book.

Thirty-six books I haven't read

Aiaiaiaiaiiiiiiiiii.

I say this because I’ve just counted how many unread books are sitting, pages all crisp and un-dog-eared, on my bookshelf.

Thirty-six.  Aiaiaiaiaiiiiiiiiii.

So I’m going to cheat. B*gger the books I’ve been reading. Here’s what I’ve been avoiding. Grouped into loose categories and accompanied by a few dog-ate-my-homework excuses.

Should have read yonks ago

London the Biography – long
The Corner – do five seasons of The Wire get me out of jail free?
Homicide  – as above
The Glass Bead Game – the prologue is TEDIOUS
Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy – should read something on the financial crisis… but is this The One?
The Map that Changed the World ­– borrowed … must read and post back
Baby No-Eyes – I quite like Patricia Grace… no excuse to hand
The Complete Polysyllabic Spree
How to be Alone – one and a half essays into it… must try harder.  See New Year’s resolutions
The Three Musketeers – waiting for someone else to finish it. YOU know who you are 

Still on the shelf for the sake of appearance
Balzac: Nine Tales from Les Contes Drolatiques – sounds hard
The Great War for Civilisation – has the moment passed?

Erring too much on the side of non-fiction and other unlikely contenders…
The Collapse of Globalism
Brothers Grimm Complete Fairy Stories  – ‘and then the soldier cut off the witch’s head’… tedious
Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You  – I bet it can
Dreams from my Father – sorry Mr President… I do hear you have a particular way with words
Stonefish – dunno, didn’t read The Bone People…
A Short History of Nearly Everything – got the text message bed-time version back in 2005
No 1. Ladies Detective Agency  – sigh
The Trouble with Physics  – it sounds too, too difficult, is the trouble
Wool to Weta 
Hitler’s Empire – he was a bad man…

Left by a friend, sibling or parent
The Unconsoled
Tales from Firozsha Baag
Touching from a Distance
The Harmony Silk Factory

The Art of Power

Baudolino

Meh!
John the Revelator – sorry McGee
Blood River – ditto
The Binding Chair
Prochownik’s Dream

On the shelf fewer than six months
A History of God
Mao: the Unknown Story
Out of Mao’s Shadow
Alone in Berlin

American Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?

American Psycho killer, the Talking Heads might warble sinisterly over Patrick Bateman’s six-foot Duntech Sovereign 2001 speakers in Brazilian rosewood… qu'est-ce que c'est?

Qu'est-ce que c'est, indeed, Mr Easton Ellis… qu'est-ce que c'est?

Brutal, clever, despicable and funny. One of the better (near best) and one of the worst books I’ve read.

You know the premise, you’ve probably seen Christian Bale (perfectly cast, I bet) as Patrick Bateman: Wall Street wealthy, obsessed with luxury goods, restaurant reservations, torture, mutilation and murder (animals, children, women, homeless people, he’s not picky – though he seems to leave blokes with jobs alone, give or take a work rival and a taxi driver).

Despite this year marking its 20^th birthday, it felt like a pretty contemporary read. The technology, fashion and music are old but the themes are familiar: a glut of vapid pop culture, a recession, a rise in homelessness to match it, a load of moneyed chaps in designer pinstripes who protest they’ve got nothing to do with it all (Bateman goes a step further and gouges out a homeless man’s eye). Trade Bateman’s Sony Walkman for an iPod touch, swap Les Misérables for the Glee soundtrack and abracadabra alacazam … it could be 2011, no?

And so, the book hypothesizes, satirically: preppy consumerism and bland vanilla culture spawns knife-wielding psychosis (I was so bored listening to Genesis, Whitney Houston and the English cast of Les Mis on CD that I just had to kill someone…) or perhaps just that such a culture could disguise such a psychosis.

At any rate, living in a city that pays a fair bit of homage to the bling (I present you with the queues outside Chanel in Tsim Sha Tsui on 23 December) it feels very relevant.

So what did I like? The obsessive descriptions of who furniture, clothes and anything else consumable was ‘by’; Patrick’s fixation with his David Onica painting (right before he kills his ex with a nail gun, she lets slip that he’s hung it upside down); the routine mistaken identity – all the guys he knows have the same haircuts, suits, girls...

