Theft : a love story

by Peter Carey. Random House, 2006.

Reviewed by Ann Skea.

"Whatever you want to invent in the art world has been done", Peter Carey is reported to have said in a recent Sydney Morning Herald interview. So, is that why the main character in his new novel, Theft, is an Australian version of Gulley Jimson in Joyce Cary's The Horses Mouth?

"Theft", says the publisher's blurb, explores "ideas of art, fraud, responsibility and redemption"; and Michael Boone, who is the chief narrator of the story, is, like Gulley Jimson an "artist, con man and aging lover" (to pick at random from some Internet synopses of The Horse's Mouth). Like Gulley, he has just been released from gaol when he begins to tell his story. Like Gulley, he is scornful of normal, polite conventions and he lets nothing stand in the way of his art. Michael Boone's art is unconventional and 'Modern' and the masterpiece on which he works has the Biblical title 'I, The Speaker, Ruled As King Over Israel’: Gulley Jimson, too, was painting a huge, modern work on a Biblical theme. And, like Gulley, Michael Boone (or Butcher Bones as he is called throughout most of Theft) is in dispute with his ex-wife over possession of his own work which, as Butcher Bones puts it, has been declared by divorce lawyers to be "Marital Assets".

More than anything else, it is Butcher Bones's attitude towards the law, art dealers, art collectors, fashions in art, the gullibility and ignorance of the general public, and his own unquestioning belief in his own artistic genius, which exactly reflects that of Gulley Jimson. Jimson's saving grace, however, is his Blakean vision, and his ability to see through the surface ugliness of the world and the people around him to the essential beauty beneath. Butcher Bones has no such spiritual depth. As his brother tells us, he does not believe in god or in miracles and he relies solely on his own judgment, especially in his estimation of his own worth.

In spite of all this, Theft is also very different to A Horse's Mouth. Most obviously, its narrator is as true-blue Aussie as any uncouth, foul-mouthed, alcohol-fuelled, football fan can be. If you choose to spend time with him as he tells his story, then there is no point in getting prune-face and prissy about his attitude to women or about his scorn for all those he robs, sponges on and deceives. In his eyes, they are all fools. His greatest admiration - his enduring love, as he proclaims poetically at the end of the book - is given to the equally ruthless and immoral young woman in whose art fraud he becomes embroiled, and whose own selfishness ultimately exceeds his own.

Theft is different to Joyce Cary's book, too, in that it not only raises questions of authenticity in art through the words and actions of its main character, but it also embodies them in its creation and publication. Peter Carey may, or may not, have stolen Joyce Cary's artist idea (this book is, after all, entitled 'Theft'), and perhaps a court case like that involving The Da Vinci Code is a possibility; and he may or may not have imitated some of Cary's brush-strokes, so-to-speak; but this book is also distinctively Peter Carey's own work. Much of this is due to his creation of Hugh, Michael's "damaged two-hundred-and-twenty-pound brother". "Hugh the poet and Hugh the Murderer, Hugh the Idiot Savant", as Michael describes him, is the second narrator in this book and he is a fine creation.

Hugh became Michael's responsibility after attempting to murder their father. He describes himself as 'Slow Bones' and much of the time he is lucid and amiable, but he is prone to uncontrollable fits of rage and he tends to speak in CAPITAL LETTERS. Hugh makes a wonderful foil for Michael, but both are mad in their own way (as was the whole family, it seems) and often their 'voices' are not easily distinguishable. At times I could only determine who was speaking by the sudden eruption of capitals in the text. Nevertheless, Hugh is uniquely valuable as an observer and as a recorder of family history which, in his parroted phrases and borrowed opinions, can be very funny. He may have spent his time from fourth grade on sitting on a chair in the school playground, but he knows that "MAKING ART" is very much like being a butcher (which was the family business in the small Victorian town of Bacchus Marsh): "the labour never ends, no peace, no Sabbath, just eternal churning and cursing and worrying and fretting and there is nothing else to think of but the idiots who buy it or the insects destroying TWO-DIMENSIONAL SPACE". Hugh's job, whilst Michael is painting his masterpiece in a borrowed, bug-infested studio on a New South Wales country property, is to remove the bodies of dead flies "the fluff and bumph and snot of life" from the Dulux-painted surface, and to fetch and carry and be, as he plaintively complains, "his MANSERVANT".

