THE EARTHRISE DIARY (October 2011)
Don Diespecker
© text Don Diespecker 2011
…At this latitude I’m spinning 836 miles an hour round the earth’s axis; I often fancy I feel my sweeping fall as a breakneck arc like the dive of dolphins, and the hollow rushing of wind raises hair on my neck and the side of my face. In orbit around the sun I’m moving 64,800 miles an hour. The solar system as a whole, like a merry-go-round unhinged spins, bobs, and blinks at the speed of 43,200 miles an hour along a course set east of Hercules…
Annie Dillard: ‘Seeing’ (in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek).
In Rhodes the days drop as softly as fruit from trees.
Lawrence Durrell: Reflections on a Marine Venus. A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes.
(An Earthrise photo, should it appear, is of the downstream view on a rainy day, Oct 1).
September 28 2011. Although it’s less than 24 hours since my wild posting of the September Diary and despite my having tottered out into the garden immediately afterward, to revive, I felt I’d been working at composing for most of a week and that time, when I returned to the garden, had sped relentlessly past and left me not only tottering but also reeling. The above extract from Annie Dillard’s engaging 1974 essay reminds me of that experience (the essay is also included in Lopate {1994} and that volume is referenced below). However fast we move when working intensively our imagined speed is about zero: alarmingly, we’re already going fast and scarcely aware of our pace through space. I like to think that some landscapes, however, seem quick or fast (like a cityscape, almost) and that other dreamier landscapes are slow and easy with unhurried streams and trees becoming forest.
Today I intended a lunchtime relaxing read but couldn’t resist first a preliminary stroll around the gardens. There has been rain and showers, the soil is damp to near-saturated and everything organic is fecund: the four irises I photographed are now 12; the grass I mowed has further leaped from the ground begging another mow and the just-visible green leaves of several white cedars are now out, fully formed, exchanging Co2 for O2 and Nature is going fast too and at a different kind of pace: one measured and sensible.
Just before the month turned: fireflies were seen again around the house on damp evenings (the glowworms at the retaining wall behind the house have been eerily gleaming and in a greenish light throughout the recent cooler and wetter spell).
October 22 2011. It seems we really are going fast within our little galaxy because we’re all now ¾ the way through the month; it won’t be long before Christmassy music booms and jingles from the stores and malls. At least the weather is warmer, more like summer (or summery, a word highly esteemed by Bruce Furner and also by me {unable to resist looking it up I see that summery, as an adjective, is “of, like, or appropriate for summer.” –And there’s a bonus word, this one a noun: summeriness, is one that my computer baulks at, for those of us who may need all the words we can muster}).
There have been days of annoyingly cool to cold and wet weather; they may all have ended for now and the air is again balmy and warm; typical spring weather here: some days cool and others more summery. Yesterday, on the 21sst, and watching the Bellinger from the belvedere, my visitor, Sharon Snir and I heard the unmistakable Opening of a cicada summer presented by a single drummer. Mentally marching to that beat we simultaneously cried out, ‘Cicada!’ The implication is that this is going to be another frighteningly noisy summer (unless what we heard was merely a solitary Joker Cicada intent on terrorizing us and now rolling around in uncontrollable mirth). Shortly afterward, however, that first beating was picked up and repeated by at least one other insect. Could there be two Jokers? What if that strange half-imagined cicada music becomes a permanent high-pitched sound coming from somewhere in the forest? Soon, battalions of these brazen percussionists will be On Air, each little creature looking as fierce and efficient as an off-world alien bent on Total Drumming. The orchestral beating will increase, steadily initiating hundreds of thousands of cicada groups to harmoniously combine. They all will practice to confirm their beliefs in having perfect pitch. Within days the vibratory beating will become overwhelming vibrations until every human will become hopelessly resonant: we’ll clutch our heads and ears with both hands and falter (Munch’s painting, The Scream, comes to mind).
October has been a busy month: to get the lawn mowed is not easy at this time because the Earthrise grass needs to be relatively dry if the machine is to succeed in cutting smoothly. I always begin at the circular perimeter of the Dog’s Garden so that I can program myself to wheel successfully in ever-widening circles. I like to get some rhythm going, because that allows a meditative cutting or trimming uninterrupted by the machine choking on a wrenched mixed grab of wet grass, tradescantia and tropical chickweed, a grabbed choke that abruptly pulls one’s mind away from the calming reality of lawn and into that of Everything Else But Lawn. Ordinary work, work that is frequently repeated, is a fine way to ease the mind into a meditative direction—raking leaves or gravel, making bread, washing dishes, carpentry, for example, are also ways of being calm while busy (and tuning out cicada choirs).
