VIETNAM VETERAN BUCKS THE TREND

REMAINS TO BE SEEN BY DANIELLE DE VALERA – SOME THOUGHTS

What is it about human nature that, no matter how much some blokes get blown off course, their homing instinct swings them back around so that their deepest urgings drive them to have a crack at what evolution made them for. Just being born male is enough to be led in the wrong direction. Peer pressure to transgress for the hell of it is just the start. Being born working class ensures that options that lead to independent success, taken for granted by the privileged few, are rarely considered. Going to war all but seals the fate of too many who take that route, whether voluntarily or by ballot. Existing, even if only briefly, as an agent of human destructiveness, all but strips away the tissue of connectivity that makes us human – all BUT! The bond that men form with one another when the life of each depends on the loyalty of others endures more widely than marriage. That bond makes it difficult in some cases to overcome the nearly universal condescension of their gender towards women. Women therefore exist in the lives of such men as a convenience at best or an unavoidable encumbrance. Children, the evolutionary point of there being men and women in the first place, are a fearful and even distasteful prospect. Yet, here’s the story of a bloke and his woman, mired in pitiful relationships with his peers, who choose each other and embrace the prospect of having children – even if the likelihood of failure can’t be ruled out.

Danielle de Valera has done something I once thought I would never tolerate: writing in the first person about the life of a Vietnam Veteran. I first encountered this phenomenon in a writing course. One of the other students wrote about an incident in Vietnam, not only as though it had happened, but as though he’d been part of the action. I was incensed! In that moment I understood the outrage of indigenous people when a non-indigenous person writes (or paints etc) as though they are indigenous. Anyone remember Wanda Koolmatrie? Or Eddie Burrup? Well, Ms de Valera has cured me of my possessiveness. (Yep, I am a VV.) I think what made the difference was that, in her use of first person narration, she does not come across as a “wannabe”. Her close association with one of the most acclaimed Vietnam Veterans certainly helps her achieve an authentic sense of “being there” without intending to claim as much. She also strikes the right tone in narrating events in Mullumbimby in the mid eighties – not as they actually happened, but as they would have, given the cast of characters in her story. There can be little doubt that she was there – as participant and as observer.

Ms de Valera’s story alternates between events in Mullumbimby in post (Vietnam) war times and moments in the thick of it in-country, as we used to say. Each episode is a panel of an unfolding mural. The first combines inconsistent messages about the Japanese - as a former enemy on the one hand, and as purveyors of the stuff of our prosperity on the other. Being denied entry to the Ex-Services Club provokes cynicism and confirms the sense and fact of isolation for the two Vietnam Vets. This commonplace episode resonates with the animosity of Second World War Returned Servicemen towards Vietnam Veterans until 1987 or thereabouts. As they drive away in the slashing rain the story segues to an operation in Vietnam, as chopper-borne Diggers are dropping through the rain into a clearing for a rendezvous with US forces for what was to be a joint operation. Not for the last time in this story would the Diggers be let down, and worse, by their so called allies. Do we hear the voice of David Hackworth, disillusioned with his own country’s military, in this story? It wasn’t just the Diggers who questioned the professionalism of their overlords. Each of the alternating snapshots has such issues embedded in the narrative. 

This is a story that can be re-read numerous times without exhausting all that is hidden between the lines. It is a Coming Home story that, in this and other works by Ms de Valera, unfolds over a number of years. That thought suggests a link with the film that bears the name of its genre. Is Michael O’Neill an Aussie version of Luke Martin – emotionally rather than physically disabled– who decides that the best way to help his mates is to escape the horror of their post war life (for its destructive nature is every bit as horrific as their experience in Vietnam) is to throw himself into something resembling a “normal” life? Does Azure thus have her Lucky Out in Michael’s self administered “cleansing”?

Aliens - Who? Us??

Thoughts arising from The Harrowing...

From the second paragraph of The Harrowing by Rita De Heer it is very clear that this is a SiFi story. So alien is the creature described that only those who like to push ahead into the unknown are likely to read on. The physiology of the creature is so unfamiliar that pushing ahead is all one can do in the hope of all becoming clear in due course. One might hope for a picture but that would be too easy. One just has to trust the narrative to give enough to keep it worth the read. It certainly does.

One of the devices used to deepen the alien experience is language itself – the very medium in which story exists. Apart from the newly minted nouns to name the species, all of the words are familiar but the way they are used heightens the sense of something perceived but not quite knowable. This is particularly so in the use of hyphens to join ordinary words to name things that require a stretch of the mind to grasp. 

Yet, despite its alien nature, there are things about this world that are familiar. The creatures procreate, though not like us. It is this difference that makes them alien. Yet in our world corals procreate, also not like us. Human procreation is not the only model in existence. Unlike corals, the creatures in this story experience something like sexual attraction but their gender relations seem to exist heedless of the whole point of gender – until one recalls that Spartan soldiers, who procreated as readily as their Athenian counterparts, did gender differently. The creatures parent their young, and if the role of the genders seems to be a bit off the planet, one has only to remember that it is, indeed, on another planet and that, on this one, seahorses do not conform with what would otherwise seem to be a universal norm. We are being asked to see the difference between a function of material existence and the way it is modelled in particular material circumstances, and perhaps to accept that there is nothing that is alien. Almost nothing, that is.

