Opening Night

The artist and her parents at Hatched.

Little Willy's

Breakfast's nearly done - omelette and chai - in a neat little cafe on William Street, Northbridge - a student, cafe, culture neighbourhood on the northern side of the CBD.  There must be a million cafes like this one the world over; small, re-conditioned and re-painted wooden tables of a variety of shapes and sizes, some retro booths (as we might be in the American fifties maybe), benches made out of three milk crates and half an old plank of wood.  There's an Indie band playing n what I'm sure will be an ipod driven player.  i've no idea who the band is but the upbeat, slightly knowing observations of the songs imbue the cafe with a relaxed, friendly atmosphere.  A young woman with orange hair, a pink jacket and her de rigeur iphone sits in front of the window, next to the pavement from where one can see and may be seen. People come and go for takeaway coffees.  They're mostly regulars who smile, their vices singing with the days news or the latest instalment of a story commenced yesterday, last week or a year ago.  The guys behind the counter seem not to miss a beat; brew the coffee, put a slice of cake in brown paper bag, listen to the story, ask questions, comment on how difficult / fun / cool / much of a relief to hear that on had to let go a new member of staff who just didn't get what we're trying to do with retail or another spoke of the causes of this morning's hangover, a third talked about honeymooning in  Paris and the fourth's cat turned up.  I could linger all day.

Waiting for the AV guys

The show opens on Friday.  Spike's work is in boxes waiting for the AV guys to fix a problem with projection.  At least the plinth is unwrapped!!! But there's time.  So, it having been a very long day with an early 5-hour flight from Sydney we're going back to the hotel for a sleep before tonight's meal with Spike's mum and dad.  

Voice

Spike had an interesting seminar at the Art College today, considering 'voice' in writing.  Her tutor had referred the class to a questioning article / sceptical review from The New Yorker (2004) written by Louis Menand.  Spike and her class mates were asked to "bring to class an example (no more than two paragraphs) of some writing (any genre) where you think the writer's voice is strong."  Spike selected the first page of Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.  Good choice.  If it had been me going to class, I'd have taken Prufrock.  No more constructed voice in literature. 

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

You mean ... out loud?

William Makepeace Thackery

Any person passing-by the silent room in which a score of bright but bored students of English literature sat today between four and five o'clock in the John Woolley Building of the University of Sydney might have wondered if the ghastly horror of an enormous, noisy fart had just ripped through the air inside, rendering all members of the class speechless, mortified lest their colleagues or the tutor might put the blame on them.  But no, the silence was not born of guilt or knowledge of the guilty farter in the midst of such unspeakable agony.  All that had occurred is that the pleasant, if inexperienced, tutor, sitting at the teacher's spot in front of the whiteboard, the sole occupant of the fourth wall of our makeshift group shelter, had asked that someone in the group read a short passage from Vanity Fair before we started to discuss what it might tell us of the author's interests, style, themes, purposes ... who knows what?  Eyes dropped to stare at the floor.  A few reluctant students shuffled in their seats, feigning purposeful activity such as turning the page of a notebook, losing one's place in the text, breaking the tip of a pencil.  Silence ruled while the great fart of engagement toured the desks in the forlorn hope that one of the assembled number might confess to an interest, a willingness, a liking even, for the act of reading from one of the greatest satirical novels ever penned in what was, when all's said and done, a university level course in English literature focusing on, of all unlikely things, the novel in English.

Interloper that I was, taking the class because I'll be in Perth on Friday when my usual tutorial is scheduled, I felt that one of the regulars might want to fill the gap.  But no, it appeared not.  Unfortunately I was unable to assist.  Pretending to myself that I'm a modern reader I'd equipped myself with a Kindle version of the text on my ASUS Transformer.  As the gods of anti-modernity would have it though my Tablet had died earlier in the day.  That's an overstatement because Spike resuscitated the computer when I got home. So, unable to bear the painful silence I apologised for being without text, recounted briefly the sad tale of my defunct tablet and was on the point of asking the bored young women next to me if I could borrow her pristine, possibly unread, copy.  Another young woman then interjected.  She would read.  I'm not quite sure if her threshold for pain at the awkwardness of our collective reluctance was close to mine or, perhaps, she felt sorry for the nice old man at the other side of the room who had suffered a not uncommon IT problem.  Either way, she read.  Between us ... her, the tutor and me ... we got a conversation going but it was hard.

I admit to puzzlement.  We're students of English, aren't we?  Who among us ... language barriers aside ... would not want to read out loud in the presence of such bright thinkers?  I'm NOT taking the piss.  It seems I'm a bit odd in this regard.  I'll try not to let that stop me.

There's Vanity Fair ...

... and there's the movie from 2004 starring Reece Witherspoon.  Each is enjoyable in its own way but the latter is a pretty distant cousin of the former.  But there are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon when you're not going far from home; not going anywhere come to think of it.

Good student

From go to whoa: nine hours and 2,300 words later I have finished what looks like the virtually complete draft of an essay on chapter 26 of L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy for my university course on Postmodernism.  It'll do.  It has to cos we're leaving for Perth on Wednesday.  I can't remember the last time I had a student essay ready to submit six days before the deadline.  I'll put it in the box on Monday.

Here's the start:

Chapter twenty-six of LA Confidential is a microcosm of James Ellroy’s thematic interests as a writer of period fiction whose sometimes shocking autobiographical details[1] have driven the author to reject and re-construct the 20^th Century genre of ‘hard boiled’ detective thriller as part of a personal, literary and social pursuit of sometimes appalling underlying truths (as he perceives them).

[He] is one of the most significant historical novelists writing today.  His novels … describe 1950s Los Angeles and 1960s America through the eyes of ‘bad men doing bad things in the name of authority’.  If he departs significantly from what academic historians would consider acceptable practice, it is because he has a different, though equally rigorous and committed, approach to his material.[2]

Chapter twenty-six fuses the known social history of 1950s Los Angeles with Ellroy’s darker, imagined, conspiratorial and close to paranoid version to expose hidden truths about the corruption, exploitation and male violence that Ellroy sees at the heart of 20^th Century America. 

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[1] Reinhard Jud (Director): James Ellroy Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction (Fischer Film GmBH, Vienna 1998) access at this location http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YPHNCDxQgk on 14/04/12.  (All subsequent references are to this edition.)

[2] Jonathan Walker: ‘James Ellroy as Historical Novelist’ in History Workshop Journal Issue 53, page 181  (All subsequent references are to this edition.)