When not gardening (and that includes lawn-mowing) and not writing fiction, memoir, essays and emails, I’ve been able to snatch some book reading time. The best or most impressive read this month has been Cormac McCarthy’s fine novel, All the Pretty Horses described by Harold Bloom as…’the ultimate Western, not to be surpassed.’ Although it is a Western, I thought of it while reading, not so much as a Western, but as a great novel, a masterpiece of modern literature. It has been all of those things for me because the textual language, the prose writing, is so magnificently Literature. I’ve also been reading Joan Didion’s nonfiction (more about that below) and have started David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (more about that next month).
In the Gardens: Canada, South Africa and Australia.
First, the cleanup:
We have been doing lots of cleanup too but at the cabin. Actually we hired the man next door. He and his wife are suffering from the US system and recession. They both lost their jobs almost 2 years ago and have not been able to find work. Joe is a fast and thorough worker: a real perfectionist. He has transformed our yard without spoiling the natural look and feel that we wanted to keep. He can do anything. He replaced a skylight, painted the outside of the cabin, made little paths by using small rocks he found on the property, created a fire-pit, put plastic corrugated roofs on the sheds, then painted them etc. They have been very grateful for the extra money and we have been so happy with the clean up and repairs--a win, win situation.
(Jill Alexander, Vancouver, BC).
Jill writes about the yard at her cabin, situated over the border in the US where the altitude is about 800 ft.
Second, the gardening plan, the seeds and plants:
I sit with seeds on my desk, next to my laptop. In order they are:
Echinacea: produce beautiful pink flowers with pinkish-brown centres. They are useful for warding off infection and building up the immune system. I will make an infusion when the flowers appear.
Dianthus: a mix of red, white and pink flowers, gloriously scented.
Phlox: for both their scent and pastel colours.
Mesembrianthemum: hardy indigenous plants that produce brightly coloured shiny blossoms and colours so bright that they dazzle the eyes.
Cosmos: for their prolific blossoms in red, white, pink and—later—hybridized mixes of the various colours. I gather seed and sow at random in the flowerbeds so there is colour all the year round.
Veg’s: spinach, Swiss chard mix, which is red and green, beautiful when grown with the flowers.
Lettuce: all year-round butter lettuce, delicious in a fresh salad.
Rocket: the pungent flavour which I love so much and which contains tons of nutriments.
The weather looks promisingly overcast, with dense cloud, and a delightful grey cast to everything. We desperately need rain. Once that comes I can plant my seeds.
This year my beautiful bottlebrushes are flowering wildly; the weeping red one that was smashed on one side by the tree felling I hated so much, and the other two, dusty pinks. Somehow the severe cold this winter brought on a flush of blossom that I am enjoying.
The stumps of the mulberry and a few other trees are showing signs of life, but it will take years before they grow to any size.
This year the roses are magnificent. A flush of pinks and of course the prolific whites, as well as my very overgrown pergola, where the red crimson glory climber is a great foil for the massively sprawling white dog-rose. There must be over a hundred blossoms. Not forgetting the old-fashioned rambling rose which produces bunches of silvery pink rosettes. The other roses down the side of the house have produced a flourish of blossoms, due to the good pruning I administered in August. I always wait until there is no danger of frost. Compost has given them a boost, as well as the special rose food they get from time to time.
(Julie Craig, Johannesburg, RSA).
Julie writes about her garden in suburban Johannesburg where the altitude will be near 1,753-m (Jo’burg used to be in the Transvaal but is now to be thought of as the provincial capital of Gauteng.
[I make] the morning round to see what activity is taking place in the leaf, bud and shoot arena: at present, many almonds and three peaches are on their respective boughs, the nashi pear is about to flower, the dwarf apple trees are in flower and three parsnip seedlings tower two inches above fifty dormant or dead seeds of their brothers. Lettuce seedlings are profligate in number, also beetroot and rainbow chard. The celeriac gives me pause for concern—there is only one and I know I planted many more seeds. Those beautiful, magical looking caravanners of the vegie patch are my chief suspects but I'm firmly opposed to using snail traps so I'll just have to rejoice in having the one strong celeriac. I'm told by permaculture friends that I don't have a snail problem but rather, that I have a duck deficiency…
Lucky you to have iris out and about already!