At the outset there is a strong sense of doom hanging over this world. Something has changed the environment and most of the waterbound young are not surviving to maturity. The creature first encountered has not been adequately nurtured and does not even understand the processes of its own maturation. Well, nothing alien there if you’re a female in our world, especially if you have to misfortune of being born into a society dominated by men of fanatical religious habits. But I digress. The unfamiliarity of the creatures with intrusive new elements in their environment causes them to explain those intrusive elements in terms familiar to their own experience and conceptual habits. The reader, however, is taken into the inner workings of the problem and recognises immediately that the aliens in this world are human and that they are acting with characteristic human disregard for what they do not understand and appreciate the value of. One thinks of colonisation, destruction of human and natural environments, genocide and so much more. Yes, there are aliens after all, but who would have thought it would be... us?

The creatures lay plans to foil what they think is the predator. They affirm that a heroic death in the service of their kind is a worthy fate. They are completely wrong in their understanding of the situation and there is a death but not one that can serve any purpose other than to demonstrate their utter powerlessness. The creature first encountered returns dispirited to the island, to serve, however futile it may be, the new generation demanding its share of existence. No sense here of the lament heard so often in our world that it would be condemning a new generation to a horrific existence and therefore better not to let them be born. The dispirited creature reflects on how it came to fend for itself - its parent having set out to slay the harrower did not returned. It finds the cause of the problem and finds the skeleton of one of its kind, crushed by the monstrously inexplicable presence in its habitat. Knowing he faces the same fate he tries nevertheless to play David to Goliath laying waste to his kind. As he is about to meet the same fate as his predecessor, something of unimaginable magnitude and power intervenes and he is not only spared, but the problem is vanquished. 

The creature, being amphibious can only think of what happened in terms of the environment in which it experienced it. So it was a big fish, although it was so far beyond the creature’s expectation that it was conscious of doubt about what it saw – what happened. The reader might conclude that it was a force of nature that restored equilibrium to an unsustainable situation. Either way the human mind is naming, as best it can, a function of existence itself. In this world suggestions of Divine intervention name that function without necessarily being any better or worse than explanations involving a big fish or forces of nature. 

There are no aliens except those who contemptuously assert their will at the expense of others. All manifestations of existence are kin. The patterns of being that are expressed in dissimilar “cultures” are what make all “cultures” precious. The assertion that value is found only in what is like “us” identifies the Anti-Being – the only real alien.

http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/287264/1/the-harrowing  

MagnifiCat – an Animal Fantasy by Danielle de Valera, Old Tiger Books, 2013

Kindle Edition

It wasn’t until I reached the resolution of the crisis that drives this story that I realised why the characters had to be animals. Indeed, for the first three quarters of the book, though my attention was constantly drawn to the fact that they were cats, dogs, snakes, echidnas, rabbits and more, I kept visualising the characters as human. I saw Rupert, for example, as Finn Burridge (Arthur in The Paradise, ABC1 Saturday 7:30 pm) and Sylvia as Phyllida Law (Aunt Auriel in Kingdom, Saturday 9:30 pm). I visualised the whole as if in the cinema thinking that human characters would be totally credible – until I came to the bit where it becomes, in the Author’s own words, a fairy tale. No one would have trouble with the part of the story that dwells in hardship, but happy endings, that’s another matter. We don’t like to see happy humans!

Having said that, I do not mean to dismiss the last quarter of the book as “just a fairy tale”. Disney has much to answer for when it comes to how fairy tales are dismissed as kids’ stuff. They are actually the depositories (depositories, Mr Rabbit) of folk wisdom. Danielle de Valera’s #MagnifiCat is no exception. But I want to go further than that by saying that this book could be called The Book of Danielle, because, like another with a similar sounding name, The Book of Daniel, it is apocalyptic.

Like all important phenomena, the word Apocalypse and what it signifies, has suffered the effects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which states that everything turns to shit. Or, more classically, working systems break down because entropy increases. Contrary to popular opinion, an Apocalypse is not about bad things happening but a revelation of faith – which is why The Apocalypse of St John in the New Testament is called The Book of Revelation. If all you see is fire and brimstone, you missed the point. And so it is with Magnificat. If you look below the narrative you may catch a glimpse of Danielle de Valera’s faith.

Faith is not to be confused with belief. We readily accept that there is a difference between belief and knowledge. But what is faith? The intuitive answer is that faith is an instance of belief. But I want to suggest that faith is actually a form of knowledge. I can believe something that is true, but that true belief would not be knowledge unless properly justified. A false belief can never be properly justified and therefore cannot be knowledge. A true belief that is falsified by a single instance, however, is not necessarily a false belief. If I believe, for example, that all metal bars expand when heated, the discovery of a metal bar that does not expand when heated simply necessitates a couple of minor adjustments – drop one word and add another – for my belief to remain true – metal bars usually expand when heated. Faith is expressed as belief that undergoes adjustments over time. But unlike the belief about metal bars which can properly be justified and become knowledge by systematic empirical experimentation, faith is knowledge before it is a belief; it is existential knowledge which comes to be expressed as belief that changes over time. Faith withstands the most serious challenge to belief and is thereby properly justified as knowledge. I can believe or disbelieve in miracles and be right or wrong depending on whether miracles do or do not occur; but I can never know that miracles do or do not occur. Faith, on the other hand, which is usually thought of as believing, is firstly a radical un-belief – faith is un-convinced that things are as they seem. It is when faith attempts to answer the question, if what seems real is not real, what is real? that it expresses itself as belief which changes over time. You know… death is not the end of existence – that sort of thing … But what does not change is what faith knows to be true – things are not as they seem; existence is more than we observe. But I digress.

