Nick.
It’s all a game of egos out there, and I dare say mine’s as developed as anyone’s. But I’ve got a pretty eclectic range when it comes to reading—though perhaps I sound like a literary snob. It’s the genre and celebrity aficionados I sometimes have a beef with; I question whether the trendy arbiters of taste have any valid role to play. By valid I mean that critics should be more than (corrupt) vetting agents for the popular market. Rather than damning or rhapsodising according to a rubric, a genuine clerisy should be extrapolating upon themes and affects, and positing them, or the paucity of them, in society at large. I’d just like to see more thoughtful criticism, which might also lift the standard of fiction.
I’ve heard you compared to Tom Sharp and I like him, so shall give one of your books a go.
Four of my now six children lost their mother to melanoma six years ago, so I might make it “Perfect Skin”, so I can pass it on to them—they’re all keen readers and the oldest (13) is starting to ask a lot of questions about mum dying. It was a blessing that they were all very young at the time, so it was less traumatic. Actually, maybe you’d consider sending them a personalised copy? If so, I can give you my details—and payment of course.

I wrote a novel myself about ten years ago, but couldn’t get anyone to even look at it—now ten years wiser, I can see why!
Congratulations on finding your thing in the world—never easy :-)

NICK EARLS

I wasn't an academic but for 30+ years a Canberra public servant, with degrees in Russian language and literature and history - subjects still my first love.

Thanks for interesting background on your literary career. It helps me understand a bit. I seem to remember that an early historian of Australian literature had the name "Barron Field" (!). Compared with Old World countries, Australia has had few grand narrative issues. The old colonial ones don't resonate now, and life for recent generations has for most people been extraordinarily soft and privileged. So in this generally very blessed country, what can one write about that really captures the imagination?

I don't take much pleasure in the nihilistic, fairly values-free hedonism of many people today. All generations try to pursue happiness, but for me it is A PRESENT "GRAND NARRATIVE" that many today observe few behavioural limits, have little interest in social values, don't recognize and so can't affirm values that are important if we are to continue to live a mutually respectful, civilized life. There are already, and will be more, serious consequences.

Ed Husain ("The Islamist: why I joined radical Islam in Britain, what I saw and why I left" - Penguin 2007) writes at the end of his book:
"When Faye and I return home from a night out and walk past heaps of rowdy, drunken teenagers vomiting on the streets we despair as much as anyone else. Anti-social behaviour in our cities, high rates of abortion, alcohol abuse, and drug addiction are abhorrent to all right-thinking people, not just Muslims. The neglect of the elderly, shunting them off to ‘care homes’, does not sit comfortably with most Muslims. When the centre of social life in modern Britain is the local pub, where do Muslims and others fit in? Can an orange juice ever be enough?"

Now far be it from me to raise Islam as any sort of model (rather, a horrible example, I'd say) but Husain's criticism of much of youth culture is well taken.

Squeers,

I'd be happy to send a personalised copy of Perfect Skin (or The True Story of Butterfish, in which the central character is coming to terms with the loss of his parents - his mother when he was three, and his father in his 30s), but I'd want to feel that it was right for your children first. Perhaps you could look at the books and tell me. I can't say that that one recent reader's perspective makes me certain Perfect Skin is right for everyone who has lost someone. It's possible that, like the character, that reader's relationship with her partner wasn't exactly as it had appeared to the people around them. Perfect Skin recently went out of print, but it's still in libraries and there are some copies around beyond libraries. If you looked at library copies and decided either book was right, do let me know. Butterfish should be easy to obtain and I could see if I could locate Perfect Skin.

I must admit that, when a book of mine goes out to reviewers, my thoughts are pretty pragmatic. I hope it'll fall into the hands of someone who has been well chosen for it and who is at least positively disposed towards the genre (whatever my genre is). I hope they have the time to read it as a reader, and to reflect on it a little.

In the end, a book review still feels as if it involves a recipe with two main ingredients: a book and a reader. The author can only affect one of those, so many books that are lauded by some are panned by others, based I suppose on what's brought to the reading.

With The True Story of Butterfish, I've read reviews referring to Curtis as the drummer in the band (he played keyboards) and his brother Patrick as a dentist (he works in advertising). There was nothing obtuse about those details in the book, and I don't know how those errors found their way into the reviews. It can make reviews feel rather like pot luck though.

Glorfindel,

I think there's a lot to be concerned about when it comes to people's values and the way we treat each other. Fortunately, my young adult books see me visiting schools and I have the chance to meet some very impressive young people who are not at all selfish, who are considered and considerate, and who give me hope.

