Source: Nature's Healing Role in Art and Writing

by Janine Burke. Allen & Unwin, 2009.

Reviewed by Ann Skea ann@skea.com

"Creativity is place", says Janine Burke in the introduction to Source. And that place, she believes, is the beginning and end of every artist's journey. It is the childhood realm, "the original source of inspiration and identity". For all but one of the artists and writers in this book, however, it was not their birthplace but a found location in which they produced their major works. As the chapter titles in Source indicate, Burke has chosen a wide and disparate range of artists through which to explore this idea: 'Georgia O'Keeffe and the Desert', 'Picasso's Provence', 'Karen Blixen's Homelands', 'Jackson Pollock on Long Island', 'Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell in Sussex', 'Ernest Hemingway in Key West', 'Monet, Blanche Hochedé and Giverny' and 'Emily Kame Kngwarreye's Utopia'. She outlines the creative lives of each of these men and women, discusses their desires and disaffections, their marriages, passions, strengths and weaknesses, and their work. She also visits the places in which they were most creative and offers her own vision of what inspired them. Inevitably, given the very unusual lives of all of her subjects, their stories involve "mourning and regeneration", and "patterns of illness, alcoholism, syphilis, breakdowns and suicide". But these are also stories of achievement and rebirth.

Source is an interesting book, not just because of the lives it documents but also because of the similarities which Burke traces between these creative lives. Sadly, the book cannot reproduce all the artistic work she discusses, but there is a good range of full-colour plates which help to illustrate her themes.Of particular interest, is her account of the work of Blanche Hochedé, the daughter of Alice Hochedé who became Monet's lover and, later, his wife. Blanche was part of Monet's household almost constantly, from the time he first took her family into his Vétheuil home when they were declared bankrupt, until his death at Giverny in 1926. As a teenager, Blanche decided to become an artist and she began to work beside Monet, learning all that she could from him. He, in turn, encouraged her and also painted her at work. Eventually, she became his studio-assistant and, as well as exhibiting her own work professionally, it is very likely that she helped Monet with his when he became older and less active. There is some debate over whether she actually worked on any of Monet's canvasses, but Burke makes a good case for her having done so, and she deplores the fact that Blanche has been given little recognition for the help and support which she certainly provided for Monet for much of his creative life.

The last of Burke's subjects, the Australian Aboriginal artist, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, is the least known to most people. Emily began to create batik art work when she was sixty-six years old and she did not paint her first picture until twelve years after that. Her first paintings immediately won critical acclaim and in 1997 she was a chosen representative of Australia at the Venice Biennale. Her work now hangs in major art galleries around the world. She died in 1996. Emily's painting grew from her kinship with the land of the Central Desert in the Northern Territories of Australia. She was a tribal elder, guardian of a particular Aboriginal food plant, and an important senior woman in her tribe. Her place of inspiration was the desert land on which she lived, and Burke visited this land as part of her research for Source. Faced with the reality of Aboriginal life in a remote part of the Central Desert, she struggles to come to terms with the "schismatic vision" of tribal people who produce "subtle and sophisticated art", who are intimately connected to the land of which they are the "spiritual custodians", and yet live in squalor and seemingly have "scant regard for their environment".Emily's Utopia (that is the name of the area where she lived and worked) is not the Utopia we might imagine. Burke's initial impression is that she has descended into "one of the circles of hell". She is shocked by the snotty-nosed children, the desecrated houses, the rubbish and the plastic bags festooning the desert; and she is angered by the unreproved cruelty that a young boy inflicts on a dog. Yet, from this seeming neglect comes delicate art based on tribal beliefs and stories. She recognizes her desire to impose her own cultural standards and she tries to come to terms with her own lack of understanding.

No such shock is produced by the creative utopias of Burke's other artists and writers. She visits their houses with delight and describes them and the landscape around them glowingly. Perhaps too glowingly at times. It is interesting to compare her description of Jackson Pollock's studio at Springs on Long Island with that of art historian Robert Hughes. Burke's visitor stands, as she has done, in Pollock's paint spattered studio and "feels energy rushing up from the floor, from the web of painted lines, so fast and intense it seems she is lifted off the floor". Hughes, in his vast and impressive book American Visions, describes the "shrine" of "Jack the Dripper" (a title he borrowed from an early Time magazine feature on Pollock). He sees only the "Miraculous brushes", the "Sanctified Shoes" and the "surplus drips of the Master, the sacramental ichor" that went off the edges of his great works.Nevertheless, Source is an interesting and absorbing book. The illustration are beautiful, the photographs of her subjects are unusual, and Burke makes a very pleasant, relaxed and informed companion and guide to the lives and work of her chosen artists and writers.

The book is dead, long live the book

by Sherman Young. USW Press, 2008.

Sydney academic Sherman Young believes that, as an influence in society the importance of the book has declined almost to the point where it is dead as an object. He chooses to convey this message in a book, so I suppose there’s life in the old format yet, but he makes a strong case all the same. In many ways books have been overtaken by newer formats. Older texts can be found on sites such as Project Gutenberg, and newer books are increasingly available in e-book format. In due course, a sufficiently attractive e-book reader will be on the market, and then we can expect the book to go the way of the vinyl record, becoming little more than a niche market. Young points out that this is not altogether a bad thing. For instance, there is much more likelihood of specialist texts being found by their target audience in an electronic format – no more haphazard ordering from book-shops which can only carry a fraction of the material being published. Young’s argument is persuasive, and spells a worrying message for booksellers, which will have to reinvent themselves, perhaps carrying a smaller range of stock and selling more coffee. But what does it imply for public libraries? Can we carry on buying and shelving books as we have done for the last hundred and fifty years, or do we move into e-books in a bigger way before it’s too late? Should we blog a bit more? Young has an entertaining style, and his book can be digested fairly rapidly. I recommend it to anybody who likes reading; we’re still just about in the majority.

- John

(Update: Sherman Young also has a companion blog for his book)

Another time past created

by Brett Hilder. Pier 9, 2008.

A layered design recreates the intricate, collage nature of a journal, where words, quotes from philosophers, poets and authors, ponderings, experiences, travel observations and astonishing photographs of landscapes and people are interwoven.
This is a book of a journey showing the lands of Spanish culture in the Mediterranean and Latin America, made with notations of memory
Absolutely beautiful.

- Wendy

Update - From Pier 9's website: 'The winners of the 2009 Australian Publishers' Association Book Design Awards were announced as part of the Sydney Writers' Festival on Thursday 21st May. Another Time Past Created, designed by Toyoko Sugiwaka, won Best Designed General Illustrated Book and this beautiful, captivating book was also awarded Best Designed Book of the Year overall!'

The house of wisdom

by Jonathan Lyons. Bloomsbury, 2009.

Reviewed by Ann Skea (ann@skea.com).

Baghdad: 'The Round City', 'The City of Peace'. This doesn't sound much like the city we hear of today. Nor do we think of Baghdad as one of the most important centres of learning in the world. So it is timely for Jonathan Lyons to remind us that all this was once true of Baghdad and to demonstrate how much the ancient Arabic-speaking world influenced the development of Western, non-Arabic-speaking, knowledge and culture.