Apocalyptic writing celebrates the fact that despite all the troubles that assail us, we better than merely survive: we thrive in ways unseen to most other people. This is not to be confused with the Byronesque Dogma that if we believe that the Universe will look after us (another by-product of TSLT), we will find ourselves rolling in abundance – an assertion pitiful on the lips of someone on the dole but reprehensible in the mouths of the affluent. No, The Book of Daniel, and The Book of Revelation are not about people who don’t suffer. They are about people who know that their suffering does not define them and who, staring down the source of their suffering, know who they really are. 

As the first fourteen chapters of Magnificat show, Danielle de Valera is no stranger to suffering. She knows poverty as a sister. This is evident in the way she writes about poverty. Her characters engage with it with a complete lack of resentment. When Claude loses his job it never occurs to him to think, let alone say out aloud, “What about me? It isn’t fair!” Intriguingly, Sylvia reads Schopenhauer. Why not Albert Camus or Jean-Paul Sartre, both of whom were champions of the kind of freedom that is to be found in taking responsibility for the quality of one’s existence? Schopenhauer was the first western philosopher to “get” that “life is suffering” and all that follows from that in the thought of the Buddha. So why not just have Sylvia chanting the mantras so familiar in the geographic location in which her story is set? Is it because suffering is not answered, by a Westerner, by putting on the livery of the Buddha but by engaging with it as a Westerner – hence her interest in Schopenhauer? 

And, of course, the title of the book is not just a pun. The Magnificat is the definitive statement of faith in the mouth of Mary, the mother of Jesus and includes the words: “He fills the starving with good things; send the rich away empty.” The story in which people are constantly on the verge of hunger, ends with a feast. But wait. Isn’t it the rich who put the show on? Yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not empty – living their eleventh century fantasy. 

There are depths to plum in this apparently simple tale. I will end by alluding to one of them. Is there a reason why the characters that are cats or dogs are not, say, possums or sheep or... whatever? And why are rabbits the snobs, rather than, say, camels with their haughty heads held high looking askance at the world? One thing’s for sure, it’s not a scheme that encodes references to Australian artists, otherwise Rupert would be a Bunny.

Miles Franklin Award 2009

Breath, Tim Winton
Everyone seems to be breathless about this book. It is, indeed, an astounding story – until a somewhat after half way, when it becomes quite alarming. In the early part two boys earn a privileged relationship with a mentor, compared the likes of whom, Alpha Males are parodies of their own potential. The three amigos become a “boys own” secret society that transcends ordinariness by engaging with the forces of nature – so to speak. What they achieve is breath taking – literally. Inevitably, as they reach early maturity, the lads find themselves on divergent paths and the narrator loses his way big time under the influence of another adult – an older woman. This is the part of the book that alarms me, because up to this point I would readily have given it to kids in upper primary and lower secondary to read. I changed my mind about that when I came to graphic descriptions of - well, I don't want to spoil anyone's read, so I won't say. Tim Winton has written about people taking risks. In so doing it is he who has, in my view, taken a very real risk – I can’t help wondering, for example, what the media, responding to a politically motivated ‘feminist’ reading, might yet made of this story. I am absolutely certain that, had it been about adolescent girls, one of whom went down the same path as the narrator with an older male, the book would be regarded as an outrage. That said, I readily recommend it anyway, to parents of younger teenagers. But read it yourself first so that you can respond to their grief when they read it. I would put this book in the same category of cautionary tale as Bill Henson’s photographs.

Notes on "The Price of Freedom"

...Uncovering the past on behalf of the future...
Denis McLaughlin, The Price of Freedom, David Lovell Publishing, Melbourne, 2007
– a review by Paul Smith


I have never used the phrase tour de force about anything except in jest – until now. Denis McLaughlin’s The Price of Freedom deserves to be described thus. In the thoroughness of its research, and the application of the historical method; in the scope of the challenge that it represents to a way of thinking about past events and present priorities; in the compassion that motivates it and the frankness of its statements about certain people and events, this book is, at the same time, breath taking and a breath of fresh air.


Pope John XXIII, when asked about the agenda for his papacy, famously walked to a window, opened it and said: To let some fresh air into the church. In Hebrew, the word for spirit is the same as the word for a strong gust of wind. In Catholic thinking that same word is used for the Holy Spirit. Denis McLaughlin takes one’s breath away not by merely opening a window, but ripping away the planks that have boarded it up for most of its existence. That window is the life of Edmund Rice, through which we can see the Kingdom of God; and through which rushes the breath of fresh air, the ruah that replaces the stale air that has been knocked out of us by the force of McLaughlin’s words.


