Zed

Could you imagine that you knew you were dying and that your life would flash before you in the time it takes you to drown?

If you could, would you allow your mind to take you back to the traumatic realities of your families past?

If you could, would you allow yourself to view the intimate details of your conception and birth?

If you could, would you allow the image of the deaths of those nearest and dearest to wash through your mind?

Would you allow your death to be a therapeutic cleansing?

Would all this dissociation from your present trauma give your mind a transcendental focus that brings an inner peace?

Crime is not my thing really. Tried it in my youth once or twice but never felt that thrilled about. A few years back the rave was The Dry by Jane Harper, so I thought I might give that a chance on release. It was OK.
Bad Debts by Peter Temple I got after my wife was watching the Jack Irish TV series. What I caught looked pretty good TV wise. Temple had also won a Miles Franklin for Broken Shore, so there was interest there. This is better than The Dry, but then that may be because the banter between the characters to me is typical strine chat in certain circles. I do enjoy this kind of thing occasionally. Quick-witted and quirky, I have worked with a few blokes over the years that made me chuckle as the day went by; such was their use of the lingo. I suspect that Plot wise this is a mash-up of the author's knowledge of the Melbourne underworld and political corruption that as a journalist he would have heard about from his time in the media.

Drunk driver goes to jail for running over a political activist and then years later after release gets killed after he is shot dead by police under suspicious circumstances. Left a desperate message on Jack Irish phone, his once drunk lawyer at the time of his imprisonment and now comparatively sober, who feels a sense of guilt for not helping him in what was a stitch up, follows up what is going on. Let's say Jack has a few adventures on the way to the inevitable conclusion, and that is maybe why crime is not for me.

Be that as it may this is an easy read, it moves along at a good pace and the inbetween stuff such as the footy banter and horse racing betting plunge break the story up in a good way.

Recommended to all the old Roy Boys out there.

Robbie Arnott's 2nd Novel is, as his first, a Tasmanian Goth fantasy that had me listening to the audio at every opportunity.

Australia, though unnamed, has suffered a military coup and during these troubled times a band of soldiers is sent by the authorities on a mission to capture the mythical Rain Heron for what can be only to see if they can control the weather. The telling of the story forces us, as a species, to face our own inhumanity to each other and to the ecology of the world around us. One's imagination has to confront all the flaws that each of the characters has, as nature exposes us as just another doomed species. When we respect nature, it assists us. Times are plentiful on the farm and in the sea until........? As a species, can we be blind until coerced by forces out of our control not to be?

I said of Robbie Arnott's very good debut that it was recommended to all us that know and enjoy Tassie Literature. Nothing changes with this thought-provoking and parable like second.

The lower middle class Stevens family have made the trek from London to Bognor for 20 years to have a family holiday; it is always the best fortnight of the year as a family unit. This one though might possibly be the final. The eldest children are at that point in their life when they move on to other things; there is a sense of an ending, as the regular holiday lodgings that they stay at are getting a little too shabby. Things stay the same to many of us, but change is inevitable in the end. The author hints hard at this and lets the reader be the judge.

The Fortnight in September is a gentle read, almost plotless and written with a charm that gives a view to a very placid English holiday between the two world wars. From 100 odd year later it feels like the author, R C Sherriff, had a sense that all was not well for the future. Yes the Great War had finished. It was the one that was to end all wars but was it? Maybe even in 1931 on this books release, bright sunny days, cricket on the beach and a stroll down the prom to watch the brass band play were all too good to be true.

The setting is strangely affecting, Bognor on the south coast of England in West Sussex, a county that has the rolling and beautiful south downs, an area that I have made visit to and would be the very emphasis of bucolic when thinking of my early teen memories of living in not far away, Bognor. My parents were born there and returned from Australia to live again for a little while in the early 1970s. “Bognor for health and sunshine” a poster joyfully announced to the family while on their way to their little bit of the seaside via the railway station at Clapham Junction. Maybe to the likes of the Stevens Family in the 1920s, but in my early teens it never felt like that. The nights seemed dark and long and sunny days far apart. The pier that the Stevens family so enjoyed was but a shell of its former glory, in my time and still today a smashed relic of a past age. Later in the book as the holiday nears its end, the family think of Bognor as a “...friendly old town”. Something tells me it may not be that place it once was when Londoners flocked to it for their fortnights by the seaside.

