James Kelman – ‘Dirt Road’ Paul Theroux – ‘Deep South’

In 1917 HL Mencken, writer, regarded the lands south of the Mason-Dixon Line ‘…as the bunghole(s) of America, a cesspool of Baptists, a miasma of Methodism, snake charmers, real estate operators and syphilitic evangelists. And an artless place to boot.’ He commented that, specifically, ‘Georgia is at once the home of the cotton-mill sweater, of the Methodist pastor turned Savonarola and the lynching bee.’ (Paul Theroux, ‘Deep South’ p222). So I checked in with Mr Theroux and James Kelman to see if much had changed. Theroux’s book and Kelman’s ‘Dirt Road’ are both worthy tomes but, gee, they took some getting through.

I was attracted to Kelman’s novel firstly because he is a Booker Prize winner. Secondly, I purchased as it dealt with, according to a laudatory review I read, the healing force of music for troubled souls. Entering into the book, I was immediately struck by the quality of the author’s prose, as well as his disdain for the apostrophe. But there has to be more to bound printed pages than the excellence of the wordsmithery, even if his casting of conversation in the Scottish lilt and southern drawl was commendable. There needs to be a story – but this one moved along at a more glacial pace than the Mississippi meanders through its delta. Admittedly it was the language that kept me going; that and the desire to find out if the lad finally wins the girl.

‘Dirt Road’ is half a coming-of-age saga, half a tale of the Southern byways – the latter being the case with the great American travel writer’s non-fiction take as well. Interestingly we tend to forget that Paul Theroux once excelled at fiction, being responsible for such product as ‘Saint Jack’, ‘The Mosquito Coast’, ‘Half Moon Street’ and ‘O-Zone’ – but more on him later.

Kelman’s tale centres on a grief stricken teenager, Murdo, who, together with his dad, the silent and traumatised Tom, have lost their mother/wife and sister/daughter in quick succession. Tom decides an American holiday is just the ticket to escape the blues, so they leave their island, off the western coast of Scotland, to escape to the US, planning to stay with rellies in Dixie. Getting there by a circuitous route, young Murdo, an accordion toting folkie-to-be of some local repute, discovers zydeco, as performed by the remarkable Queen Monzee-ay and her washboard playing granddaughter. Murdo is immediately attracted to both, for different reasons. He performs with them on a whim; the black musicians being so mightily impressed they invite him to take the stage with them in a few weeks time when they perform at a festival in a place called Lafayette. Dad and the lad continue on their journey to their welcoming relatives – unfortunately a fair distance from the happening-to-be in a field near Lafayette, Louisiana. Adding to his confusion is a town by the same name much closer to where he is staying. It’s at this stage that the novel becomes more boggy than Culloden. Murdo proceeds to spend an inordinate amount of time camped in his host family’s basement, trying to figure out how to reunite with his newly made musician friends – especially that girl. Towards the end, this offering from Kelman picks up the pace as Murdo does a runner with his father hot on his tail, but by this time I was thankful I’d reached the final pages. I was over it. It was an easy novel, despite its positives, to let go of.

And sadly, I felt the same way about ‘Deep South’. Was that because Theroux went over the same territory, just with seasonal variation, as he made the trip from his New England home towards the Gulf in Autumn (sorry Fall), Winter Spring and Summer? Was it because he self-drove those byways instead of using the conveyance we most associate with him – the railroad? With ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’, ‘Riding the Iron Rooster’, ‘The Old Patagonian Express’ and other such titles he made his name as a travel writer par excellence. As an aside, whilst I was reading this, I encountered a well-journeyed shop keeper in Richmond village who was inspired to go places she would never have countenanced before she came across this author’s writings, even taking the same trains. And perhaps there is one final question – is age catching up with the famed describer of exotic locales?

