Notes and comments to study Personal Best: Thirty Australian authors choose their best short stories (1990).
A Preview of Personal Best by G. Smith
It's a busy world and most of us have little time to sit and read. But on reading the stories in Disher's Personal Best collection, I found that writers have been busy at their art too. The anthology demonstrates the variety and advanced writing art that today's Australian short story writers practise.
The anthology offers thirty stories by contemporary writers, who introduce their own stories in turn so we may see the writer at work. They explain why they make their selections - some are sentimental choices knowing that that story may not be the best one they've written, while others are proud of their stories for being their first tangible successes. Their Introductions offer living contexts for the work like "living in Paris at the time" or "written during a London garbage strike" and so on. In all, the anthology offers an enjoyable read even for us busy people!
Stories about nostalgia feature in it. Carmel Bird's "The Hair and the Teeth" is very readable and enjoyable, a short tale about losing sentimental items in a house robbery. I found her direct honesty and her ability to relate to ordinary things very appealing indeed. Her narrator-character is able to evoke familiar reactions and the woman's point of view so credibly. In no less a way was Robert Drewe's "The Bodysurfers" (the lead story for his own anthology of the same name) able to convey a wistfulness and contemporary 'feel' as he settles in with his new wife and the growing children of the previous marriage. It seems autobiographical and appeals to readers of his sixties' generation now established in the eighties and nineties.
That same longing for a time long gone is a thread taken up by other contributors. Tim Winton's prize winning "My Father's Axe" from 1985 is one such, where the theft of his old father's axe from the verandah of the same house where he grew up has a very strong personal impact. The fact that it happened on the same day as his father's death breaks open the memory banks and seems to give the event a symbolic value. When another father returns the axe with his own son who had taken, the narrator's spontaneous reaction seems to wrap up the incident with a compelling and just resolution. Another sense of longing is recalled by Gerard Windsor in his "The Archbishop or the Lady" where the woman narrator listens to her friend who feels compelled to unload memories of earlier years when in a former life he had helped to lift the dead Archbishop Mannix from his chair to a bed. We see here the artist in anguish, not knowing what to do with this "brush with glory." The resulting story is a little too particular but nonetheless valuable.
That these memories had 'composted within him for so long' is a theme of many other contributors too. Wilding writes that writing is "rediscovering what has been forgotten or ignored or repressed." Peter Goldsworthy's "The List of All Possible Answers" will amuse distracted parents, Jean Bedford's "Through Road" for expatriates with children, and Elizabeth Jolley's "Wednesdays and Fridays" for worried mothers with still adolescent adult sons. Some stories draw from autobiographical material and still others are stimulated by observations or newspaper items.
Horror and fear feature in some stories too: "Gates" by Barry Hill has a symbolic application, "Inside the Oyster" by Morris Lurie offers a shock value for the narrator who meets up with an old school chum who has fallen on hard times, Carey's "American Dreams" for those worried by today's creeping cultural imperialism, Disher's own "Amateur Hour" dramatises fear in an actual situation to portray the cruel indifference of racism, and Murray Bail's contribution with the alphabet name is an milestone exercise in technique to tell a tale of a jealous husband. Helen Garner's exercise in unGothic horror, and James McQueen's final delivery of natural justice have wider applications than their imagined readerships would suggest. Astley's "Ladies Need Only Apply" powerfully dramatises feminine vulnerability.
As well, many stories explore the art of the writer as a theme. Moorhead's Gina, a hermit artist alone on a Tasmanian promontory, is living her dream until it is rudely challenged. Farmer's winter story in memory of Marjorie Barnard shows how the writer's work is explainable in the context of her physical setting and personal feelings. Windsor's man character is aching to make sense of powerful memories. Disher says in his overall Introduction that despite being asked most contributors were reluctant to explain the process of their writing. This anthology must stand however as a primary source for such a study.