Oh! I do like to be beside the seaside! I do like to be beside the sea! Oh I do like to stroll along the Prom, Prom, Prom! Where the brass bands play, “Tiddely-om-pom-pom!”
So just let me be beside the seaside! I'll be beside myself with glee and there's lots of girls beside, I should like to be beside, beside the seaside, beside the sea!

Author Robbie Arnott has received a fair bit of positivity on a few Australian Lit Blogs that I subscribe to. A week back my Spotify account recommended this one as an audiobook, so I thought why not considering those nice online reviews.

To say I have enjoyed this audio would be an understatement. Anyone that has read my scribbles over time would know I have never shied away from my admiration of Tasmanian literature. I am not going to shy away from this one, it joins all that grabs me and spits me out about the island's writing. Flames is Goth fantasy that from a curious start had me listening to the excellent telling of this terrific plot at every opportunity. My audio listening is for my walks or in the car, but I just sat in the comfy chair with the JBL's stuck on the head, I was that engrossed.

A family is enjoined with flame as part of their very existence. How so? That would be giving it away as to the tale told but let's just say that this is a curse on the physical life and psychology of the family involved, the father, the mother and their two children. Son Levi wants to have a coffin made for his sister Charlotte, for reasons that become obvious as time goes on. Charlotte wants none of this and escapes to the safety of an anonymous life in the south of the island. And from this wild beginning we meet an irate coffin maker, a very strange wombat farmer, an alcoholic private detective and a few more wild characters along the way. Add to that an animal god and what a yarn delivered.

This is a very good debut and is recommended to all us that know and enjoy Tassie Lit.

A very readable dystopia about North Korea that was at times impressive, though maybe just a bit too long to make it one for the ages. I say that as I had seen prior to reading comparisons to Orwell's 1984 and that for this reader was a bridge too far. I wish it was so, but it was not.

Split into 2 half's the first, The Biography of Jun Do was outstanding. I read the entire part, all 220 pages in one session such was its power. I would add that if it had ended there, it would have been close to me declaring it a masterpiece. The life of the orphan was researched by the author, and he told a truly tragic tale of state power using and abusing in the hermit kingdom.
The 2nd part though an interesting tale of subterfuge and at times a graphic read just seemed a touch too contrived and long to this reader.

Be that as it may there was a certain element that was typical of what many novelists say in that they tell a story from truths they know of and events in this book, such as the kidnapping of foreign citizens by North Korean agents for example, had me scouring the internet to see the author had indeed researched his story extremely well.

Recommended to those that read dystopian literature.

Kurt Vonnegut's 7th novel and followed his most and popular. How did he go? Not too bad at all in this reader's opinion.

Free will is as ever to the front and centre of his work, with mental illness a major theme in this novel. It was initially hard to tell the direction this novel would take, as it began as a satire on what he may have thought of the life of US citizens at the time of writing. Some may say nothing has changed, some may not. What do I know? Nothing, as I have never lived there. As the story took shape it was certainly very funny at times, and with all Vonnegut's writing so far more ideas driven with absurdist plot than some literary attempt at fine writing. Vonnegut is not subtle, he just bangs the reader around the head.

The story reached a climax in that an unknown Sci Fi writer meets a spiralling into madness used car salesman who read the writer's meaning of life novel and goes on a rampage as he interprets the book, called Now It Can Be Told, I laughed out loud at that, as a truth that we are all robots and lack free will. Is this a comment about some of mankind's absolute faith in religious dogma as fact? I think so.

I did enjoy the crappy little line drawings on the way through. They kind of made the satire more satirical.

Recommended to the Vonnegut reader as they will get a lot out of this one.



My review of number 1 Player Piano.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559
My review of number 3 Mother Night here.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6287961968
My review of number 4 Cats Cradle here.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371451
My review of number 5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater here
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371734
My review of number 6 Slaughter House Five
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231370983

I have no intention of writing too much about this excellent book. GR friend Ian has written an outstanding review that I commend to anyone that has yet to read it.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4998638261

This is one of two audiobooks I have listened to on this subject recently, the other being Pathogenesis: How Germs Made History by Jonathan Kennedy.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/136347602-pathogenesis

As fascinating as that was, Harpers is superior in my opinion.