(Tracey Furner, Fennell Bay, NSW).
Earthrise (the gardens) is only 50-m above sea level: the Darkwood, more or less where a few score of us dwell, is at the bottom of a deep valley, i.e., we are all overlooked by those who live Higher Up at, for instance, Dorrigo—and by the birds, of course. Fennell Bay is virtually at sea level. Some of the trees here are 50-m or so high.
(October 15 2011). I’m half way through the month and have been seeing as many as 20 blue irises in flower at the same time. Also, there are ‘miniature’ daisies, including Shasta Leucanthemum superbum, osteospermum, and Argyranthemum (Madeira Blush Double) and frutescans (Summit Pink); Begonia semperflorens, bouquet aster Callistephus chinensis; dwarf white chrysanthemum paludosum and orange marigold (Tagetes patula); Super Purple pansies and a Magic Fountains Dark Blue Delphinium.
All of these nursery-bought plants are at the mercy of the dreaded Fly-In Brush Turkeys that arrive like fighter-bombers on direct flights from across the river. They land with sinister intent behind the belvedere and immediately reconnoiter. If there is nothing to their taste on or near the lawns they head for the forested slopes behind the house and work there for most of the day. On their return from the forest the Turkeys may amuse themselves with some Easy Scratching in some of the gardens enclosed by stones or (as with the recently planted dahlias), by chicken wire. Turkeys delight in digging; they particularly relish digging out newly buried dahlia tubers that are never to their taste (it is the act of fiendishly clawing the dahlias out of the earth that blissfully transforms the big birds into pleasure-mad tyrants). Chicken wire usually stops turkeys in their tracks. So far so good and the dahlias have survived. These big flyers are relentless, though, and they easily drive gardeners into frenzied outbursts because turkeys return to gardens with outrageous persistence. I could probably amass a fortune as a garden psychotherapist specializing in Brush Turkey Counter Measures…
I’ve unwittingly made it easier for the Tyrant Turkeys to fly in having used my new Lopper (a long handled sort of secateurs capable of cutting thick-ish Euro privet along ‘my’ piece of riverbank). I’m sure the privet between the bridge and into the bend near the belvedere has never been so heavily pruned, not in my time, anyway. I first had to cut my way toward some of the old river oaks so I could set an extended stepladder against their trunks. Then I climbed 2-m or so into/onto the dense old tree-like shrubs, stretched between ladder and the privet. What fun! There I was, more than 5-m above the stones and the torrent, swaying giddily and breathing heavily the fumes of the privet flowers now in full bloom and remembering that the last tree I climbed like this was the old cheese tree between the belvedere and the river lawn (about 20 years ago when I determinedly clawed down every last vestige of lantana and buddleia that had infested the old tree (it now has only green moss hanging from its branches). –And that reminded me of tree climbing even further back in time (about 1940) when we (kids) climbed big wattles growing along the Blyde River at Pilgrims Rest (Transvaal, where the altitude was about 3,400 ft, I think) there to construct one of the best long-range catapults ever! That dangerous machine comprised a forked branch and great strips of an old inner (car) tube: it was our version of a Roman siege engine and required a dangerous pull initiated by two of us clawing our ways back across branches, the catapult loaded with a brick-sized stone which we could then fire about 40-m across the river… And that reminded me of tree climbing in Victoria, BC in the 1930s. The older brothers of one of my school friends had built a tree house over the sidewalk and I was privileged to climb up on visits. And, also in Victoria, I made an inglorious ascent into the old pear tree in the back garden where stoically I hung upside down, helpless until my mother woke from her afternoon nap and came out to rescue me (c 1933). Anybody trying to climb one of the flooded gums here would be completely unsuccessful.
TEDROB: The Earthrise Diary Review of Books.
Julie Craig has reviewed two popular books by well-known authors:
John le Carré. Our Kind of Traitor. New York: Viking (Penguin Group, USA), 2010.
This book is a little different from le Carre's usual spy style, though the novel is engrossing.
The main characters, Peregrine Makepiece (an English tutor at an Oxford College) and Gail, his fiancée—“a sparky young barrister on the rise, blessed with good looks and a quick tongue” are on a cut-price low season tennis holiday in Antigua, and meet up with a Russian millionaire called Dima. He is, as they later discover, a leading light in the Russian Mafia. Dima invites Perry to a tennis match, which results in an offbeat friendship between the two. Dima enlists the help of Perry and Gail in escaping from the clutches of his rivals, who intend to assassinate him.