But the book did thoroughly explain to me, in no uncertain terms, as to why the Trumpster was able to capture the disaffection of the American heartland thus taking him to the Presidency. Over and over again Theroux railed about the destruction of American industry due to globalisation. It’s pulverised the economy of much of the South and ergo the lives of huge swathes of its populace; what with the transition of their jobs to south of the border down Mexico way, as well as to China and India. Most of the towns he visited were just shells of their former glory, their inhabitants existing well below the poverty line – black and white. There are still immense racial divisions and antagonisms, as well as a fissure between urban and rural of both races. He also points to the deep distrust held by many to anything associated with the Clinton family.

Theroux meets many of the poor and down-trodden. The stories they told were uniformly heart-breaking, but by the end there were just so many of them it seemed to defeat the purpose. He also heard the tales of those doing their best to assist these defeated souls – including some from outside the region who were often viewed with suspicion as do-gooding interlopers. In his travels he bumps into the former wife of the great BB King – and does she have an interesting word or two to say about her ex. He encounters numerous men by the name of Patel, all from the state of Gujarat in India. A Patel ran every single motel he stayed in – could these be the same industrious people who seem to be behind the counter of seemingly all United servos here?

But, overall, the wordsmith’s impression of the people of the South, with some notable exceptions, was that they abounded in ‘…kindness, generosity; a welcome I had found often in my travelling life in the wider world, but I found so much more of it here that I kept going…’ The fact that he did so, on and on and on, is perhaps not such a plus for the reader.

‘Deep South’ is illuminated by the images of the great Steve McCurry, but more illumination would have been gained by an inclusion of a map of his travels for those of us not so familiar with the geography of these former Confederate states. As Theroux points out, with the US pumping so much foreign aid into the third world, some would find it at odds with such poverty on the home front down south. Maybe Trump will pay more attention to those who, through no fault of their own, are doing it tough from the Georgia shore to the Ozarks.

Not since Kennedy has there been a President as charismatic as Obama, but the hope that came with him had well and truly dissipated in the south by the time these two books were written. Middle America has now gifted the planet the ultimate wild-card. Can he conjure much needed change for those who demonstrated how weary of the political elite the voters in these regions were? Time will tell.

Paul Theroux Website = https://www.paultheroux.com/

‘The Boy behind the Curtain’ ‘Island Home’ ‘Scission’ – Tim Winton

He’s a living national treasure. In his fiction Tim Winton takes the pulse of what has and does make us tick as Australians, particularly those of us who grew up on our nation’s great littoral and away from the mega-cities. He connects us to the sea – and to where the bush or desert meets the sea. His books, like the television series such as the iconic ‘SeaChange’ and these days ‘800 Words’, despite the latter being set in NZ, help nurture the urge to make our own lives more elemental, less digitalised; less rapacious. Perhaps just plain simpler – maybe somewhat the way it used to be.

Of course ‘Cloudstreet’ has been the golden egg for him – and for many Australians it is the best book written in this country. It’s a classic, but if this scribe had just one of his to choose from to snuggle up to on a desert island with it would be ‘The Riders’ – perhaps with ‘Dirt Music’ in reserve. But no less important has been his fare for younger folk. His ‘Lockie Leonard’ trilogy hit a nerve for a generation, linked in with its own televsion series. The lad going scumbusting was a favourite staple of mine in the classroom for years. ‘Blueback’ is another treasure.

As Malcolm Knox, no slouch in the wordsmithery department himself, has commented on Winton that he ‘...has been shy about revealing himself through the clearer glass of non-fiction writing.’ This has changed, though, in recent times. Long content to pass on certain messages through the words of his fictional characters, he first started to expose himself with the fight to save Nigaloo Reef. Then, last year, TW peeped further above the parapet with ‘Island Home’. And in 2016 went bravely over the top with ‘The Boy Behind the Curtain’ – so in his later years the shyness has dissipated.