One comment I will make from a discussion from this audiobook is that the common fly that occasionally gets past the screens of my abode is now ruthlessly hunted down.

Recommended to those with an interest in the subject.

Kurt Vonnegut's 6th and most famous novel is less satire and sarcasm and more commentary on man and war with very black humour.
When I think back to my youthful reading, my biggest recall was of the sci-fi elements that took protagonist Billy Pilgram to another planet and the vague thought that it was an antiwar novel. With this read, very much later in my life, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder felt very much the major theme. Much has been written about that, but it was not something I would have recognised in my youth. The bloke who I worked with as an apprentice got blown up in Korea and shook with fear, the old bloke on the corner who shaped up to everyone passing, this was shell shock but the fact they were inevitable victims of events that they had no control over? That never entered my youthful mind.

Antiwar The Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance certainly is, but the feeling is there that it is also a comment that war is an inevitable human condition. “So it goes” said Vonnegut after every death in this book, therefore “so it goes” could be the comment about every reoccurring human conflict over what others have claimed are generally tribal property rights. We have no choice but to be what we are. I suppose that I will get up on Monday morning and go to work. “So it goes”.
Is that free will, or do I have no choice? To be honest with myself, as much as these questions make for fascinating thoughts, I am not that intelligent to really digest or understand what direction I think they should take.
“Poo-tee-weet?”

I make the same comment as I did for the previous review, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. This is a wonderful book and stands the test of time. It is a read that is far better than I recall from my youth and is with that highly recommended.


In order of publication and my reading of Vonnegut's novels.

My review of number 1 Player Piano here.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559
My review of number 3 Mother Night here.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6287961968
My review of number 4 Cats Cradle here.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371451
My review of number 5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater here
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371734

Rohinton Mistry's A fine Balance is without the doubt the most depressing book I have ever read, but it was also hard not to admire the very good writing and the ability to tell the story exceptionally well.
This one, Tales from Firozaha Baag, is also very well written but also has the addition of humour as well as life events such as disappointments, fears and hopes. In a Bombay apartment block we are told 11 interconnected stories of the majority Parsee inhabitants within, how they lived, how they died and everything in-between.

It would be an understatement to say that I have enjoyed this read, and to use the old cliché, I have not been able to put it down. What I found profoundly superb was that as the 11 tales were told they got stronger and stronger and made one realise that the earlier stories had a part to play in the book as a whole. The interconnectedness of a tribe for good or for bad or for just indifference are played out by the inhabitants of the apartment block, where we get an initial death via murder through to a final start of a new life as a migrant with all the issues that go with that.
A triumph in style and substance by Rohinton Mistry and I will tuck this one away to reread.

Highly recommended.

Kurt Vonnegut's 5th novel and to this point in his illustrious career he has let the satire and sarcasm take off big time in what is in my opinion the best novel he has produced so far.
The obvious and major theme is the use of inherited wealth.

Should one be generous with that inherited wealth? Protagonist Eliot Rosewater is certainly generous. His father is sure he should not be and is outraged by that so questions his sanity.
Eliot does have a breakdown of kinds as he tries to help all that he comes into contact with that need assistance. Or is he driven to the edge by the pressures of his father and his class, and those that have an eye on his wealth for other purposes than humanitarian? Is it his philanthropy that is a pressure in itself adding to his breaking down? His guilt as to his part in the death of innocents in WW2?

The purposes of philanthropy run deep in this novel. Should one help those in need of assistance if they have the money to do so or if one is in a position of political power should one; for example, bring in legislation to curb the viewing of bodily hair as an attempt to curb pornography to assist helping the poor and morally degenerate work harder to rise above their station in life and be more than “people that have no use”.
Vonnegut writes in such a way that either side of the questions could be answered in the affirmative or negative. It all depends on ones view.


As I have got older I personally think that political debate is the same old thing, it isn't much different than it was in my teens, thematically it never changes. This satire from 1965 to me makes fun of the same political divide we talk about today and will do so into the future. Life is the same old same old with technological advancements changing the surrounds. First there is birth and then there is death and just luck as to how one gets to live out their life in-between. This is an excellent satire and far better than I recall in my youth. A character in the book, a highly ambitious lawyer has a poster on his wall of a Roy Cohen who I had no recall of. His wiki made quite a read and if anything made me agree with my own feelings about political debate being the same old thing then it is the life of Roy Cohen. Cohens life reads as a Vonnegut satire.