In 762, the Abbasid Caliph, Abu Jafar al-Mansur, influenced by the geometrical teachings of the Ancient Greek, Euclid, set about designing the new capital city of his empire as a perfect circle. Learned astrologers (one a Zoroastrian, the other a Jewish convert to the Muslim religion) were consulted; a mathematically gifted overseer was appointed; various rites were performed, and The Round City grew up on the site of the old Persian city of Baghdad. Al-Mansur and his scholars then began to collect knowledge from wherever in the world they could find it. Persian, Greek and Indian knowledge was searched out, translated, studied copied and disseminated, and the city grew into a rich and important place which, according to one traveller, had "no equal on earth" for prosperity, luxury and learning. The great library of Baghdad, which housed the accumulated knowledge of the Empire also housed an academy of scholars and translators, and it was the resort of experts in astrology and scientific experiment. It became known as 'The House of Wisdom', and large sums of money were devoted to expanding its endeavors, accumulating valuable texts, and undertaking related cultural and intellectual projects.

Al-Mansur was not the first to so value knowledge and learning. The Umayyad dynasty, whose armies al-Mansur's brother had defeated in 750, were equally interested in 'scientific' enquiry. Astrology, logic, law, philosophy and medicine, all were studied, and when the most important surviving Umayyad Prince, Abd al-Rhaman, fled to Southern Spain, he took this love of scholarship with him. So Muslim Spain, too, became a important centre of learning.

Meanwhile, the Western non-Arabic-speaking world had lost the language skills which would have allowed them to learn from the Ancient Greeks. Latin had become the language of scholars in the few centres of learning. And Christianity suppressed Greek philosophy and independent thinking to such an extent, that only Aristotle's influence survived in the formal teaching and practice of logic and rhetoric. The Crusades soon made the free exchange of knowledge between Muslims and Christians almost impossible. However, contact with the Arab world, however bloody, did expose some Western men to Arab culture and a few, like Adelard of Bath, set out to learn more. Adelard is one of the heroes of Lyons's book. Born in about 1080, he had influential church patrons, a thirst for knowledge, a flair for languages and, apparently, a penchant for flowing green capes, green being a new dye colour discovered by the Alchemists. In about 1100, Adelard left his native England for a cathedral school in France. From there, he headed East, possibly by way of Spain and Sicily, spending at least seven years studying in and around crusader lands before returning home. He learned Arabic well enough to communicate with other scholars, and he read and translated (from the Arabic) the works of Classical Greek philosophers and mathematicians. When he finally returned to England, he brought back with him knowledge of geography, astronomy and astrology, as well as his own translations of a work on the use of the astrolabe and, most importantly, Euclid's Elements. Euclid's work was of seminal importance in the West. It covered geometry, number theory and such sophisticated mathematical concepts as irrational numbers, plus the logical method of stating a problem, hypothesizing a solution, demonstrating proof, and presenting a final conclusion. This 'scientific' method was, and still is, applied to every aspect of the search for knowledge. Adelard's work, Lyons notes, became the benchmark for Twelfth-century learning.Other scholars similarly sought out Arab knowledge and brought it back to the West. In 1230, the Scotsman, Michael Scot, brought back the medical work of Avicenna, and the philosophical work of Averroes. In twelfth-century Italy, Leonardo of Pisa, better know as Fibonacci, produced his Book of Calculations, which provided a detailed account of the use of the Arabic numbering system (which had, in turn, been learned from India) and so the nine figures 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 and the sign 0 (which we still call by the Arab name 'zero') came to the western world. In the thirteenth century, English scientist and philosopher, Roger Bacon, brought from the East the knowledge of alchemy, which was the precursor of chemistry. Lyons's charting of these changes gives us an important insight into the major sources of our knowledge today, and the strong influence of Arab learning is still clear in every aspect of our lives. Music, manners, gardening, geography, religious debate, magic, all were strongly influenced by Arab learning. They gave us not only our number system but also many of the words which are in everyday use: 'alcohol', 'tariff', 'monsoon', 'algebra', and many more. The House of Wisdom is a timely reminder of the debt we owe to these early lovers of learning: the Arabs who searched for it, treasured it and transmitted it so freely, and the adventurous Western scholars who were fascinated by it, saw its value, and brought it back with them from their travels. Lyons writes well and his knowledge of the Muslim world is extensive. My only quibble, is that he tends to jump around in time in his book and, since history and dates were never my strong point, I often lost track of which century I was in.

However, this was a small price to pay for the knowledge I gained.

Copyright © Ann Skea 2009

The freedom paradox

By Clive Hamilton.

Over the past two centuries most citizens of affluent countries have gained unprecedented freedom and economic independence. Why is it, then, that we are discontented? Why, according to a report prepared by Harvard School of Public Health for the WHO, is depression "predicted to become the world's second most burdensome disease by 2020"? Why has the affluence we have struggled so hard to achieve not brought us the contentment and wellbeing we expected? This, says Clive Hamilton, is "The Freedom Paradox". We have never been more free to shape ourselves and our lives but, at the same time, we have never been more subject to social and commercial pressures to conform to collective goals. We are constrained by a new form of "unfreedom". Subtle pressures persuade us that we must have more money, a bigger house and car, a perfect body, a particular toothpaste, even, if we are to make our mark in the world. The consumer society in which we live focuses on generating needs, then, for a price, filling them. The market - commercial and economic - offers us our identity but also fosters conformity and intolerance towards those who break away from the common goals.

There is nothing new here. This is the condition which has been labelled 'Affluenza'. What is new, is the solution Clive Hamilton offers us for our malaise. What we need, he says, is "inner freedom": the reasoned ability and the courage to evaluate the commonly accepted route to happiness and to stand aside from it, the freedom to set our own goals, and the will to achieve them. But we cannot achieve this inner freedom, he says, without committing ourselves to a moral life - without imposing constraints on ourselves and living according to the values and standards these constraints require. Only in this way can we achieve a true sense of Self.

So, what is this 'inner freedom'? What constitutes a moral life? What does Hamilton mean by 'a true sense of Self'?

To answer these questions, Hamilton turns to philosophy. Examining earlier theories of morality, he writes clearly and concisely about the philosophies of Plato, Mill, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Rousseau, and of more recent philosophers like Sartre and Rawls. He also examines science, psychology, religion (eastern and western), and he discusses God, death, Marxism, suicide, various sexual practices, art and poetry. His project is hugely ambitious but his aim is to establish a new basis for morality and moral judgments.Hamilton's project is important and the book is full of thought-provoking argument and discussion. For anyone with any background in philosophy, however, this book is hard to read. Philosophers want to examine the validity of every argument along the way, and Hamilton covers almost every major topic of philosophical debate since the time of Plato and Aristotle. Better, to read this book in the manner in which Hamilton says he wrote it:"Contentious philosophical debates underpin much of the discussion....I exclude or skate over most of the controversies if pausing to review them would interrupt the flow of my argument". This is an easy way of avoiding having to point out and deal with the flaws in his own argument, although he does say he will offer some hints of these "controversies" in his notes.

