This blog was created with the intent of writing about my experiences as a medical student/maybe a junior doctor, but I've come to the realisation that I don't really want to blog about my education and my professional life; if a blog is to have any chance at longevity, it will need to be something I can work on as an escape from the medical world. And the only other thing I do enough of, it seems, is reading books. So let's see how that works out.
The champagne bottle to be smashed against the blog's creaking hull is Peter Carey's novel True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), chosen for the highly creative reason that it's the first book I've finished since deciding to give this book-blogging thing a go. (No, I tell a lie: the first book I finished was Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, but me trying to review that would be laughable at best and also lend a very misleading tone to the blog as a whole. Besides, I'd been slogging away at that one for months, and anything related to Plato or Socrates or really anything pre-Renaissance is at this point a far-off and distant dream.) I picked up True History because I'm in the middle of a personal project to read every book that's ever won either the Man Booker Prize or the Man Asian Literary Prize. Honest to God, I am least one-third as pretentious as this makes me sound. I merely have a weakness for lists on which items can be crossed off, and a few of my very favourite books of all time have won the Booker, so I thought I'd expand my horizons a little. And cross some things off lists while I was at it.
Like the terrible, terrible Aussie that I am, I had been putting off reading this particular book. Peter Carey is one of only two authors to have won the Booker twice (the other being J.M. Coetzee), and of his other winning book Oscar and Lucinda I can remember very little beyond the fact that there was a church made of glass in it, what more could you possibly want? But I knew that True History was written using vernacular, and I wasn't sure that I would find such unconventional language easy going.
I'm pleased to tell you that I was completely wrong.
The book is a fictional memoir of one of the most recognisable figures in Australian history, the bushranger Ned Kelly. I honestly have no idea if anyone outside of Australia is like to have heard of him (there was a movie? Orlando Bloom and Heath Ledger were in it?) but here down under he's certainly a Thing. One of our better-known artists, Sidney Nolan, did a series of paintings of him, like this:
Like the terrible, terrible Aussie that I am, I had been putting off reading this particular book. Peter Carey is one of only two authors to have won the Booker twice (the other being J.M. Coetzee), and of his other winning book Oscar and Lucinda I can remember very little beyond the fact that there was a church made of glass in it, what more could you possibly want? But I knew that True History was written using vernacular, and I wasn't sure that I would find such unconventional language easy going.
I'm pleased to tell you that I was completely wrong.
The book is a fictional memoir of one of the most recognisable figures in Australian history, the bushranger Ned Kelly. I honestly have no idea if anyone outside of Australia is like to have heard of him (there was a movie? Orlando Bloom and Heath Ledger were in it?) but here down under he's certainly a Thing. One of our better-known artists, Sidney Nolan, did a series of paintings of him, like this:
The letterbox-head is an instantly recognisable motif, drawing on the fact that Kelly and his gang wore plate metal armour in that shape.
However: the book itself. Edward 'Ned' Kelly, farmer turned bushranger, eldest son of a poor Irish family, is writing out his life story for his daughter to read. It's very difficult not to feel for this sober, hard-working, furious boy, to whom family is everything and poverty is truth and justice is nowhere.
As far as the writing style is concerned, Carey's done something that I think is quite spectacular: by roughing up the syntax entirely, removing most punctuation and leaving the grammar to fend for itself, he's managed to write a highly lyrical book that nonetheless manages to convince us that it could have been written by a poorly educated man with a natural gift for metaphor.
True History has won prizes out the wazoo, and I think it deserves every one of them. It's beautifully and unconventionally written, the plot is never slow or boring, and it grabs your emotions firmly by the collar and drags you along with them.
Finally, I was delighted to find in the book a quote directly addressing the fact that Australia as a country has a tendency to celebrate things that maybe aren't the most deserving of celebration (eg. ANZAC Day, the great patriotic public holiday on which we celebrate a crushing defeat!). For all his criminality, Ned Kelly holds the same sort of romantic, adventurous, folk-hero appeal as Robin Hood. This novel has also brought home to me the extent to which he, as a poor Irish-Australian criminal, stood at the time for resistance against the English, who were the authorities in the colony of Victoria.
However: the book itself. Edward 'Ned' Kelly, farmer turned bushranger, eldest son of a poor Irish family, is writing out his life story for his daughter to read. It's very difficult not to feel for this sober, hard-working, furious boy, to whom family is everything and poverty is truth and justice is nowhere.
As far as the writing style is concerned, Carey's done something that I think is quite spectacular: by roughing up the syntax entirely, removing most punctuation and leaving the grammar to fend for itself, he's managed to write a highly lyrical book that nonetheless manages to convince us that it could have been written by a poorly educated man with a natural gift for metaphor.
When our brave parents was ripped from Ireland like teeth from the mouth of their own history and every dear familiar thing had been abandoned on the docks of Cork or Galway or Dublin then the Banshee come on board the cursed convict ships the ROLLA and the TELICHERRY and the RODNEY and the PHOEBE DUNBAR and there were not an English eye could see her no more than an English eye can picture the fire that will descend upon that race in time to come. The Banshee sat herself at the bow and combed her hair all the way from Cork to Botany Bay she took passage amongst our parents beneath that foreign flag 3 crosses nailed one atop the other.For all that Ned Kelly's voice sounds Irish, the book feels deeply Australian; the descriptions of the bush ring true, and there's a lot of commentary about Australia itself as a fledgling colonial place starting to find its own identity as a settlement built by, but so remote from, England.
And here is the thing about them men they was Australians they knew full well the terror of the unyielding law the historic memory of UNFAIRNESS were in their blood and a man might be a bank clerk or an overseer he might never have been lagged for nothing but still he knew in his heart what it were to be forced to wear the white hood in prison he knew what it were to be lashed for looking a warder in the eye and even a posh fellow like the Moth had breathed that air so the knowledge of unfairness were deep in his bone and marrow. In the hut at Faithfull's Creek I seen proof that if a man could tell his true history to Australians he might be believed it is the clearest sight I ever seen and soon Joe seen it too.UNFAIRNESS. It deserves the caps. A major theme of the book is that of injustice, betrayal, how anger can be forged into action, how life takes more from -- and piles more onto the heads of -- those who can least afford it, and how theft and murder and rebellion can become the only paths that seem sensible when the world is slowly destroying you and the ones you love. It's certainly not a cheerful book, and I don't think I could even describe it as 'uplifting', but I didn't come out of it feeling like my soul was crushed beyond repair or anything like that. Mostly I wanted to roll around in the sentences some more.
True History has won prizes out the wazoo, and I think it deserves every one of them. It's beautifully and unconventionally written, the plot is never slow or boring, and it grabs your emotions firmly by the collar and drags you along with them.
Finally, I was delighted to find in the book a quote directly addressing the fact that Australia as a country has a tendency to celebrate things that maybe aren't the most deserving of celebration (eg. ANZAC Day, the great patriotic public holiday on which we celebrate a crushing defeat!). For all his criminality, Ned Kelly holds the same sort of romantic, adventurous, folk-hero appeal as Robin Hood. This novel has also brought home to me the extent to which he, as a poor Irish-Australian criminal, stood at the time for resistance against the English, who were the authorities in the colony of Victoria.
What is it about us Australians eh? he demanded. What is wrong with us? Do we not have a Jefferson? A Disraeli? Might we not find someone better to admire than a horse-thief and a murderer? Must we always make such an embarrassing spectacle of ourselves?This Australian's opinion is that Peter Carey can go on making spectacles like this one for as long as he wants.
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