Exam time

So my university preparation course ended today with a three-hour exam in Sydney University's New Law Building (a triumph of form over function). I answered four questions in three hours (having not pursued the extra time my disabling condition probably warranted). In order of writing I answered questions on T S Eliot, Crash, Beloved and Shakespeare's Sonnet 55 (ran out of time on that one.) I think I did well enough to achieve a distinction for the course.

When / if I enrol in the undergraduate course I'll need to aim higher. The target, 10 years from now, is to secure my PhD.

Rabbit Proof Fence

First of two classes on the movie of 2002 based on the book of 1994. Asked by Dr Morrison what we thought of the film when first we saw it (on release) I found myself (surprisingly) letting rip ... didn't trust its story-telling from the moment it started until the end; tells us it's a "true story" but the film doesn't even stick with Doris's re-telling of her mother's story; scenes in the movie that simply aren't in the book - A O Neville never met Molly, no evidence that kids sang Swanee to him, the girls didn't travel south by train in a cage but by boat as passengers, Mavis is fictional, the girls didn't steal on their journey home, they didn't collapse in the desert to be saved by a bird, Gracie's capture at the railway line never took place, Molly and Daisy rode the last section on a family friend's camel. It was, I said, bleeding heart liberalism at its worse. Why couldn't Noyce simply tell the girls' story as they recounted it? Why do the whole Hollywood job on a story with enough drama in it to satisfy anyone?

The (male) movie-maker's gaze upon the precocious, defiant central character idealised her story. There were too many distorting fictions that reinforced conservative portrayals of undifferentiated aboriginality as perceived by the dominant ideology ... white, male, urban, middle-class looking at black, female, childlike, noble savage archetypes fixed firmly in the past. I suggested too that everyone in the room try the Neil Armstrong test ... name the second man on the moon or the third, fourth or fifth ... applied to black Australian actors ... name someone other than David Gulpilil ... big silence then, Ernie Dingo maybe.

But I felt the unfairness of my own argument. Phillip Noyce's movie took the story of the Stolen Generations to millions of people who would never have engaged with it otherwise. RPF raised interest in real issues at home and abroad. This is true for me as much as anyone. I find the book more compelling but I never thought of buying it until tjhe movie was made. that'll make me another bleeding heart hypocrite I guess.

Read the book. Watch the movie. Make up your own mind.

by the way ... read about the fence here. As if it could ever have kept out rabbits. What a monument to the silliness of men.

"Unfortunately, the fence did not stop the rabbits from moving westward. There were parts of the fence which eroded underneath, holes in the wire developed, and sometimes gates would be left open, enabling the rabbits to pass through."
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Study day

Spike worked on essay. I watched Rabbit Proof Fence, the movie made by Phillip Noyce. I know which one of us had the tougher academic task. My old doubts about the movie were not challenged by watching it once more. The word may be problematic.

Follow The Rabbit Proof Fence

Started and finished the book by Doris Pilkington in preparation for next week's class on the movie. The short read contains a great deal. It's infinitely preferable to what I can recall of the film.

Why so loud?

Good question. Second Beloved class.

Beloved part 1

First of two classes on Toni Morrison's Beloved. I said it is one of the finest novels I've ever read; a truly great work of fiction, which is a very rare thing indeed. Dr Morrison did not disagree. Some in the class talked a bit about the movie version, which I've not seen. It's hard to imagine Oprah Winfrey carrying off the Sethe character but Fiona M reckons she does a decent enough job but that Thandie Newtone is somewhat less than spectacular as Beloved. I'm surprised by both.

At the end of my class we received our second essay marks ... 17.5 out of 20 for my piece on Pride And Prejudice. That's the high distinction I was aiming for. All I need to do now is keep up that standard, improving on it if I can.
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Hip hip hooray

I don't have an essay to write today for submission tomorrow. I get an essay back tomorrow (Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice) and have at least two weeks to write the third and final assessment of course work.

Hip, hip, hooray. (Card by Alice Carmen here)

Spike, I'm sorry to say, does have an essay to submit tomorrow. We can't all be lucky all the time ... or can we?