Edmund Rice emerges from this book not only as a startlingly successful business man, but, to put it colloquially, a bloke with street cred, capable of sharing his faith and material prosperity with street kids willing to seek a better life. He emerges as a devoted husband and father who made life choices that would be regarded as exemplary today, let alone in the eighteenth century. Indeed, his experience as a father is portrayed as the defining mark of his vocation. Rice is shown to have been not just a pious man, but, more importantly, a man whose faith produced practical, socially significant results – a man who put his money where his mouth was. Starting with the provision of meals, clothes and instruction tailored to the personal needs of youths he welcomed into his home, to the very substantial donation of funds to the Presentation Sisters, Rice ultimately applied the whole of a personal fortune, estimated at 50,000 Irish pounds, to the education of youth, not only in Ireland, but in England, Australia and, in time, every English Speaking country in the world. Furthermore, he inspired others to do likewise. Many of the first generation of his congregation were men of means who contributed their wealth and talent to the same enterprise. Rice was not a man with a classical education and the leisure to articulate an educational philosophy. Yet his pedagogical priorities and practices – inspired, McLaughlin argues, by his experience as a father – would withstand the most critical scrutiny today: which raises the question. Why are those who came after him known for less well regarded methods?


Up to this point, McLaughlin’s book is the breath of fresh air alluded to earlier. It is when he begins to answer the foregoing question that it becomes breath taking. It is beyond my ability to summarise the bastardy (McLaughlin’s word) of what happened when Edmund Rice relinquished the leadership of his congregation. Suffice to say that he was crucified by those who wrested (my word) control, and his enterprise subverted by issues of power – rather like HMC, it might be argued, when She fell into the hands of people less humane, because less divinely inspired, than Jesus.


For me, the most surprising thing about the book was that, despite my having spent two years in a Christian Brothers Juniorate and Novitiate, I knew absolutely nothing of the events that McLaughlin catalogues in chapters 6 - 8. In one sense the most surprising thing about the book ought to be that those events took place at all. Ought to be, only from a Panglossian point of view, however, for as the pious are quick to point out: No one should expect us to get it right all the time. We are not perfect. We have feet of clay! Indeed. But having feet of clay is one thing: gilding them to disguise the truth is another. And that is the most bitterly received point that McLaughlin makes in his book. Not only was Edmund Rice’s enterprise turned into something alien to his intention; but self serving ideological perspectives ensured that that this would be hidden from view. And this goes to the “myth busting” purpose of McLaughlin’s book.


I use the term “myth busting” advisedly. McLaughlin himself alludes to the two senses of the word myth – the underlying vision of an enterprise (charism?); and the deceitful misrepresentation of reality. McLaughlin’s purpose is to expose both – Rice’s intention and achievement; and the way in which the vicious grab for power in the founder’s own life time has reverberated into present practice and thinking. In doing so McLaughlin is by no means purporting to have arrived at the truth. He repeatedly avers the need for caution when considering the conclusions he has arrived at, and engages in self critical analysis of the research program he is undertaking. Nor is he pretending that his work is unprecedented. As I read – dutifully breaking the flow of the story by looking at and, where necessary, reading every foot note – what became clear was not just the meticulous thoroughness of his research, but the identities of the “giants on whose shoulders he stands” in producing this work. What rescues the tragic litany of subversion and misrepresentation from a damnable story to one of breath taking hope is the record of courageous questioning by members of the congregation itself, and the uncovering of much that was deliberately disguised. McLaughlin ends the book by proposing a means of recovering the Ricean charism and restoring Ricean Education to its intended role of liberation in the contemporary world.


This book is not just about a man whose achievement was diminished by some who came after him. It is about the way the world works. A few good men get things done. Lesser men get in the way. Things bog down and ossify. Yet people and organisations experience The Resurrection. Rice constantly advised people that all things turn out for the better. It sounds Panglossian – especially in the light of what happened to him and his work. But people like Rice earn the right to be believed precisely because they endure injustice to the death.


The most important contribution of this book is not the past which it illuminates – as vital and necessary as that is for the future – but the very future that it points to. McLaughlin says of Rice in Chapter 1:
“Perhaps what contributed to his call to action was the realisation that some of his success may have been at the expense of his countrymen. His truly revolutionary response was not simply educating the poor, but the provision of a special type of education that challenges the status quo which justified and protected class systems that legitimised the Irish abuse of their own.” (p 26)


Rice did not confine his efforts to educating children, but also addressed the needs of parents – as parents and as members of a community – partly as a result of which, the future of his country changed, from one in which people were subjects, to one in which they became citizens. At a time when, despite the catastrophic prospects of climate change, powerful people decree that measures to reduce its effects must not diminish economic growth, education that produces revolutionary outcomes is indeed what is needed, not just for children, but adults as well. Who will act on behalf of the ‘dear little ones’ – the many species on their way to extinction?

In-flight Entertainment...Books

I listened to several talking books as I drove. I didn't really watch the videos in the car, but I thought I'd throw them in – I did watch them at various houses during the journey. And as for the secret men's business, well, I saw the inside of a Masonic Temple.
Torquing Books
UndergroundIf you read or listen to only one more book for the rest of this year, make it this one. Canberra has been nuked and Australia is in security lock down. How this happened and the consequences of it makes for a furiously paced story of frightening plausibility. Though set in the near future its roots are in the decade beginning with the election of the Howard government. Read this story to understand why you hate what happened in the Howard years – or why you should.http://www.smh.com.au/news/book-reviews/underground/2006/10/02/1159641243961.html

