Reviews and Comments

A noticeable boundary arose, a couple of months ago, in the items delivered to me by the home library service. Sharp as between the rings of a trunk. Somebody new had started selecting loans for me.

Since that moment, Greenwood was the one I looked forward to most. Like many of its bagmates, I hadn’t heard of it, or its author, but the blurb held startling promise. I cored a few sentences from its heart, at random. Yes. They were striking. I would save this one, savour it.

Aside from the back third or so lacking the structural fullness of most of the novel — a slow and then hastening collapse which the format, together with the thematic content, primes the reader to anticipate, anyway — Greenwood did not disappoint in the least. Though not without occasional irritant (the typical occasion being an (at first glance?) unconvincing blow to proceedings by Gen X carpenter Liam Greenwood), the work was considerably more satisfying than I had hoped.

Christie, it turns out, is a transportative and lyrical writer, with an ornate sense of literary patterning, and I probably would have deeply enjoyed floating along on his prose for several hundred pages regardless of subject. It may have only helped that, while susceptible to the profound intercontinental resonance between settler‐colonial resource economies, I am ignorant about the actual currents–‐of‐the–times–in‐the–places where he set this saga; lightening the load of my potential scepticism and diminishing the barriers of expectation. It definitely helped that he writes landscapes gorgeously — especially of forests — dives and dips delicately among immeasurable distress and destruction, and set so much story along rail corridors and in the thick of the forming of found family, alongside its faltering.

But I really liked this one.

The conceit of this being a collection of short stories may have served the writer well in maintaining funding, an audience, and industry connection throughout its composition, but fails the book as an artwork. Its abundance of redundant chapters would betray careless curation, an unwarranted, greedy completionism, were these genuine standalones, containers each of a story. Their emptiness, as even those chapters exceeding a couple of paragraphs remain bare vignette; the dogged homogeneity of concept; the consistent chronology along which they are all chained, the flicker of more‐than‐the‐sum‐of‐its‐parts integration; though, belong to a novel. Or an attempt at a novel.

The speculative urbanism approaches a cool. Some thought, maybe even research, has gone into redesigning an ever more inundated Birrarungga, to fashioning successive layers, up, down, and out, of future Old Melbournes and proposing emergent cultures around these. The evolution of increasingly coastal towns to the east is infinitely less considered: the streetscapes develop little but for damp and desertification; the society stays in stasis, flees in same.

Here appear to be Fitzgerald’s weaknesses as a (fiction?) writer: as a (fiction?) writer. (Rather than broad arc‐sketcher). Her churning world is inexplicably peopled by glossy cardboard and expressed with all the lyricism of an instruction manual. Where she goes in for evocation, it is to lean on readers recognising themselves and clumsy stereotype in an eerily select cast of characters.

Disproportionately, they flop around suburbs like Brunswick, following a taken‐for‐mundane uni education; cry poor in equating the costs of cigarettes with those for milk; and take as half the professional occupation of uniform matrimonial pairs the sitting in dedicated writing spaces, not‐really‐writing‐much. They enjoyed salty, sunburnt childhoods in holiday hotspots, so return home out “Gippy” way to a social scene of surnames sealed steadfastly Anglo‐Celtic. Observed through the bubble of protagonists, internal migration appears to involve only those with matching histories (wherein cultural diversity may make token appearance if restricted mainly to name), for the first few degrees’ temperature rise. Some decide to procreate and some don’t; everyone is mesmerised with this decision. It’s always an equally unconstrained choice, a kind of hypothetical exercise one (couple) completes and can then simply stamp onto reality at leisure. Veggie patches wilt, neighbours hit the road for good, flames tower, water’s traded, war is referenced; middle Australia feels a tad blue, First Nations groundskeepers truck on; but we ghost only lives of remarkable comfort, even by twenty‐teens’ standards, as we plod on through the decades — centuries, eventually — until… certain grammars spontaneously lurch, and then physiques grow fantastical. The cringe is on. If we even made it out awake.