The problem with Hamilton's approach, however, is that fundamental to his argument is his attempt to dismiss the carefully argued positions of some important philosophers in order to establish a distinction between what he terms the 'phenomenal world' ( the which we construct by the use of reason from what we experience through our limited range of sense data) and the 'noumenal world' (which is outside the range of our senses). The noumenon is undifferentiated, unmanifest, timeless, spaceless, causeless. It is essentially the same, although Hamilton does not say this, as the Ein Soph of the Jewish Cabbalists, the Ancient Greeks' mythological Chaos, the Scientists (and magicians') Aether. It is transcendental (it transcends all physical and phenomenal existence). Poets, artists, musicians, saints and, occasionally, ordinary human beings have moments when they intuit a connection with it. And according to Hamilton, the moment of creation of a new life constitutes connection between the phenomenal and the noumenal worlds, and sexual ecstasy, too, as in Tantric beliefs, is the result of such a connection.

Having established the existence of the noumenon, Hamilton goes on to argue that it contains a universal human essence which is made manifest in each of us in the phenomenal world. We intuit our connection with this 'Universal Self', and this is the basis of the new morality he proposes. Intuition and the recognition of some shared human essence which links us all to the Universal Self is what should guide our moral judgments. The fundamental idea is simple and attractive but Hamilton ties himself in a few philosophical knots trying to work out the practical details. Just for example, his undifferentiated, unmanifest, a-causal noumenon suddenly acquires individual essences, similar to Platonic Ideas, as he tries to determine a moral basis for general revulsion to the sexual act of bestiality.The main problem with the noumenon, however, and with any hypothesis of such a non-rational world (rationality is a human attribute and therefore confined to the phenomenal world) is that its existence cannot be proved by reason. Like all religions, and Hamilton's hypothesis constitutes his own religious interpretation of the world (or worlds), it relies on faith. Yet Hamilton's whole book is an attempt to rationalize his view and, especially, to offer a philosophical framework for his proposed code of morality. No wonder, as he comments in his 'Acknowledgements', the four (un-named) philosophers who read the early draft of his manuscript, offered him 'bracing' criticism.

Nevertheless, The Freedom Paradox makes stimulating reading and it deals with important issues which should be the topic of discussion and debate. Hamilton's chapters are short and easily digestible, and, as some of his chapter headings suggest, the range of topics he covers offers interesting material for thought and discussion. There is much to consider, for example: 'Do we prefer what we choose?': 'The decline of free will' ; Subtle coercion'; 'A digression on the existence of God'; On death'; 'Suicide'; 'Nature'; 'Emotions as judgments'; 'Egoism and malice', and much more.

Whatever I think of the philosophical basis of Hamilton's arguments, he proposes a form of morality based on common humanity and an awareness of the world around us, including something wonderful which is intuited and transcendental, which I find emotionally satisfying, even if reason cannot support it. What I am lacking, I fear, is faith that such morality can or will ever prevail.

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NOTE: Clive Hamilton was recently appointed Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, a joint centre of the Australian National University, Charles Sturt University and the University of Melbourne. You can listen to his presentation of some of the arguments in his book at http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/1166

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Copyright © Ann Skea 2008

Human smoke

by Nicholson Baker. Simon & Schuster, 2008.

Better-known as a novelist, Baker here turns to history, with a fresh perspective on the lead-up to World War II. Using a huge variety of sources, from contemporary newspapers to diary extracts, and eye-witness accounts, he composes a sort of verbal mosaic of the times. This has been done before, notably by Studs Terkel, but Baker’s particular narrative views the accelerating drift to war from a pacifist perspective. It is unusual to have an emphasis on the voices which dissented to the inevitability of war, and surprisingly confronting. Baker has already drawn fire from critics who feel he underemphasizes the imperative reasons for going to war with Hitler’s Nazi Germany; he does not paint a flattering picture of Churchill by any means. He takes his narrative up to the end of 1941, when, as he points out, the great majority of those who were to die in World War Two had yet to die.

Thought-provoking, gripping, grim - this is history with great immediacy. Will there be a second volume descending further into the storm?

Camino de Santiago

What has prompted the interest in the Camino de Santiago also known as the Santiago de Compostela? Has modern man suddenly discovered pilgrimages or decided it is now time to repent? There certainly has been a rise in requests for books about the Camino, and Manly Library now has quite a selection to offer.

The Conde Nast traveler book of unforgettable journeys :great writers on great places.
NFPB /TRAVEL - MANLY

The way of a thousand arrows : an Australian family's journey on the Camino de Santiago by Jonathan Drane 914.6/DRA - MANLY

Walking the camino : a modern pilgrimage to Santiago by Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles, 914.6/KEV - MANLY

Spanish steps: travels with my donkey by Tim Moore, NFPB /TRAVEL - MANLY

Spanish steps: one man and his ass on the pilgrim way to Santiago by Tim Moore, 914.6/MOO - MANLY

Off the road : a modern-day walk down the Pilgrim's Route into Spain by Jack Hitt, . 914.6/HIT - MANLY

The Camino : a journey of the spirit by Shirley MacLaine, 920/MACL - MANLY

Last night Jon Drane spoke at the Library telling his experiences of walking the Camino with his family. The audience was rapt, and had so many questions. Two were already booked to go in October and others were still in the planning stages. You can even do an on-line tour at Jon’s website http://www.jondrane.net/ . We are now eagerly awaiting the reports from those booked to do the pilgrimage in October and hear how the inspiration from the Library books became an action to be carried out so far away.

- Fran

Shakespeare

by Bill Bryson. 2007.

Following a less than enthralling autobiography, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, in one fell swoop Bill Bryson bounces back with this excellent biography of Shakespeare. What I particularly like about this biography is that it resists the temptation to make something out of nothing. Countless biographies of Shakespeare, faced with the lack of any hard evidence for large parts of his life, fill the gap with speculation and repetition of myth. Bryson is upfront about saying, we don’t know what Shakespeare was doing in this period – we just don’t know, alright? In fact, so little is known about Shakespeare’s life, that it’s amazing that any biography is possible – he appears to vanish into thin air. Bryson sets Shakespeare in the context of his eventful times, unveiling a vast wealth of social detail, some of it rather horrid. Lovers of interesting factoids will find plenty to enjoy. There are surprisingly few extracts from the plays or sonnets, however. Altogether Bryson comes across as well-read, critical, and a touch zany. Some will have an antipathy to his approach, but others will read him with bated breath.

In the above passage, words and phrase in red are first found in Shakespeare. The man’s genius beggars all description.

- John.

A Venetian bestiary

by Jan Morris. Faber & Faber, 2007

Reviewed by Ann Skea.

This small, slim book about animals is not as insubstantial as it looks. Jan Morris's writing is as rich and colourful as ever, and her knowledge of the history and the little-known sights of Venice provides her with a rich source of material.

In fluctuating temper and varying fortune, in and out of love with the place, I have written rather too much about Venice in the sixty-odd years since the city first bewitched me", she writes in her 'Introduction', signing it with her Welsh name, Trefan Morys. This book, she goes on to say, is "by way of an epilogue", but whether she can ever really get Venice out of her system seems doubtful. Morris's imaginative, vivid and humorous style is evident from the first paragraph of the book. And her familiarity with Venice and her delight in its history, its people, its art, and its curiosities, is evident in the things she draws attention to in this book: the "unmistakable knees" of the owl on the statue of Minerva in the Riva degli Schiavoni; the "black humour" of the artist portraying Noah's raven in the mosaics of the Basilica; the exclusion of male cats in the street-name of the one thoroughfare named for the cats of Venice; and the symbolic presence of the four Golden Stallions of St. Mark in a painting of the crucifixion by Lotto. All this and much more is packed into this little book about the beasts - real and mythical, mild and monstrous - of Venice.