Dirt MusicDo you know a family whose members are immensely talented and whose skills are highly sought after, yet are treated as pariahs? Like the Jews in pre-holocaust Europe. Or Aboriginal artists in today’s Australia. The male lead in this story is from such a family. His reluctant rival is top dog in the district, but is sick of the role everyone expects of him. Their girlfriend (sic) is the blow-in who can see and respond to both sides of the story. It’s a ripping yarn whose pace builds to a crescendo – as is appropriate for a story with the word “music” in the title. Who gets the girl? Well, it’s not really about that. Though the book ends before reconciliation is achieved, that is the inevitable outcome, so the story itself is about what we have to endure and what we have to shed on our way to mutual respect. While I found the whole story engaging, the chapters in which whitefella ways collide with blackfella intuition, and music is re-invented, are utterly sublime.http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Nov01/McFarlane.html

TheftSet, in its early stages, in Bellingen, northern NSW, and later in Sydney and New York, this is about the art world. Relax. It doesn’t require any knowledge of art. By the time you have finished, however, you’ll almost certainly be highly motivated to either take an interest in the way art is made and marketed or stay clear of the whole crazy trip. There’s a very clever device for putting across two points of view about what’s going on in the story. There are two narrators: the artist and his brother – the latter described as an idiot savant. He’s certainly not wired the way most of us are, but he’s no idiot. There’s a female who drives the action of the story. What a piece of work is she!!http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2328/1063/1/Theft5UV.pdf
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/April06/Lamb%20review.htm

BreathEveryone seems to be breathless about this book. It is, indeed, an astounding story – until a somewhat after half way, when it becomes quite alarming. In the early part two boys earn a privileged relationship with a mentor, compared the likes of whom, Alpha Males are parodies of their own potential. The three amigos become a “boys own” secret society that transcends ordinariness by engaging with the forces of nature – so to speak. What they achieve is breath taking – literally. Inevitably, as they reach early maturity, the lads find themselves on divergent paths and the narrator loses his way big time under the influence of another adult – an older woman. This is the part of the book that alarms me, because up to this point I would readily have given it to kids in upper primary and lower secondary to read. I changed my mind about that in Chapter []. Tim Winton has written about people taking risks. In so doing it is he who has, in my view, taken a very real risk – I can’t help wondering, for example, what the media, responding to a politically motivated ‘feminist’ reading, might yet made of this story. I am absolutely certain that, had it been about adolescent girls, one of whom went down the same path as the narrator with an older male, the book would be regarded as an outrage. That said, I readily recommend it anyway, to parents of older teenagers. But read it yourself first so that you can respond to their grief when they read it. I would put this book in the same category of cautionary tale as Bill Henson’s photographs.http://www.powells.com/review/2008_07_28.html
http://breath.timwinton.com.au/

WantingA meditation masquerading as narrative – which is by no means a bad thing. Set in Tasmania, where Sir John Franklin was governor, and London, where Charles Dickens was the toast of English literature, it is the story of Mathinna, and Aboriginal girl adopted by the Franklins and effectively abandoned when it was no longer convenient to have her around. Life in the Franklin and Dickens families provides a foil against which the changing fortunes of Mathinna (and Aborigines generally) rise and fall. And her story is the measure with which the feted families can be judged. Opportunity and misfortune – wants pursued to destructive ends – bring insights regardless of class or station in life. In the end, all are equal. All are found wanting, yet the insights they have had make the details of how they lived utterly irrelevant. This is a meditation on redemption which comes to all no matter what.http://www.richardflanaganwanting.com.au/review_tasmanian.aspx
http://reviews.media-culture.org.au/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3025

NakedThere is no other word for this but funny – though funny is not nearly a strong enough word. Beyond funny, it is deeply engaging. You cannot look away because the narrator is truly naked – in the sense that he is utterly defenceless – free of the kind of defences that often camouflage the truth about oneself. God, it is said, looks after drunkards, fools and Americans, but is particularly fond of fools. In which case, this guy’s going to heaven.http://www.digihitch.com/review13.html
http://stress.about.com/od/books/gr/nakedreview.htm

Canterbury tales
Apart from the fact that this is the book that kicked English off as a national language, and therefore deserves to be read for that reason alone, it is one of the most engaging books I have ever listened to (I haven’t yet actually read it). There is a delightful diversity of characters whose tales ripple with insight and wisdom – even when they’re being gross, which is often. My favourite is the Wife of Baths’ Tale in which Chaucer answers the question, What do women want and leaves you wondering why Freud and C20 feminists bothered.

Last DrinksThe narrator was best mates with a restaurateur during Queensland’s Jelkie era, who did very well out of police corruption. He never ever had to call “Last drinks!” Until, that is, the Fitzgerald Enquiry fired a cannon through the crowded bazaar, taking down a government minister, the police commissioner and a cast of thousands. Well, hundreds. Scores? Tens, perhaps. Whatever, some very powerful people went to gaol. But not the top scone. Ten years later, half a dozen of the people who were either investigated, or in other ways close to the event, are drawn together again by the death of that very same restaurateur in suspicious circumstances. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear how little things hve changed in Queensland.http://www.dotlit.qut.edu.au/reviews/drinks.html