The third important character in Theft is the young woman, Marlene, wife of a famous artist's son and (due to her 'eye' and her husband's total disinterest in art) effective wielder of the droit morale by which paintings are authenticated. She erupts into the Bones brothers' lives, becomes Michael's lover, manipulates art sales and art thefts and art frauds, and in the end shows herself to be as untrustworthy and mad as they are. As for being a love story, as the sub-title claims, there are many ways to interpret that. There is Michael's love of Marlene, which may be love in his terms but which seems very much more like lust, admiration and puzzlement. There is Michael's love for Hugh, which is equally often an onerous duty. And there is his love for his art; although he is not above forging a piece of work by another artist, copying his brush-strokes exactly, adopting and adapting his style, and then revelling in the art-world's acceptance of what he clearly regards as his own masterpiece. At least Gulley Jimson forged an early Jimson and could be rightly proud that it was all his own work.

The twists and turns of the plot in Carey's book keep you on your toes. The book’s Australian flavour, too, is strong, although some of the action also takes place in America and Japan. But this book does Australia no favours, feeding instead a popular caricature of Australia as a cultural desert inhabited by ex-convicts, frauds and uncouth, boozy larrikins. Interviewers, so far, have concentrated on trying to establish a biographical link between Peter Carey and his main character (both were born in Bacchus Marsh, both are divorced, both have young sons, both are creators) but Carey has been fiercely dismissive of such suggestions. Maybe, however, Michael Boone is Carey's alter-ego in a rather different way. Maybe both are masters of artistic theft.

Copyright Ann Skea http://ann.skea.com/

Ted Hughes' Pages http://ann.skea.com/THHome

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Notes from an exhibition

by Patrick Gale. Fourth Estate, 2007.

Madness and creativity have been linked together in this wonderful book. The story is of Rachel Kelly, an artist, and the reader becomes a detective, piecing together the clues of a life – as an artist, lover, mother, wife and patient. What emerges is a story of love, of a family which weathers tragedy, mental illness and the strain of living with a genius. Told via notes from a posthumous retrospective of Rachel's work, which head each chapter, the narrative offers an unusual way into the half-dozen changing viewpoints, like apparently random pieces of a jigsaw. An immensely satisfying book, Notes from an Exhibition is funny, sad, tender and frightening all at the same time.

- Wendy

Doris Lessing wins Nobel Prize

The 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Doris Lessing. She is only the 11th woman to win the award, and turns 88 next week. This ABC story has more info. Or visit the Nobel Prize site. Some of her novels include:

The cleft
The grandmothers
Love, again
The fifth child and its sequel Ben, in the world
A ripple from the storm
Martha Quest and
Landlocked

All of these titles can be found at F /LESS in Manly Library. You can view availability and place holds through our online catalogue.

Autobiography of my Mother

by Meg Stewart. Vintage Books, 2007.
Cover design by Christabella Designs.

Reviewed by Ann Skea. http://ann.skea.com/

What do you do if you have spent hours talking to your mother and recording her memories, researched some of the family history, and published it all as a ghost-written autobiography, and then you read a chapter headed 'Mistress and Wife' in someone else's book and realize that there was something your mother omitted to tell you?

This is what happened to Meg Stewart, whose mother, Margaret Coen, was a well-known Australian artist and whose father, Douglas Stewart, was an equally well-known Australian poet.

Margaret Coen's 'autobiography' begins with the story of her grandmother, Margaret O'Connor, who arrived in Australia in 1844 as a sort of mail-order bride. Her husband, Patrick Moloney, was a prosperous 'New Chum' who was thirty years her senior. He had migrated to Australia in 1838 to work on the land and he had done well. He saved enough money to buy a property in sheep country south west of Sydney and then, not wanting to marry a convict woman, he wrote back to his parish priest in Ireland and asked him to find him a wife. So, Margaret O'Connor, aged eighteen, set off for a new life in Australia. Between them, Paddy and Margaret Moloney produced eleven children in twenty years, and their seventh child was Margaret Coen's mother, Mary Moloney.