Dima is an enigmatic figure, in spite of being a family man with an extended entourage of relatives who live with him, and off him.
Mysteries surrounding him and his family intrigue Perry and Gail, but it is only when Dima invites them to the fourteenth birthday party of Dima's twin sons, that they discover the purpose of the invitation. Dima wants to defect to England, in return for information about the Russian Mafia.
The plot is densely detailed; characters are revealed with loving care as the story unfolds, revealing the somewhat sinister family that surround Dima.
Perry subsequently makes contact with the British Intelligence people. The debriefing is painstakingly slow. It takes so long that Gail goes home, gives up on the whole thing although she has much to add to Perry's tale, as she has befriended the two nieces, as well as Tamara Dima's daughter from a previous marriage. Tamara is in a mess, and needs help neither her father nor evil, psychotic stepmother can or will provide.
MI5 (or 6?) people are unsure whether or not Dima is on the level. They take their time.
Luke persuades his superior officer, Hector, to meet with Perry and Gail, to assess the situation in person.
Hector has doubts about Dima and his plight, in spite of the facts as revealed to him.
Eventually plans are put in place to liaise in Paris with Dima, who is due to hand over his position to his murderous successor –who will, presumably “off” Dima after the signing. Ultimately, the rendezvous takes place, and Dima is smuggled under cover to a safe house in a village in Switzerland.
The book is a good read that I thoroughly enjoyed. JC.
Patricia Cornwell, Scarpetta. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010.
The story is simple: Dr Kay Scarpetta, forensic pathologist, leaves her practice in South Carolina to join her husband, Dr Benton Wesley, on an assignment in New York.
Benton asks her to examine a patient of his, Dr Oscar Bane. Nothing sinister in that, except that Oscar has come to him for help. Oscar's girlfriend has been murdered, and he is the chief suspect. Oscar has himself surrendered himself to Benton Wesley, requesting a full psychiatric evaluation, from which Benton is able to profile him.
Kay travels to New York to do the examination. During the course of the examination she makes notes, and subsequently catches Oscar out in a lie. She begins to wonder if in fact Oscar is actually responsible for killing Terri. But there are a few anomalies that will later puzzle the team about Oscar and his involvement with Terri.
Oscar has other problems. He is convinced someone is stalking him, and is sure that a tracking device is somehow enabling the stalker to monitor his movements.
To further complicate matters, Terri and Oscar are “little people” which Oscar feels, may have been a contributing factor to Terri's death. This might have exacerbated his paranoia and insecurity, Scarpetta feels. He insists that he is being covertly surveilled, and nothing will budge him on this. Initially there is no evidence to support his claims.
Across the road from the murder victim's apartment is a widowed woman who becomes embroiled in the murder without realising it. She reveals certain facts to the police, but this is not sufficient to solve the case. She later reveals that, working from her apartment, she has been administering a sinister and nasty website which is very popular, because of malicious yet partially truthful information posted on it daily. She has previously made contact with Jaime Berger's office with a complaint, during which she makes contact with Pete Marino. He takes a detailed statement from her, and wonders if she in fact knows more than she is telling him, though he dismisses her as yet another crazy who wants to “speak with Jaime Berger” and waste her time with imaginary problems.
Later she is murdered—presumably because of the work she has been doing on the website, which has by then, mysteriously crashed after she loaded gruesome post mortem photographs of Marilyn Monroe onto this website. The resulting hits supposedly result in the site crashing, though nobody can say for sure a hacker (Lucy?) has not created the crash.
Once again Oscar is the primary suspect in the second murder. His fingerprints are found in the deceased's apartment. It seems likely that a warrant to be issued for his arrest is imminent.
Pete Marino, who has worked with Kay for nearly twenty years, has become estranged from her after attacking her, and then escaping to New York, where Benton Wesley helps him find work with the District Attorney's office, headed by Jaime Berger. Pete now works with Morales, a smart-mouthed medical dropout-cum-detective, who seems keen to solve the case on his own. He has already identified two previous murders that bear a frightening similarity to Terri's. Morales passes this information on to Pete who follows up to find these two murders are similar to that of Terri's, although two year's apart, and in different cities.