In some areas - for example, the property and legal rights of women and orphans (as referred to in the 4th Surah of the Qur'an) - I think Islam provided a model that was well ahead of its time, compared with Europe. It took us centuries to catch up in some areas. Some of the punishments in the Qur'an are far harsher than we would tolerate now, but so were they in Europe at that time.

What we face now is that European law has been free to evolve over centuries, and to detach itself from some of the harshness in the Bible, whereas the Qur'an is sometimes treated less flexibly. (I don't think either Book was intended to be treated flexibly, since each was received by its people as the word of God.)

I would like to see less drunkenness and vomiting in our streets - I live near two pubs - but I'm not sure to what extent the current hedonism is a new phenomenon. Perhaps it's unusually prominent at the moment, but it's something people no longer in their 20s seem to have complained about when observing youth since the ancient Greeks. The English in the 12th century were viewed quite poorly because of the amount of beer they drank and their frequent drunkenness. Marlowe and his cohorts at Cambridge in the 1580s were looked on very poorly for their drinking and carousing. A report I read of them reminded me of UQ engineering students in the 1980s. I don't think many of them have gone on to write for the theatre though.

Nick Earls:

All valid reasonable points. A pity that Islam hasn't moved out of the desert tribal tent since the 7th century. Its treatment of women today in much of the Dar-al-Islam and its ghettos in the Dar-al-Harb as documented in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel: My Life" is harrowing, shameful and absolutely unacceptable to civilized people.

The 4th surah of the Koran is hardly a model to cite! Have you forgotten 4:34, which commands women to be obedient and instructs their husbands to discipline including beating them? And it's 4:52 which so pruriently describes the torments for unbelievers - to burn in hell, with their skins being regenerated as soon as they are burned, so the scourge can continue to be felt. Oh, and surah 4 contains some great stuff on jihad (4:74, 96, 100), avoiding friendships with unbelievers (139, 145) and incitement to murder of unbelievers (89,90). A deplorable, execrable and satanic book. No wonder Tony Abbott on the ABC's Q&A last Thursday night described the Koran as 'the Old Testament on steroids"!

Yep, I'm well aware that every crotchety "old" generation badmouths the young, often unfairly. I don't look back to a past golden age at all. But I do remember a more socially conservative time when people were more timid in their thinking (constipated, I'd call Australia from say 1965 to Billy McMahon) but we didn't overstep behavioural limits the way so many do now.

It's good that you fly the flag for writing in your visits around schools. Now I'd write about different things, but perhaps you're a less heavy mirror!

Squeers:

I've taught Russian history and culture as well as language over the past five years, and spent nearly 18 months in Russia over 4 visits, including a postgrad exchange year at Moscow University in 1967-68 and 3 visits since 1993. Communism is a cancer of the human spirit. Marxism is OK for academic analysis of behaviour, but as a prescription for action it has WRONG WAY - GO BACK! written all over it.

Sorry I seem to have dropped out of the thread, folks. I've been at a conference in Brisbane.

I'm very envious, Glorfindel, of your Russian odyssey (virtual and actual!), and I've no doubt you know the books way better than I do.

On your other comment, it's such a can of worms that I hesitate...
Sure, yep, communism/socialism has been a disaster to date. Nevertheless, why should we settle for capitalism by default? I actually think that the human race under capitalism has burgeoned out to become such an unwieldy and hungry beast that "only" capitalism can now sustain it! If we suddenly reverted to something sustainable, conscionable and humanising, the price would be decimation. It seems to me that the next big dialectical shift the human race takes wont be the one Marx predicted, but a catastrophic plunge from an environmental or economic or military cliff. So it's all academic...

But... I'm interested in why communism/socialism, despite their utopian ideals, deteriorated into tyranny. Indeed all human political systems tend to tyranny. Capitalism's is a technocratic tyranny as aloof from worldly affairs, or the consequences of its actions, as any dictatorial system or tsar in history. I think that any one of the systems could work, even capitalism, if they were informed and regulated by ethics. Our vaunted humanitarian ideals are observed mainly in the breach and amount to little more than rhetoric. It wasn't socialism/communism that was a failure, it was and is the human spirit that is corrupt, that by nature exploits any advantage and is capable of feats of concomitant rationalisation. Until the human soul can be somehow cleansed of this evil tincture (sorry about the hyperbole), whatever political/economic system we live by has to be married to a guiding system of ethics that can't be turned to anyone's advantage. We have to stop blaming politicians and systems; they accurately reflect human nature, I'm afraid ... But perhaps there's a cure?
Nick, thanks. Will put another post up later.