Room Service (10 page)

Naturally, all this is still not an open subject for academic explicitness in Australia and it is only here
in Italia where such candour can be enjoyed with our perspective of centuries – and our knowledge of such things. But I say, Australia – be not ashamed of that which is bizarre, seek not always the genteel. Remember that we, the older cultures, have myths that also acknowledge such happenings of interspecies reciprocity (cf. Jason and Search for Golden Fleece). See in these happenings the beginnings of your own mythology. See it as an affirmation of the beautiful truth – that we share the planet with animals and we are partners, therefore, in its destiny.

So, in Lawson, Drysdale and Bail, we see how High Art in this new culture admits a message of unspeakable truth (albeit, in a coded and guilty way), this being the ploy of all great national cultures.

Thus is the magic of the imagination.

LETTER TO THE GENERAL MANAGER OF THE ABC

Post Office
Coolangatta

To The General Manager ABC

Sydney

 

Dear Sir,

I wish to enlighten you as to what is going on over the air, as I am certain you will not stand for it.

On Wednesday night I switched on to radio station 2NR a programme, I think, coming from Sydney,
portraying among other things Henry Lawson's ‘The Drover's Wife' and Russell Drysdale's painting ‘The Drover's Wife'.

The Narrator was introduced as Professor someone and was stated to be an Italian who himself claimed to have worked in bars. This is how it went.

According to this Italian early Australian Drovers were so short of women that they had affairs with sheep …

… I switched off then – I couldn't stand any more. I am so annoyed now 2 days later that I have a job to write.

I am an old drover of sheep and cattle and many of my friends are. I am married with children and grandchildren. These people need kicking out. I've never heard anything so vile and distasteful.

They should never be allowed near a broadcasting micro phone to misrepresent decent men and women of Australia.

Sincerely (name withheld).

LETTER TO THE
BULLETIN

THAT'S WHAT YOU SAY

The Drover's Wife

I refer to the article that appeared in the Centenary Edition of the
Bulletin
, page 160. The article in question is a transcription of a paper on Australian culture given ‘excitedly' by an Italian student, one
Franco Casamaggiore, at a recent conference on Commonwealth writing in Milan.

Without wishing to pour cold water on any excited students, I do, however, wish to draw attention to some obvious fallacies regarding the interpretation of Henry Lawson's story ‘The Drover's Wife' presented in this article and therefore at the conference in Milan. Incidentally, Mr Lawson's story also appears in this edition of the
Bulletin
, page 257.

Firstly, it is claimed that the woman character lives her life ‘as if she were a sheep. She is penned up in her outback fold, unable to go anywhere. Her routines of the day resemble closely the life of a sheep and it can be taken that this is a literary transformation for the sake of propriety. She tells in the story how she was taken to the city a few times in a compartment, as is the sheep. She is looked after by a dog, as is the sheep.'

This is an over-simplification. She is not penned up. She has no buggy, but she has a horse and if she wanted to leave she could. She stays because she is loyal, not because of any fences. Every Sunday she and the children dress up and go for a ritual stroll along the bush track. The bush is vast and sometimes it depresses her, but she is not penned up by it. And how do her daily routines resemble those of a sheep? I have never yet seen a sheep preparing and cooking food; washing or mending clothes or sweeping the floor, let alone reading the
Young Ladies Journal.
Furthermore I think it highly unlikely that the sleeping compartment of the railway carriage, which her husband hired for her trip
to the city, could be compared to a sheep pen on the same railway even though the occasional grumblings of railway travellers of the day might do so. She and the dog are companions – surely the dog can be a woman's friend as well as a man's. Very different from the working sheepdog.

The article continues … ‘The climax of the Henry Lawson story is the “killing of the snake”, which needs no Doctor Freud, being the expression of a savage and guilt-ridden male detumescence. I am told that to this day, Australian men are forever killing the snake.'

I do not wish to wallow in the mud of Doctor Freud and his followers' psychological tramplings, but would just point out that it would seem only common sense for this lady to attempt to dispose of a critter such as the snake in question. I am told that there are people who keep snakes as pets and in fact give them the freedom of the house, but I have not met any.