Kay is surprised (and angry) when Benton finally tells her Pete Marino is in New York, working for Jaime Berger as an investigator. Benton himself has been instrumental in promoting Pete to Jaime, who employs Pete on the basis of his recommendation. Kay never disclosed what really happened when Marino assaulted her, although Benton knows she was not raped, in spite of Pete's extreme drunkenness. Pete is filled with guilt after this incident and goes into rehab, before acquiring the job with Jaime Berger.
Lucy, Kay's niece, is called in by Jaime Berger to do some forensic computer work on Terri's two laptops. What is later revealed is shocking.
The action takes place over a few days. Dr Lester, the resident forensic pathologist is a secret buddy of Morales,’ the detective who is everywhere-at-once. Morales notes many things about the murder. He wants to get to know Kay Scarpetta, who is not interested as she has her own doubts about Oscar and his paranoia that clash with Morales' belief in Oscar's guilt.
Benton and Kay have drifted apart since she was assaulted. They must now face the situation as their relationship is filled with distrust and unanswered (and unasked) questions. The murder brings them together under difficult conditions; both are sleep-deprived, hungry and exhausted, which makes it hard for them to deduce the difference from truth and fiction.
Cornwell's writing is always skilful, densely detailed, revealing each character's past and their current relationship to Kay, Benton, Marino and Lucy.
Jaime Berger becomes a key figure in the solving of the case.
The climax comes when the murderer's identity is revealed because of an oversight on her or his part. If you enjoy reading thrillers, this will not disappoint, although it is just over 500 pages long, which may be daunting to some. JC.
Julie Craig is an avid reader and has also been attempting to write a bestseller for some time, although the publishing world has not yet seen the benefit of publishing her work.
Nonfiction notes, with some comments on Joan Didion’s work.
My reading preference is most often for fiction; over time I’ve developed a liking for essays, too: essays that are widely varied in their themes and topics and especially those that are always widely considered to be literary nonfiction. I’m as much taken with the wartime dispatches of Hemingway or Gellhorn as I am by nonfiction writings that examine the literature of place (works by Barry Lopez, for example).
Many who write favour either fiction or nonfiction and some writers enjoy writing both forms. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1960), for example, began his writing career as a journalist and following his wartime WW1 dispatches he began writing short stories and novels (his debut novel, Fiesta. The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926).
Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998), once married to Ernest Hemingway, was a fiction writer as well as a journalist and war correspondent. Both Hemingway and Gellhorn are fine examples of writers competent in writing both excellent fiction and nonfiction. In this era many and varied anthologies of essays and collections of literary nonfiction are being published.
In 1950 I began (but did not complete because I sloped off to Paris) a course on journalism at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London (now the University of Westminster). In those days, and as our newspaper editor teacher frequently advised, reportage was to be objective writing: the reporter or journalist was to write in a neutral style and to keep him or herself out of the newspaper story (where, when, what happened, to whom, how and why—such were the notions that were central to reporting). It was the reporter’s job to get the facts and to write them without embellishment.
As fiction takes varied forms; so, too, does nonfiction. For example, if selected reportage (nonfiction) is later collected and republished in anthologies it may then be categorized and reviewed or critiqued as essay, personal essay, creative nonfiction (or literary fiction) and so on. Nowadays there are many forms and sub genres of essays, including nature essays (and the literature of place), political essays, essays on aspects of art and science, and much more, including essays that will have originated as wartime dispatches or as new forms of reportage. I’m also implying that a newspaper story or a war correspondent’s dispatch may be re-published possibly years after original publication and that with hindsight there may be but not necessarily will be alterations or improvements to such narratives.
Modern anthologies of essays will contain narratives specially written for an anthology or accepted for a proposed anthology, as well as essays that have been selected or chosen for republication in an anthology. Christine Kenneally’s “The Inferno” is a personal essay first published in The New Yorker, then republished in the anthology The Best Australian Essays 2010. Kenneally’s essay is a powerful account of Black Saturday ‘when (in Christine Kenneally’s words) the worst wildfires in modern Australian history incinerated more than a million acres of the state of Victoria and killed 173 people.’ Such writing often dramatically describes graphic scenes and such essays may be lengthier than a more concise or condensed newspaper article would be.