Margaret Coen's paternal grandfather was also Irish. He had been attracted to Australia by the discoveries of gold, but he soon bought a hawker's cart and did so well that he eventually established a General Store in Yass. He became a wealthy and prominent citizen but died at the age of fifty-six. Grandma Coen, who was also considerably younger than her husband, took control of the store and ran it for the rest of her long life. The Coen family, who were staunch Catholics, also prospered and grew, and religion in Grandma Coen's house was taken very seriously. There was daily family prayer, one son became a Passionist priest and three daughters became nuns. Margaret, who was born in 1909, spent much of her childhood in her grandmother's house and was so impressed by the religiousness that she decided she was going to be a saint. Fortunately, she remained a very normal, mischievous child, and her memories of those early years are fascinating.

Equally fascinating, are her memories of her unusual schooling at a small Sydney boarding school, Kincoppal, which was run by the Sacre-Coeur nuns, many of whom were French.

A major part of the book, however, is devoted to Margaret's memories of life as a budding artist in Sydney in the 1920s and 1930s, and her later years as an established artist, familiar with all the most prominent artists, poets and writers of the time. The Circular Quay area of Sydney at that time, was a place full of art-schools and artists' studios. During the depression years of the early 1930s, space could be rented in old buildings very cheaply. This suited the artists, because their earnings, too, were meagre. They clearly enjoyed life, however, and hardship probably bonded them together more firmly than financial security might have done. Margaret Coen remembered an easy-going group of artists, art teachers, artists' models and other creative people who frequented their own chosen coffee houses and pubs in the area, where they would sit and talk for hours. She especially remembered the parties. The annual Artists' Ball was the highlight of the year, and it was obviously a very lively and uninhibited affair. When Margaret's mother, concerned for the reputation of her daughter, ordered an older brother to escort Margaret to the ball, Margaret worried that he might be shocked. Luckily, he dropped her off and disappeared for his own night on the town, then returned to pick her up later.

Amongst the artists and poets Margaret knew were Antonio Datillo-Rubbo (who taught her), Grace Cossington-Smith, Thea Astley, Donald Friend and Ken Slessor. She also befriended a visiting American illustrator, Jack Flanagan ( whose work she had long admired) who filled her head with stories of famous artists in New York, fed her Clover Club cocktails, and introduced her to another artist, Norman Lindsay. Lindsay, whose many paintings, etching and sketches of nudes had made him notorious in Australia, was a driven man. When he was not painting, etching or writing books, he worked on model ships for which he made every piece himself. Margaret tells of one attempt he made to relax by taking up cards: he cut out and painted every single card himself. Margaret had clearly idolized Lindsay because of his work. When she eventually met him, he became her mentor and taught her a great deal about water-colour painting, at which she became expert. And Lindsay, so it seems, also became her lover. In remembering her life, Margaret told her daughter nothing about this.

The unexpected revelation of this affair to Meg Stewart as she read Joanne Mendelssohn's book, Letter and Liars, left her distressed and, as her mother's biographer, "stricken". The term 'mistress’, with all the connotation it has acquired, particularly upset her. What did she do? She set about finding out if it was true. Family, when she consulted them, knew nothing and didn't believe it. The author of a book about Lindsay's art charted the progress of the affair from Lindsay's work. And although her mother's undated correspondence with Norman Lindsay (which, after her mother's death, Meg had deposited unread at the State Library of New South Wales) revealed an "undeniable bond" and real affection between the two which lasted until Lindsay's death in 1969, there was nothing "salacious" in them.

So, Meg Stewart updated her mother's 'autobiography' with newly revealed facts about her art, then simply added an extra chapter about her own researches in to the 'affair'. She describes the process of reading and dating her mother's correspondence with Lindsay as "by turn tantalising, tacky and addictive", and her conclusion, finally, is "What does it matter?". Her mother was loved by two remarkable and creative men, her own father, who had also been a close lifelong friend of Norman Lindsay, and Lindsay himself. If she chose to forget "the sexual indiscretions or passions of youth" or to keep them secret from her daughter, it was nobody's business but her own.

Meg Stewart's Autobiography of My Mother is the sort of book many of us would like to have written about our mothers but left it too late to sit down and record all the details of their memories. It is a fascinating account of a life and a fascinating picture of Sydney in the early years of the twentieth century. Sadly, there are only two of Margaret Coen's painting reproduced in black-and-white in the book, but there are photographs which show that she was a beautiful young woman, and an etching of a party by Norman Lindsay in which someone who Meg says looks "very like my mother" is dancing, scantily dressed, for an appreciative audience.
Copyright Ann Skea 2007