Finally, the paragraph ends with … ‘The drover is absent from the story, a point to be taken up later.' The point is indeed taken up later with the words ‘And we note that … there is no drover. This is a reversal of situation, an inside-out truth, for we know historically that there was a drover but there was historically no wife, not in any acceptable conventional sense.'

But of course there was no drover in the story. The title of the story is ‘The Drover's
Wife
'. The drover was simply off somewhere droving and his wife remained at home. Just as there are many women today who keep the home together while their husbands are working in
Antarctica or Papua New Guinea or simply in prison.

Henry Lawson was usually fair and even sympathetic in his attitude to Australian pioneer women, and did not mistake them for sheep, at least in his literature. Which is more than can be said for a mob of excited Italian students.

Bornia Park, NSW

(name withheld)

LETTER FROM CHINESE STUDENT

Wuhan University
14 April 1984

Respected Suzanne Kiernan,

How do you do? We are strangers to each other, so I should first briefly introduce myself to you. I'm a teacher at Wuhan University, who studied for two years at La Trobe University in Melbourne from 1980 to 1982.

Recently I read the leading magazine of Australia ‘the
Bulletin
' in which I came across some problems I can't resolve by myself. That's why I'm writing this letter to you, and I sincerely hope you can give me reply (or the key to the questions I ask) at your earliest convenience. My questions arise from my reading of the following two passages (or notes by the editors):

1. ‘Note: A number of European and American universities are now studying literature written in English from the former colonies of the British Empire. This new literature from India, Africa, Canada,
Malaysia, the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia is known as Commonwealth literature.

‘This is a transcription of a paper on Australian culture given, excitedly, by an Italian student Franco Casamaggiore, at a recent conference on Commonwealth Writing in Milan. It comes to us from writer Frank Moorhouse and we acknowledge also the inspired assistance of
Suzanne Kiernan
of the Department of Italian, University of Sydney.' (From ‘the
Bulletin'
, 29 January 1980, p. 160.)

2. ‘For the
Bulletin
Centenary Issue earlier this year, Frank Moorhouse supplied a transcript of a paper on Australian culture allegedly delivered by an Italian student, Franco Casamaggiore, to a conference on Commonwealth writing in Milan. The excitable Signor Casamaggiore outlined the implications of the Drover's Wife as seen by Henry Lawson, Russell Drysdale and Murray Bail. Here, Barbara Jefferis, journalist, author and former president of the Australian Society of Authors, presents the female side of the picture.' (From the
Bulletin
, 1980. 12. 23–30, p.156.)

Now I have four questions arising from the words under lined in red to ask:

1. What does ‘transcription' mean? Does it mean ‘translation from Italian to English' or ‘a mere copy in the same language'?

2. What does ‘excitedly' or ‘excitable' mean? Why did the editor say Franco Casamaggiore is ‘excitable' or ‘excited'?

3. Does ‘student' mean ‘a person who's studying at school(s) and not yet a graduate'? or ‘a scholar' or ‘a person who's a researcher'?

4. Why is the word ‘allegedly' used? Are the words in the first quoted passage true or not?

Best wishes to you

from Guo Zhuzhang

LETTER FROM SUZANNE KIERNAN TO CHINESE STUDENT

The University of Sydney
Sydney 2006
New South Wales
Australia

Department of Italian
11 May 1984

Dear Guo Zhuzhang,

I was very interested to receive your letter in which you ask me if I can throw some light on problems you have encountered in the matter of a piece of writing attributed to one Franco Casamaggiore in the
Bulletin.

I think I should tell you what I believe you already suspect – that this is a joke on the part of the writer Frank Moorhouse, whose name has been ‘Italianised' (with a little semantic liberty) to become ‘Franco Casamaggiore'. This was the full extent of what was described as my ‘inspired assistance' in the introductory remarks, which are the author's own, and are part of the fiction. (In Italian, ‘casa' = ‘house', and ‘maggiore'
‘more' = homophonous with ‘moor', while not, of course, having the same meaning.)

The use of the words ‘excitedly' and ‘inspired', which you single out in the original story by Frank Moorhouse, has the function of signalling to the reader that the writer's intention is ironic and satiric, and that what follows is not necessarily to be taken at face value. The (pseudo) information that the story ‘comes to us from writer Frank Moorhouse' is knowingly ambiguous, since it could mean that he is simply transmitting it from another source, or that it ‘comes from' him in that he is its originator.