So Personal Best shows that the short story writing is alive and well in Australia. I emerged stimulated and more aware of myself as a contemporary Australian. These stories remind one that the experiences that make literature are everyday ones, parading round us in all their variety and diversity. Beverley Farmer puts it this way: "There seemed to be no jolt, no transition between life on the written page and lived life. . . In their fictional form (my) people and places fitted without a crease into day to day time." After reading Personal Best, I feel sure more of us will be better observers, and perhaps even encouraged to record our lives too for the entertainment of our peers and our children.
G. Smith 890 words
Carmel Bird "The Hair and the Teeth" (1989) previously unpublished
In Garry Disher (Ed.) Personal Best Angus and Robertson Imprint p. 289.
This story is about the writer's feelings stirred by a domestic robbery, her enhanced reactions to precious things, and how personal items are precious. I find it very readable, accessible, close to home, very middle class, contemporary, topical and revealing of the narrator.
Note the last lines of her Introduction - "The province of my fiction is in the process between the pattern of images and the response of the writer." She presumes the reader's experience of reading, and that his or her response process is a 'mystery'.
289 very appealing opening - a clear voice in prosaic style, understandable everyday feelings of frustration, and routine.
291 the recountal to the police is so true to life, so full of poignancy, human feeling and honesty "the lies" 292. the wax doll from Paris is a significant memento. That emotion is central to this story. Its relevance to the narrator is the story's pivotal power.
291 the title: the two lockets of the children's hair and nine of their first teeth are very significant to her but not to anyone else as Jack McClaren said - "They'd just chuck the babies' curls into the gutter."
Beverley Farmer " Black Genoa" 1988 pp. 327-36.
a strange "story" - re-readings will enlighten.
She says it is "slow writing, a winter story" (326) How? Why? Effective?
an interrupted narrative rather like a stream of memory structure;
Do the observations establish relevance as an 'In Memoriam: Marjorie Barnard"?
Her fascination with the black genoa variety of fig tree for its purpling oozing fruit , a throwback perhaps to the decomposing and puffy corpse of the penguin she had seen on the shore and sketched for Joanna; a powerful symbol of death & cancer.
the unrelated narrative extract (330) is explainable in the context of her own experiences : the dead bird, the groan of the sea & the lighthouse horn and hooting of passing ships; Farmer here strong on this physical setting and on one's mental state as the resource and impetus for writing; the artist's psychology.
Joanna's father Ray died of cancer & narrator reflects on her own distant father;
The narrator associates Joanna with ripe figs, who incidentally was called the Purple Lady in the hospital as she tended her father everyday wearing the same purple dress.
Question: is the narrator in this story merely an observer, a friend at a distance (p. 326), or indeed involved in sharing Joanna's grief and in honouring the memory of her hero Majorie Barnard?
I suggest enter the story by establishing the identity of the narrator.
Her novel Alone (1980) explores feminine relations & feelings; Milk (1983) and Home Time (1985) the "Greek stories" which explore the migrant experience of Australians in Greece.
Barbara Hanrahan "Dream People" 1987 pp.36-44
one reader's reaction: no climax, disconnected. What do you think?
a young girl in Adelaide in 1938 becomes pregnant & her husband dies.
Has got the feel of Ruth Park's Poor Man's Orange; mirrors the freshness of her mother's telling.
35 a thin narrative with lots of description & detail. annoying in its lack of traditional 'structure'. a catch-all story: life & death, birth and life.
Why the title? Who are the dream people? Harsh realities happened to them. Are they naive, or just victims of circumstances? What was their dream? dream about being beautiful36, being decent, being accepted, being pregnant, being married, being alive & well.
Glenda Adams "A Snake Down Under" (1971) pp.54-56.
