rebness

Throughout the weekend, I found out that I had bags of spare time, just, y’know, floating about. Yes, still, the Computer Says No.

I finally picked up Night Letters, by Robert Dessaix, again. I hadn’t heard of him, either. Well, not until saffronlie sent me a copy of the antipodean writer’s Corfu, and then this book. 90% of the literature I have read thus far has been northern-hemisphere centric, and of that, most of it is Euro-centric.

Granted, this is because I’ve spent the last few years labouring through the classics to become OMG Sooper Sekrit Litry wunder!!1! and being a snooty reader means wallowing through The Illiad by way of Greece, getting lost in Venice with Thomas Mann and reading about selfish horrid people in France through Bonjour, Tristesse.

There have been diversions along the way, in the forms of American and Canadian greats such as Salinger, Jeffrey Eugenides, Douglas Coupland and…er…ah…Anne Rice. Indian literature rocks, and I fell for the charms of The Death of Vishnu and the seminal God of Small Things.

But Australian literature? Why are we often so snobby about it?

Before Robert Dessaix, the only Australian story I remember reading was that one about the bunyips, which scared the hell out of me. (I was about eight, you know.) Perhaps this has been a mistake. There’s a clarity in Dessaix’s writing. He regards Europe with that cool but knowing way. I loved how he summed up so much about hell-island Corfu in the book of the same name, but this book just… I adored it. No jaded narratives, alarmingly evident in a lot of things I read these days, but a new, fresh, exciting perspective. I'm actually pretty damned upset that I finished the book last night and now must return to Cervantes.

At one point in the narrative, he says that being Australian means that people treat him as a kind of blank canvas, a nationality to paint their own identities on. I suppose that’s true, in a sense. However, at the same time, his narrative brings something new and refreshing to the tales of long-dead Venetians and Irish blue-bloods living on strange islands—a sense of enthusiasm, not weighted by the European trappings of class and status.

That sentence wasn’t very clear. Let me explain. My super amazing free time also meant that I finally sat down to watch Keep the Aspidistra Flying, which was taped for me a little while back by the sublime pandorasblog.

It was a great comedy, superbly acted, funny lines, etc… but it was so preoccupied by class. Undoubtedly, this was the point of Orwell’s comedy, but class has always been something that makes me feel haughty, inferior, superior—always at a certain unease with myself, knowing that it defines me in Europe like no other place on earth. Stamped before I even open my mouth. Actually, open my mouth and the idiot assumptions about my status and the verity of my Englishness start up. It’s ridiculous, I know, but there it is. There it always is—and nobody can understand that who has not lived in Europe. More specifically, Britain.

My point is this: Europeans always have, and always will, have hang-ups about class and history and culture. We’re always vying with one another, with our own countrymen, to better ourselves. Sometimes I think we’re as bad as the peacocks in Dessaix’s novel who strut past Camilla’s window, weighed down with gold and fur. It’s interesting to get the perspective of an outsider once in a while. Ann Coulter can still shut her stupid mouth, though.

P.S Also, yes. I totally do rely on my friends for new cultural and literary experiences.

ETA: Rest in Peace, Hunter S. Thompson. You never did fail to shock, you literary wonder, you.