I was having a chat with some nice people the other day, and one of them said, ‘There is nothing so sad as a moribund blog’. I’m not quoting exactly, but that’s basically the gist of it. As he said this, my heart swelled beyond typical size and I thought bleakly of my poor little blog sitting here, all alone, by itself.
But I have been doing other things, if not blogging, and two of them can be read by you, if you so choose. I interviewed Sydney fashion label Song for the Mute for new fashion magazine Collection. Song for the Mute have just won the 2011 L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival Designer Award, against some stiff competition. Collection is pretty gorgeous – it’s a hardcover magazine printed on lovely stock, and every page is perforated at the spine, so you can tear out any page with impunity.
The other thing keeping me busy of late has, of course, been Kill Your Darlings. For the new issue, available for pre-order this week, I interviewed Geoff Dyer, famed writer of many stripes. Dyer is a wonderfully interesting writer and also a charming raconteur. If you’ve read any of his twelve books (the subjects range from photography to jazz to military history, and he’s also an acclaimed essayist and fiction writer), you’ll know what I mean.
I was shocked and saddened to learn a couple of weeks ago that Hazel Rowley had passed away. As many of you know, Rowley was scheduled to do an Australian tour to talk about her latest book, Franklin and Eleanor.
My acquaintance with Rowley’s work began when I heard her interviewed on The Book Show about Richard Wright on the centenary of his death. Not a reader of biographies, I was surprised to find myself totally absorbed in Rowley’s details of the American writer, whose protest novel Native Son sold hundreds of thousands of copies when it was published in 1940. Rowley was a delightful interviewee, so obviously entranced with her subject, so humble:
How can I be so stupid? Who’s going to talk to me? What the hell do I think I’m doing?…Writing about a man, a black man, an American man? What do I know about this? Zero!
I planned to seek out Rowley’s biography of Wright – I’d never heard anything about him before, and his story was electrifying (an angry black writer, read widely by white readers and deeply influential upon later black writers, who became a communist, joined the John Reed Club, then moved to France).
But I came across Tête-à-tête first, which I couldn’t resist – being as I am conditioned to treasure great love stories. As Rowley writes in the preface, the book ‘is not a biography of Sartre and Beauvoir … This is the story of a relationship.’ Which for me was a sort of relief – I’m not well acquainted with the work of either, and haven’t particularly enjoyed Sartre’s fiction (which I suppose is akin to saying ‘I don’t think Shakespeare was so great at making paper planes’). Nevertheless, it was good to approach this book not burdened by my lack of philosophical knowhow – which was more than supplemented by Rowley’s familiarity with these existentialists’ oeuvres.
It’s a pleasure to track how Sartre’s and Beauvoir’s work developed and changed, and equally wonderful to discover how they supported and encouraged one another. Named after the type of communication the pair found most satisfying, the book is a tender portrait of how, among emotional and political upheaval, Sartre and Beauvoir continually returned to their particular brand of intimacy until Sartre’s death in 1980.
For a biographer to gain this reader’s trust, they must prove their depth and breadth of knowledge, and present themselves as a balanced teller of the particular story. Having interviewed Beauvoir in 1976, as well as many of Sartre and Beauvoir’s friends and family members, Rowley certainly does the former, also providing endnotes, a selected bibliography and a ‘note on sources’ that briefly describes the location and status of the various diaries, letters and other materials she studied. As to the latter – on the one hand, it’s clear how close to Rowley’s heart the two writers are, particularly Beauvoir:
When I read Beauvoir’s memoirs in the late sixties, I was exhilarated – intoxicated, one might say. She made the impossible seem possible. Didn’t we all want an intellectual partner with whom we could share our work, ideas, and slightest thoughts? Didn’t everyone want to write in Paris cafes amid the clatter of coffee cups and the hubbub of voices, and spend their summers in Rome in complicated but apparently harmonious foursomes? Who wanted monogamy when one could have freedom and stability, love affairs and commitment?
This is the kind of passion a biographer needs to stay the course with a subject, but a reader also wants a biographer who can be even-minded with the material, not a hagiographer. At once admiring and tongue-in-cheek, Rowley tempers her obvious interest in the two – as writers and as partners – with a clear-eyed view of the tangled family they eventually wrought. Small details help deconsecrate Sartre (‘He had been keen to get himself a German girlfriend but found he lacked the language skills’) and humanise him – at one point there’s a great image of the ambitious, workaholic academic carrying lunch to an ill Beauvoir, ‘taking great care not to spill it on the way’. Seen through the eyes of later lovers, though, the man is not so appealing. In particular, Sartre’s pursuit of the Kosakiewicz sisters wears its facts sordidly. Wanda, the younger ‘Kos’, was ‘appalled’ when the fifty-six year old Sartre kissed her – then twenty years old – in the back of a taxi. It wasn’t just Sartre who had grand appetites, though: both Sartre and Beauvoir pursued younger lovers, often sharing them. When she was a teacher, Beauvoir seduced a couple of her baccalaureate students.