In ‘personal essays’ creative (or literary) nonfiction readers can expect to see subjective as well as ‘objective’ writing of the highest order. In such essays the literary quality of prose will also contains the personal pronoun: the reader will see ‘I’ and ‘my’ used in the text and thereby understand that the writer’s work will have been informed by his or her observations and experiences—such experiences having been the consequences of the writer having been present ‘at the scene’ at some time and/or to have interviewed others who were at the scene prior to any writer/journalist being present. Such nonfiction writing will also contain prose that is not only descriptive of the place or location, what transpires there, and the writer’s views, opinions and feelings surrounding the getting of the information enabling the writing of the narrative: it will be prose that reads not like ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ reporting, but will likely have an added literary quality, i.e., the writer will have used his or her imagination, probably have a widely recognized writing style that editors would encourage (rather than curtail in the interests of ‘good old-fashioned reporting’). Literary nonfiction will also feature aspects of the writer’s style: Gore Vidal’s essays are recognizable as his work, being witty, generally as measured as they are cheerful, often audacious and always highly intelligent:
Reporting for the BBC during the election campaign, I stood in front of the Albert Hall, the voice of the crown in Parliament incarnate, John Major, still ringing in my ears as, inside, a recording of Elgar caused a thousand gorges to rise, including that little part of me which is forever Dimbleby. I faced the BBC cameras. A petit mini-mini-documentary was in progress. ‘Here,’ I said, head empty of all but emotion, ‘is the proof that only through England’s glorious past can a bright future be secured in this land of Drake and Nelson, of Clive—and Crippen.’
From “Twain’s Letters,” in The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2001.
Martha Gellhorn’s Spanish War dispatches, republished in book form (anthologies) and having the appearance of well constructed and carefully considered personal essays are written in prose that is striking, dramatic and often unforgettable:
In Barcelona, it was perfect bombing weather. The cafés along the Ramblas were crowded. There was nothing much to drink; a sweet fizzy poison called orangeade and a horrible liquid supposed to be sherry. There was, of course, nothing to eat. Everyone was out enjoying the cold afternoon sunlight. No bombers had come over for at least two hours.
From “The Third Winter; November 1938” in The Face of War.
Lyrical prose may be abundantly found in literary nonfiction as well as in fiction. Such prose may then be further appreciated by the reader in ways that we appreciate the literary quality of prose in novels and other forms of fiction (e.g., in drama). Such prose will suggest that the writer has used his or her imagination, as well as humour, for example, in writing the story; thus, narrative is a word applying both to fiction writing and to literary nonfiction—just as story is a word that may be used to describe both fiction (as in a novel) and nonfiction prose (as in newspaper journalism or in literary nonfiction as may be found in personal essays and for example in the New Journalism).
The so-called New Journalism is described as ‘a form of news reporting developed in the 1960s that incorporated some of the features associated with fiction, lending an imaginative, literary character to the traditional, fact-based report’. One of those ‘features’ is an emphasis on the distinctive style and personality of the authors’ (Literary Terms). (Lopate refers to New Journalism as ‘combining reportage with personal, subjective disclosure’).
The New Journalism is widely considered as an American form of writing and its best-known proponents are Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, Jimmy Breslin, Gay Talese, Hunter S Thompson, Joan Didion, John Sack and Michael Herr. Capote is also remembered for his ‘non-fiction novel,’ In Cold Blood (Capote also coined the term ‘non-fiction novel’).
The English author and critic, David Lodge, reminds us that Tom Wolfe, in the introduction to his anthology of New Journalism, ‘distinguished four techniques borrowed from the novel.’ According to Lodge the techniques discussed by Wolfe, plus several more not mentioned by him, were used by Thomas Carlyle in The French Revolution, published in 1837. Lodge also reminds us that Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark qualifies as a nonfiction novel. Thus, the New Journalism may not be as new as once thought.
The American, Joan Didion (1934- ) is a notable writer who initially had the ambition to be an actress. She came to prominence as an exponent of the so-called New Journalism. Her writing style was influenced by Hemingway’s style (he had been influenced by Gertrude Stein who also introduced him to bullfighting). Didion’s sentences are striking, often long and always so carefully constructed as to clearly convey information without ambiguity. In writing of Didion Lopate has described her as ‘a key practitioner of [the sixties] New Journalism, which combined reportage with personal, subjective disclosure.’ Lopate has also written that ‘Didion has shown an uncanny ability to create atmosphere on the page.’ Such ability is priceless for any writer.