Seems like a preamble for Roeg's film Walkabout, a review of the film. Note cumulative effect on reader - not normal narrative structure - a juxtaposition of tales (tails?)
the story of the girl and the snake reflected in reality in the school; snakes tempt and bite and kill (§4 an anecdote of a girl who dies of snake bite); Museum photograph: "Snake trying to eat goat" - the pregnant girl goes to Qld.; Sunday school teacher is such a snake hissing and lying; meeting her first snake in a wheat field in France - she screamed, it fled, friend's Eve joke.
In A Snake Down Under not an emphasis on a story but "the pleasure of capturing the tone of voice and feeling connected to characters and incidents I had dismissed years before." (52) Down under = written by an Australian in New York, or does it suggest more sinister overtones of sexual threat ?
What cumulative effect have these vignettes had on you?
Are they connected by a feeling? How did you link the segments?
Adams has challenged your preconceived notions of a short story, yet the conventions are observed (brevity, can be read at one sitting, focus on character, economy of language, only one plot) but has rearranged these elements creatively.
Joan London "Sister Ships" (1986) pp. 101-118.
Notes © G. Smith 1992.
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"But some of those stories are really hard!"
Once a dancer was asked when she walked off the stage after performing her dance, "Tell us what that dance means. What were you saying in the dance?" Her answer was "I just did."
The dancer was saying that art forms are not transferable. She was being asked to put into words what can only be expressed by movement. She could not put into words the emotions and connections expressed in her dance. The integrity of her art lay in its own distinctive artistic form.
When dealing with the short fiction in Personal Best, we come across this issue. Today's writers like Murray Bail, Frank Moorhouse and Beverley Farmer and others present us with that same initial difficulty. Their fictions are not linear as we are used to, they are difficult to read because they seem disconnected and things are left unsaid. They write unconventional stories.
Today's short fiction writers believe that construction of meaning is also the reader's task, not just the writer's. For writing to be democratic, no one participant in the process can take over. For them, the reconstruction of meaning and enjoyment of the fiction is constructed by readers, with all their shortcomings, biases, lack of readiness, backgrounds and expectations. Some would even desire that the author be invisible, that the worth of the art form lies only in the reader's response.
A fiction is not a scientific experiment that can be repeated over and over with the same result. It is always essentially new and creative, being dependent on the viewer, or reader, for its validity. The writers in Personal Best then respect their readers and invite them to take part in a creative reconstruction of an experience only mapped out in the story. These stories are not really hard; they're just challenges their authors offer to unpractised readers.
© G. Smith 1992
"When I read short fiction, I like to enjoy it and be stimulated too."
Reading Disher's Personal Best was enjoyable and quite stimulating. I had forgotten just how powerful short fiction can be; what struck me about the anthology was just how many slices of life it represented and the diversity of methods modern writers can employ.
Enjoyment in reading can come in many ways. The writer can present and dramatise current felt concerns of his or her readers, can evoke shared memories with a sense of nostalgia, can project our fears into future settings to confirm them or to show them up to be illusions, or can recreate the familiar settings in new and unusual ways as if to hold a mirror up to reality. Writers of Australian fiction give identity to a nation becoming aware of itself with its changed ethnic and cultural diversity and this can be a great source of identity and satisfaction too. I found all these occurring in my reading of Personal Best too. What makes this anthology so satisfying is its wide diversity of forms and preoccupations.
Authors like Archie Weller value raw feelings and I found his fiction "Sandcastles" was refreshingly frank. His aboriginal "almost man" character is able to articulate many current concerns and his felt lack of security, identity and continuity that previously I have not been able to tap into. It was useful to compare it with Sally Morgan's My Place . On an even larger canvas, I found Disher's own "Amateur Hour" a powerful exploration of indifference and racism. The narrator moves in a beautiful landscape yet the accidental death of Tobias raises many self-doubts and a sense of alienation. Reading such a story I found is serious but no less enjoyable.