‘Island Home’ was much about the landscape and its effect on the mind. With the latest publication, it is more about the mind itself – revealing what, indeed, makes him tick. But, of course, I, as a long time reader, thought I had a fair handle on that anyway. I was wrong. We all know of Winton’s love of the briny, particularly surfing, that, for some, can take the form of a religion. Then there’s his impressive ‘get’ of our indigenous people’s connection with country. In both of these non-fiction tomes there’s passion expressed on the big issues, developed through his personal history. He may be slow to rouse, but in the end, he’s pulling no punches. He knows the way it has to go – all of us do if we have a brain to bless ourselves with. But with the likes of Abbott – as well as Abbott-lite in Turnbull – we’ll never get there. In the bigger picture, throwing Trump into the mix, it would seem the task is pretty hopeless. Knowing doesn’t develop the collective will, but Tim W’s writing in both of these outings sure gives encouragement to make headway.

The major aspect of the author’s make-up I didn’t know was his connection to evangelical religion. When Winton was a kid his father, a motor cycle cop, had a near death experience when he came off his bike. A pall came down on young Tim’s household as his dad battled to recover from his ordeal. One of his carers was deeply into religion and his father was converted. Back in the day this resulted in the whole family becoming church-goers. Most of us are formed by home upbringing and school as the power of organised religion wanes. For Tim it seems it was family and the Bible. ‘Even if the Australian society of my childhood was militarily irreligious, the church was my first and most formative culture. It was, in effect, the village I was raised in, and in many senses this meant I grew up in a counter culture, although it was the sort in which beads, feathered hats and granny glasses were worn without the sense of performance that arrived with the hippies.’

His family became happy-clappers, joining the Church of Christ, an Americam import. All this ran kilter to my impressions of Winton, but undoubtedly it had a profound impact. In the tale ‘Twice on Sundays’, from ‘A Boy Behind the Curtain’, even though some of what occurred to him as a member of this church’s congregation seems a tad spooky, it was here, rather than at school, that he was exposed to story. And we, as his readers, excusing the pun, thank heavens that he did.

Much in both books has seen the light of day in stand-alone airings for newspapers and journals, but there is mint new writing as well. In ‘TBBTC’s’ ‘Stones for Bread’ we have an example of his passion as expressed back in March of 2015 for the Fairfax Press. Here we have Winton using his pen to scribe his disappointment at our politician’s appalling treatment – anti-Christian treatment – of those refugees asking our country to keep them safe. With this article his whole being is exposed for pot-shots to be aimed from the far right and our odious shock jocks – but, of course, there’s safety in numbers, to an extent. His is by no means a lone voice decrying our leaders’ hypocrisy, on many fronts, in placing the innocents into such dire situations on off shore islands.

As one would expect, there’s some lovely stuff in ‘Island Home: A Landscape Memoir’. The image on the cover and endpapers, with their immense beach and tiny human figures, gives our first indication of how this writer views the vastness of a country, a vastness that isn’t entirely confined to the Outback alone. There are a humongous number of kilometres of almost untouched coastline. Early on here he remarks on how he found the difference from his homeland to what he found on his European adventurings. Visiting that continent he struggled with scale, in that ‘...the dimensions of physical space seemed compressed. The looming physical pressure of mountains cut me off from the horizon. I’d not lived with that kind of spatial curtain before…For a West Australian like me, whose default setting is in diametric opposition, and for whom space is the impinging force, the effect is claustrophobic. I think I was constantly and instinctively searching for distances that were unavailable, measuring space and coming up short.’

I loved the essay ‘Barefoot and Unhurried’. Here Tim writes of the pleasures of grandfatherhood – of how he’s watching his offsprings’ children ‘…taking the world in through their skin…Being short and powerless kids see the world low down and close up…In childhood you own little more than your secret places, the thoughts in your head…’ and so on. Magic stuff – stuff that I see in my own precious granddaughter and will see in the one on the way. He went on to recount his own childhood of freedoms where there was, ‘...strange comfort in the hiss of the stick I trailed in the dirt all afternoon, and in the whispery footfalls on the empty beach.’ That bit got to me. What got to Delia Falconer, in her review of ‘Island Home’, was when Winton went exploring the cliffs facing Ningaloo and he happened on a cave. He entered and discovered it seemed to be the place the local kangaroos came to die, their carcasses then mummified by the dry desert air. These were, he writes, ‘…still themselves, still beautiful…like an ancient priestly caste keeping vigil even in death.’