This is not a book which will allow you to follow some kind of 'Jan Morris Animal Trail' through Venice (thank goodness!). A few of the many paintings which Morris mention are not (I think) even in Venice, although the artists are Venetian. This is a book, however, which may open your eyes to some of the delights which the average tourist to Venice generally misses. The curious and fascinating carvings on the capitals of the Doge's Palace, for example; and the many different animals which can be found around the streets and in Venetian painting and architecture. My own favourite discoveries amongst Venetian animals have been the mouse (not the lion, which Morris mentions) in the Carpaccio sequence of St. Jerome in the Scuola degli Schiavoni, and the cat which peeps out from beneath the skirts of Athena on the gates of the campanile of San Marco. This book, makes me keen to go and discover more.

- Ann Skea

Musicophilia

by Oliver Sacks. Pan Macmillan, 2007.

Reviewed by Ann Skea.

Do you suffer from earworms or brainworms? Most of us do. They are those fragments of music which repeat themselves endlessly in our heads, sometimes (as Oliver Sacks notes) "maddeningly, for days on end". In advertising, television and film, music is often designed to do just that. What is needed, these industries believe, is a catchy tune which no-one will forget. And how often do you find that some advertising jingle seems to be stuck in your brain?

"All of us, to some degree, have music in our heads", writes Sacks: but thankfully not all of us are possessed by music as are some of the people in Musicophilia. Some suffer musical hallucinations, hearing loud music just as if a radio had been left on. Some experience music as part of a pre-epileptic aura. One man, a surgeon, after being struck by lightning, dying and being resuscitated, became so obsessed with piano music that his whole life was devoted to satisfying that obsession. He taught himself to play the piano, took music lessons, and learned notation so that he could write down the tunes he heard in his head. Even a second, serious head injury did not change his obsession and, although he still practiced as a surgeon, musicophilia dominated his life.

Music, it seems is more deeply embedded in us than language. It stirs the emotions, alters our movements, sooths compulsive ticks and remains as a musical memory even in the most deeply amnesic people or in those isolated by disease and dementia. Sacks, in his work as a neurosurgeon, has seen the value of music in people suffering from Tourette's syndrome. He has seen its co-ordinating power in patients with mental and physical disabilities. And he has experimented with the use of music therapy in patients with Altzheimers and other sorts of dementia. He describes the astonishment of seeing deeply demented, mentally isolated, uncommunicative people respond and become alert when music is being played: people who never speak sing along with tunes they recognize, faces become unfrozen, immobile patients start to move. And he observes and describes the effects of music on many other very different conditions.

A glance at the chapter headings in this book suggests the wide range of areas and conditions in which Sacks has studied the effects of music: musical savants, Cochlear Amusia, Musician's Dystonia, Parkinson's Disease, aphasia, dysharmonia, Tourette's Syndrome, Williams Syndrome, hypermusicality, depression, musical dreams, emotional response - all these and more are discussed in the context of music and brain function, but in language and in a style which most readers will understand and enjoy.

Many of the case-histories in this book are fascinating and Sacks's seemingly boundless curiosity, excitement and sympathy are readily apparent in his writing. He is (understandably, since he is a neurosurgeon) what philosophers call a 'Mechanist'. For him, every aspect of our experience has some physical basis, is related to some particular brain function or neurological activity, and our response to music, miraculous as it seems in some instances, is no exception. He explores the many wonders he describes in this book with scientific rigour, and for the non-scientific reader this can be dry and difficult at times, although Sacks keeps his science as simple and non-technical as possible. If you are not a Mechanist, you might argue that not everything about music has yet been scientifically explained. Sacks would agree but he is sure that eventually it will be. So, if you wish to take spiritual comfort from the very similar things which people describe after near-death and out-of-body experiences (both of which are discussed in this book) you may need to do what the lightning-struck, musicophilic surgeon eventually did when he refused to have his condition analysed further, and chose, instead, to simply accept the mysteries of his experience and the grace and blessings of the music which changed his life.

And if you are not a Mechanist, there is much to ponder in this book. What, for example, is one to make of the most deeply amnesic patient, who cannot remember anything at all from one minute to the next, and yet is able to sight-read a musical score, play and improvise on the piano, and even conduct a choir through an entire musical score with intelligence, skill and feeling? His behaviour is anything but automatic and he seems totally present and engaged, yet he remembers nothing at all once the music stops? What, too, of the fact that although he has no memory of any previous moment, he knows at times that something in him is 'broken'?

Music, for the ancient philosophers, was what connected us with the Divine Source. Its harmonies created and shaped our world. And in spite of everything science has discovered about the brain, in spite of increasingly sophisticated tools which can map the minute areas of the brain which respond to music, its mystery remains. Whatever way we choose to explain its powers, however, the therapeutic value of music is immense, as Sacks convincingly demonstrates in this book. And his own "old-fashioned" method of close observation of his patients and imaginative empathy with their experiences, allied to clinical, scientific analysis, is not only necessary for our understanding and use of the therapeutic power of music, it is what makes Musicophilia such a warm, human, humane and valuable book.

- Ann Skea.

Letters of Ted Hughes

by Christopher Reid. Faber & Faber, 2007.

Reviewed by Ann Skea.

Writing a review after a number of major British newspapers and journals have already published theirs is an interesting exercise. Interesting, not because everything seems already to have been said and all the best quotes to have already been used, but because of what other reviewers select from the many letters and from the great range of topics about which Ted wrote. He wrote to a huge range of people - family, friends, poets, editors, scholars, teachers, schoolchildren, theatre directors, politicians, royalty. As he got older and more famous, the pressures of answering correspondents grew: "I've spent most of this week simply writing letters.", he told his aunt, "Even writing very briefly, they take me ages". Still, he managed to write about many things, some serious, some trivial, some at great length, others with exemplary brevity. So, what reviewers choose to write about from this treasury reveals their own preoccupations.


Those reviewers who are intent on feeding the public's seemingly insatiable curiosity about Ted's relationship with Sylvia Plath begin with that and make the most of the three letters to Sylvia which are included in the book and the many references to her in other letters (a long list of which appears in the very useful Index of subjects). They look up Assia Wevill in the index, too (a shorter list). Then, it seems, they browse a bit further, add something from Ted's letters to his children, Frieda and Nicholas, and note some of Ted's comments about a few famous literary figures.Ted's detailed and extensive comments about many of his poems, his descriptions of his poetic methods, of mythology, and especially his discussions of Shakespeare and The Goddess of Complete Being, leave them baffled and terse: "a little goes a very long way", one reviewer complained. Yet, these are the very letters which give the most insight into the thoughts and purposes behind Ted's work, and they reflect the passions which drove him to be a poet in the first place. Yes, they are long and complex, and often they represent only one fragment of a long exchange of letters in which discussion and explanation flowed back and forth between Ted and his correspondent, but they are a fine example of Ted's generous spirit and an important guide to his work and to aspects of his life which influenced that work.