It’s a shame, because where Fitzgerald does actually start to shine is in depicting speculative consumer tech, classic sci‐fi cityscapes, and simple machine sentience, so — although even the standout chapters still wanted for much more polish — those latter eras are the only ones that might come anywhere close to worth reading.

Presumably, the lot has proven worth publishing, business‐wise. Otherwise, however, it would be hard to argue (convincingly!) for any of the manuscript. For a long‐form, deep‐time work on ecological catastrophe to concentrate in this manner on exactly the crowd who celebrate this unbelievably bland heating epic… You can see how it happened, but.

[12 Jan 2023]

Dancers communicate so profoundly with the mere flex of a foot or hand, a shift of focus, the roll of a head, the transfer of weight within their body.

⸻ Stephen Page, opening page

Yet considering all that is going on in the images which fill almost the entire book, Barrett’s photography (as paired with Page’s art direction?) tends to be rather lifeless. Murky, flat, depleted of momentum, almost clinical, for all the heavy‐ink, gloss and phenomenal energies gone in.

I couldn’t help but contrast the pronounced underwhelm at a first glance through 21st century, prestige project Clan with my memory of alternately squint‐goggling at a juddery, blurred few‐second clip of anthropologist–choreographer Pearl Primus’ 1950 solo dance Spirituals, rolled and buoyed and awash with awe, utterly.

Like [Isadora] Duncan, [Primus] danced with — not against — gravity, but in her case the gesture tied her to the dances that she had researched in the Gold Coast, Angola, Liberia, Senegal, and the Belgian Congo, among other countries on the African continent of the late 1940s. She describes the earth in African dance as “an extension of the dancer’s own feet, as if it were a stage of rubber from which he can bounce to the skies, as if it were a soft bed upon which he could roll and be protected.” Primus incorporated this Africanist vision of oneness with the earth into her choreography.

[In Sprituals,] Primus leaps, legs in a V, arms open to the sky, then drops to the ground to execute a breathtaking series of forward rolls. Moving in a tight circle, she falls face‐first onto the stage floor, rolls, and then quickly pushes herself back up to her knees — her centre of mass low to the ground and her chest high, as if ascending from the deep. She does this over and over again. It’s an image of redemption expressed in movement, and gravity is her guide.

⸻ Emily Coates and Sarah Demers, Physics and Dance, pg. 19

Though drawing on different traditions, Bangarra’s performances are also closely integrated with a cultural research approach to choreography, running along strong seams of spirituality overtly embodying kinship with the physical world; and enact some remarkable relationships with gravity (if perhaps sometimes more balletic in dynamic, which I suppose could be part the problem).

Film and photo may be different media, but I do not reckon the comparison unfair. One can picture a Barrett take on Primus, given his Bangarra. There they are, even bound in deliberate sequence, these bemusingly bland shots belying incredible somatic precision, sheet after sheet after sheet of them. Palpable poses somehow the strange exception, making it seem there’s really only the material here for a short pamphlet, a few grammes of promo. Indeed even the most fleet‐shuttered micromoments do feel very close to posed and promotional, the dense fields of ink somehow detached from the dances they represent, the depiction of dancers; and showing such scant sense of spirit. Book as tight proscenium; bodies planar and forcedly forever folded faceforwards, choreographic forebears of these fast twenties’ frontal fashions.

Sure enough, going through sketching, searching out toe tendons in the gloom, eyes meandering around shapes pulled and reimagining them multidimensional and dancer‐felt as they might have really been in the moment — a hand riding a heave of the ribs, the dipped chin tucking hot breath into the shoulder, the soles’ clap to the floor and the thigh and each other in moments of stunning suspension… That force of appreciation came through much stronger, and closer to consistent, once given active analysis.

I’d like to see more books of this ambition, but I’d most like to see lots of dance photography that dances itself, or at least seems to respond to, to live in the same world as, the dancing.

sona toki pi jan wan lon lipu toki lili. ona li pana e ken kama sona lili kepeken ala mani. teno pini la mi alasa e ni. taso mi kama wile sama e sona pi jan mute e sona musi.

lipu mute ni li jo e moli mute tan jan. ni li ike tawa mi tan ni: teno pini la jan li toki lon nasi ni: toki pona li sewi e pilin pona.

sitelen li len e lipu. sitelen len li suwi. mi wile mute kama sona e sitelen toki e tawa toki.

mi kin wile lukin e anpa pi supa toki. tan nimi ali li seme? jan li pali e sona sin pi toki pona kepeken open lawa seme?

