Books, Reviews
This is a positive review of Ryan O’Neill’s short story collection The Weight of a Human Heart
The Weight of a Human Heart
Ryan O’Neill
The final story in Ryan O’Neill’s debut collection, ‘The Eunuch in the Harem’, plays out in a series of book reviews. A newly minted author has his book slammed by a reviewer, and, on the basis of her beauty in the author photo, the reviewer begins courting the author’s wife as well. He positively reviews her (terrible) poetry collection in a ‘400-word chat up line’ and even manages to get it shortlisted for an award. Ultimately his courtship is successful, but the reviewer meets with considerable violence at the hands of the jilted author.
As a final note for the collection, it seems a clear enough warning to any would-be reviewers, although perhaps wisely O’Neill’s wife does not appear in his own author photo. But it’s also pretty representative of the operative dynamics of many of the more experimental stories here. Plenty of them invoke some metafictional device, deconstructing the story as it’s being told. But, perhaps more importantly, they also serve to draw the reader closer. The reconfiguration of familiar modes of writing acts like a shared confidence between reader, text and author, and does a lot to surmount the often alienating first impression experimental writing can make.
A good example of how these devices can draw in the reader is ‘Seventeen Rules for Writing a Short Story’, which shifts style and subject matter every few lines by taking famous writing advice literally – from Kurt Vonnegut’s suggestion that any character must want for something, even just a glass of water, to Raymond Chandler’s advice that, when in doubt, the writer ought to have two men with shotguns burst into the room. Not only will many of those maxims be familiar, but the story also enunciates what seems to the reader like something they’d always known: devoutly following all of these rules would produce terrible, ridiculous stories. But O’Neill does apply all of these rules literally and instead produces a joyful, funny story, sending the relationship between author, text and reader careening off on another axis again.
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
‘There aren’t any funny women out there’: perceptions of gender in stand-up comedy
Dandenong comedian Tegan Higginbotham
Of the 202 Australian stand-up shows at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, less than 25% of the acts were by solo women or women-only teams. I wasn’t particularly surprised about this, since gender imbalances are common in other creative industries (such as writing, as we know) but my inner feminist was still left feeling rather pummelled. My intention had been to support younger, female comedians in their work and though I still could, by seeing acts by Hayley Brennan and Tegan Higginbotham, my choice seemed very limited.
We all know that there are funny women out there. UK stand-up extraordinaire Shappi Khorsandi was one of the festival’s biggest acts. Judith Lucy and Cal Wilson, who are also performing, are household names. Higginbotham’s act, ‘Million Dollar Tegan’, was exceptional in its comedic timing, engaging use of narrative, linguistic wit and personal honesty. Outside of the festival, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Magda Szubanski, Jo Brand and the current golden girl of humour, Tina Fey, are practically enshrined within the comedic canon. So why are there so many more men on the stand-up circuit?
Germaine Greer (who is extremely witty herself, I might add) responds to this question by assessing socially accepted gender norms. Men tend to be the funnier sex, she argues, because they depend upon cultures of banter, buffoonery and quick-wittedness in order to bond with one another in ways that women generally don’t. Men’s comedic skills, therefore, are developed early and become embedded within their patterns of relating to people, making stand-up comedy a more readily accessible profession for them than it may be for women.
News
Slow Guides – call out for writers
Calling all writers! Passionate about all that is local, natural, sensory, traditional and slow in your hometown of Sydney or Brisbane? Affirm Press wants to hear from you.
In 2013, we’ll be publishing new editions of The Slow Guide to Sydney and The Slow Guide to Brisbane, and we’re keen to find some new writing talent for the refashioned, refreshed and fully recharged series.
All interested writers are invited to get in touch with us by May 31, via email at info@affirmpress.com.au. Please send through a one-page CV and three relevant samples of your writing. Previous experience writing for guidebooks/lifestyle publications is preferred but not a requisite. Passion and enthusiasm are our key criterion, so please reflect your interest in the slow movement in your email cover letter.
Column: Film and TV
Food fantasies: virtuosity and curiosity in film
I have to admit that I’m an epicurean chump of the first order – I can spend money on quinoa and obscure spices like asafoetida more quickly than I can pronounce them: is it ‘aso-fo-ti-da’? I can watch, and genuinely enjoy, almost anything to do with cooking. This is because cooking has become a sort of therapy for me – pacifying and forcing me to slow down. Since I associate the act itself with pure comfort, watching food programs on television or films about cooking provokes an (almost) equal sense of calm. In short, I’m a foodie wanker – and I’m not alone; there are millions of us out there.
