Notes and quotes from Kim Scott's Benang: from the heart FACP 1999.

Keep a reading journal. Record your experience of reading this work. Pose yourself such questions as:

• How is this book affecting me? How am I addressed? Included? the implied reader? How do I feel when addressed as "dear reader"(43), "your concern" 22, "share with you" 36? Can I relate to the strong and consistent narrative voice?
• What seem to be Scott's intentions and agenda here? What does he mean by describing himself in the term "the first white man born"? (10, 90).
• Does it conform to a conventional genre? Or is it autobiography? social history? political manifesto? journalism? anthropology? What if it is unique? a classic? literature?
• What intertextual associations can I make? e.g., with Sally Morgan's My Place, or the film Rabbit Proof Fence.
• How do I react to the cover blurb reviews? Why do you think it won the prestigious Miles Franklin Award?
• What paradoxes would you highlight? e.g., overtones and associations in the very name: "Ernest Solomon scat", "progressive men" (48),"reconstruction" (58), "my dear grandfather" (135).

For Text Study

• What are the sources of Scott's ironies and self reflexivity, and assess their import: "confirmation of my fears" (25), "prove myself his failure" (29), "successfully assimilated" (33), "your sulky narrator" (111), etc.
• How would you explain the sentence (31): "an inexorable process, this one of we becoming" ? Is this a major theme?
• Does the text bear out Saussure's claim that "humans are creatures of difference" (quoted Catherine Belsey Poststructuralism: A very short introduction New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 8 )? How is it not just a question of racial difference?
• Throughout, Scott italicizes the repulsive, racially insulting words he quotes: full-blood, half-caste, natives, niggers (185), arrangement (193), gin, blacks, indignation meeting (162), spree (202, 220), blackfellas (205, 394), darky darkies (208), native camps (232), savage (234), natives' camp (276), native boy (322), boongs (365), absorption (400), coon kids (431). Does this painful directness succeed in confronting modern white readers (as perhaps is intended), or does it in sad reverse, reinforce existing prejudices in white society? How does such emotional language work?
• Try to describe its intended Australian audience (Supply a synchronic contextualisation). Does Scott try to locate events in historical periods and contexts (diachronic contextualisation)?
• What meanings (interpretations and responses) do you derive in your reading of Benang: from the heart?
• Jonathan Culler says (The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1981, 2001 edition, p. 67: "To be an experienced reader of literature is precisely to feel oneself to be in a position to appreciate, evaluate, synthesize, and reject others' readings." How have your become a more competent reader from reading "Benang: from the heart"?

Consider the 56 chapter headings: (with page numbers)

from the heart 7 the first white man born 11 raised to this . . . 15 funerals 20 success 23 Ernest Solomon scat 30 hairy angels 54 what reason 62 strictly routine singing 68 well-meaning friends 77 ern to close 103 what jack and kathleen built 124 a menace in our midst 135 heartbeats in the grass 140 my sandy heart 142 in white and black 149 some tiny inlet 151 hazel eyes! 154 mirrors 157 we move . . . 162 registering romance 177

sandy two 188 headache 209 stormy birth 217 to the chief protector of aborigines 227 Cuddles 229 to the chief protector of aborigines 239 whispering stories 242 a writer 248 jetty 250 a rich lode, or 266 mine mind awaking 270 a coolman and school 286 white, right? 299 who is exempt? 307 steel fences 322 kathleen returns 329 post marked kathleen 334 almost a grave orgasm 337 a place for jack 354 and salmon fishing too 360

tommy 363 police report 377 in the black bark of yate trees 379 never a dawg 381 aunty kate 383 mother 398 ocean, roads 404 blue me 413 of water and ice . . . 414 calling, and choosing 416 last but one 433 i say 449 not beginning 456 blooms its heartbeat 468 continuing . . . 470

Comment on the chapter titles' 'unconventionality' e.g., lower case spelling, ironies, intended ambiguities, anti-narrative indicators, etc.

How would you describe the style of this 'novel'? Is is conversational? 'postmodern', antithetical, engendering anger, revulsion/sympathy? backward or forward looking? revisionary? reactionary? person-centred?

Where does the title come from/ imply? Who was Fanny Benang?

Would you agree that this text is 'boundary crossing' (Wolfgang Iser, "The play of the text". In Sandford Budick and Wolfgang Iser, Language of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, 325-339) where "the text is no longer solely prescriptive and univocal but growing freer to be plurivocal and playful. Thus we have [in Chaucer] a very early example of literature's overstepping or 'boundary crossing' which enables the text to disrupt and thereby double its referential world. In it, mimesis declines and a performative component comes to the fore"?