The White Earth
The son of a farm hand on a grand Darling Downs estate, is given unrealistic expectations about his future role there. He is disabused of his fantasy by the daughter-of-the-house and spends the rest of his life manoeuvring to get his way. This is achieved at great cost, not least to his relationships with everyone who should be close to him. When his son-in-law dies in a farming accident he begins to groom his grandson as his heir. The boy’s mother, emotionally crippled by her sense of dependence, sees his role as securing their future in what she anachronistically conjures as the Queensland squattocracy, …… stifling the boy’s relationship with his grandfather. The boy and the old man, however, have preternatural insight about the future. They inhabit a world of brutal political conflict and soaring spiritual ambition. The two opposing dispositions, mother and grandfather, reach a crescendo of mutual destruction. The boy is left orphaned and penniless, and the author is left with a sequel to write, because the boy, now free, can choose who he can become… can’t he?http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/12/1084289744278.html

Response to BU

John: A Novel – Response to a review by Barry Unsworth

Link to BU's review http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/04/fiction2

Barry Unsworth reviewed John: A Novel in The Guardian Saturday 4 October 2008. He gave it a good wrap, saying that there is much to be admired; the writing is unfailingly resourceful; and that it is a shrewd and subtle examination of the role of spectacle in the quest for power; as well as an eloquent and moving statement of the power of love. Reviews don't come much more positive than that. I'm drawing attention to what BU says is good about the novel because he also makes some very substantial criticisms, to most of which I feel the urge to respond.

BU's third paragraph

Among those who might read this book there will be a good number in the same situation as myself, heirs to Christian sensibility but without belief in the doctrine, impressed by the dramatic but more than sceptical of the miraculous. For the purposes of the novel, John is not required to recall the miracles; the story is wonderful enough without them. Obviously the author chose to make him do so. But in matters such as this, the reader too should have some choice, and here he is given none. There is an exact coincidence of viewpoint between the character who remembers and the person who provides him with the words. There is no element of sorely needed questioning, no space for the doubt that forms so large a part of human rationality. Might not the saint's memories be confused? After all, he is 100 years old. The rebel disciple, Matthias, might have provided a counter-voice. He does suggest at one point that this might not be the same John who was once in the presence of Jesus, but he is discounted from the start, portrayed as manipulative, cold-hearted, hungry for power; deeply wicked, in fact. It is difficult to believe that he could ever have had the fervour and devotion to follow John in the first place. He undergoes no course of disaffection or disappointment; there is no process of scrutiny.

…impressed by the dramatic but more than sceptical of the miraculous.

… in matters such as this, the reader too should have some choice, and here he is given none.

There is actually only one miracle in this book, the account of which is so subtle that it might not be recognised as a miracle. In the very last scene, John is in a state of ecstasy in which he "sees" the future of the church – one detail of which is Papias, his right hand man, and two others, healed of the disease that first appeared on Patmos, which John's prayers and touch failed to heal. There is account after account of sincere efforts to effect miracles, all of which fail. There is also an account of a fraudulent miracle which "works" for those who did not witness it but want to believe it. And there is the account of how Matthias, the perpetrator of the fraud, having caught the disease, attempts to heal himself. We are not told the outcome. But how could one not wonder about it? The reader is given no choice? Here's a two that I can see. The book affirms that it is wise to be more than sceptical of the miraculous – Papias and the others recovered naturally. Did Matthias recover? We don't know, because we've been given a choice about a second possibility. Papias and the two who remained on Patmos were miraculously cured, not by John but by their own faith – a point that is made over and over in the Gospels about how people are cured, miraculously or otherwise! Was Matthias also cured? What do you think? So much for not being given a choice.

Perhaps BU was distracted from this choice by the irritation of being told about Jesus turning water into wine and curing lepers etc. I assume that these are the kind of things he feels did not need to be included and about which he wishes he had a choice. If so, I would offer the following points for consideration. Firstly, whenever these phenomena are referred to, they are always expressed as the thoughts and words of John or his disciples – never as events that the author says happened. This is a book about what made John persevere. How could such things not be included? Did they really happen? That is the choice the reader has. The observable event in this book is John's perseverance. John's explanation includes miraculous cures and transformations, but to think that such things constitute the whole of John's explanation misses the point. These very things are called into question by the events of the book. The book is, in part, about how faith when misunderstood is expressed as beliefs that invariably fail. Far from there being … an exact coincidence of viewpoint between the character who remembers and the person who provides him with the words … the author is providing an … element of …questioning … space for the doubt that forms so large a part of human rationality. The very manner in which the story is told – every effort to replicate such events fails – implies the question that BU asks next, Might not the saint's memories be confused? After all, he is 100 years old. I have two things to say about this. I'll make the weakest argument first.

We know that old age does not necessarily bring on dementia. We all know, or know of, people who "had all of their marbles" deep into old age until they died. We also know that people who have lived an active life that involves critical assessment of and engagement with people and events actually grow in acuity and wisdom. On these grounds alone, the answer to BU's question could quite credibly be No. One of the reasons that a person such as just described prospers into old age is that they have realised, to a degree greater than most, the wholeness of being that is every person's raison d'etre. If the claims of Christianity about Jesus are correct and he really is "The Truth"¹, then there is every reason to accept that John's engagement with Jesus set him on a journey of ever deepening integrity; and that his age, far from being an impediment to lucidity, accounts for the extraordinary insights of his Gospel. That is not to say that his having encountered Jesus necessarily accounts for his extraordinary attainment to wholeness. Peter and Judas were both on the same journey.