Many authors I read drew on domestic settings quite effectively. Carmel Bird's "The Hair and the Teeth" explores sentiment and lost feelings when robbers take her personal and sentimental things. Robert Drewe in "The Bodysurfers" appeals for being very contemporary in its presentation of the individual's search in life. It enjoyed its indulgence in a sense of nostalgia in our changing times and its treatment of the recurring problems of communication today. Narrator David, his new wife Lydia and his kids represent my generation at its present stage in life. It has a personal relevance. Peter Goldsworthy's "The List of All Possible Answers", set in another domestic setting, is a humorous response to another problem of communication, the demanding child. Mummy devises a final list of answers to deter her child while she is busy. It is humorously told and brief but effective too. All the evasions and compromises in parenting seem to be summed up here.
I found it stimulating too to grapple with new ways of presenting short fiction in Personal Best. For instance Elizabeth Jolley's "Wednesdays and Fridays" is one side of a correspondence between a son and a mother. The mother shows her concerns through regular letters under the guise (for the reader) of being his landlady. It does provoke and stimulate like reading a detective thriller until readers reach the end to find the identity of the correspondent, Mabel Morgan. Some might say Windsor's "The Archbishop or the Lady" is playing to the literary community with its playful ambiguity and rapid changes of point of view. But every story has its technical achievements and these particular aspects of Windsor's story I recognise and enjoy too.
Many contributors write about themselves as writers. Gerald Murnane's "Precious Bane" dwells on personal preoccupations, changes in modern society and the writing task itself. I found its emphasis on the narrator's self enlightening. Jessica Anderson's "The Appearance of Things" displays writing as a stimulus to memory and Winton's "My Father's Axe" a recollection of many personal memories associated with the axe. Beverley Farmer's "Black Genoa" links also a number of memories by the one symbol of the fig tree. These fictions work on a different principle but I found them fresh and challenging nonetheless.
It is enjoyable exploring social attitudes. George Papaellinas' "Christos Mavromatis is a Welder" scratches at the great Australian taboos, social class and the world of work. It is not about the migrant experience. In the everyday setting of a public bus, Christos fails to deflect the persistent questioning of a drunk fellow passenger. I find this kind of writing very stimulating.
An anthology offers something for everyone. Disher has selected authors who have something to say about the task of writing and I found this quite informative. I found that even its difficult short fictions rewarded me with a sense of satisfaction. I know that the reader must own his own responses in reading, that fiction is always essentially new and creative, being dependent on the reader for its power. I found that the writers in Personal Best respected their readers and invited them to take part in a creative reconstruction of an experience only mapped out in their words on paper. I was glad to be part of this process. 849 words © G. Smith 1992
Must successful stories have Happy Endings?
TOPIC: "I suppose we all like happy endings, but a realistic ending can be more satisfying."
This tension between realism and fantasy permeates all fiction. The question is: is it all just a matter of taste or is fiction better for being one or the other? (There is no room for the hybrid of both; that is neither fish nor fowl.) For me, I used to like happy endings but now I know that a realistic ending is what I am looking for, to relate the story to life. I've had enough of fairy tales and false hopes.
As I read Disher's anthology Personal Best, I was pleased to find this trend in modern short story writing to give us readers more realism. I guess it is a sign of the times; our nineties are harsh times. For instance in "Junction", Kate Grenville refused the chance to give the traditional happy ending, to have Doug meet and marry the girl with the blonde hair on the 63 bus. Instead she rings only once and he misses the call despite his elaborate schemes to stay near the phone. His "toneless hysteria" as Grenville calls it in her introduction is very much a character type today - she quite realistically picks out the great gulf between his aspirations and his squalid circumstances.
Her story's setting features the facts of modern urban poverty, in its unpretty realism. I head echoes of "The Wasteland" in her line: "In his room he boils an egg and eats it with revulsion he wishes he knew how to cook. He sits and burps and stares at the spatters on the tiles . . . "(244). Finally the sordid ending on the third Friday night in frustration and rejection is all too often our modern society's experience; yet I would rather this than be insulated by a fairy tale's unreality.