This is a wonderful book and stands the test of time. It is a read that is far better than I recall from my youth and is highly recommended for its timelessness on the topic.


In order of publication and my reading of Vonnegut's novels.

My review of number 1 Player Piano here.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559
My review of number 3 Mother Night here.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6287961968
My review of number 4 Cats Cradle here.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371451

Would a large but secretive conspiracy use Email to let the conspirators know the address of the location that its next meeting is at? This is an important question. No they would not, not even when this was written 25 odd years back.

Would an alien civilisation know what a bull's eye is? Did they have Walnuts? Just two less than profound and meaningless questions, I suppose. This was the reason I moved away from Sci Fi in my early 20's to rarely come back. That feeling that it dated rapidly. When aliens were involved my then youthful imagination was fast dissipating into a demand for some historical form of what was reality and history became the normal read.

As to Sci Fi, interestingly I have just recently finished a couple of Kurt Vonnegut's very dated Sci Fi's, the difference between him and books such as this was (and not noted in my youth) he was actually making a comment about the human condition using Sci Fi as a trope. The Three Body Problem is purer in the scientific approach and that is where they can fall down rapidly with time I suppose. Things get dated, Email for example.

As to the writing and/or translation, considering how conceptually very good this piece of Sci Fi is, there is an at times clumsiness in the telling of what is essentially a first contact story. The characters can be a dull or even clichéd. Policeman Shi Qiang is one of the most clichéd characters I have read in any form of literature. I also note that this is going to be a TV series soon, and adapted for an English-speaking audience. It almost felt like a film script at times.

Anyway onwards and upwards and as the blurb says “Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilisation on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.” I suppose it the clever mix of Cultural Revolution revenge politics and the consequences make this conceptually very interesting.

Being the first of a trilogy I naturally want to know ‘what happened next' so with that thought in mind I will listen via my Audiobook allowance via Spotify in a couple of months' time.

Stream of consciousness delivery about losers who lacked the skill of Glen Gould when playing the piano, I think. I also think that as much as I enjoyed this quite odd read I might not be able to talk about it down the inn, or at least the pub near where I live.

Recommended to those that think, I think.

Wiki says that “Cat's cradle is a game involving the creation of various string figures between the fingers, either individually or by passing a loop of string back and forth between two or more players.”

How does that relate to Kurt Vonnegut fourth novel so named? I can but hazard a guess. The game is ultimately meaningless. In fact, life is if we think about it. We live, then we die. Religion to some holds meaning, but then the other argument is how? There is no one we have ever met that has met a God/Gods/Superior Beings and so on and so forth. And those that have, some of us tend to think a bit odd. That is why we might just act the way we do. Those that have faith and those that don't: they do what they do for the same reason, do what we do because of our faith or because it don't matter anyway. Human stupidity does not matter.

Cats Cradle, the book, has both the religious and the non-believers doing what they do because of that faith and that lack thereof, and that is why, as an example from this book, that they create weapons of mass destruction when there is not really a need.

To slightly paraphrase Lionel Boyd Johnson from this book about nothing but a cat's cradle if I had the ability, I would write a history about human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mt Coot- tha and sit and stare at Brisbane City from above while I drank the coffee I purchased from the café and I would thumb my nose or wonder about You Know Who and what.

Recommended to those that do wonder why.

My 4th read in my attempt to read Kurt Vonnegut Jr's oeuvre from first to last.

My review of number 1 Player Piano here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559
My review of number 3 Mother Night here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6287961968

Onwards to the next...

Kurt Vonnegut Jr writes a “what is truth?” novel. In 1961 when published there was no such thing as fake news. Or was there? The term “fake news” is to my ears of recent origin and comes from the US, at least that's what I believe. My first encounter with “what is truth?” was many decades back when I was dragged to a pub in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley where journos got themselves smashed to smithereens on Bundy Rum and XXXX beer. This was the only time I ever went to this pub while it was infested with journos and it was at the height of the slow (at least that is what it seemed to me) political downfall of a noted premier of this state of Queensland. A drunken journo blurted out to me that they had always supported this premier as they had been told to from up above. Did YOU really support him I asked? “As close to a fascist as you will ever get” he drunkenly spluttered. So why the written word support? I asked. I got laughed at.