Secondly, we have to ask about the nature of John's memories? Are they memories of "the facts" or memories of "The Truth"? It is often said that the time it took to write the Gospels guaranteed that "the facts" were mis-remembered. The exact opposite case can be made, however. It took quite some time before the significance of "the facts" could be grasped and re-membered. This is what I mean by the difference between "the facts" and "The Truth", and that is what is demonstrated in John: A Novel. Eighty years after his encounter with Jesus, John is still waiting for Jesus to come again in the way that he (John) expected. On (almost) the very last page of the book he finally gets the fullness of "The Truth", and it is soooooooooooo inexplicable in terms of even his most recent expectations, that it can be expressed only in language that that exceeds – even confounds – "normal" expectations.

Does this mean that the miracles in the Gospels are just metaphors? It would be enough if they were! But are they more – did they actually happen?² That's the choice that the book puts before the reader. There are at least three answers. Yes; No; and I don't know. The first two answers reflect the mind-set of belief³ – it either happened or it didn't; the third could also reflect the mind-set of belief, albeit in the form of sincere doubt about both Yes and No; or it could be something else altogether. It could be a disposition which doesn't need to know the answer to that question because it knows the only thing it really needs to know: that the existence of Jesus means something that is profoundly felt in a way that, in time, the most extraordinary things seem possible – incarnation, resurrection, parousia – and yes, miracles. Might the saint's memories be confused? Absolutely! Matthias was certain of it and is the prosecutor of the Yes case. Papias is equally certain and puts the case for No. It is John himself who, by the time this story commences, is the eloquent embodiment of I don't know. He is so troubled right from the beginning of the book that at one point he confesses to a senior disciple that he is near the point of despair, and yet is careful to ensure that this does not become known to anyone that may not know how to deal with it. John is indeed confused – why are my expectations being frustrated – right through to what looks like being a bitter end, when finally, ready to die, feeling as though he'd failed (as Jesus felt He'd failed), John "sees" the reality that was always waiting for his own expectations to get out of the way. BU's question actually leaps off just about every page of the story. The question that I would ask is, What could possibly account for the eventual success of the Johannine community.

The rebel disciple, Matthias, might have provided a counter-voice.

I find this the hardest sentences in BU's review to understand. Perhaps because I am not a writer I am ignorant of some specialist technical meaning of the word Voice. I say this because in view of the prominent and nearly definitive role that Matthias plays in this story, Voice must mean something other than "Point of view". Before going on to say what I think BU might mean by voice, let me deal with the prominence of Matthias' point of view in this book. Matthias humiliates John in the first two chapters by demanding an answer to questions that have long been shredding John's composure. Matthias secretly gathers half the company to his own cause and promotes belief in the One as an alternative to John's witness to Jesus. Matthias concocts a fraudulent miracle. He damages his own body as "evidence" of his having been chosen to replace not only John but Jesus as the one who witnesses to the One. He has a fraudulent document made claiming that the real John the Apostle is already dead. He tries desperately to seduce John's right hand man into belief in the One and temporarily succeeds in shattering the younger man's confidence in John. Matthias' ambition drives the whole narrative. But that, apparently, is not Voice. If it is not Matthias' point of view that constitutes the Voice that BU would like to have heard, is it his rationale for his position? Would BU like to have heard a reasoned argument for belief in the One as an alternative to fidelity to Jesus?

Had fidelity to Jesus not resulted in the emergence and consolidation of the Christian church as the single most influential institution in Europe and Asia Minor for the next thousand years and more; had it's competitors⁴, for which belief in the One is the nominal representative in this book, flowered into a major cultural phenomenon, not necessarily one that became dominant, but one that provided a truly insightful philosophical movement such as the Greek and Roman schools of philosophy, it would have been interesting to hear a sustained argument from Matthias. But none of the alternatives to fidelity to Jesus that tried to compete with Christianity in the first 300 years came to anything – not because the Christian church persecuted the alternatives. It was the Christian church that was persecuted for almost the whole of that time. The alternatives failed because they had nothing philosophically sustainable to say. So there is no interesting argument that could be made by Matthias. Lacking a core that was capable of nurturing a viable community, salvation through knowledge could never be more than a self serving belief – never a confessional faith – never more than a cultic ghetto where power rather than integrity was the goal. Anyone opting for such a belief could not be cultivating anything other than deception and therefore on the way to a life of evil. In this story, Matthias could not have been portrayed as other than manipulative, cold-hearted, hungry for power; deeply wicked, in fact.

It is difficult to believe that he could ever have had the fervour and devotion to follow John in the first place.

My goodness! Can BU be serious? Has he never had anything to do with the clergy, and even some in monastic life? How many stories are there in literature (and real life) of people who start out throwing themselves into a cause and ending up being its implacable enemy? Didn't Jim Jones start out as an exemplary campaigner for social justice? Anyone uncertain that people in cloisters could pursue self-serving and destructive agendas might read Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. Sure, it's fiction, but it's entirely plausible simply because it draws on so much well documented historical material. And if that's not enough to establish that Matthias could have had the fervour and devotion to be a disciple, the ultimate example is Judas. And the sobering thing about that is that it was Jesus who chose Judas and not the other way around. Matthias is all too believable.

He undergoes no course of disaffection or disappointment, there is no process of scrutiny.

The short answer to this is that all of this has happened before the story of this book begins. To insist that it would have been preferable to see this development is simply another way of saying that the book that was written is not the book one would have preferred to read.

