01/09/2023
Across the depth and breadth of Stephen King's absurd output (total pages as of writing approaching page count of "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu"), I think his neatest and most incisive sentence is the one that calls the written word for what it is: telepathy.
Books speak to us from across time and distance in their specific voices. The conversation is admittedly stilted until you come around to liven up the party. But the magic is in being able to hear the voice and make out the words even years and centuries on when the speaker has reconstituted to the earth.
I'm not doing a book review here, although the book merits one some decades after delivery. It is one of those books you read two or three other, shorter, books while you take periodic intervals from the primary task. And it specifically asked about a couple mutual acquaintes we've met on our respective travels. This is about that conversation that books engage us in, how sometimes they engage other books too. You may have read "Book Lust" but I'm going to tell you about Book Poly. Grab a rainslicker..
Our primary source material is the defiantly subtitled "The Fatal Shore", which very casually declares itself an "Epic" even as you are just shaking hands. Presumptuous much, pal? I believe the publisher specifically intended a note of pluck to ring from the subheading, "the epic of Australia's founding". The idea being that you say, "epic, eh? We'll see about THAT!" but the joke's on you because the book is so eminently readable that you don't actually end up throwing it against the wall, there to descend ignobly to its final resting place atop Doesteyevesky and Sarte (who at least had the decency to be incomprehensible in a tidy amount of space).
I believe that Hughes is the first, and certainly the first Hughes is aware of, to mount a full scale history of Australia's auspicious origins. And while it is not the final word on the side track we shall follow anon, it is probably the first attempt to authoritatively address that sad subject.
It is, suffice to say, a book that merits the self confidence of titular brag. Epic in scope and in length, at least by literary standards of today. But also eminently readable even for all the mass of figures and faceless paper pushers whose portraits technically are reproduced in the photo plates, but small and black and white and will we ever be called upon to name any in a trivia contest? Just go with Darling, that seems safe enough.
Usually a book of this length, and especially of this depth, merits multiple readings. The first one, you kind of skim at 10,000 feet so you absorb enough to feel knowledgeable when you dip in to actually READ the thing. That's a mandate for if you need to sound quasi informed when you interview the schmuck hawking the book, but it is also a pro tip from a professional reader.
This one defies such methods, as do all the comparably well written ones. You instead get sucked in by the word smithing, the fantastic turn of phrase, the keen eye and tender heart, the passion for the subject matter and the confidence that the story is something that needs be preserved. Hughes comes from an art critic background and the language is that of someone who has an idea of the artful. It is the sort of book of size one returns to anon in order to absorb the trivia, the tables of lashes applied and the procession of military men to govern the burgeoning colonies. It's one of those books you read two or three other books on the side before you finish. Cos you need to take a break from the convo, goddam, does this guy have something to say!
I went and knocked on Bill's door to hear the one about the outback if I may so prevail upon your courtesy, my good sir. And the great thing about telepathy is that Bill will take a moment at any time of the day or night to spin that yarn.
Hughes has things to say of Australia that would certainly surprise an American, if not a Brit. I mean, Bill covers it as well, but Hughes is himself Australian and also literally wrote the book about it. Because nobody else had. Did you know that Australians are not generally proud of their national origin as a penal colony? And that further, you might not even be bought a drink for having cracked a witty joke about said past to a bar full of blokes and shelias?* One has to wonder how such a clearly erudite and sophisticated person ad Hughes didn't see fit to relay the word back to the rest of Oz; the cousins think it gives us a rugged Steve Irwin charm. Probably could have punched up the book a little, no? Bro, nothing wrong with being descendants of the people upper class Brits of the Georgian Age didn't want around. We've all been there.
Joining in the conversation will be Tony Horwitz, jaunting past Aus as he follows Captain Cook along HIS journeys. It's a down under ... -erm, ballyhoo? What draws the three together is the common thread of holding forth a forgotten thing that really IS pretty neat and maybe we should not just leave in the attic. Stuff like Australia's history, Australia itself, and also Captain Cook, although he was Lieutenant Cook at the time he gave name to Botany Bay, possibly just to confound some hapless bastard later on.