From the beginning, Sartre and Beauvoir’s relationship was a singular one, with few precedents even in the pair’s social circle. Sartre was non-monogamous, and to counter jealousy, he suggested to ‘the Beaver’ that they tell each other everything, which he called ‘transparency’. Sartre wanted her ‘to share … all her thoughts with him’, and Beauvoir found this ‘as frightening as it was exhilarating’. This was to be a central tenet of their relationship, which Sartre called ‘primary’ and ‘essential’, but they did not extend the courtesy of transparency to their other, ‘contingent’ lovers; indeed, they often lied to them. The tension between the pair’s devotion to the ideal of transparency and the emotional consequences of their manipulations held for the rest of their lives, with many of their other lovers constantly requiring assurance, time, continued falsehoods and even funds. Sartre, particularly, continued to accumulate dependants, until he and Beauvoir were supporting several young women. Complicated affairs like these provided ample material for the pair’s creative endeavours, such as Beauvoir’s She Came to Stay and The Mandarins (though her memoirs arguably caused more commotion; one-time lover Nelson Algren reviewed one of the volumes, ending with ‘Will she ever quit talking?’).
Beauvoir was often worse off in these taxing situations. Only once did Sartre admit to having felt jealousy, and being attached to so many young women was eminently satisfactory for him; towards the end, he even said he lied to Beauvoir more than to anyone else – despite their pledge to be honest with one another. On the other hand, Beauvoir struggled with jealousy and was often tortured by worry – she was a woman; society found ‘freedom’ just that much more condemnable in her – and suffered no small anxiety about the edifice of lies the couple constructed in claiming the transparent life for themselves, and leaving the contingent life for others. After Sartre broke off his relationship with Bianca Bienenfeld, a former student and lover of Beauvoir’s, Beauvoir wrote: ‘I blamed us – myself as much as you, actually – in the past, in the future, in the absolute: the way we treat people. I felt it was unacceptable that we’d managed to make her suffer so much.’ It makes for uncomfortable reading, the The Second Sex‘s author bearing weary witness to her partner’s etiolated women. The bitter taste of Beauvoir’s reassessment is echoed in an affecting part of Rowley’s Book Show interview:
The disappointment came really when Simone de Beauvoir’s letters were published after her death and we did find out that she had lied to people and that they had both lied to people, and that she, to some extent, had lied to us readers as well as her lovers, and that was the disappointment.
Yet there is something incredibly salutary about reading this non-judgmental account, in respect of a story that could easily have been rendered merely as farce or muck. Rowley’s inquiring and fair mind has laid out what she discovered, for all to read, as if to regale us with ceaseless tales of her most treasured, high-functioning and flawed friends. This book is a wonderful, naturalistic feat of reverse engineering – from letters, books and interviews to lives.
Sartre and Beauvoir’s philosophical project – resolving to create their own lives’ meaning without recourse to any traditional rubric – was a difficult one. As Rowley puts it, ‘It is not easy, freedom. It brings with it the anguish of choice. It comes with the burden of responsibility.’ And though they did not always discharge that burden creditably, Sartre and Beauvoir forged memorable paths as readers, thinkers, writers, lovers. Tête-à-tête gives those of us intrigued by their work a chance to be caught up in the excitement and newness of the legend as if it were happening now, rather than forty, fifty, sixty years ago.
Hi all. Just another one of those cursory ‘direct-you-elsewhere’ posts, sorry. Hey, at least I am not stealing your money or anything like that. (Although, for all you know, I could be.)
Anyhow, I read Sherman Alexie’s War Dances for Killings and I blogged for The Book Show here about … this blog, actually. And how it’s helped me become a better reader.
Happy week!
I owe almost everything to internships (extreme claim alert), so without any further ado here are two three you might like to check out if you are interested in a career in publishing.
The Australian Book Review Sidney Myer Fund Editorial Internship is worth $20,000. It’s a full-time position and the intern will receive a six-month placement at the magazine. Wild times, you guys. This is a pretty rare opportunity. Applications close on 18 February.
Kill Your Darlings (where I am the online editor) has two unpaid intern positions available: Marketing and Publicity Intern, and Subscriptions Intern. Interns will work one day a week. Position descriptions are available here, and applications close on 14 February.
Just a note from me that even though the three positions are very different, any entry-level position at a small company is an excellent way to get an overview of how the whole organisation works.
I swear to God I just picked up The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest and CANNOT REMEMBER ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN IT.