And that is my take on this book. One sometimes must do what one has to do even if one is not sure it is truth. But as was written very early “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Indeed and especially when in a pub drunk.
How cynical of Kurt Vonnegut Jr to even suggest that “truth” and all its derivatives may be pretence for the human species. This is Kurt's 3rd book and follows his very good The Sirens of Titan. Strangely in that review I wrote that Titan's might be about “why we might do what we do and might think what we think.” So this is very much the same thematically, but this story is told conventionally as apposed to his previous Sci Fi efforts.

This is a fictional memoir of Howard W. Campbell Jr a US spy in the WW2 who was the equivalent of Lord Haw Haw. Trouble is that not even the US authorities knew he was a spy so consequently he ends up on trial in Israel for war crimes. The question of what is truth and who really knows it is truth is what permeates just about every page. We even get good old love appearing. What shall we do with love sweet love? Let's just say that one can pretend to be in love, but if one really does fall in love one may have to stop pretending and the consequences of that can be dire.

The consequences of pretending to be what we are not are always dire. That seemed to be Howard W. Campbell Jr's message. I tend to think he had a point.


My 3rd read in my attempt devour Kurt Vonnegut Jr's oeuvre from first to last.
My review of number 1 here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559

Onwards to the next.

This brief history focuses more on the paramilitary Freikorps that began almost immediately with the fall of imperial Germany at the end of The Great War.

Told in chronological order from that fall through to the Beer Hall Putsch, author Nigel Jones has written an opinionated short history of the violence that occurred from the recriminations that befell the German people from armistice onwards. As far as the narrative of events goes, this was a very useful read for me personally as the Freikorps and their violent use and effect in Germany was an area that I had not really delved into too deeply in the past. I would suggest that as a brief history this does the job it sets itself out to do even if the opinions of the author are a little too much to the fore at times.

The violence started early, with the infamous thoughts of being “stabbed in the back” and that “November Criminals” had humiliated a beaten Germany took root very early. The use of Freikorps was immediate as the ideological warfare of extreme left and right took to the streets in such areas as the murders of Liebknecht and Luxemburg and the smashing of the Munich Soviet.
There were also events that had completely passed this reader by, such the chapter called The Baltic Campaign. The author writes that this campaign was “....important historically and for its contribution to the Freikorps' – and hence to the German nations – myth” The wiki for anyone that needs to read further on this fascinating but seemingly little known event that made contribution to the thought process of the ultra-right and their rise to power under Hitler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikorps_in_the_Baltic

The Freikorps themselves comprised irregulars with many that knew nothing of life other than trench warfare, hence violent methods were the norm. The republican government of Germany used the Freikorps to suppress the left, though the Freikorps had no love for that government and blamed it completely for the humiliations that came with defeat. Many government leaders later paid with their lives.

In appendix A the author lists the main Freikorps, their leaders, dates, fate, size and insignia. Many of these were dissolved and merged into the regular army. Though well written and moving at a good pace, my criticisms of this book are that the narrative gets too opinionated for a brief history. There are also no footnotes. The appendix A noted above is very good, and Appendix B lists Freikorps members who became prominent in Nazi Germany. Many fell at The Night of the Long Knives, as even their free booting style of ill-disciplined violence was too much for the Nazis. There is a selective bibliography with some interesting further reading.

I would recommend this one to anyone with an interest but no knowledge of the subject. For those with a bit more depth of knowledge, there would be better served elsewhere, I would suggest.

A topical subject considering the pandemic and that I have long covid.
I listened to the author tell his own research via audio, and I have no problems with his tone of voice or the pace he spoke at.

First, the criticism of the book would be the use of Pop culture to use as analogies. I am never that keen on this as it tends to date the books that use it as a device and there are also those that have no idea who Monty Python, as an example, might be.

That one complaint aside, I have learnt a lot. I was reminded of Guns Germs and Steel in that that book along with this one will have me reading my history from a slightly different angle into the future. The Black Death did cause the change from Feudalism to capitalism, and just about everything I have read on that subject passes over this a little too quickly. It is like listening to complaints from my fellow Australians about inflation at the moment. One major cause was the Pandemic, but that hardly gets a mention. It should. The point the author made was that as pandemics go this one was handled very well and that the death rate by historical standards was low. Governments used measures to protect their population, and that included financial as well.