Amidst the general landscape of consumer culinary curiosity, over the last eighteen months a series of documentaries have been released that profile the world’s top chefs: Andoni Luis Aduriz (Mugaritz BSO), Ferran Adrià (El Bulli: Cooking in Progress), Jiro Ono (Jiro Dreams of Sushi) and René Redzepi (Noma at Boiling Point). In different ways, the films all showcase deeply monomaniacal men – gods of the culinary world. All have repeatedly earned several Michelin stars for their cuisine, creating the sorts of dishes that make Jamie Oliver look like a well-meaning home cook. For these men, as the documentaries show, food is art. So what makes food as fetish such a compelling spectator sport? Specifically, what might render the Virtuosic Chef Documentary – as I’m calling it – so particularly enthralling?
Reviews
Success within constraints? Small Wonder, Linda Godfrey and Julie Chevalier (eds)
It is sometimes the case that language, when restricted, blossoms. The French writers and mathematicians in the 1960s Oulipo group made ‘constrained writing’ work for them, and so do some of the writers in Small Wonder. Eight hundred words or less was the challenge given to writers, and it doesn’t seem like much to work with, but inside this collection are complete and whole stories, as well as small but beautiful fragments.
Created as the product of a competition run by short fiction publisher Spineless Wonders, the works in this collection are a compilation of entries and invited contributions, covering many different themes and styles of writing. Interestingly though, reading the winning and commended entries doesn’t necessarily give a clear indication of how to write a good prose poem or microfiction piece. Instead they show the spectrum of what is possible within each genre. The winner, Charles D’Anastasi, gives us a rich and vivid prose poem, sketching a room resonating with horses’ hooves and a sky of ‘stars, and long-period comets, stripped down by the repeated surgery of the night’. In contrast to this, the story from Erin Gough, ‘William Shatner vows to save the Great Basin Pocket Mouse’, is much closer to a typical realist short story, with conflict, endearing character interaction (and instant mashed potatoes).
Recommended Reading
Recommended reading: P.A. O’Reilly
For this Recommended Reading column, writer P.A. O’Reilly, whose latest novel The Fine Colour of Rust is out now, lists four books about man’s best friend that provide her with inspiration via their intense mix of savagery and beauty.
When I’ve finished a piece of writing and I am casting around for an image or idea or landscape or line of dialogue or even a sentence – whatever is powerful enough to compel me to write something new – I like to read work that is different, that jolts me out of my normal space. So for some different reading recommendations after having recently published The Fine Colour of Rust – a book of humour in the face of adversity – I’ve selected four books that bring us face to face with horror and strange fierce beauty.
We talk about the dog as ‘man’s best friend’, we award dogs medals for bravery, we give dogs as gifts, we use them as helper animals. We love them and bring them into our homes as part of the family. Yet, like our human family, these animal friends can turn, without warning, and savage us. Sometimes they kill us.
Unlike the sentimental depiction of dog-love in books like Marley and Me, the relationships between dogs and humans, dogs and dogs, and humans and humans are explored in extraordinary and disturbing ways in the following books.
Animalinside, text, László Krasznahorkai, illustration, Max Neumann
László Krasznahorkai is a Hungarian novelist best known for his works The Melancholy of Resistance and War & War. He is also the screenwriter and inspiration for several films by the Hungarian director Béla Tarr. Animalinside is a series of short pieces written in response to fourteen images of a strange dog-like creature created by Max Neumann, brought together in a small, exquisitely produced booklet. The text is absurd, ironic, apocalyptic, savage and funny. It speaks directly to the animal inside us. It mocks and grovels and rages in powerful language.
Continue reading »
Column: Books and Writing
What we didn’t know and couldn’t read: Nicole Moore’s The Censor’s Library
Several years ago I was fossicking through the national archives researching the regulation of pornography in Australia when I stumbled across a reference to a box of items confiscated by customs officials. The box included something called a ‘boob bath mat’. Intrigued, I approached the archive staff to see this contraband for myself. Because it was unclear which national legislation it fell under – the Archives Act (in which case I would be permitted to see it) or the Customs Act (in which case I would not) – I never did get to see that bath mat. Two decades after it was confiscated, I was still being ‘protected’ from whatever subversive influence mammary-inspired manchester could produce.