Things I liked about Freedom:
Excellent dialogue. Often, the big difference between a good book and a great book is the utility and credibility of the dialogue. In a serviceable book, dialogue often reads as mere plot-mover. Franzen’s dialogue does not. For example, this fits-and-starts conversation between Patty Berglund and her good-doer lawyer father Ray after Ray finds out Patty has been raped by the son of the Berglunds’ ‘political friends’ the Posts:
‘Yes, but better to, uh. Life’s not always fair, Pattycakes. Mr. Post said he thought Ethan might be willing to apologize for not being more gentlemanly, but. Well. Would you like that?’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘Coach Nagel says I should go to the police.’
‘Coach Nagel should stick to her dribbling,’ her dad said.
‘Softball,’ Patty said. ‘It’s softball season now.’
I would say that, aside from being really quite moving, this snippet contains a fair whack of character (habits, interests, concerns – spoken and unspoken), elucidates the relationship between the speakers and absent characters, tells us a bit about the social milieu, and has a great rhythm to it – as well as being an efficient bit of plot assistance.
Casual mastery of activity-specific vocabulary. A lot of my favourite writers do this well, but Franzen does it at a level that straddles the divide between immense comfort/familiarity, and ostentatiousness. Hence, Patty’s skill in basketball grows: ‘Augmenting her reliable perimeter shooting was a growing taste for driving to the basket.’ Nice.
Getting some kind of insight into what it must be like to hang out with Jonathan Franzen. So a lot of great fiction writers have strong powers of imagination, but a lot of great writers also have acute observation and recording skills. Plenty of the scenes and characters in this book are shored up with the kind of detail that can only come from obsessive observation. However. Observing people in a public place is one thing – it’s quite easy to do without bothering anyone, but Freedom deals closely with a family and domestic settings. Where does he get that detail from?
It’s hard not to start imagining what it must be like to be friends with him. Imagine being like ‘Oh, hey Jonathan, come bake some cookies at my house with me and my kids,’ and Franzen is thinking ‘What a great opportunity to observe domestic minutiae’. When he comes over and you are happily mixing dough, You are thinking ‘God I love baking with maple syrup’, and Franzen is surreptitiously taking notes: ‘X is labouring to mold cookie dough into geometrically perfect spheres, taking such pains that the butter liquefies and makes the dough glisten darkly. She makes eleven balls for every one of the child’s. When the cookies come out of the oven X never fails to ask the child’s permission to eat the one “truly outstanding” cookie.’
That is, assuming you know Jonathan Franzen, which I am assuming you don’t. Anyway, just some advice, put yourself on guard in case of friendship with Franzen.
Reading about middle class people and being allowed to laugh at them because they are highly caricatured, even though analogues for most of the behaviour in this book would probably be easily found among my acquaintance. I think that one speaks for itself. The combination of detail and absurdity made me think irresistibly of actor/screenwriter Chris Lilley, whose faux documentaries hold up funhouse mirrors to many faces of Australian society. Hue and outcry! Well, wipe down your vanity.
Deep, wide, sprawling and comprehensive portrait of complex people. I honestly don’t remember the last time I read a large novel featuring characters of such detail and depth. Obviously, I need to read more widely and in more volume, but with Freedom I went spelunking joyfully into the histories and externals and laterals of this family. A lot of people have said that they found these characters unsavoury or unsympathetic, which I find difficult to believe as a person impatient with my own seemingly endless fallibility.
A reminder me that I can love novels. A consequence not to be underestimated.
Things I didn’t like about Freedom:
SPOILER FOLLOWS, SERIOUSLY, THIS IS A WARNING THAT BELOW I DISCUSS THE END OF THE NOVEL THOUGH IN NO GREAT DETAIL
Structural maliciousness. The best way I can think to put this particular criticism is taken from the book itself. A description of Joey Berglund’s perception of the ‘higher-order bad luck’ that seems to be haunting him goes as follows: ‘The culprit was something deeper, something not political, something structurally malicious, like the bump in a sidewalk that trips you and lands you on your face when you’re out innocently walking.’
I like the term ‘structurally malicious’, actually, its corporate poetry echoing the young Republican’s disregard for personal responsibility. But it is an apt descriptor for the much criticised death that occurs about two-thirds through the book, and what follows. I’ve heard other people describe their reaction to this as ‘Franzen really hates his characters’, but my response was more to decide that Franzen privileges structure and neatness above all else. The death was so out of left field that you could practically hear the machinery grinding against the strain of being taken in such an unnatural direction. And how nuclear and paradigmatic an ending! A friend of mine describes the book’s denouement as ‘cursory’ – I thought of it as the gift-wrapper’s final tamping down of the ribbon bow: here you go, a novel.