But of course I hated the decapitation, the cannibalism and vicious violence against women and particularly, the scene with the rat. Though the title gives it away, right? It’s a book about a psycho killer, the violence is there for a reason. Is it gratuitous? Yes. Did I stop reading it word for word towards the end? Yes. If I were his editor, would I have asked Bret Easton Ellis to take out some of the gory bits? Probably not. And do I think it would be a better book without it? No.

So… if you don’t have the stomach for gut-drenched horror, I say run, run, run, run, run, run, run awaaaaaay from part-time banker, full-time homicidal maniac and Talking Heads fan Patrick Bateman. If you’re okay with skim reading, and the blackest of black-hearted satire then I say do it (read it in the afternoon when it’s sunny and you know the world is not such a bad place).

Apologies to Christian Bale, I don't think I'll ever be able to watch the movie. I couldn’t handle the rat scene.

Rolled up rugs, ticket stubs and other literary festivities

A few months ago I stuck up my hand and volunteered to help out at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival.

An act of altruism? Yes, well sort of...

An act of miserly cunning motivated by the desire to hear some people I’d heard of and admired (if not yet actually read) as well as some I hadn’t heard of but hoped to admire, without paying for a ticket? Yes, well sort of…

Motivation aside, the festival rolled round two weeks ago. I’ve had an enjoyable fortnight taking ticket stubs, picking up authors from hotels, passing microphones round rooms full of eager audience members, pointing out the loos, finding out where the loos are in order to point them out, putting up banners, pulling down banners and writing and issuing poorly spelled receipts for on-the-door tickets.

And an even better time… hearing Emma Donoghue talk about her research techniques (rolling her five year old up in a rug to see whether he could escape), sipping coffee listening to Amitav Ghosh’s thoughts on the Opium Wars, environmental destruction and whether his kids have read his books, flagging Jeffery Archer to hear Craig Silvey and Brian Castro at the Australian Consular General’s stunning (and difficult to find) Repulse Bay residence, and hearing Ex-Aussie PM Kevin Rudd’s daughter Jessica talk about why the label chick-lit doesn’t offend her.

Oh yeah, and all this means I’ve added the following to my gots-ta-read list:

1. Room (wasn’t going to do it, but if Ms Donoghue’s son is really putting all that effort into making sure his Mum’s stories are properly researched then I’ll give it a go – plus it sounds less Flowers in the Attic and more, umm, charming than I was expecting given the subject matter. Hooray)
2.  Burying the Bones – Hilary Spurling’s biography of West Virginian born, China-raised Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Pearl Buck whose 1931 novel The Good Earth changed the way many Americans thought of China and the Chinese
3. The Good Earth – I have it on good authority (Hilary Spurling’s) that it’s as wonderful a read today as it was in 1931
4. Rhubarb and Jasper Jones – both by Australian author Craig Silvey. Silvey is one of those rare people who just knew what they wanted to do when they grew up. He shunned University and age 19 sat down to write. He’s been awarded the prizes to suggest he definitely did the write thing…
5. When a Billion Chinese Jump – part travelogue, part environmental missive. Terracotta Warriors and the Great Wall? Nope. When Jonathan Watts toured China he sought out evidence of the environmental degradation the country’s rapid industrialization has wreaked on its landscape. The book examines the environmental issues facing China as well as the intriguing line-up of characters Watts met along the way. 

Adventures in the all-American arts

Mortality, Hitchcock and the metaphysical; beauty in New York; and democratic adventures in the brave new world of Jackson’s America... all-American and art focused is the best way to sum up my reading over the last few weeks.  The books and the case for each, below.

The book: By Nightfall

The case: reflecting on art and beauty and reaffirming that I’m lucky to be an only child...  Peter Harris is a forty-three year old art dealer searching for the real deal: an artist who creates masterful and beautiful art. Instead his search leads him towards his wife’s beautiful but troubled f***-up of a younger brother. Unsettling from the moment you clock where Peter may be headed, the novel is itself a thing of beauty, filled with the kind of longing and resignation with which you’d rather not identify. The plethora of literary and artistic references Michael Cunningham has loaded into his prose can occasionally grate, but if you make like me, eschew Wikipedia and embrace your ignorance it’s still a compelling read.