There are many other far less serious letters to balance these lengthy flights. One which everyone can enjoy is Ted's letter to Frieda describing his visit to Buckingham Palace in 1974 to collect his Gold Medal for Poetry from the Queen. The preliminary visit to the clothing store, Moss Bros., for a hired suit, was disconcerting: "[My waistcoat] was short. Between the bottom of the waistcoat & the top of the pants, I had three inches of white shirt puffing out. I could see I was going to spend my time in front of the Queen, surrounded as I imagined by lords and ladies, pulling my pants down to cover my socks, then pulling them up to cover that waist gap from below, & pulling my waistcoat down to hide it from above, and I thought I'll look like a right hick". When he mentioned that he would be meeting the Queen in an hour's time, however, a more dignified-looking outfit was immediately found for him. The rest of the letter is similarly graphic and funny - a wonderful picture of the whole visit painted for his school-age daughter.


Christopher Reid, the editor of this book, has done an excellent job in selecting letters from the hundreds which were made available to him. It can't have been easy to decide what to include and what to leave out, but he had complete editorial freedom in this matter. Nevertheless, he is well aware that some aspects of Ted's interests have not been well represented. One reviewer, Ed Douglas, chose to fill in some of the gaps that Reid was obliged to leave in the interest of keeping the book a manageable size. Douglas, as a fisherman friend of Ted's, is well situated to write about Ted's little-known work as an environmental activist. 'Portrait of a poet as eco-warrior' (The Observer, Sunday November 4, 2007) is a fascinating and informed supplement to Ted's letters..


Poet, Craig Riane's review in The Times Literary Supplement (Nov. 21, 2007), on the other hand, is a curiosity which would surely provide food for thought for any psychologist. Raine seems to be obsessed with combing the letters for hints about Ted's sex life. He begins with a completely irrelevant reference to a sexually explicit self-portrait by Egon Schiele, then extrapolates from there, quoting selectively, to demonstrate that Ted left "a paper trail for posterity" which shows him to have "remained 'untamed, undomesticated, unruly and animal' ". Ted's astrological interests are dismissed with a sneer, and a few Birthday Letters poems are dismantled (questionably) for good measure. "It is easy to be censorious", says Raine, but he goes ahead with his speculative accusations anyway. Strange, when Ted's letters to him, when Raine was poetry editor at Faber & Faber, are friendly and generously appreciative of his work.


John Carey's review (The Sunday Times, Oct. 21, 2007.) is perhaps the best, broadest and most objective of those recently published. Yet, for many years Ted and Carey were not on speaking terms with each other. The bad feeling began after an angry public exchange of letters over Carey's review of Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, and was exacerbated when Carey's signature appeared (amongst others) on a public letter concerning Sylvia Plath's grave. Ted's own description of the many problems Sylvia's more radical fans had caused over her grave appears in two letters in this book. As does Ted's last letter to Carey, seeking to heal the "misunderstanding" between them and written just a couple of weeks before he died.


Christopher Reid states quite plainly in his introduction that this book is not a biography in disguise". Nevertheless, the chronological ordering of the letters and the incidental and, sometimes, specific biological content provide a far more vivid, truthful and very personal picture of Ted's life than any biography could achieve. There is amazing variety in this book which contains not just letters but also photographs, and, for example, an astrological chart for Philip Larkin; another made for Sylvia Plath in 1956, with a note about the suicidal placing of Saturn (which, according to astrologer Neil Spencer shows that Ted was very good astrologer); a diagrammatic method of comparing "sensibility and temperament" in the work of various poets; and a sketch which Ted made of his Order of Merit medal for his Aunt Hilda, which is part of the last letter in the book. Reid's note that Ted died nine days after writing this letter provides an appropriate but chilling ending. For me, nothing can compare with the sense of Ted's presence which I feel when looking at his handwritten letters. His strong energetic handwriting, his characteristic dashes, the occasional indecipherable word which has to be puzzled over, the odd spelling mistake and the inserted afterthoughts, all convey his character. A printed transcript on the white pages of a book loses that sense of energy and immediacy. Nevertheless, the letters collected in this book display a whole range of emotions, enthusiasms, interests, concerns and obsessions: there is warmth, humour, occasional bleakness, passion, love, dedication, pedagogical instruction, self-questioning, self-discipline and everything else which characterized the man himself. The letters span Ted's life from his teenage years to his death, and they tell us a great deal about him. Above all, as John Carey rightly says, "No other English poet's letters, not even Keats's, unparalleled as they are, take us so intimately into the wellsprings of his own art".


A series of extracts from letters included in Letters of Ted Hughes was published in British newspaper, The Telegraph, November 27 -29, 2007.

When the rivers run dry

by Fred Pearce. Beacon Press, 2007.

What happens when the water runs out? That’s the big question environment journalist Fred Pearce tackles in this frightening book. The world is running out of drinking water, as ancient reservoirs are tapped and squandered. Pearce has travelled widely looking at how countries use and misuse fresh water. Crops fail, pollution spreads, dams burst and precious wetlands are drained. By 2025 three billion people may face chronic water shortages.

Australia is among the countries Pearce looks at, and the problems facing the Murray-Darling Basin are bluntly expressed, but they pale into insignificance beside the problems faced by China, the Mekong Delta, and the countries surrounding the Aral Sea. It is time to manage the water cycle better and to treat fresh water as our most precious resource. It’s not all doom and gloom, because some communities are rediscovering old ways of harvesting rainwater which don’t rely on large-scale 20th century engineering.

What makes this book such a standout is that although it tackles a hugely complex subject, it is written in an immediately accessible style that can be read at the speed of a novel. It is a very important subject, and Pearce has written an important book to match.

- John.

Thames: sacred river

by Peter Ackroyd. Ramdom House, 2007.

Manly Library call number: 942.2/ACK

Reviewed by Ann Skea.

Peter Ackroyd's Thames: Sacred River runs from source to sea, like the river itself. Like the river, too, it sometimes flows swiftly through landscapes of great interest and beauty, and at other times it meanders, becomes turgid, or has stony passages where the going gets harder. The journey, however, is well worth taking and, as a companion book to Ackroyd's London: The Biography, it must rank as one of the most detailed, informative and enjoyable surveys of London and its river since 1598, when John Stow wrote A Survey of London, a book to which Ackroyd often refers.

Thames is a book for dipping into rather than for prolonged immersion. There are fascinating and curious facts and anecdotes, history, geography, geology, myth, legend, art. There are chapters on the working river, trade, river boats, river law, the river as "a stream of pleasure"; and on the association of the Thames with healing, life and death.There are curiosities, such as 'dene-holes' (interconnected subterranean tunnels along the river banks) and 'swallow-holes' (where the river vanishes and rises again). There are pre-historic visions of crocodiles and jungles. There are pageants, kings and queens, diarists, historians, saints and sinners, watermen, dapper Chelsea 'kiddies', day-tripping cockney 'Arries and 'Arriettes, artists, poets and musicians. And there are barges and punts, log-boats and coracles, 'cogs', 'trows', 'wowsers', hoys and onchers, and other strange and more familiar vessels which use the river’s waters. Alongside the river are the towns and villages, the great houses and palaces, the churches, the ruins, the docks and the City of London itself. Ackroyd can fairly be said to have covered almost every aspect of the river, and to have done it with admirable skill, scholarship, humour and delight.