For a while our four times Miles Franklin winner-to-be lived in Albany in the era when Australia’s last whaling station was in operation. As a callow kid he loved going down to where the flensing yards were located to watch the tourists, on their viewing platforms, turn green and retch at the smell and sights before them as the behemoths from the deep were disemboweled. ‘This was what the town was built on – a century and a half of seizing, killing, breaking and boiling.’ That kid went on to write ‘Blueback’. He tells of the men, in ‘Corner of the Eye’, that helped shape the values he holds today in regards the environment. They came to him, via television, into his family lounge room. There were Harry Potter, Vincent Serventy and dare I say it, Rolf Harris, in ‘Rolf’s Walkabout’.

Another strong impression was made on his mind by a recluse. This story is told in ‘Waychinicup’, relating to an area now a national park. Frank was ‘… a squatter in search of peace and quiet.‘ and the future Booker Prize double nominee became ‘… a puppy like nuisance intruding on the space of a bloke who treasured his privacy.’ Frank, with his wheelbarrow, used for carting goods to his remote location, became the inspiration for the old hermit a lost couple encounters in his tale ‘Wilderness’, featured in his first short story collection, ‘Scission’, from 1985. Several yarns, the now 56 year old, relates from his childhood in the two books under review here, such as when he and his father came across an accident victim during his youth, were inspiration for tales in this collection.

With ‘Scission’ one can see that, at this early stage, his writing is not the powerful beast it becomes. And not all his stories work – for this reader anyhow. To me he was fine in the core, but endings were problematical. Perhaps he learnt that he’d be more at home in the longer form – he certainly would be once he prised the remarkable ‘Cloudstreet’ out of himself. Still, there was much joy to be had in ‘Scission’ with tales such as ‘A Blow, a Kiss’, ‘Thomas Awkner Floats’ and ‘Neighbours’. In these we can sense the future.

‘When I was a kid I liked to stand at the window with a rifle and aim it at people.‘ This was the unsettling opening sentence to ‘The Boy Behind the Curtain’. We’re sucked in from the get-go. For Winton, as for me, guns were a part of life as a child in our shared era. We were easy around them. My father taught me the fundamentals and the dangers – and in no uncertain terms were we to not deviate from the guidelines he laid down for their use. We knew where the ammo was kept – and there it would stay, unless we were in his company to discharge it. For our country Port Arthur changed everything, but I had long before distanced myself from any form of gun culture. But as a kid it was fun to imagine – even if Winton took it a little further.

And in another story I found out what a boodie is. Reading about this animal here I felt a bit like Martin Clunes who came to Tassie as part of his documentary series, ‘The Islands of Australia’, discovering, as well as actually holding, an animal he’d never heard of – our quoll. I doubt I’ll ever handle a boodie. Winton had never heard of the creature either until he was outback and a station leaseholder, John Underwood, introduced him to the animals’ deserted burrows. John explained to Tim that the little creatures were extinct on the mainland since the 1960s, but still could be found on a couple of isolated islands in Shark Bay. Tim was explained to that the boodie was a relative of the woylie??? It became clearer for Tim when he heard they were types of bettongs. Tim doubted he would ever get to see one. Slowly, carefully the boodie is now being introduced back into highly protected areas on the mainland. It was a delight to read of the author, along with Tim Flannery and Luc Longley, of basketball fame, helping to introduce boodies to their new surrounds. So Tim got to handle a boodie.

In ‘The Boy behind the Curtain’ there’s so much to give pleasure. His paean to Elizabeth Jolley, an early mentor, is very engaging. He also takes us into the arguments concerning sharks’ rights, when it comes to the shallows, and he examines his own role, when he first put his head above the parapet, in ‘The Battle for Nigaloo Reef’.