Lazy start, lounging in the sun, followed by toast n mushrooms n tea n juice. I continued with my re-reading of Beloved (subject of my third essay). Spike wrote ... slowly, as she describes it ... at her speed, is how I think of it.

Track work on the railway lines below us drove me past the point of distraction. I'm sure it's necessary. I understand it can be noisy. But guys ... please ... it's been two years. Aint it fixed yet??????????????

Parliament in the morning (my thoughts came together, which meant my session did too) then Chairing the Lifetime Care and Support Authority Advisory Council in the afternoon. I ambled down Macquarie Street to Hyde Park where I paused for a while by the fountain, in the sun, watching lunch time unfold in the heart of the city. Lovely.

When I decided to move on through the trees that are doomed by some blight (apparently) I headed first to galleries Victoria for a Laksa its makers claim is the best in Sydney. It's not but it did the job. After that I was drawn to Kinokinuya, as I always am when in that space. I Bought Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence for me and Rooftops, a graphic novel by Mandy Ord, for Spike. That book store is an irresistible treasure trove.

Naturally, at least in my universe, travelling through the underground mall adjacent to Town Hall station necessitates a detour to the German bread shop. It IS a hard life I live, isn't it?

Noodles with Spike in the evening. The second glass of cheap wine is ALWAYS a mistake. (Actually, even one glass of cheap wine is a debatable decision ... but we're human; we forget or live in hope. We should learn, however, that hope and cheap wine never meet).
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Beloved

Finished it. Truly wonderful writing. It has to be one of the finest novels I've read and genuinely an important one too (and it's not often that that can be said with justification).

What can one say? Read it.

Here's what the much-maligned Wikipedia has to say on the novel.

These are some surprisingly perceptive Sparks Notes on the book.

And this is a link to Toni Morrison discussing her novel on the BBC Radio World Service Book Club.

I love this story from the New York Times:

SULLIVAN’S ISLAND, S.C. — Toni Morrison has said that her acclaimed novel “Beloved,” which features the ghost of a baby killed by her enslaved black mother, came out of the need for a literature to commemorate slaves and their history. “There is no suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath or wall, or park or skyscraper lobby,” Ms. Morrison said in a 1989 magazine interview. “There’s no 300-foot tower, there’s no small bench by the road.”

This weekend, on Sullivan’s Island, off the South Carolina coast, Ms. Morrison, the Nobel laureate, and some 300 people held a memorial ceremony to dedicate her long-awaited “bench by the road.” (read the rest)

(Photograph by Anne McQuary for The New York Times)
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Beloved

I've spent most of the day sitting in the sun with cups of tea, a bag of crsips, cheese & tomato sandwiches and one of Spike's sponge cakes reading (aloud mostly) Part 1 of Toni Morrison's novel. Fiction ... writing of any sort ... just doesn't come any better than this. I am in the presence of greatness; transported out of time, place and body. The past is, indeed, another country but a text this good can take you there.

Ovid

The Creation of the World

Of bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with coelestial heat;
'Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to Caesar's times.
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And Heav'n's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unfram'd,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam'd.
No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
Nor pois'd, did on her own foundations lye:
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water's dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was imprest;
All were confus'd, and each disturb'd the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fixt;
And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt.


The beginning of Book 1 from the version translated by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al
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David Malouf

Tonight's university class was the second of two on David Malouf's An Imaginary Life. I read it for the first time about two year's ago (which is the last time I thought about preparing to return to university). I have to admit that before then I had never read anything by Australia great Romantic; never even heard of his imagined life of Ovid. Well, now I have.

It's an impressive read. I've no idea if the text takes me inside the head of the exiled Roman poet. Who could know such a thing? But the short novel certainly did take me inside the head of some imaginary other. I believed I was with someone crossing the frozen land of a hostile Black Sea hinterland. I could picture the Shaman drifting into a trance. I felt the scorn and suspicion of hard-working woman who felt the arrival of the wild child posed some kind of threat.