But why is his Thames a "sacred river"? Rivers all over the world have, since pre-historic time, been regarded as healing, life-giving places, and the Thames is no exception. Based on objects and clusters of objects found in the river over the years, Ackroyd argues (as do many archaeologists) that votive offerings have been made, and still are made, to Thames river gods. And although the association of the Thames with the Egyptian goddess, Isis, dates (says Ackroyd) only from the 1500s, the use of the Thames for baptism, healing and purification is ancient and, in some cases, still exists. Old Father Thames is a common name for the River around London, and the number of religious establishments which have lined its banks (temples, monasteries and churches, for example), suggests its long and close association with religious practices. The role which Ackroyd attributes to the Thames in inspiring religious awe and fervour in poets and painters, however, is less certain. There is no doubt that Turner, for example, was inspired by the Thames and that Thames light, colour and changeability pervade many of his paintings, but whether he regarded the river as sacred is questionable. Similarly, Ackroyd waxes lyrical about the mystical colours and light of the Thames but the poets and painters he gathers to his 'sacred' theme often seem unlikely recruits.

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Kenneth Graham were, perhaps, more interested in story-telling than in the Thames itself, although it is delightful to hear of Dodgson inventing 'The Adventures of Alice Underground' as he rowed Alice Liddell and her sisters up the river from Oxford to Godstow. And it is fun to learn the whereabouts of the Wild Wood of Graham's Wind in the Willows, and of the likely model for Toad Hall and for the dungeon in which Mr Toad was incarcerated after his arrest.

On the whole, the book works best when Ackroyd sticks to fact, rather than speculation, but, that said, there are times when facts become just lists and when his speculations are much more entertaining and thought-provoking.

Ackroyd is a congenial companion with whom to take a Thames journey, but for those who want to explore and experience the Thames on their own he has included 'An Alternative Topography, from source to sea' at the end of the book, complete with maps, and with a condensed guide to the towns and villages along the way. I particularly enjoyed his brief asides in this section. The note to the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames estuary, for example, is just seven lines long and ends with the comment that "in 832 it was overrun 'by the heathen men'. It has not been the same since". It makes me want to go and find out what he means by that.

Thames is well written, well illustrated, full of joys and horrors, facts and fiction. It is an excellent guide to a great river and to the city which grew up on its banks. And it is written with style and humour. In addition, the hard-cover copy comes with a handsomely illustrated jacket and with endpapers reproducing Joseph Mallard William Turner's watercolour painting, 'River Scene with Trees'. It's a fine cover for a fine book.

Copyright Ann Skea 2007

Website and Ted Hughes pages: http://ann.skea.com/

Three reviews

Breakfast with Tiffany: an uncle’s memoir, by Edwin John Wintle at NFPB/BIOGRAPHY, is a year in the life of Uncle Ed, a New York urban gay who takes on the care of his fifteen year old “in trouble” niece Tiffany, an enjoyable biography that at times reads more like a novel. Over the year Ed takes on schools, drugs, curfews, guns, sex, phones with his niece but also manages to learn about himself.

The Bronte Project: a novel of passion, desire and good PR, by Jennifer Vandever at F/VAND is a “romance” with interlinked bits and pieces about the Bronte family. If you have read more than Wuthering Heights by this literary family you will get a lot more out of this book…and in particular the ending.

The genius factory: unravelling the mysteries of the Nobel Prize sperm bank by David Plotz at 362.17/PLO An investigative look at a recent time period in sperm bank history, never dry or scientific David Plotz a reporter, finds out about the people who setup, donated to, took from and were produced from this sperm bank.

- Louise

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

Dead lucky: Life and death on Mount Everest

by Lincoln Hall. Random House, 2007.

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

At 7.30pm on May 26th 2006, at 8600 metres on the face of Mount Everest, Lincoln Hall died. At 9am that morning he had stood on the summit and spoken by radio-phone to Alexander Abromov, the expedition leader at Advance Base Camp. He spoke briefly, letting Alex know that he and the three Sherpas, Lakcha, Dorje and Dawa Tenzing who were with him, were on their way down. One hour later cerebral oedema struck him and he began to hallucinate. For the next few hours he lapsed in and out of coherent consciousness. At times he was lucid and capable, at other times crazy: he refused his oxygen mask, fought to go back up the mountain, and tried to jump off Kangshung Face. The three Sherpas, soon joined by another, Pemba, pushed and pulled him down the mountain.

At Mushroom Rock, still 300 metres above Advance Base Camp, the Sherpas were exhausted, they had no oxygen, no food or drink, Hall was unresponsive and dying, and the weather forecast was bad. The Sherpas were ordered to cover Hall with stones and leave him.No-one had ever survived a night on Everest at 8600 metres. Exhaustion, hypothermia, lack of oxygen, the retention of fluid in the brain so that the whole metabolism is affected, snow blindness, detached retinas, all these things are common at this altitude and all can be fatal.

At the time of Hall's descent eleven climbers had already died on the mountain in the few months of the climbing season, the last just hours before Hall and the Sherpas reached Mushroom Rock. Alex, at Base Camp, phoned Hall's wife, Barbara, and broke the news to her that at 7.30pm, on Everest, her husband had died.

Barbara told their two teenage sons, rang a few people, and family and friends began to rally round to support her. Amongst others, she contacted Ang Karma, a Buddhist friend in Kathmandu, and asked him to perform the appropriate Buddhist ceremonies for her dead husband, who had become a practising Buddhist in the late 1960s. Only late in the evening of the next day did Barbara hear that her husband was still alive, but that he had only a 50-50 chance of surviving.

Hall had tackled Mount Everest twenty-two years earlier but had been forced to turn back before he reached the summit. He joined the 2006 expedition as an experienced, high-altitude cameraman for a fourteen-year-old boy, Christopher Harris, and his father, who intended to climb the highest mountains on each continent, seven summits in all. Unfortunately, Christopher had experienced a severe drop in blood pressure shortly after leaving Advance Base Camp. A second attempt had produced the same result, so, recognizing that it was too dangerous for them to press on, he and his father turned back. Hall however, was urged to go ahead, and did.

Lincoln Hall is a very experienced mountaineer, veteran of some thirty-six years of mountaineering expeditions both as a climber and a guide. He is also a writer and film-maker, and he is co-founder of the Australian Himalayan Foundation.

Dead Lucky tells the story of his last expedition to Mount Everest, his death and his survival. Even for a non-climber like me, it is a fascinating story. His account of the difficulties of the climb, the expeditions and climbers he met, the harrowing descent, and his subsequent treatment for frostbite is gripping and well-written. He has no doubt, just as the Sherpas had no doubt, that he died. His description of his psychological state, his hallucinations, and the few moments of lucidity which surrounded that death alone on the ridge at 8600 meters is totally absorbing. I was surprised to read of the large number of people who now climb Everest during the brief season when summiting is possible. I was surprised, too, to read of the fixed ropes and crevasse-crossing ladders which are put in place by Sherpas each season for some expedition organizers and which make the ascent marginally safer. Nor did I expect to hear that Hall reach the summit after passing a number of dead bodies, some of which have lain there for years, and that the summit was littered with empty oxygen cylinders and marked with yellow urine stains. I was shocked to read his account of the two Sherpas who were sent to help him when another climber found that he had survived the night at Mushroom Rock, and who bullied and threatened him, cut a rope at one critical moment, and attacked him with an ice pick (he had bruises to prove that this was no hallucination). Luckily, other Sherpas arrived in time to save him.