‘We rise to a challenge and set a course. We take a decision. You put your mind to something. Just deciding to do so it gets you half way there. Daring to try.’ This quote is from Winton’s 2013 novel ‘Eyrie’. The legend has been a published wordwrangler since 1981 and as with the quote, he has dared himself in so many ways, when he’s been at the crossroads during his career. He dared to write at so young an age, dared himself to get involved in causes that were right and he dared to open himself up to scrutiny in ‘Island Home’ and ‘The Boy Behind the Curtain’. You can keep the reader at arm’s length with fiction, but now we know much more about the man, thanks to these two publications. What will he dare to do next I wonder? We wait in anticipation.

Link to Winton’s 2015 Fairfax article ‘Stones for Bread’ = http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tim-wintons-palm-sunday-plea-start-the-soulsearching-australia-20150328-1ma5so.html

Along with the street talk, musings and whisperings of Oslo Davis’ cartoon oeuvre, Judy Horacek is a favourite constant in my newspaper of choice, the Age. She also shares a small space, as well, with the likes of Dyson and Weldon in this metropolitan daily most days. When so much that has been savoured about our newspapers is being lost as they attempt to stay afloat in the digital age, there are still treats to be had, such as those small treasures provided by Judy H et al. Newspapers, it is presumed, will eventually disappear – I just trust this does not occur in my lifetime. Reading a newspaper on-line is nothing I would relish. Perusing them off-line is the way to go for me – but then so much about the world I was once comfortable in has changed.

Judy Horacek, in my view, is one of our very best conveyers of a message, through a simple illustration, in the form of a cartoon. Simple though the drawings may be, in them often the message can be the cause of much contemplation. At other times, what she produces is pure whimsy. She’s had thousands of her marvellous images published in all forms of print media and as well, her distinctive figures, with their regulatory pointy noses, grace greeting cards, tea towels and t-shirts. She is also an illustrator, sometimes to the words of Mem Fox. Together they produced the beloved ‘Where is the Green Sheep?’ The two have recently toured together, including to our island, promoting their delightful new collaboration, ‘This and That’.

Under her own steam Judy H has published children’s picture and board books to further enchant Australia’s future. She’s had seven books of her own cartoons published, which brings me to the point of this scribbling. I like Avant postcards – those free cards that spruik new product or emerging artists’ work, found on stands around our major cities. I’m a frequent visitor to them here in Hobs. On one last weekend I spotted Horacek’s unique style – complete with a green sheep, many pointy noses, a red heart and kissing fish – so I grabbed a handful.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have saddened me, as I probably had the bull by the horns, but reading the little descriptor on the reverse of the image, I found this Avant offering was a plea for some crowd-funding to get Horacek’s next book of cartoons off the ground. I immediately thought this was a negative reflection on the state of Australian publishing – the fact that such a well-known contributor to our culture cannot get her product out there with the support of our publishing houses. As difficult as this is now, it will soon be made much harder by yet another crazy, short-sighted proposal from our Federal leadership. As it turned out, on discussing this with my beautiful writerly daughter, there may be other factors at play. Judy H’s decision to go down the crowd-funding route may be a reaction to the time it takes to get something ready for the market place through normal channels; or it could be a means of cutting out the middle man.

I would have liked to have made a contribution to her cause, but my reluctance to use the ether to hand over money prevented me. In compensation, I will buy the end product if I spot it in my travels, as I did when I recently picked up Oslo’s new offering. People like Davis and Horacek are national treasures and warrant taxpayer’s support, along with opera companies and symphony orchestras. They reflect our times and ping our consciences.

Judy H’s website = https://horacek.com.au/

In the north western homelands of my youth I became a mullet fisherman. That was post-mobility though. Prior to my father giving me my first banger, a Fiat with suicide doors, I was confined. I couldn’t get to mullet. My fishing was down at what is now termed Burnie Port which is, in this litigious age, well and truly off limits to the general public. But back in my youth it was a mecca for kids having their first fishing experiences. On the seaward side of Ocean Pier was a ledge, and we wanna-be fishermen flocked there after such piscatorial delights as ‘couta, mackerel and cod. A barracouta was the prize and we all possessed a supply of ‘couta lines. They were so delicious, fried and doused in vinegar – it seems a rarity these days. We’d walked through the gates of the wharf area, dodge the trucks and trains disgorging their wares and say good day to dozens of stevedores working at unloading the cargo vessels in those halcyon pre-containerisation days. My town’s seawater was decidedly polluted from the heavy industry around Burnie’s shores, all spewing effluent into the waters of Bass Strait, giving our briny a red tinge most of the time. But we would have our mum’s cook up our catch – it hasn’t seemed to have done us any lasting harm.