Thus the story by Frank Moorhouse isn't a literary hoax, in the manner of the famous ‘Ern Malley' case (which as a scholar of Australian letters you will doubtless be familiar with), but a joke, whose intention is to amuse rather than deceive. And Barbara Jefferis's use of the word ‘allegedly' in her rejoinder to the original story indicates that she wishes to write in the same spirit of fun.

Although I teach in a Department of Italian, my interest in Australian literature is by no means secondary, and I would be very interested to hear at some future date about what you are doing in Australian studies at Wuhan University.

With best wishes,

Suzanne Kiernan

ITEM IN THE
NATIONAL TIMES

FEARLESS FRANCO

Someone should take a close look at the sort of cultural exports Foreign Affairs spends its money on.

At a literature conference at Wellington, New Zealand, this week, Franco Casa Moora, a self-styled Italian expert on Oz lit whose junket was funded by Foreign Affairs, delivered a paper suggesting that ‘sheep guilt' was the dominant sort of imagery in Australian literature.

He explained to the New Zealanders that because Australia had had no women for the first 50 years after colonisation, an intimate bond had developed between Australian males and the nation's sheep – aided by a technique of placing the sheep's rear legs in gumboots.

The ‘sheep guilt' had surfaced first in works such as Henry Lawson's ‘The Drover's Wife'. The eponymous wife, Casa Moora explained, was in reality a sheep.

The New Zealanders, having a high sheep population themselves, received the paper in anxious silence.

Chief, I say to you that I am scratching for something to write about and you say why don't I write about my hobbies and recreation. You're kidding? Why not ask me to write about my ‘honours and decorations'? I don't have hobbies and recreations, I just have nervous collapses. That's my only recreation – nervous collapse. Nervous collapse occurs at first because you don't have hobbies and recreations, but after a while the nervous collapse becomes something of a hobby. At first they occur because writers can spend two years or more working on a book that will be a disaster without anyone knowing this, including oneself. And then, a lot of the time when you think you're writing great literature you're really having a nervous collapse. The distinction between a nervous collapse and being a great artist is thin (on a day-today basis). And it's like one view of the Third World War – that it started the day the Second World War stopped. Nervous collapses are a little like that. But I can pick them now. When I cry at the silhouette of building cranes against the sunset, or when I find myself sitting without answering the telephone and it rings at a great distance, or when I put a cassette on
the telephone answering machine saying that I have ‘gone away for a year', or when I find myself saying a lot, ‘that wasn't a very zen thing to do' – any of these signals indicate that I'm having, or am about to have, a nervous collapse.

When you're having a nervous collapse you can't really make travel arrangements or decisions of any kind. You have to stumble into a hole and recover without elaborate plans. That's the trick.

I usually book straight into the Hilton here in Sydney and sit watching the midday movies. (One day I'll tell you why I don't go to stay with friends of friends.) Handling the menu can be a giant undertaking, though, when you're having a collapse. Deciding when to eat and what to eat when you're alone and collapsed is sometimes almost beyond your capacity. My method is to start at the top of the menu and eat my way down. Once in New York while waiting for a film director to arrive to talk about a movie I had a nervous collapse. He was three weeks late and the hotel bill was ticking over like a water meter. I had a lot of trouble deciding when and what to eat there. If you use room service in New York you end up getting your breakfast for lunch and your lunch for afternoon tea and so on, which contributes to nervous collapse. You're asleep when your dinner arrives.

In New York I went out from my hotel into Forty-fourth Street, turned right and began daily to eat my way around the block (as long as they took American Express – I had no cash). Again, I began at the top of
the menu in each restaurant. But the good thing about using room service a lot is that you eventually get to play cards with the staff.

If you book into your hometown Hilton you can telephone selected friends who never fail to come because they're curious to see you having a nervous collapse and to try room service. But it's good, too, because you are surrounded by foreigners and you can forget that you're still in Australia.

During a nervous collapse I become an expert for a month on all sorts of subjects. I hoard books ready for nervous collapses. I usually hoard books on one subject – say the history of the
Pall Mall Gazette.
When I retreat to a Hilton I take my hoard of books on one subject and read my way through them. But I find the knowledge stays with me for only about a month and anyhow none of my friends are interested in the subject, usually.