Didion’s work reads both like extended reportage and often like prose fiction and that eminently qualifies her as a New Journalism writer. From a cover blurb on her book, Miami: ‘Didion’s Miami is a masterly portrait of the city, an account of Cuban immigration and exile, and a secret history of one dark corner of the Cold War.’ Her style is sometimes brisk yet so detailed are her descriptions that the reader may easily visualize scenes:
In this mood Miami seemed not a city at all but a tale, a romance of the tropics, a kind of waking dream in which any possibility could and would be accommodated. The most ordinary morning, say at the courthouse, could open onto the distinctly lurid. “I don’t think he came out with me, that’s all,” I recall hearing someone say one day in an elevator at the Miami federal courthouse. His voice had kept rising. “What happened to all that stuff about how next time, he gets twenty keys, he could run whatever-it-is-Idaho, now he says he wouldn’t know what to do with five keys, what is this shit?” His companion had shrugged. We had continued in silence to the main floor. Outside one courtroom that day a group of Colombians, the women in silk shirts and Charles Jourdan suede pumps, the children in appliquéd dresses from Baby Dior, had been waiting for the decision in a pretrial detention hearing, one in which the government was contending that the two defendants, who between them lived in houses in which eighty-three kilos of cocaine and a million-three in cash had been found, failed to qualify as good bail risks.
Extract from the third chapter of Miami.
Didion’s sentences tend to be long, indicate considerable detail and thereby encourage the wide-awake reader to read with concentration—and to keep turning pages as though the narrative were a fast paced novel. Miami has changed markedly in recent decades, and Didion’s closely focused writing makes this clear. Her concern has been to tell the story of the change, explain the demography and show the reader both the surface of what goes on in that place and the undercurrents that make Miami a dangerous as well as an exciting city.
Miami ought not be thought of in this day and age as a ‘typical American city;’ an enormous part of the city’s personality and character is now Cuban. The story Joan Didion presents so forcefully is about refugees, criminals, corruption and murder and barely concealed hostilities against the Castro regime in Cuba. In essence Miami is about la lucha, the struggle, and dialogo, dialogue between the Americans and the Cuban Government. For Cubans in Miami the initial struggle was against Spain in the 19th century and has become a further struggle against the later regimes of Machado, Batista and Castro. Had she written conventional reportage the almost seamless narrative of Miami would have been presented in many relatively brief and ‘objective’ news reports. Didion’s reporting and skilful writing is much more than distinctive news reports of street bombings or assassinations: the book is much more than the sum of its reportage parts and reads almost like a novel. Readers will also appreciate the inclusion of a most useful Index. DD
[From Wikipedia: ‘Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking was awarded the National Book Award in 2005. Documenting the grief she experienced following the sudden death of her husband, the book has been said to be a "masterpiece of two genres: memoir and investigative journalism."
‘In 2007, Didion received the National Book Foundation's annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters for "her distinctive blend of spare, elegant prose and fierce intelligence." This same year, Didion also won the Evelyn F. Burkey Award from the Writers Guild of America.
‘In 2009, Didion was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Harvard University. Yale University conferred another honorary Doctor of Letters degree on the writer in 2011.”’]
References
Bloom, Harold. Novelists and Novels. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 2005.
By-Line: Ernest Hemingway. Selected articles and dispatches of four decades. (William White, Ed). London: Collins, 1968.
Collins Dictionary of Literary Terms (Edward Quinn, Ed). Glasgow: Harper Collins, 1999.
Didion, Joan. Miami. London: Granta Books, 2005.
Gellhorn, Martha. The Face of War. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press (rev ed), 1988.