Being misunderstood too is a modern theme; Doug is misunderstood by the landlady ("deviant"), the "toadwoman" at the railway station and the lady wig-seller at the op. shop. Even the kid he bumps as he rushes past betrays him: "It rams its knuckles into its eye the man hit me." He wails like some pre-echo of Doug's bad luck. He is misunderstood by the girl he loves too it seems.
Grenville's style of writing is realistic and experimental - no full stops or commas do show the rush and quiet fury of the actual events as they happen: "Lunging his hand in for the keys he rips his pocket drops the keys grabs them they slip his hands are sweaty he rams the key at the lock but it won't go in he's using the wrong key he drops them again but snatches them up before they hit the ground" (245). I rather like this stream of action style of writing and think it is successful here too. I relate to it very readily for its fluid realism.
Doug comes across as a real character in love: obsessed with red raincoats, oblivious of his circumstances, willing to take slim chances, vagrant, sneered at by the ex-jockey ticket collector, and depressed and restless at home. He comes across not as a literary construction but as one we might meet in our neighbourhoods. Grenville's "Junction" satisfies me for its realistic plot, setting, and characterisation.
by G. Smith April 15, 1992 12:12 AM
Student Worksheet for reading Garry
Disher's anthology Personal Best Angus & Robertson
Imprint 1990.
1. Read Malouf's introduction p. 373. Do you agree "that a short story belongs to the reader. . . that if a writer has done the job properly, he can add no single word. That any further word would be superfluous - if it isn't, it ought to have been in the story itself"? What do you expect of a short story? What are significant elements of a successful short story?
2. I recommend Goldsworthy's "The List of all Possible Answers" p. 261 as a short one to start with perhaps. Write a review of this one. Characterisation, familiar setting, action, dialogue, climax all occur here. Compare it with his very readable and seemingly autobiographical novel, Maestro (Imprint, 1990).
3. Consult Stories from the Warm Zone (Penguin, 1987) by Jessica Anderson "The Appearance of Things" p. 9 was published there too (p. 17). What do you value in family stories? Compare this one with Goldsworthy's.
4. Thea Astley is now an AO in the 1992 Australia Day Honours list. What are your reactions to this short story "Ladies Need Only Apply" p. 186? Her introductory note refers you to a previous story of hers as pre-reading to LNOA. Look it up.
5. Browse through a similar anthology of short stories by current Australian writers: Coast to Coast edited by Kerryn Goldsworthy (Angus & Robertson 1986, $9.95). You'll see the same names there: David Malouf, Gerard Windsor, Elizabeth Jolley, Helen Garner, Tim Winton, Glenda Adams, Barry Hill, etc. Perhaps compare stories by the same author.
6. Read the editor's own choice "Amateur Hour"(p. 120), a novel cut down to a short story says Disher. Compare his style and material with The Stencil Man.
7. Peter Carey is currently famous for his highly successful novels, Oscar and Lucinda and his most recent The Tax Inspector (1991). What do you think of "American Dreams" (pp. 57-70)? Do you like first person autobiographies?
8. Draw some general conclusions about the preoccupations in Personal Best. What connections do you find between stories there? What devices of story-telling appeal to you best? Draw up a list of likes and dislikes in those you have read. Consider criteria for including your friends' stories in such an anthology.
9. Re-read only the Authors' Notes one by one. It is interesting just how often authors were surprised by the popular receptions their stories received. What were some of their reasons for writing?
10. What is pure fiction? Is Helen Garner's claim convincing that her story was unrelated to anything she had experienced ("nothing in it actually happened to me"), that "I made it all up" (p.88)?
CONSIDER THESE QUESTIONS FROM the 1991 VCE PAPER:
11. "When I read a collection of short stories they all seem separate, but later I discover links between some of them."
12. "I suppose we all like happy endings, but a realistic ending can be more satisfying."