The chapter on Cholera in London and elsewhere in the British Isles was fascinating. Even when the researchers in the field said that the issue was a public one in that the water was not clean enough, some of the more conservative types refused to accept that public money should be spent on health outcomes that were good for society. For all Australia's faults in our health care system, I have yet to hear anyone from any of the political factions say anything other than good health outcomes for the populace at large are good for the economy. Why some in other countries argue this point confuses me somewhat. The proof is London's clean water in the excellent health and economic outcomes that were provided. The wiki is worth a read if one is not going to read this book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak

Recommended to those with an interest in the subject.

My thoughts below are initial without reading any other source.

“Obviously about depression. The wall paper is all powerful in the thought process of the narrator.The husband is trying to use his limited understanding of depression but is failing. The narrator thinks this is a prison, but he is not of the same opinion. She wants company, and he is scared to give her such. This could also be a horror story. Was it one, and that the narrator is using depression as a trope? I am not that good at metaphor at times, so is it obviously about depression?. What am I missing?”

At this point I read a blog post that had linked this short story and then the wiki on the book. It is about depression. If this had been written today, I would consider it an excellent short story in the horror genre. As it was not, it was published in 1892, it was a cry for help.

A very short read and well worth chasing down.

I read Lewis Woolston's 2nd book of short stories over the recent Christmas break. It was an appropriate read for the time of year as Australia lived through the trials of nature doing what nature wanted to do in terms of putting us in our place. The tales mostly took place in a place where nature ruled supreme. The same applies to this anthology

The Australia Day long weekend seemed another appropriate time to get stuck into Lewis' debut. Not long after the Christmas deluge in north Qld had ended, they copped it again. A cyclone and the aftermath of that, flooding, hit Townsville and the north. The Australia Day Wet Weekend. A perfect time to read about more of the eternal outback and the drifters that head there.

The Last Free Man and other stories had one tale of the wet, and that wet was a rarity for the place it happened. These are the stories of the parched and arid land on the road between Perth and Adelaide, a stretch of approximately 2,700 kilometres and 30 odd hours by car. Once past the main areas of population, it is all isolation. The aridity applies for the road between Adelaide and Darwin, 3,000 kilometres and another 30 odd hours by road. There are a few tales from the Alice, near to the drop-kick town that is Darwin as opposed to Adelaide the city of churches, a place of boredom for some.

These are the yarns about the escapees from the mainstream, those that try but can't be part of what the majority want Australian society to be. To those escaping, the mainstream is a place of confinement. Just ask the last free man, just ask Grandpa Bob, just ask the dead bloke with a needle in his arm in the middle of nowhere, they know there is freedom out there.
After reading both Lewis' books there is a feeling that they are aimed at those that are a bit blokeish, the restrained in talk kind, those that are over their youth, a youth that may not have offered that much. Many may think that the vast majority of Australia is full of bush types, the reality is that it is urban, demonstrably so, and these tales kick against that.
Lewis restrained writing style is perfect for the backdrop of each story. The tales are, in my opinion, going to be preferred by 40 plus males. Those that understand the need for their peer groups to have isolation. This is time and place reading.

The Triffids soundtrack for my read.

Well, the drums rolled off in my forehead
And the guns went off in my chest
Remember carrying the baby just for you
Crying in the wilderness
I lost track of my friends, I lost my kin
I cut them off as limbs
I drove out over the flatland
Hunting down you and him
The sky was big and empty
My chest filled to explode
I yelled my insides out at the sun
At the wide open road
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
So, how do you think it feels
Sleeping by yourself?
When the one you love, the one you love
Is with someone else
Then it's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
And now you can go to any place
That you want to go
I wake up in the morning
Thinking I'm still by your side
I reach out just to touch you
Then I realize
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
So, how do you think it feels
When sleeping by yourself?
When the one you love, the one you love
Is with someone else
I wake up in the morning
Thinking I'm still by your side (it's a wide open road)
I reach out just to touch you (it's a wide open road )
(Then I realize) it's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
It's a wide open road
And now you can go to any place
That you want to go

Considering the age of this debut novel by the great Kurt Vonnegut Jr there are certain parallels to this modern life.