That seems even more impressive to me (as a late reader) given that so much of the novel evokes the tensions of post-colonial Australia. In some senses only an Australian could have conceived and written the text. Good stuff. Well worth the read.

I let loose my worse nature in tonight's class (although I doubt that anyone noticed). I struck a pose; made an observation about sentence construction in the novel and asked a question that was too clever by half (about what constitutes good or bad writing ... as if I didn't already know what ideologically loaded terms those are). It would have been better for me and more interesting for everyone else if I'd used this brain of mine (size of a small planet in a far off galaxy) to real effect. There is no need or benefit to underplay one's interest, intellect or perception. Why bother Dougie? You'd still have much to learn by asking questions that you don't actually know the kind of answer a tutor is likely to give (which she did).
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Grounded

So I worked from home again, thanks to the broken motor in my van. Sharon will drive it tomorrow to the Tyson's people to repair or replace it, except it's not Tyson's anymore. They went broke but someone bought the remnants of the business. Let's hope they can fix it.

I've managed to get through a decent amount of work, so that's satisfying enough. When I've been waiting on recalcitrant colleagues to reply to my e.mails I've caught up with my blogging. Does it show?

I've also been reading a good book, which I borrowed from the library yesterday. It's the published version of six lectures in 1993 by Umberto Eco, entitled Six Walks In The Fictional Woods. God, that man is erudite, witty, thought-provoking, terrifically well-read, illuminating, thoughtful, sharp ... bastard! No, seriously, it's a good read; thoroughly accessible and I'm sure it will help me with my studies either now or in the future (if, in the end, I make my mind up to return to undergraduate endeavour).

Eco's little book (barely 150 pages long) comes from the same series as Italo Calvino's Six Memos For The New Millennium. It's a series known as the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures. I assume this must be the same Norton as the anthologies but I'll check. I had no idea about these lectures / essays until Spike returned from the college library with the Calvino. I'll have too seek oput others because the two I've read so far really do make you think.
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Pride And Prejudice

I worked all day on the second essay for my university preparation course. I chose the question about Jane Austen's best-loved work.

"Good judgement is at the heart of this romantic comedy. Superior judgements, ethical judgements, hasty judgements, unbending judgements and really bad judgements are all examined. Why is good judgement so significant in the world of Pride And Prejudice? Is it merely a source of good comedy?"

Two and a half thousand words later (including quotes) I reached this conclusion:

"The proper deployment or misapplication of judgement in Pride And Prejudice, then, are not merely devices used to great effect in a romantic comedy of social manners. The crucial role good judgement plays in determining the success in the world of the novel is critical to understanding its intentions.

Elizabeth alerts the reader to those intentions when she observes, while dancing with Mr Darcy at the Netherfield ball:

It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion to be secure of judging properly at first.

Jane Austen suggests that only by virtue of experience, reflection and self-knowledge can any of her characters come to understand, as her principals do, that Elizabeth's overt-confident criticism of propud Mr Darcy is prejudiced by a lack of self-knowledge, which ultimately only good judgement can bring."

I am a novice.
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Reading Jane Austen

I have an essay due next Monday on questions of judgement in Pride And Prejudice so I re-read an engrossing article by Tony Tanner in Jane Austen, edited by Harold Bloom. Among other helpful observations, Tony Tanner writes:

For Jane Austen's book is, most importantly, about prejudging and rejudging. It is a drama of recognition - re-cognition, that act by which the mind can look again at a thing and if necessary make revisions and amendments until it sees the thing as it really is. As such it is thematically related to the dramas of recognition which constitute the great traditions of Western tragedy - Oedipus Rex, King Lear, Phedre - albeit the drama has now shifted to the comic mode, as is fitting in a book which is not about the finality of the individual death but the ongoingness of social life.

That link is strong and obvious once you see it but one does need a perceptive analyst like Tony Tanner to show you the way to a clearer reading of a text that's been part of your reading life for more than thirty years.
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Too much Eliot can be too much

Waiting For Godot

I re-read WFG for the first time in 15 years as preparation for next Monday's class. It's just as brilliant as it always has been. Difficult? Not if you simply let it was over you. Try this. What's difficult?