In spite of the organized expeditions, the final stages of the ascent of Everest are still extremely hazardous. Survival above 8300 metres is, to use Hall's word, "desperate". The oxygen level is so low that even with oxygen support just speaking is exhausting. The final stages of the ascent are begun in darkness, vision is restricted by an oxygen mask, and clothing is cumbersome. Gaining the summit and the euphoria of doing so often takes all the climber's energy, so descent is even more hazardous. As Hall discovered.

Dead Lucky tells an amazing story. Occasionally, I found the listing of names daunting and confusing. Hall seems to have felt obliged to name everyone on the mountain that year. His acknowledgements, too (thankfully tucked at the back of the book) run to seven pages and even include the cafe where he typed part of his manuscript whilst attending hospital for the treatment of his frostbitten fingers and toes. Nevertheless, the book is a pleasure to read, the photographs are interesting and the glossary useful. One is still left wondering what prompts anyone to expose themselves to the agony, danger and trauma of trying to reach the top of Mount Everest. Hall's own list of reasons doesn't solve that riddle. Looking back, he sees the mountain as a mirror into which climbers look to find themselves. His brush with death has given him a new perspective on life and, as he says at the very end of the book, now that he has summited Everest his life can move on.

- Copyright Ann Skea 2007

Shakespeare's wife

by Germaine Greer. Allen & Unwin, 2007.

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

Introduction: considering the poor reputation of wives generally, in particular the wives of literary men, and the traditional disparagement of the wife of the Man of the Millennium.

In this introduction to her 'Introduction', Greer spells out for us the theme and nature of her book. Ann Shakespeare is the maligned or disparaged wife in question and Greer intends to rescue her from this sorry state. She takes on all the well-know biographers of Shakespeare and points out where they err, and she offers her own biography of the wife of the Bard. As usual, she is argumentative, challenging and controversial. As usual, she will infuriate some readers and delight others. But she is tilting at windmills: and given that she provides us with chapter headings in the manner of Cervantes in Don Quixote, she clearly knows this.

In Chapters One and Two, Greer gallops through the genealogies of both Ann and William at such a pace that the reader is left reeling. Parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, births, marriages, name-changes, contracts, deaths and wills fly past but ultimately prove nothing other than that we don't know and probably will never know why Ann (or Agnes) Hathaway (or Gardner) and William Shakespeare married, or what their marriage was like. All Greer proves is that she can speculate as well or even better than the "bardolaters", in particular the male ones, whose work she frequently quotes. She speculates along the way that Mary Shakespeare, William's mother, married for status and spent her time gossiping and showing off her finery, rather than helping his father in the family business; that a young, love-lorn William wooed Ann with his poems (which, of course, is very likely); and that Ann was blind (although this is probably sarcasm), a milkmaid, or an employee in John Shakespear's gloving business.

Other chapters contain similar gallops through fragmentary archives concerning Stratford, its history and its citizens. Mostly, these chapters concern people whose lives may have been somewhat similar to that of Ann Shakespeare or who may have had some association with her. They provide support for Greer's claims that, for example, Ann was a respected and influential, financially independent townswoman. Which is quite possibly true. Often, however, these chapters bog down in details and connections which are just confusing. They offer speculation supported by too many random and often irrelevant details, which is pointless.

When Greer gets down off her high horse and writes about facts related to contemporary custom and society in general, rather than fantasy, she is very good. Chapter Six, for example ("of handfasts, troth-plights and bundling, of rings, gauds and conceits, and what was likely to happen on the big day"), offers a delightful description of Elizabethan marriage practices, beautifully illustrated by apt quotations from Shakespeare's plays. This chapter is a pleasure to read and provides us with a deeper understanding of the plays as well as some idea of the way in which a sixteenth century audience would have understood them.

Another chapter which I thoroughly enjoyed is that which argues that some of Shakespeare's love sonnets may have been written for Ann, not for some mysterious dark lady (or man). Greer quotes freely from the sonnets and argues her case selectively but well. The romantic in me would happily believe that Shakespeare truly loved his wife and missed her during his long absences from Stratford, but nothing can be proved either way.

It is a pity that in her gallant effort to rescue Ann from oblivion, Greer sometimes contradicts herself. In several places she notes that many people made the three day journey between London and Stratford, and she suggests that Will did this between terms, when the theatres were closed, and for family occasions. At other times she writes of him as having been "estranged from his family for more than ten years". She is also inclined to lapse in slang (Mary Shakespeare was "spoiled rotten", John Shakespeare's business had "flat-lined", someone else "gets an earful"), which is a pity given the overall excellence of her writing.

None of this matters, of course. In the end, all biography is speculation. What does matter is Shakespeare's work, not his life or that of his wife.

As Greer writes in the penultimate paragraph of her final chapter, in which she, "the intrepid author", suggests that Ann may have been very much involved in the publication of the First Folio: "All this, in common with most of this book, is heresy, and probably neither truer nor less true than the accepted prejudice".

Exactly!

Copyright Ann Skea 2007

Love is a mix tape

By Rob Sheffield. Random House, 2007.

This is the first book I’ve been really excited about in a while so had to share it! Written by music journo Rob Sheffield, this is memoir told with the aid of mix tapes. If I was being corny I would say: ‘the soundtrack to his life’. Having many shoeboxes full of mix tapes myself, this concept really ‘struck a chord’ with me. And for me, like Rob, listening to the tapes is like dredging up whole parts of your life, and this is what Rob does with the book.

Each chapter starts with the track listing of a tape and the rest of the chapter expands on where Rob was in his life when the tape was important to him. The music is mostly nineties alternative – a genre I really love, and I was introduced to some great music I had never heard through the book, including Pavement (where was I?). Mostly the book is a sad but joyful elegy to Rob’s wife Renee, who died tragically young. But I was laughing in parts as well as crying. Yes, crying. Not something I do often with books, but this one was worth it.

Here’s the official website for the book. It can be found at NFPB/BIOGRAPHY in Manly Library.

- Anne

Unpolished Gem

by Alice Pung. Black Inc, 2006.
Cover photography Narelle Autio. Cover design Thomas Deverall.

Alice Pung is the daughter of Chinese refugees from Cambodia. She was born only months after they arrived in Melbourne from a refugee camp in Thailand.

She was called Alice after Alice in Wonderland because her parents thought Australia was ‘wonderland’. She calls them the ‘wahsers’ because they “Wah!” at so much that astonishes them from the vast array of things to buy, to the red and green lights that drivers and pedestrians actually obey -

“We wait for the Mao Ze Dong man to disappear before we move. He stops everything.”

Some of it is laugh-out-loud funny.

It is ironic that the pain sets in as the prosperity grows. When their frantic desire to succeed it is realized, then they have trouble stopping and enjoying their success. At 17 Alice has a mental breakdown, as if she is a mirror of all that afflicts her now successful community.Her story gives a vivid insight into the Chinese community of Footscray and through it, an understanding of what it is like to grow up part of an extended Chinese family in Australia.