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Reviews, Discussion Links

Middlemiss introduction radio national promotion, Trees That Belong Here interview: Joseph Buck Book Notes: selected reviews 2003 Fremantle Arts Centre Press seven newspaper reviews four text extracts my review My author-centred response Adam Shoemaker Black Words White Page (on-line book) 2004

Flying Dream (David)   Quote from the Artist, Tabitha Vevers "I used to assume that everyone flew in their dreams pretty much the way I did, arms flapping, just above the tree tops." http://www.galleryguide.org/Artist Portfolios/Kraushaar/vevers/vevers.asp

Idea for an intertextual reading of Sally Morgan's My Place 1987) and Kim Scott's Benang: from the heart (1999)

by Greg Smith

Using the comparison grid below, devise a prose piece to report on your reading. Be conscious and explicit about whether you read from the authors', the textual, the reader's or the world context points of view.

Category of reading	Morgan's My Place	Scott's Benang: from the heart
Publisher and year	Fremantle Arts Centre Press 1987	Fremantle Arts Centre Press 1999
Major theme	Discourse of the unknowing	Discourse of the oppressed
Minor themes	special referentiality	special treatment of the "first proper white man born" 90
Title	that place. My own home, my land 166	"Benang is tomorrow." 464
Implied readers	White Australians	non-Aboriginal Australians
dramatic issue, engine of action, conflict	Nan reveals hidden family history	Puzzlement about special treatment leads to search for kinship origins
Major characters	Sally Milroy, Nan, Mum, Jill	Grandad Ernest Solomon Scat (53); Fanny Benang, Dinah; Jack Chatalong
point of view, perspective	Morgan's own as girl and woman	Scott's own persona Harley as adult, guru 455
Genre, style	Autobiography, open fresh approach; simple language	Hybrid: documentary, history, autobiography, irony and affirmation; apologist 359; manifesto?; anti-lyrical 303; performative; disconnected factual, commentary not narrative; lacks causal connections; phenomena without meanings 306
Key quotations	"You got no shame. We don't want them to see how we live." 78 "It's a terrible thing to be Aboriginal. Nobody wants to know you." 98 "I'm going back to live with my people." 111	"Speaking from the heart, I can tell you that I am part of a much older story. . . with its rhythm of return, return, and remain. . . We gather our strength . from the heart of all of us. There is smoke and ash in my skin, and in my heart too . . . I offer these words especially to those of you I embarrass. . . We are still here, Benang."(495) "Work your way through this shit, Find that spirit which is in you." 349
Agendas, transformations achieved	Affirmation of worth as Aboriginal: one country/ one history; "From now on, I'm going to say more, be more assertive." 142 "I'm proud of bein' a blackfella." 147	Affirmation of Aboriginal current agendas; revision of stolen generation issues; revision of A O Neville policies
setting	Perth, Manning, Corunna	Mogumber; Nyoongar people round the Dutitj Creek area of south-east coastal Western Australia
Idioms, chief symbol emblems, motifs,	Skin colour 97, 139, passim; corroboree music  292	Steel fences 322; forked stick 357; Scott italicizes the repulsive, racially insulting words he quotes: full-blood, half-caste, throwbacks, quadroon (75),  natives, niggers (185), arrangement (193), gin, blacks, indignation meeting (162), spree (202, 220), blackfellas (205, 394), darky,darkies (208), native camps (232), savage (234), natives' camp (276), native boy (322), boongs (365), absorption (400), coon kids (431).
Intertextualities achieved		My Place, Rabbit Proof Fence
Tone, irony	Gentle irony, honesty	Gentle insistent assertion; let the horrible facts speak
Resolutions achieved by the book	Landmark in mainstream; story we can relate to; sympathy	Affirmation, understanding; "The fish were calling to us through the ropes in our hands." 42
Your appreciation	Great!	Worth the hard read! a remarkable exploration of an alternative intelligence

© Greg Smith January 2004

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Reading strategies you may be using

 

Author Centred Reading

• biographical - product of his own life situations identified
• authorial concerns raised
• patterns of writing typical of multicultural writing
• persona who is writing the text, and his authorial interventions
• imaginary space created by the text
• the 'pulling back' non-accusatory tone adopted
• courage bravery to write beyond conventional securities and modes
• political act in writing this material; rehash, revise or transform history?
• my relationship, points of identification with Kim Scott here
  • Some reading strategies in an author centred approach:
  • consult the spirit of the author's times, the events, circumstances, news, history, era she wrote in
  • consult author's biography, autobiography, diaries, letters, notes, transcripts, earlier editions, interview her
  • consider how this text reflects the authors' achievement in her other works or similar works by her contemporaries and antecedents; credibility of author's name as a 'brand loyalty'
  • read critics' reviews at the time of its publication, website discussion lists on its reception, commentators, book club views
  • consider with suspicion the publicity machine blurbs, launch speeches, publicity, media releases, etc.
  • consider what school of thought the author locates herself in, style she adopts, any breaking of 'genre rules' for effect
  • consider narrator/ a favourite character in the text as possibly the author's own persona
  • as an empirical reader (Eco), how have I imagined the implied author (Booth)?