The major theme is that modern technology is taking over industry to the point that it leaves many of a certain skill set without a role in society. Vonnegut Jr being a brilliant satirist has made an occasional laugh out loud satire that though showing its age in terms of using the then known machineries seemed to me to have a relevance to the modern use of AI as just one example.

One of the more interesting events in the tale told is that rioters were smashing all the machines up and that the engineers behind the revolt pleaded for them to stop as they had to decide what machines were kept and what were to be destroyed. The rioters took no notice and were even destroying bakeries, for example. What to eat now was the obvious question. Hence, Vonnegut Jr asks the reader the question, if machinery makes for a dull life what do we do without it anyway? The definitive double bind for the opposition to modern technology? One could argue so.


Highly recommended to all Takaru.

P.S
I read a lot of Vonnegut Jr in my youth though the only stand-out to this day is Slaughter-House Five, so with that I have decided to read his oeuvre from the first to the last. This will take time, but so be it. This has come about for 2 reasons. Backlisted covered Galápagos and I have not read that. I need to. Also, a conversation with a well-read neighbour about Vonnegut Jr. I concluded I needed to read him out.

Kim Gordon has produced a fairly entertaining, but in this reader's opinion, standard rock and roll autobio. I know that it is difficult for families to contend with a member having mental illness and Kim writes of that, but many families have such issues. And divorce is now ubiquitous, so hardly a subject. I suppose that when a fairly well known couple split acrimoniously, the public at large have an interest. Our generally mundane lives lit large?

The vast majority of Kim's book does cover her music with Sonic Youth and her art. That I liked the best as how music and art are made is always interesting to me. But the non-art side has to be very interesting to me, and Kim's domestic life away from her art is standard fare.

My mea culpa is that I have never purchased a Sonic Youth recording. When they first came to my attention in the early 80s I was very interested in Sonic Youth, the dissonance of their style was an attraction. But when others around me were playing them, so my then rather stupid music snobbery took over, and I let everyone else buy the records. I spent my money on the more obscure and way Kooler Dunedin Sound bands.

Which brings me to that youthful desire to be Kool that Kim wrote about occasionally where she said she is fairly shy and also wrote a few other self-depreciating thoughts as to herself. All well and good, but it takes a lot to be in a rock and roll band and seek some form of fame if you are scared of not being Kool and claim to be a bit lacking in confidence. I suppose that some would say that this attempt at fame is also an attempt at overcoming that shyness, especially for girls attracted to the arts. Be that as it may, in my opinion it takes a need to get up and perform, so shyness should not have come into the discussion. Kim was not scared to get on and do her art and damn the critics and the consequences, good on her for that.

On Page 153 of my copy, Kim tells an interesting though not unique tale of the cover art for the Sonic Youth album, Sister. The cover originally included a Richard Avedon picture. He threatened to sue, so the image was blacked out. Basically the band's art world was about appropriation, so that was normally not an issue. I had to look up who Richard Avedon was. I must say he is a fantastic photographer. With that even if he was not a fan of the music, an image of his on the album cover would have been a...............................Kool Thing.

Recommended to Sonic Youth admirers and those that thought Richard Avedon made a mistake.

This feels like an observation of the author's time in an upmarket hotel in Calcutta in the early 1960s. Every employee seemed to fear for their jobs when something went wrong, even when it was hardly the employee's fault, and that kind of reminds me of some rental property owners I have met and their attitudes to the tenants. Bland and dull writing and far too long-winded dialogue about very little made this an utter bore for me personally. It took all of my energy to finish.

In the 4 page Conclusion to this fascinating subject the author writes “The individualistic philosophy of Brahmanic India ......appeared to be in conflict with Indian life, which is peculiarly difficult for our Western mentality to comprehend – the fact that a great mass of humanity was distinguished solely by caste, lineage and clan.” Indeed.

My Indian contacts via my line of work all tell me different things about modern India. “It is all about religion” say some, others tell me that it is all about the love of pomp and ceremony and festivals, one other that it is about making money. And that can leave this reader, to paraphrase the quote above, in a peculiarly difficult position for my Western mentality to comprehend.

So based on my read of daily life from 200 BC to 700 AD is India today much different than its past? Based on the author using ancient texts and poems traveller accounts and various I suspect that all the religion, pomp and ceremony and festivals and money making is nothing new and an ingrained part of the thousands of years caste, lineage and clan system blended into an almighty complex mix that just bamboozles me.