HOMEWORK
Each week read one story and write a half page summary of it and a half page report on it. We will read these and compare them in class. This will be your way of preparing for possible answers in detail for questions such as occur above.
Your answer on Disher's "Amateur Hour" could go like this:
"Amateur Hour" is Disher's best known short story and won the National Short Story Award. It deals with a naive young man trying to make sense of a fatal accidental shooting he witnesses in South Africa.
I found this story quite disturbing although its setting is quite different from anything I have experienced. It shows the craft of short story writing well with its economy and unpredictability. In it he juxtaposed the indifference between whites with the despair that exists between coloureds. Tensions and ironies abound, such as that the inhabitants are like poets in a beautiful landscape yet they hold racial antipathies underneath. Disher maintained my sympathy for the new-boy narrator, for Tobias and for the drunk woman. I found the action somewhat anti-climactic,in that the shooting of Tobias was shock enough without the added indignity of the black woman in the alley near Carnaby's.This added incident only seemed to reinforce a moral point and the helpless indifference of the narrator. Like his friends the Reeds, his reaction was understandable.
But I was at a loss to understand the significance and relevance of the title. The claim he made in the introduction that it was "a local tragedy revealing a greater one" was actually more enlightening but that is extraneous to the story. I take this to mean that such events occur often enough and are not an isolated; they have a universal significance. Disher seems to dramatise the question of fear: "What if...?" in an actual situation while applying it to all of us generally in the human family.
"Whether it is long or short, a good story needs to be well crafted in terms of characters, setting and plot."
Everyone loves a good story it is true and Disher's The Stencil Man is one excellent example. It displays the best elements of the novelist's craft: realistic characterisations, an a dynamic setting and a clear storyline. This may be short novel by comparison with others but it does exhibit all the features of "a good story".
In The Stencil Man Garry Disher tells a good story: it is a clear narrative and we feel involved with Martin from the arrest, through his internment in all its frustrations and intrigues to the escape and the novel's eventual open-ended conclusion. Disher conveys well the emotions of shock, frustration, wistfulness and desperation that characterise the stages that Martin goes through. Circumstances conspire against him and Disher shows Martin in clear relief against them. He opines at one point distinguishing the harshness of their reality with the pleasure of his memories that the stencils represent: "What a difference there is between what I see in my memory and what I see in the light of the sun" (p. 34). This novel has a well crafted plot.
Disher is also well able to paint realistic characters. Martin, Wurfel, Egk and the others emerge as real characters. The closely-felt frustrations and social stigmas in the camp are well dramatised, as Martin comments at one point: "He had few customers any more because he was marked" (p. 61). It must have been difficult for Disher to resist the temptation to stereotype characters; these wartime events have a cosmic impact and the situations are universal. But his characters appear as individuals with all their faults and peculiarities. Disher will be remembered for crafting this realism in his characters.
Disher is firmly in control as writer; his point of view is most advantageously chosen. As a third person invisible observer, he is somehow able to continue to explore Martin's thoughts but also give us a sense of the facts of the world outside them. But the objectivity is not documentary only - we even side with Martin in his plea for justice; we know his cause and we stand with him at the appeal. His simple claim, "I have lived in Australia for seventeen years now." (p. 72), has all the force of an innocent but wronged man's defence. Disher's choice of a point of view contributes largely to the overall success of this novel.
Disher's themes raised and explored in The Stencil Man are still pertinent and universal. How innocent actions can be misconstrued by others, the relativity of historical interpretation, the fragility of truth and trust, the paranoia about strangers and Australians' xenophobia are all here thoroughly dramatised. His account of the breakdown of a fine proud European character in the grit of an Australian internee camp rings true. His focus on the individual overwhelmed by bureaucracy and social forces features the underdog, a very Australian theme. No wonder he finishes: "Martin continued to yield to a private lunacy because of his children... They had want of someone who could stand up against brutes and run through fire and water" (p.120). What choice does one have against such adversity?
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