 

The Reader Centred reading:

• Reader as meaning maker: reader aware that she is constructing meaning; plot how you construct meanings

• Reading with or across the text - pose questions, challenge assumptions and propositions in the text

• Offers variety of readings: admits several different readings

• Texts as source for personal growth: how the text suggests improvements, directions for growth, a moral force,

• Reading for personal identity: how the text helps the reader define herself

• Preferred readings - match identify with text: where you find yourself generally comfortable with the text - shared ideology

• Alternative reading - across the text

• Reader reflexive about the process: Reader Centred helps the reader become more aware of herself as a reader, with identity, history of success or failure at reading, with preferences, and a learned repertoire of strategies,

• Transaction with text: emotional involvement in the world of the text; envisioning of oneself in that text world.

Some possible reader centred reading strategies:

• Pose questions to yourself such as, what's this mean to me?
• Read to find out whether I agree with its composer and its critics
• Decide to suspend questions, uncertainties in the hope of reaching answers later in reading
• Keep adding to an image of a central character; draw or paint or doodle my image of a character
• Imagine in my mind's eye the characters as they are speaking
• Identify my own reader's stance (as a young, white, academic male employable) as opposed to the narrator's
• Am I the implied reader, the model reader (Eco)?

 

Text Centred Reading:

Note your observations about the text presentation: discontinuities, readability

have regard for diction, vocabulary, register

Look for patterns of memory, pain, redramatizations of events

Seek textualitiy- sources for the text (Is it a pastiche, hybrid?)

As about its self referentiality (how it talks about itself)

Note agendas raised in the text

Query the role of the rare lyrical passages

Note other voices raised in the text: the Nyoonga people, all Aboriginies, all First World Peoples, all those caught between cultures at the margins, 'mixed bloods', stolen generation, all creole cultures

Some possible text centred reading strategies:

• Identify the genre (ballad, speech, editorial, review, etc.) and any genre breaking and its purpose
• Identify the register of language - formal, casual, familiar, sarcastic, ironic, etc. - and judge its appropriateness
• Identify the mode (persuasive, expository, satirical, etc.) and assess its degree of achieving that
• Ask what devices are used (metaphor, simile, repetition, syntax, paradox, etc), and how these devices work
• Emotive language - identify key phrases as slogans, terms with historical overtones e.g., gas chambers
• identify the voice or the contrived voice within the text
• research any historical allusions, lexical anomalies, foreign words for their meanings, overtones
• clarify in your own terms the central thesis, claim, observation, etc.
• Interrogate the text.

 

World Context-Centred reading

how it is a critique of white history; what injustices does it strive to reveal?

how it explores the silences in white history

how it vitalises the Aboriginal agenda for Reconciliation

other voices raised in the text: the Nyoonga people, all Aboriginies, all First World Peoples, all those caught between cultures at the margins, 'mixed bloods', stolen generation, all creole cultures

 

G Smith

1/2/4, 28/1/05, 7/2/5

 

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Supplement to your journaling while reading Benang: from the heart

These might be some 'reading strategies' people use, "operations of reading to awaken the drama latent in every text." Culler Structuralist Poetics 263.

 

How many do you use? (in no particular order)

• Read the end first and 'work back'

• Pose questions to the text such as, what's it all about?

• Read to find out whether I agree with the critics

• Decide to suspend questions, uncertainties in the hope of reaching answers later in reading

• ask other readers for the location of 'juicy bits' and read them first

• do a web search for biodata on Scott

• Pre-read all the reviews to see what to look for

• clear my mind of prejudices/ others' views

• keep adding to an image of a central character e.g., Granddad Scat (167)

• imagine in my mind's eye the characters as they are speaking

• copy down interesting phrases

• note appropriate similes and metaphors

• link chapter prologues with the chapter text e.g., p. 149

• note that single words in italics are quoting terms offensive to Scott

• observe how the chapter titles are expanded, indicative of that chapter

• note unusual vocabulary, lexical items e.g., aureole 159

• note key events supporting the narrative e.g., car accident

• feed motivation to keep reading e.g., listening to teachers' comments, seeking other students' views

• journaling a chronological diary of the story's events

• keeping a central idea alive e.g., 'floating' as a major interpretative device

• consult an atlas, encyclopedia at times

• pausing to catch the drift of a passage

• draw a story-board map of the story's events

• note Aboriginal identity cues e.g., 146, 161

• compose a genealogical table of Harley's family

• compare the book's data with my knowledge of geography/ history/ etc.

• read related materials in this course at the same time

• decide not be shocked by 'crudities' e.g., 86, 164.

• imagine myself writing researching this book

• copy out certain passages for later analysis or modeling style

• skip passages that delay the plot

• identify, plot my own reader's stance as a young, white, academic male employed with prospects as opposed to the narrator's

• draw or paint or doodle my image of a character

• reread passages

• keep page references for cross referencing and deeper understanding

• strive to answer the question: what genre is this?

• build up an answer to the question: what is literature?

• read on "waiting for something more important" Culler Structuralist Poetics 263.

• what other things do you do to garner meaning?

Webmaster and author © Greg Smith 6 January 2004 revised 20/1/05.

This page's address is: http://home.pacific.net.au/~greg.hub/benang.html