Despite the publication itself being quite sweet, the expressions inside exude off‐putting vibes.

One person’s idea of the language has gone into a free educational pamphlet, which is what I’d sought. But likewise I desire multiple, enjoyable perspectives.

This book features a lot of killing. This upset me, given toki pona is renowned for prioritising well‐being.

The pages are decorated with pictures. These illustrations are cute. I would prefer to learn the writing systems and signed forms of the language.

I’d also like to explore beneath the surface. What are the reasons behind the lexical choices? (Oh gosh I sure conceived this next notion without thought to cramming it into English…) Using what intellectual bases was the concept devised?

(And look, though for many years I have had a sense of the language and its purpose, the vaguest imprint even of its characteristics, before I read this  tiny course — or some other comprehensive summary— I would not have been able to make an attempt to actually use toki pona!)

[18 January 2023, Boonwurrung Country]

These remarks seem more review, I suppose, than close reading. So have a rating: straddling the slog of a one and the old two for well, I would not publish it, myself, in this state.

Allinson studs his book, very sparely, with breathtaking twists of phrase. The surrounding text is meticulously crafted also, and, I found (especially in the cases of the absolutely agonisingly autobiographically pitched Parts One and Three), disengaging.

It’s a multilayered grief text, but heavily filtered through themes of middleclass masculinity. Cultural cringe, even. The narrator is occasionally transposed to some other voice (slightly older Miles! slightly younger Miles! art critic Miles! potted historian Miles! translated scrap of this or that secondary source in the sole possession of Miles! gonzo journo Miles! Miles as Miles imagines his girlfriend would word him... travelogue Miles: miles of Miles...), without straying towards much of a range of perspective.

The Mileses into whose (un)confidence we are dumped are petulant in romance (we can only hope poor Alice, the ex, was not drawn from real life), and pretentious about art, with both aspects exquisitely, even just excruciatingly rendered. Indeed, the entire novel makes for a masterful character portrait overall, and is sincerely impressive.

However, the narrator’s personal relationships are too neatly mirrored by those of the obscure surrealist with whom he has become obsessed. The parallels are exhausting, if not exhaustive. They compound the time-hopping, dream-ridden fixation on reiterating the same kernel of a story. The tellings over are largely and unfortunately vacuous — more so than perhaps intended.

If you are into its particular cohort of navels, you will probably adore it. This feels a bit like reading Garner, I thought, a few pages before Allinson toasted Helen Garner. It is almost a Brow piece; (albeit) thirty times longer than it had to be, but for determination to impose a mood. This thing plods. With restrained power and precision.

Guess what sits top of the list Gardening in Naarm’s Sandbelt, where I wrote what seems review enough I figured I’d expand slightly on it with an actual one.

Grounded in the very geology of the place, this is a slim but rich introduction to a representative selection of local plant species, and assisting them in forming communities.

It is useful as! The authors strike a fine balance, which the clear presentation makes look so easy: being welcoming to beginners, reaching deep for the hardcore, and always keeping things convenient. It’s a surprise not to have met more books of this formula, as such guides could obviously be immensely beneficial in all kinds of places.

The text isn’t perfect. My biggest gripes are wordings that would confine Aboriginal practices to the past, and quite so readily condoning resort to rank pesticide.

I might have liked slightly more attention on incorporating indigenous plants in the kitchen garden, but that may make for a different book. The curation as is is not in need of upsetting. It is well suited to a good range of contexts.

Still an invaluable resource two decades on — indeed, only growing in urgency every month — this title is commonly held by public library services around the region, although remains worryingly out of print and pixel.

A revised edition would be so welcome! Meanwhile, I’d encourage anyone with so much as an egg carton in the area to reserve, show to friends, and cherish those remaining copies.