The Journey Of The Magi

We spent our second week on T S Eliot at this evening's class. The more one studies the poet the more impressed you have to be. Prufrock and the other poems in that first collection of iconoclastic brilliance still have the power to overwhelm the senses, particularly when taken together; as the whole they seem to be:

Lines two and three of Prufrock are famously, When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table.

The second of the Preludes begins ... The morning comes to consciousness / Of faint stale smells of beer.

Different poems. Same world. The poems connect not just in content and subject matter and voice but in the way the lines and images relate to one another.

Fiona Morrison (our tutor) ended the class with a reading and discussion of The Journey Of The Magi. Andrew Calder's critical essay cites the poem as an indication that Eliot had begun his descent. Fiona suggested it marks the high-water mark of a mature poet, on his game so to speak. I'm inclined to agree with her, which means my opinion of the poem has changed.

Fiona asked us to speculate on what made the Magi particularly appealing to her. We tried to guess but none of us hit the answer. It was this section, she said:

...................................... but set down
This set down
This:...

I see her point. It is confident. We are persuaded by / of the poetic voice. We suspend disbelief. We're sitting with an old, wise man; a real man rather than some religious icon or signifier. He's telling us his story. He wants us to be sure we write down the crucial, epoch-turning truth he recalls from an earlier time. He is insistent that we get his point; that we get the point. It is, I agree, mightily impressive craftmanship.

I looked for images, settling on this one. It has a realism about it that contrasts strongly with other 'Adoration' paintings of the time. Worth a look.

Jacopo Bassano

(b Bassano del Grappa, c. 1510; d Bassano del Grappa, 13 Feb 1592).

Son of Francesco Bassano il vecchio. He was apprenticed to his father, with whom he collaborated on the Nativity (1528; Valstagna, Vicenza, parish church). In the first half of the 1530s Jacopo trained in Venice with Bonifazio de’ Pitati, whose influence, with echoes of Titian, is evident in the Flight into Egypt (1534; Bassano del Grappa, Mus. Civ.). He continued to work in the family shop until his father’s death in 1539. His paintings from those years were mainly altarpieces for local churches; many show signs of collaboration. He also worked on public commissions, such as the three canvases on biblical subjects (1535–6; Bassano del Grappa, Mus. Civ.) for the Palazzo Communale, Bassano del Grappa, in which the narrative schemes learnt from Bonifazio are combined with a new naturalism. From 1535 he concentrated on fresco painting, executing, for example, the interior and exterior decoration (1536–7) of S Lucia di Tezze, Vicenza, which demonstrates the maturity of his technique.

Prufrock and the women?

When asked by my English tutor, on Monday night, to interpret the Michaelangelo couplet in Prufrock I dropped the ball. Some of the group felt the women are prostitutes. You can see how that reading is possible; the women appearing, as they do, after the grimy first fragment. Our tutor favours an inside / outside reading. Prufrock is in the "half-deserted streets". The women come and go in a room beyond a window.

The tutor turned to me then said ... you like this poem Dougie, what would you say? To which I answered both readings are possible, although nothing else in the poem supports the prostitute reading.

Poor response Douglas, is what I thought then and now.

Answering the question has been bugging me all week. This much I now know. The famous couplet,

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michaelangelo

is lifted, almost directly, from something written by the French 'symboliste' Jules Larforge. The original reads,

Dans la piece les femmes vont et viennent
En parlant des maitres de Sienne.

That, of course, shows us something of Eliot's brilliance. And (for reasons I can't quite pin down) argues further against the prostitute reading.

I am being driven nuts, however, in my attempts to source the original. I find reference to it in many Googled places but no citation of the source. That's very, very annoying.
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Prufrock

We started on the 20th Century Modernists at tonight's literature class. And with what other than The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock could one begin?

I stumbled over this rendition of what might be the most important single poem of the Twentieth Century. Not a bad reading, at all. Persuasive interpretation. Quite a character reciting it too.