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October 27 2011. As I struggle toward Press Time and The Posting I offer the reader some end of October notes in a mixed style, most of which is abbreviated interior monologue:
The old man walked out onto the wilting lawn in the noon heat the river winding slowly through the rapids close by. A drongo squawked high in a flooded gum on the old campsite and a honeyeater trilled overhead in a white cedar. Thinking hard. What else? He stopped to focus on the emergent dahlias. Would Mrs Rees come through today? Some tubers were overdue. Feel like an expectant parent. Must get the piece cleaned up dare I say polished then posted next few hours. Polished and maybe with a pic. Camera to computer technology requires care. Anxiety. Slightly. What else? Ah, tell the reader about the canoe. I wonder if there’s more than one reader? Poor old Enterprise II. Had bought the chemicals, taken the advice, borrowed Doug’s generously offered fibre-glass matting bits and worked on the hull. Not brilliant work alas lots to learn. There’s room for improvement. Donald can do better. Went down the bank Enterprise on the mooring rope like a lazy big dog on a lead and found a gapped bedrock launch site. Then took the dry canoe on her sea trials ha-ha. Old Henry Dog used to sit in the bows. Eartha would never she always swam summer or winter. That was long ago. Downstream went 100-metres or so. Not bad: still one tiny leak to stop, maybe a second one, half a one anyway. No rest for the wicked. Playful canoe or was she vengeful to rise up when docking fling me into the shallows. Fit of pique perhaps. I’d ignored her dusty plight. She’d been sulking under the house neglected for years. Sigh. The canoe’s revenge justified. Deserved. Dried the phone in the sun as Bruce suggested. No problem. Note book numbers unaffected by water dried in sun too. Good old Biro. What else? There’s the archaeological recovery of the Butterfly Garden. Worth a mention I think? Second garden here wasn’t it? Ariadne the first garden still covered over by tradescantia. The 2001 BIG flood dumped all that loam. With a hand trowel lovingly on my knees tickling aside the loam drying out because I’d earlier removed the tradescantia then the stones reappeared among the Giant Maidenhair. And so did damn big and I mean BIG red jumping ants must have been living among the neat little stone paved path running between the two wings of the garden. Healthy respect and backed off at speed their pincer bite or is it a fanged bite or where does the formic acid is it formic anyway it hurts like hell the bite of bull ants will return cautiously soon when the heat’s off. What else? Made some notes on the TV guide in the semi-dark. Bandicoots. They’ve been making holes everywhere to join the collection of holes made by a cow or two from up the road possibly the cow or cows I mean and almost certainly not the Deer Park cows. Robert said they’d be moved to Dorrigo soon. Ah yes I remember the Big Dragon at least that’s what it may be. Sharon saw it said it was big and I said how big as big as a crocodile ha-ha and she said yes it seemed so and I blinked disbelievingly but she was right a damn big critter all of 2-m I’d say when I saw it two days ago. BIG. Biggest dragon I’ve seen in my life on the River Lawn looking like a goanna almost. Sinister enough it was to be an alien from another galaxy. Might need a minder or armed bodyguard I. Remains of old blogger scattered on riverbank signs of a struggle. No evidence of crocodiles on Bellinger. Mystery. What else? Maybe mention that part of the purpose of writing the Diary each month, other than my selfish pleasure in compiling it, is the sharing of space IN the blog by which I mean dear friends and colleagues, I invite your book reviews, email comments, feuilletons, essays. If you want to be part of The Earthrise Diary then the Diary will be an intertextual document! Should be OK. Oh yes the jacaranda are flowering in Bellingen but too soon for up here. That powder blue colour Maybe mention the mingled scents and fragrances of white privet blossom profuse plus the yesterday-today-and tomorrow and not forgetting the jasmine and should add the singular scents of the clovers and native violets in Big Lawn. The Earthrise Spring Scent the brain stupefied by. What about the tiny white cedar flowers with the delicate scent? Them too. Tiny white. Of course yes. Then there was the snake at dawn yesterday in the kitchen. Walked past unseeing. Heard it behind me rolling through the bench top containers. Argh! From torch wavering to electric light flooding. Killed it I with the Dutch hoe. Pink it was. Must have shed a skin. Weighty. Only 1.45-m long was. Locals call them Night Tigers. Can never find one quite like mine on the Internet. New species perhaps the Earthrise Night Fang possibly shall be? Worked on Diary and had lunch. Went later on white-knuckle drive to shop in Coffs. Had need of fleeing blood-spattered scene & changing consciousness state before finalizing Diary. Afternoon sir. Drivers licence please. Is that blood I see on your hands? Step out—don’t be silly now. Driving in driving rain. White-knuckle trolley traffic in supermarket aisles too. Early morning shopping more civilized. How about that monstrous great dragon, eh? Thinking Komodo. Can’t possibly be. Some throwback? Paddled down from Indonesia? Dashed odd anyway. Must be alert all times. Another noisy storm here last night rain and showers on & off the river up a metre the rapids roaring again white water banging through. Clear the head now. Time to post.
Thank you to Jill Alexander, Julie Craig, Tracey Furner for your contributions this month and special thanks to Kerry Smith for his technical advice and timely assistance! Be well, all. Best wishes to all from the quivering editor.