The book: Parrot and Olivier in America

The case: My book group didn’t like it (pretty unanimously) but I thought it was wonderful. These things are subjective you say? No, it’s clear that they are wrong. From the celerifere sketch on page 2, I was riveted. Peter Carey was inspired by the writings of French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville and has created his own guillotine-scarred aristocrat, Olivier de Garmont, loosely based on Tocqueville. As the title suggests, he partners Olivier with Parrot, an English servant with a chequered background in art and printing via Botany Bay and sends them off to America together, unhappily, to witness democracy in action. The result is a cheeky, surprising and colourfully written tale, using language that’s florid in an enticing, entertaining, never (though I must admit that the book group don’t agree with me) boring way.

The book: Point Omega
The case: Don DeLillo’s latest novel is a long, short read: at only 148 pages it took me the better part of a week to finish. It's inspired by, and opens and closes with scenes that take place at, an installation of 24 Hour Psycho, an artwork which slows the Hitchcock film down to run over 24 hours. Part murder mystery, part reflection on the metaphysical, Point Omega requires careful reading. DeLillo decelerates his characters, their thoughts and actions, shepherding them out into a desert location where the days run into each other and life is drawn out. Overall, interesting if not exactly enjoyable.

World Book Night, NZ Book Month and the HK International Literary Festival

Silent reading is out. Boisterous sharing of books, reading out loud and talking excitedly about writing is in pretty much everywhere (or at least in the three places that mean the most to me).


Hong Kong: March 8 to 18 is the Hong Kong International Literary Festival... there's a great line up of authors and events and I, for one, am very excited. The full line up is available on http://www.festival.org.hk


New Zealand: March is NZ Book Month, a time to celebrate Kiwi authors and read their books. With Whitcoulls in administration and Christchurch booksellers struggling with the tragedy of the Christchurch earthquake it's been a difficult time for the Kiwi book industry. Pay homage to Christchurch, help out a local bookshop and read a cracking good yarn, by buying a book by the likes of Christchurch writers Ngaio Marsh or Margaret Mahy. The NZ Book Council website also has an excellent resource with files on over 500 Kiwi authors and their books if you're looking to introduce yourself to a new-to-you Kiwi author. 


London: the stage is being set in Trafalgar Square for World Book Night on March 4. Go join the masses, get your hands on a free book and stay up all night reading it with the likes of Margaret Atwood.

The won thing: celebrating Shaun Tan

Forget Natalie Portman, Colin Firth and The King’s Speech. The Oscar win everyone should be talking about is The Lost Thing’s win for best short animation.  There’s a particular rabbit-shaped place in my heart for Australian picture book illustrator and Lost Thing creator Shaun Tan. So this morning, when I heard he’d won, I gave myself a little high five and pulled some of his books down to re-examine them and wonder at his creative genius.

If you want to wonder at them yourself – or at least wonder at some of his works of mechanical, architectural and zoological fantasy – noodle over to http://www.shauntan.net. For me, while The Lost Thing (the book on which his Oscar winning short is based) is both intriguing and beautiful, Tan’s two best works are The Arrival and The Rabbits.

The Arrival really is a picture book. Using not a word throughout, it tells the story of an immigrant leaving his family and home to journey to a new land. Tan’s fantastical creatures and buildings are at their most effective, showing how much of a stranger in a strange land, how lost and uncertain the Arrival feels in his new country.

In The Rabbits Tan provides the illustrations for Tomorrow When the War Began author John Marsden’s text.  The Rabbits is really an allegory for the colonisation of Australia and Tan’s illustrations give Marsden’s words real power. Make sure you’re sitting down when you get to the page with the words ‘and they stole our children’. 

Social media mooch round-up

Mooching around social media sites and other book blogs this week I've caught me these links:

1.    On my to-read list: Swamplandia! and People of Paper
2.    Reading the Oscar nominees like a book
3.    Rubber duckie, you're the one...
4.    iPrince of Denmark... Hamlet's playlist
5.    Extracting odd titles: Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Kahn Way