Also drawing all together in this conversation is me, asking the question that all Americans want to know about when they start inquiring about Australia. What's up with the black folks?
And throats clear, looks harden or turn embarrassed and shift away, conversation moves on as though a fairly obvious and gaping faux pas was not just broached against all basic rules of social interaction. How WAS it molesting those kids, Ted?
Can I emphasize that this is nothing on the respective authors, all of whom seem dedicatedly liberal. Nor am I trying to throw shade on Australia as a whole, as America is not a glass house from which to be lobbing stones in front of. What is curious is the paucity of material available to even draw on. The impression one gets from not following up with any diligence is that things have changed a LOT since the century dawned. But one outside Australia doesn't get a lot of dirt on what goes on with Australia unless they are looking for it. As of the late 90s or early 2000s, this was most of what we had to work with.
Hughes takes care to bring in as much as possible any data about indigent peoples, but his story focuses largely on what ceased their way of life. I got curious and I remembered that Bill had broached the subject to minimal yet alarming result. I won't spoil his impressions as they are hardly the only reason to have read that book.
Suffice to say, there is not much on the topic and nobody seems to have taken more care to document these people (as they lived along the east coast at any rate) with a fair and open perspective than James Cook. We will hear much more about him in the expanded version of this very piece (which I edited for your convenience BTW). For our purposes here, it suffices to say that Captain Cook is easily one of the more gratuitously maligned figures of history and Tony Horwitz read more of his naval logs than you could reasonably expect a man to have done.
Cook's impression was that although the aborigines seemed to be the rudest and most primitive people on earth (and he did not reach Tasmania) and yet were perfectly content in their existence as such and seemed to want nothing the white men could offer but the absence of white men. Hughes's impression (boiled down quite crudely) is that it sucked to be them. Bill's, that it is best left unspoken. All three evoke an interest to defy the scarcity of known data and consequently come up with roughly the same few pages.
Bill has the most informative despite being the one least immediately centered on the life they led for untold centuries before. Bill notes with some marvel the sheer number of those centuries, which have successively been pushed back from 4 to at least 45 and maybe 60. On a piece of land that has not NOT been an island since before humans lost tails. Can I just take a pleasant side track here?
Hughes is himself an Australian and Horwitz is married to one, and anyway totes a Yorkshireman along through his Australian leg of rehashing the Cook voyages. Bryson lived in Britain for 20 years and wrote two books about the history of English. Even for an author, the dude is correctly tickled by words. Accordingly, Bryson relates the following item and piously acts like he didn't do the same math anyone would.
A "swagman" is a transient individual who is distinguished by the rolled blanket ("swag") he totes about. A swag can also be called a Matilda, cos Australia. So 'a-waltzing Matilda pretty obviously means a roll in the hay.**
So it falls to Bryson to further relay the interesting item that no aboriginal language of Australia has a word for "yesterday" or "tomorrow". He found it surprising but it makes as much sense to me as anything. I'll have to re-peruse Jared Diamond to see what he says on this, but per Bryson, the people who populated Australia previously had done so since 30,000 years before another human being built anything like a vessel capable of getting themselves there. And then they abandoned the technology altogether. Of course, lot can happen in 60 centuries. Everything in Australia that is a form of life exists to defy everyrthing that is known about anything.
But the thing you always must keep in mind about knowledge is that nobody wrote THE book. I was once asked for a good book on a subject and I said, "Get three books and try to find at least two that disagree entirely on the subject, that's how it's done." Because books are a conversation that speak through ages, but can still only speak in THEIR voice.
And, look, these are liberal guys. Feel free to call on all three at once. We doing Book Poly here and everyone gave consent. It was tacit when you walked in on the o**y.
And we doing telepathy; these guys can read your dirty mind..
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*"blokes" and "shelias" is not touched on by any of these, I learned this Oz colloquium from another book written by an Australian woman of Indian heritage about her travels in Hindustan, which did not meet the criteria for inclusion in my crude photshop.
** a f**k for those not familiar with American colloquium. "Who'll go a-waltzing Matilda with me?" is obviously "who will do a bedroll dance with me?" and there is not even a way Bill doesn't realize.