Usually the books relate to a fantasy I have about what I would like to have been other than a writer. Arun Joshi the Hindu writer once said to me that while it is good to write it is better still never to have needed to write. In fact, I would rather have been the editor of the
Pall Mall Gazette
in the last century. Or a colonel at Gallipoli.

Another approach to the collapse is to rent a car. A rented car is important because it disconnects you from your life. Your own car will be an ever-present reminder of your life – the hair pins, the registration due next month, that friction coming from the transmission,
unanswered letters on the back seat. In a rented car, as one of my characters once observed, ‘You are free of the bonds of ownership. The rented car is not your ego, rusting away, corroding, scratched, dented. A rented car renews itself at each renting and renews you with it. Certain things can be best and freely used when not owned.' (
Tales of Mystery and Romance
)

But you must only drive on country roads very slowly, drinking Heineken beer out of an esky in the back, and listening to country-and-western music.

The country-and-western music is important to the therapy because it will help you cry a lot. It will give you a vastly distorted view of reality, which also helps. For a time you will believe there are basic values to life and the only things that matter are children and watermelon wine. It is later, back in the real reality, that you realise that you've never seen, let alone tasted, watermelon wine and that it doesn't sound all that appealing. And that the drug addicts who break into your flat every six months or so, break the newly planted trees in the street and smash bottles in the sand at the beach are ‘children'.

Aimless country roads driving is good for you. I some times throw the shotgun into the back, camp at night, and shoot a rabbit or quail to cook on the camp fire. You get to pretend you're Karen Blixen.

Backpacking into the bush is OK, but it's dangerous to go into the bush alone when having a nervous collapse. You may decide not to come back. And your map and compass work becomes a trifle sloppy. Or you sit
under a gum tree and drink the whole of the five days' booze and eat the chocolate provisioning.

I have trouble, though, finding a friend to go into the bush with me because my friends are sybarites and lounge lizards.

People also say behind my back that I'm a zealot and that I walk X kilometres a day and that I have strict rules on camp hygiene and do not open the bar until sunset, and so on. Some of the things they say are true – I keep a very detailed log book – and I fancy myself at bush medicine, including a little surgery.

But if you're having a collapse and go into the bush you hear voices too, which doesn't help. I hear bad songs, badly sung. It's best to stick to rented cars, country music, and backroads.

I once used opera as a place to go. Another world. But it's about time I said publicly that I failed Opera (on the back of some of my books it lists opera as my ‘recreation' – in those days I was anxious to be able to supply answers to questions about my ‘hobbies and recreations' and ‘honours and decorations').

I subscribed to
Opera Australia
for four years. I passed Opera I because that's easy. For a country boy like myself opera is breathtaking and it's a thousand miles from Balmain and my life. That gets you through year one. Opera II is harder but you do start to recognise the tunes and by now you've read twenty opera program notes at least. But, by Opera II, you've seen through the dazzle and find the stories very silly and that opera is not about the stories. By Opera III you find that it's
not the tunes you're supposed to be listening for but the singing, in particular it's not the music, really, but the singer's performance on that particular night compared with the other singers' performances on other particular nights. What makes Opera III more difficult is that people like Patrick White, Gough Whitlam, Margaret Whitlam, the Kerrs, David Gyger, see you at the Opera Theatre bar and at interval seek your opinion. In Opera III you're expected to have an opinion. You can't forever say ‘that it's breathtaking, and for a country boy, etc.' (I now listen to opera only in the bush after backpacking. That way I can skip the story, get the singing and the tunes and avoid the quizzing by experts at the bar.) But really, I have to say I failed Opera.

Once, if the collapse coincided with the Film Festival, you could book into the Hilton and walk down to the Festival at 9.30 a.m. and watch movies until midnight for two weeks. You could sneak in after the lights went down and out before they came up, to avoid ex-lovers. You could go back to your room at the Hilton and watch the late movies if you wanted and have a bottle of bourbon sent up on room service. But now I find that the Film Festival films are selected on whether they worry the middle classes or not. These days the more worried the film the better for the film festival in Sydney. The selectors don't seem too happy unless they're worried. This is no good for someone who is middle class and having a collapse. So I suggest just staying in the Hilton and watching television and playing cards with the staff.