- Ines.

Inside Little Britain

By Boyd Hilton. Random House Australia, 2006.
Manly call number: 791.45/LIT

The talents behind the ground-breaking BBC comedy show Little Britain, David Walliams and Matt Lucas let writer Boyd Hilton spend nearly a year in their company as they prepared to take a stage version of the programme on tour around the UK. The writer describes in detail the stresses on the pair as the tour progresses. It turns out to be a huge year for Lucas and Walliams – they win numerous awards, the tour and Live DVD of the tour are enormous successes, and, while Matt proposes marriage to his partner Kevin, David goes out and swims the English Channel in a ridiculously fast time. Hilton takes us the reader through all these highs, and records the low points as well – newspaper criticism of the third series of Little Britain, and Walliams’ disappointment in love.

Hilton’s book shows signs of being speedily published, and could really have done with being edited down: almost 400 pages is too long. However, he does succeed in making the reader feel a part of the inner circle getting the show on the road, and he captures plenty of funny remarks for posterity. The stars come across as a genuinely likeable and generous pair. The occasional grossness is only to be expected by fans of this high-gross comedy.

- John

PostSecret

by Frank Warren. Orion Publishing, 2007.
Designed by Richard Ljoenes.

In 2004 Frank Warren printed 3000 postcards inviting people to share a secret with him – something that was true, something they had never told anyone. He handed these cards out at train stations, left them in art galleries and in between the pages of library books. Then, slowly, secrets began to find their way to his mailbox. This book is a presentation of those post-card secrets. The secrets are sometimes shocking, a little sad, optimistic, thought-provoking, funny, and/or romantic. The cards themselves are works of art too. I found the book impossible to put down and read the whole thing from front cover to back in one night.

The PostSecret blog is updated regularly with new contributions.

A piano in the Pyrenees

by Tony Hawks. Ebury, 2006. (Non-fiction)

English comedian Tony Hawks made his name with the engaging travel book Round Ireland with a Fridge, about his journey round Ireland, er, with a fridge. He followed it up with Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, in which he tracked down and played each of the Moldovan soccer team at tennis. A third book, One Hit Wonderland, described his attempts to record a top twenty hit record, in order to win a bet. He was ultimately successful, getting to number 18 in the charts – in Albania.

So you’d think from the title of his latest book that it would be equally offbeat. Surely it doesn’t describe a tour of the Pyrenees pushing a piano? Ah, if only it did. In fact, it’s a description of the problems he faced when he bought a house in a small French village. Still engaging, but there are plenty of other books which have trod this path. Tony Hawks’ pleasant personality still comes through, but whereas his other books are laugh-out-loud, this one is merely smile-out-loud. Quel dommage.

- John

But enough about me

From eighties geek to rock 'n' roll chic - adventures in Celebsville.
By Jancee Dunn. Headline, 2006. (Non-fiction)
Cover photograph: Jupiterimages/Blend Images.

I started reading this for bit of fun - light reading. It was definitely that, but also became really involving and touching as I read more about Jancee's life. Jancee was a reporter for Rolling Stone and it was intriguing to hear her stories of not-so-normal office life.

'They were the hippest people my suburban eyes had ever beheld. Most of the males cultivated a slightly grubby look. One stubbly guy in a Clash t-shirt and army pants slumped by with a cup of coffee, trailing the odor of stale cigarette smoke, probably from some show he had been to the night before.'

Jancee tells of her most memorable interviews, and gives inside tips on the best way to deal with celebrities. Such as: 'It can be done: manipulating your way into the kitchen cabinet'; 'Dirt gathering: short-cuts to finding the least loyal person in an entourage' and 'The difficult question: when to bring up the Church of Scientology.' I was laughing out loud a lot of the time while reading this book, and I definitely recommend it. It's not a 'we-love-celebrities-and-want-to-know-everything-about-them' type of book, it's more about Jancee's life, and you don't have to be a celebrity to have an interesting life!

- Anne

1001 books you must read before you die

Peter Boxall (ed). ABC Books, 2006.
Cover design: Quintet Publishing

It’s the title that’s the problem. Weighing in at a shade under 1000 pages, this thumping tome aims to tell you about all the books (meaning novels) that, let’s face it, nobody ever gets around to. Moby Dick, War and Peace, Finnegans Wake – who has the time? Even if you started now, you’d be committed to reading around 200 million words of fiction. You don’t have enough eyes! The selectors of these 1001 books are academics in the main, and this means there is little room for the oddball, the unconventional, the unliterary and the comic. There aren’t many Australian writers here, either, only four. There are numerous obscure choices: good luck getting hold of Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, or Hebdomeros by Giorgio de Chirico, or Cane by Jean Toomer. There’s also a certain amount of pretentiousness in the more recent selections. Whilst the novels before 1950 have generally earned their place, at times I was reminded of Woody Allen’s reply when asked what he would do differently if he had his time over: “I wouldn’t read Beowulf”. The short summaries of why the books are ‘must-reads’ range from enjoyably enthusiastic to boringly egocentric.
- John

Born on a blue day

By Daniel Tammet. Hodder & Stoughton, 2006 (Non fiction).
Cover photograph: David Levene.

Born on a Blue Day is the autobiography of Daniel Tammet, who featured in a memorable Catalyst documentary on ABC, Brainman. Daniel has Savant Syndrome, a rare form of Asperger’s, which in his case means he is capable of extraordinary mental feats. He can calculate large numbers with great rapidity, and is capable of reciting the number pi to more than 20,000 places. Unlike many savants or so-called ‘Rain Men’, however, Daniel is capable of describing what his mind is doing when it achieves the answers. He seems to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures, which combine in intricate permutations when he performs mathematical calculations.

In some ways Daniel Tammet displays characteristics of autism, but he has proven he is capable of living an independent life, and he has unique self-awareness, which makes for a touching and powerful read. He describes some of the frustrations of his life, as well as the mind-blowing feats he is capable of. He has a gift for languages, and for the tv documentary learned Icelandic in a week, conversing fluently with native speakers. He suggests that we are all capable of using our brains more, and has set up a website to promote his insights into how to improve our mental powers. His awe-inspiring book is really food for thought.

- John.

Save Karyn

by Karyn Bosnak. Bantam, 2003 (Non-fiction).
Cover design: Robin Bilardello. Cover illustration: Greg Paprocki.

This is a fantastic read! If you’ve ever tested the limits of your credit card, indulged in a spontaneous shopping spree, or simply turned to the shops as a form of retail-therapy, then you are sure to love this book.

Save Karyn is the true story of a self-confessed shopaholic, who bought her way into almost $20 000 worth of credit card debt. To get herself out of debt, Karyn started her own website on which she asked for donations. Amazingly, she received e-mails from people all over the world, either confessing their own debt-ridden lives, or criticising hers. But after only four months of Internet panhandling and selling her prized possessions on eBay, her debt was gone!

I devoured this book in two days and identified with every single purchase. Some episodes are laugh-out-loud funny, as are her money-saving tips and responses to critics. For me, the book rates as highly as Gucci and Prada!