But the most confounding part is that to some extent I liked the ending and thought it suited, with its inevitable sadder-wiser ending and cheeringly redemptive flourishes, and it challenged what I thought I wanted from a novel. I like clear moral paths and consequences in young adult books (there’s a proclivity I don’t much want to explore without the aid of a mental health professional), but in literary fiction I like something a bit fuzzier (or something), don’t I? Why did I respond with such relief to such a surpriseless conclusion? I have no good answer yet, partly stemming from the fact that I am not sure how else I would have wanted the book to end.
I know most people are starting to look forward now, but I stumbled across an amusing video at bright stupid confetti the other morning, and I thought it might be quite fun to do a Culture Mulcher-style reflection on 2010′s sonic bounty.
The Boredoms at Melbourne International Arts Festival
The video I mention above was this video of the Boredoms’ famed 77 Boadrum performance. In Brooklyn, on the 7/7/07, 77 drummers gathered together at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park to form a giant drum salute. There are a lot of videos of the performance, but none of the videos available on YouTube really capture the bracing effect of several people thrashing out some tattoo in unison. I like this video for the interview they do with an attendee at the beginning: ‘I like drums. I like the number 777.’
The Boredoms came to Melbourne as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival to perform a Boadrum 10. Ten drummers was plenty overwhelming and mesmerising. I could see how it was possible to want to join a cult. Highlights included one member of the Boredoms being transported to the stage on a huge litter, banging at his kit with all abandon. See some photos here.
I started listening to Radiolab at the suggestion of my friends Jessie and Jon. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich present science documentaries with rich sound design, and are the teachers I always wish I’d had. Favourite recent stories include one about how Tasmanian devils were dying from tumors that were genetically identical (and, gross, described as being crumbly, ‘like feta cheese’) and another about how mining and geese led to life in an acidic lake. You can reach quite far into the archives at the website.
Nicki Minaj’s verse in Kanye West’s ‘Monster’
I’m still conflicted about Nicki Minaj. (Sorry, Anna.) I don’t know how to feel about her Eliza Doolittle accent and her wilful/flat conflation of Japanese and Thai peoples (‘When I was a Geisha he was a Samurai / Somehow I understood him when he spoke Thai’). WE DON’T ALL LOOK THE SAME. But her verse in Kanye West’s song ‘Monster’ blows me away. The first time I listened to it I had to reach for my asthma puffer. See it here, from 3:36 onwards.
Though let’s not talk about how tiresome I find the ‘Monster’ video, with all the dead-girl imagery. Even Minaj’s appearance has her teetering between mounting and decapitating a hooded woman, who turns out to be herself. Sucks to be a lady in the land of hiphop.
The Dirty Projectors at Golden Plains
It was raining, but I did not care. People who like The Dirty Projectors have been described as ‘people who like way too many toppings on their pizza’, and I used to agree until I think some weird chemical reaction occurred in my brain whereby I now love them. Couldn’t find a video of the performance, but here’s ‘Stillness is the Move’. Incredible song, but not the most exciting video, unless you like wolves, and guitarists rotating on a hillside.
Have One on Me, Joanna Newsom
Yes, I’m a fey lover of little birdies. This three-part album hit me in some good places, and the standout for me was the title song, which follows the adventures of Lola Montez, famed dancer and lover of many men. Montez’s story brings her from England to India, Germany, Switzerland, the United States and Australia during the goldrush, where she performed her ‘Spider Dance’, ‘raising her skirts so high that the audience could see she wore no underclothing at all‘. Newsom’s lyrics jump from third person to first, from myth to recount, and the song’s mix of tenderness and supplication furnish an affecting portrait of a maddening and maddened lover. There’s nothing quite like the way Newsom builds up to the ironic title line:
Meanwhile, I will raise my own glass
to how you made me fast and expendable;
and I will drink to your excellent health,
and your cruelty.
Will you have one on me?
Das Racist
I’m not including any specific album or song here, because I’m coming from a slightly impersonal angle with Das Racist. My friends have been pretty into this ‘conscious’/'deconstructionalist’ hiphop group this past year, making them pretty much inescapable for poor old me. But I find them pretty fascinating. So far, all their albums (Das Racist call them ‘mixtapes’) have been available for free, and they’re known for combining often comedic lyrics with music that both emulates and progresses the hiphop genre.
‘Rainbow in the Dark’, from Shut up, Dude contains plenty of pop-culture riffs and upfront subversions of the mainstream rap genre: ‘Das Racist is the new cool g-rap / Peep us at the Grammys, we’d like to thank gchat’. It’s thoughtful, and catchy.
Funny: Victor Vasquez, one of Das Racist’s members, challenged New Yorker cartoonist Farley Katz to a cartoon-off after he blogged about the Das Racist song ‘Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell‘ (a semi-dadaist call-and-response pal-investigators tune about two men who can’t find each other in a combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell restaurant). The Katz post that sparked the cartoon-off is actually pretty hilarious, but the resulting cartoons don’t leave anyone in doubt of who won the day.