There are three parts that give us “An introduction to Indian Life” followed by “Individual and Collective Existence” and finally “Royal and Aristocratic Existence.” We get a Conclusion, Bibliography, Chronological Table, Footnotes and Index and I found them all very useful indeed. There are 24 pages of photographs in the middle of the 344 pages, along with a map at the start. My copy does not say who the excellent translator is, but after a quick search I have come up with Simon Watson Taylor.
His wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Watson_Taylor_(surrealist)

Considering this was released in 1961 this was high quality research by author French Indologist Jeannine Auboyer. Her wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeannine_Auboyer

She wrote in the Preface that she could only use the resources available at the time and that more would be added with more archaeological research etc. It would be an interesting to see how much further research has taken the modern Indologist.

With a book such as this there are always snippets that can be given to those that read reviews such as this but there were so many of interest that I will leave it at one and that was from the final 3 pages that were covered by a subchapter called Solemn and Imperial Rites. aśvamedha was a ritualistic horse sacrifice that was, “......rooted in protohistoric times, was essentially a symbolic performance which associated the entire population with the king offering a sacrifice” For more info I read the wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashvamedha

“Gayatri Pariwar since 1991 has organised performances of a “modern version” of the Ashvamedha where a statue is used in place of a real horse, according to Hinduism Today with a million participants in Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh on April 16 to 20, 1994.[72] Such modern performances are Sattvika Yajnas where the animal is worshipped without killing it,[73] the religious motivation being prayer for overcoming enemies, the facilitation of child welfare and development, and clearance of debt,[74] entirely within the allegorical interpretation of the ritual, and with no actual sacrifice of any animal.” says the final paragraph on the Hindu Revivalism.

Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in India.

I began to read this on Christmas Eve and finished on Boxing Day. Read amidst the sound of my wife and her father bickering over how to cook a chook, through to watching the cricket get rained on. Amongst a couple of beers I mused that I read sitting in air-conditioned comfort, but the reality is that in north Queensland there are devastating floods and north of Perth bush fires destroy all in their path. Not far from me 160,000 odd people of the Gold Coast have no power after a massive storm. Some in these events have not only caused the loss of possessions but also lives.

Then outside the mainstream news of these natural events that affect the many there are the homeless, the drug addicts, the victims of domestic breakdown and many more loners and outsiders that drift amongst us. All have left a small trace. Remembering the Dead indeed. Some of the alive are Dead to many of us. Are these vignettes of Australiana more realistic than my present comfort? They have left a trace. We all do I suppose, but then we never write about those that leave images on our lives. Those writers of the more literary style will tell their stories with more ornate flourishes that may not give those outsiders the dialectal stories they warrant. The outsiders are justified these stories of the traces they leave.

These stories give the Dead the traces of memory that we all want, but don't know it.

The Triffids wrote a soundtrack for my read.

Property is Condemned.


Alcohol, Heroin
It's all water under the bridge
Left to your own devices
I know you're going to sink like a ship
Property, property, property is condemned
You tell a lie for long enough
And you believe it yourself
Now there's spittle running down your chin
Dozen murders under your belt
Property, property, property is condemned
Men and women on their knees
Nothing in their heads
I don't want to hear no tall stories
About what they doing in bed
I don't want a talk, I don't want a chat
I don't want to share a joke with a fink
I don't want a novel or a movie show
Just a pissing in the sink
Property, property, property is condemned
It was written all over your face now junior
You wanted chicken and turkey
Then that then this
The very next minute your bowels went slack
Now it hurts so bad you can't even piss

On page 70 Pi wrote that “There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, “Business as usual.” But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.”

Pi is most certainly right and he also states at the start that this read about his life will make one believe in a god. Me? I don't believe in superstars organic food and foreign cars I don't believe the price of gold the certainty of growing old that right is right and left is wrong that north and south can't get along that east is east and west is west and being first is always best but then I don't believe I will be reincarnated as Don Williams either.

I may not be as keen on this fantasy as most. For what was an attempt at a philosophical discussion on belief, it seemed that the writing plodded along far too much at times and got bogged down in its own attempt to be profound. I did however enjoy the Japanese investigators.