Finally, to return to the second paragraph of BU's review, he says this –

He remembers how he dropped the nets and followed; he remembers the amazing impact of the messianic personality; the grief as he stood with the others below the crucified form. He also remembers, with the same clarity and authorial validation, the changing of the water into wine, the feeding of the 5,000, the raising of Lazarus. And with this we have changed terrain - we have crossed over from the dramatic to the miraculous.

I may be wrong about this, but it seems clear that the He of this passage is John. For this reason the last sentence in the passage makes no sense to me at all, because it looks like a criticism. But how can John be criticised for crossing from the dramatic to the miraculous? This is a story about John's journey. In John's mind the miraculous is the definitive mark of his journey. If the He in this passage were Niall Williams, on the other hand, I would get the point. But that, surely, could not be BU's intention. The plain sense of the sentence simply does not permit it. Yet in the same passage BU says He also remembers, with the same clarity and authorial validation … Again it is clear that He is John. And again, there is no problem that John would remember with clarity and authorial validation. This is his story! That being the case what is BU saying? One has to wonder if he is playing a game of sleghit of hand here. Is he conflating John with NW so that the fault that would exist, if it were NW remembering with authorial validation and crossing from the dramatic to the miraculous, attaches itself to John in the reader'mind?

1. What is truth? (Pontius Pilate, Jerusalem ~33 AD)

– truth is any action, thought or disposition that deepens the integrity of people and incrases the sustainability of their relationships with oneanither and their environemnt – which, ultimately, is the whole of what exists! (Paul Smith, Mullumbimby, 2009 AD)

Light travels at 299 792 458 m / s. Louis XIV was the King of France from 14 May 1643 to 1 September 1715. Both of these statements are factually correct. But neither is the truth. Truth is a quality of being that for now we can think of only in human terms. It relates to the integrity of persons and the sustainability of their relationships with one another and their environment – which, ultimately, is the whole of what exists. Is it possible that, somewhere in the whole of human history, which includes the future as well as the present and the past, a person could exist with such depth of integrity, and have such an impact on other people's sense of wholeness and their relationships with one another, that she or he would come to be known as the one who showed us the truth of who we really are – "The Truth" for short. Were such a person to exist, would the fact that some people – even a lot of people – declare him to be "The Truth" make it so? How would someone not in a direct face to face relationship with such a person, or with the people who know or knew him, test the veracity of such a claim?

2. In his novel King Jesus, published in 1946, Robert Graves gives a startling account of the wedding feast at Canna in which Jesus does not turn water into wine but transforms a situation of serious social disgrace into a triumph of compassion over custom. When his mother draws his attention to the fact that the hosts have run out of wine he orders the stone jars filled with water and invites the steward to serve him some of the water as though it were wine. He does what we would think of these days as a wine buff performance, heavily fortified, if I can put it that way, with humour. Verily! This is the true wine that Adam drank in Eden! Ably assisted by the Master of ceremonies who croons, Indeed! I have never tasted sugh good wine! This is done, not to ridicule, but to relieve the whole party of the burden of judgment, by getting them all to join in, and to recognise and rise above the derision they would otherwise have felt in their hearts for their hosts.

This kind of plausible re-imagining might be applied to all of the miracles, and if done with sufficient forensic insight might even recover the historical Jesus. But even if it did, we would still have to explain why such events became the miracles of the Gospels. A simple explanation would be that the disciples really did see Jesus alive some time after he died on the cross. That would certainly colour the way they spoke about events in the life of Jesus and even determine which events were selected to explain their experience of his resurrection. The Gospels are not accounts of the life of Jesus – documentaries reporting facts – but confessions of faith in something new under the sun. In the light of that experience, miracles … well yeah, of course. Why are you asking?

3. We readily accept that there is a difference between belief and knowledge. But what is faith? The intuitive answer is that faith is an instance of belief. But I want to suggest that faith is actually a form of knowledge. I can believe something that is true, but that true belief would not be knowledge unless it were properly justified. A false belief can never be properly justified and cannot be knowledge. A true belief that is falsified by a single instance is not necessarily a false belief. If I believe that all metal bars expand when heated, the discovery of a metal bar that does not expand when heated simply necessitates a couple of minor adjustments – drop one word and add another – for my belief to remain true – metal bars usually expand when heated. Faith is expressed as belief that undergoes adjustments over time. But unlike the belief about metal bars which can properly be justified and become knowledge by systematic empirical experimentation, faith is knowledge before it is a belief; it is existential knowledge which comes to be expressed as belief that changes over time. Faith withstands the most serious challenge to belief and is thereby properly justified as knowledge. I can believe or disbelieve in miracles and be right or wrong depending on whether do or don't occur; but I can never know that miracles do or don't occur. Faith, on the other hand, which is usually thought of as believing, is firstly a radical un-belief – faith is un-convinced that things are as they seem. It is when faith attempts to answer the question, if what seems real is not real, what is real? that it expresses itself as belief which changes over time. You know… death is not the end of existence – that sort of thing … But what does not change is what faith knows to be true – things are not as they seem; existence is more than we observe.

4. I should be clear about who I am referring to – the Gnostics, in particular the so called Christian Gnostics. Gnosticism sees humans as divine beings trapped in a material world created by an imperfect god; and holds that salvation comes not through conforming with the will of that god, but through esoteric knowledge that reminds humanity of their true origin within a superior Godhead, thus being able to escape materiality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06592a.htm

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