Obtaining my wheels freed me up to take my rod and reel to more distant locations in search of heavier bags of fish. One such destination was the mullet hole on the Inglis River, just west of Wynyard. The main feature of this angling nirvana was that the hole just happened to be under a pipe that would gush bloody waste from a chicken processing factory on the opposite bank. If our luck was in and the pipe had recently deposited we simply had to cast our multi-hooked line in and there were dozens of mullet for the taking, and sometimes some tasty by-product, such as bream, as well. Mullet is considered poor eating by some aficionados, only good for cray-bait, but I thought they were just fine – even if, from that particular source, they had a slight poultry flavour. It didn’t matter much what you baited those hooks with there. In the feeding frenzy those silvery fish engaged in there any grub or sand-worm looked much the same as chook gizzards. Bag limits didn’t exist in our world, so you pulled them in until you were tired of it. The fish could be filleted and frozen, given away to the neighbours or provide cat tucker for months.

All good things come to an end and heading south to uni virtually ended my days as a fisherperson. But I am delighted that my son now possesses the urge to take to sea in search of scaly denizens of the deep, so I cast my line in these days vicariously. But it’s not mullet that excites him, I’m afraid.

So maybe I was destined to love Steven Herrick’s evocative verse novel ‘Another Night in Mullet Town’. I have followed Herrick’s career since he took up wordwrangling thirty or so years ago – once he realised he wasn’t going to be the next Beckham to take the soccer world by storm. He has been producing sublime reading fodder for youngsters and the young at heart for decades now, many in the verse format. Earlier titles such as ‘Love, Ghosts and Nose Hair’, ‘Water Bombs’ and Love Poems and Leg-spinners’ I once used in the classroom to bring joy to my students, as well as to prove to them that poetry was alive and well and a living art.

‘ANinMT’ focuses on two mates, mullet catchers Jonah and Manx, living in almost coastal Turon, a place that has seen better days – but with property developers circling to make a bucket with the sea-changers. For now, though. the place is a struggle-town and marriages, including those of the parents of the two boys, struggle too. So when a big-city moneybags comes sniffing around, complete with an obnoxious offspring, who joins their Year 10 class, the life for the lads becomes suddenly more complicated. The obsequious money-bags, Mr Lloyd-Davis, is intent on buying up all he can in Turon town to turn the hamlet into another blandsville full of McMansions. He figures he can make a killing. The lads mount a guerrilla campaign to thwart him. Here we have shades of ‘Lockie Leonard Scumbuster’ and from the tele, ‘Sea Change’, with more recently, ‘800 Words.’ But Herrick does it so well he is not at all derivative. The book is a mere 200 pages, easily consumable in one or two sittings and it’s more than a David and Goliath tale. It’s about sticking by your mates, familial love and coming of age. Jonah has his eye on Ella, Manx on Rachel – two feisty young townsmaidens. It takes a bit of courage to step across the line and make the first move on them. It’s as hard to commit. Herrick writes engagingly on just how getting to grips with girls is not easy – the body is ready but the mind just cannot find the right words. Ella is a beautiful creation. She tenderly guides Jonah into losing his virginity in such a beguiling way. Herrick handles this with utmost sensitivity, indicated by his depiction of the reaction of Jonah’s dad when he realises just what has occurred for his son.

Herrick’s 2011 offering, ‘Black Painted Fingernails’, was a recent favourite of mine. ‘Another Night in Mullet Town’ is up there with that. So I say well done Mr Herrick – may you continue to give us these gems of books for young and old for many years to come. And you’ve given me cause to return, in my mind, back to those faraway days when I pulled the humble mullet out of a river by a chook factory.

Steven Herrick’s website = http://www.stevenherrick.com.au/