Imagine my feelings, then, on reading Nicole Moore’s new book The Censor’s Library and coming across a reference to said bath mat, which, Moore informed me when I interviewed her recently, is legendary. Alas, she never got to see that mat either, but what she did see is nothing short of mind-blowing: 793 boxes that make up ‘the censor’s library’, a collection of material banned in Australia from the 1920s through to the 1980s.
Scholars had long known of the collection’s existence but assumed it had been destroyed or dispersed. Yet Moore found the collection, intact and meticulously preserved, a fact which she says left her ‘Astonished. Gobsmacked’. Moore described how visually compelling the 12,000-odd objects making up the collection are:
most of them still wrapped in brown paper, with pencil marks, stamps and annotations telling of their treatment by Customs officers, members of the Literature Censorship Board, the Post Office or even the courts. Inscribed with a B for banned, R for restricted, P for passed, in red pencil. Then underneath the brown paper, lurid pulp covers, pristine comic illustrations from the 1950s, early magazine photography, first editions of major writers, obscure underground titles produced for collectors: everything from cheesecake calendars to surrealist poetry, birth control pamphlets to blaxploitation material from the 1960s. And of course fetish literature, bestiality, child porn.
News
Vote for Killings!
Killings is an entrant in the Sydney Writers’ Centre Best Australian Blogs Competition. If you’d like to show your support for us, why not vote for Killings in the People’s Choice Award at the SWC website? You can also get involved on Twitter: the hashtag is #bestblogs2012.
Just so you know … voting closes on Thursday 9 May.
Thanks for your support!
Literary Links
Amusements and distractions
Killings brings you our fortnightly selection of posts that have amused, enlightened and generally distracted us.
Don’t despair, just laugh til you cry … at the screen. It’s Friday after all!
This is on quite a few internet ‘distractions’ lists already and for good reason. Check out a time-lapse reconstruction from Hitchcock’s Rear Window.
A behind the scenes tour of book tours, you say? Click this link and off you go – guided by nine different publicists and writers.
Want to snack on some free reads over lunch? How about one of two Davids – Wallace or Sedaris – take your pick.
Speaking of food and literature, the Wheeler Centre have posted the video from their recent Jamie Oliver and Matt Preston event. Eat it up!
Two lists on Killings in as many days – so while we’re here, let’s take a look at the many lists Johnny Ramone. He even has a generic ‘All-Time Top Ten’ list – that’s far too much pressure for us.
We’ve known for a few hours now, but who isn’t still abuzz about the Australian Prince tour announcement? We sure are. Let the battle for tickets begin (it’s going to be like The Hunger Games for children of the ‘80s everywhere). Dance your way into the weekends, everyone!
Gang of Five
Five bad boys I can’t help but love
In our new list series, ‘Gang of Five’, we make a list of five things related to … whatever we like. This time it’s KYD Online Intern, Stephanie Van Schilt, with five bad boys she can’t help but love: Simon Amstell, John Waters, Mr Rochester, Logan Echolls and Jerry Lee Lewis.
1. Simon Amstell
I have long adored Simon Amstell for all of his cutting, controversial ways as a host of British television shows Popworld and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. As his character (‘Simon’) states in the first episode of Grandma’s House, which Amstell co-writes and directs, his public persona has led people to congratulate him for being mean in these hosting gigs. But as his mum reminds him, he isn’t just mean – his adorable face and appealing energy means that he is also very ‘cheeky’. It’s the combination of these traits that makes Simon Amstell the perfect example of a ‘bad boy’ today. I love him for these reasons. That, and the fact that he is very, very funny.
After a variety of controversies in superficial scenarios, particularly with celebrities – such as making Britney Spears cry and goading Buzzcocks guests about their personal life until they storm out – in recent times, Amstell has become quite reflective when acknowledging this bad boy persona, trying to distance himself from the barbarous quips he is known for.
Next week, I’m going to see Amstell at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. This will be the first time I see his stand-up live, and I can’t wait to see the more personal, insecure side of him.
Bonus points: definitely this. Gets me. Every time.
