A Month in Siena | Hisham Matar #NonFiction

Sometimes you read a book, or discover an author, that opens up a new world to you. Or a world that you knew existed, but one that doesn't really intersect very often with your own every day, ordinary life.

A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar was one such book and one such author.

It's hard not to feel a little envious of someone who has allocated and prioritised their time for thinking, wondering and pondering. Someone who has made their life around really understanding art, history and sociology. I wonder what it would take to live that kind of life. What are the sacrifices? How do you earn a living? Raise a family?

The joys, to me, are obvious.
Spending hours in front of your favourite art work to really see everything there is to see. Spending a month, on your own, in Siena to facilitate your obsession with this period of art history. Then writing a book about what you've learnt.

A picture changes as you look at it and changes in ways that are unexpected. I have discovered that a painting requires time. Now it takes me several months and more often than not a year before I can move on. During that period the picture becomes a mental as well as a physical location in my life.

At a micro level I can also obsess, research and blog about certain topics (most recently Moby-Dick and Herman Melville) and over the years I have become addicted to the peace and calm that radiates out of The Sea Hath its Pearls | 1897 | William Henry Margetson on regular view at the Art Gallery of NSW. Maybe it's simply that Matar has found a way to turn this into a career, whereas for me it's something I fit in around my working life. One of the things I have taken from this book, is to make this habit of observation a more conscious act and I no longer think I'm weird for returning to the same painting every time I visit the Art Gallery.

I thoroughly enjoyed Matar's detailed, intimate descriptions of his favourite Sienese paintings. I especially loved the colour plates that were included in my hardback edition of the book, so that I, too, could spend time pouring over every detail in the painting, marvelling at Matar's observational skills and interpretative ability.

Only love and art can do this: only inside a book or in front of a painting can one truly let into another's perspective. It has always struck me as a paradox how in the solitary arts there is something intimately communal.

The Effects of Good Government in the City | Ambrogio Lorenzetti

Matar also gives us a potted history of Siena and walks around a number of the main areas, describing what he sees, including the local cemetery.

It is one thing to consider the particular intimacy of a single grave, another to glimpse death's endless appetite....how brave and heroic we are in the face of undeniable evidence that life cannot be maintained, that regardless of what armour we choose, all things must pass.

Given the Covid-19 news at the moment, his reflections on the Black Death that decimated the world in the 14th century felt very relevant. The decline of civilisation as more and more people died, the growth of fear and fanaticism in the face of such chaos and the need for scapegoats to shoulder the blame that 'provoked violent sectarianism and social division.' Criminal groups and rebellions increased. Christianity viewed the plague as a form of guilt (we did something wrong and are being punished approach). Muslims saw it as something else to be endured or resisted, in a long line of God decreed acts to be endured or resisted. But out of this devastating event, came the Renaissance and the Baroque periods.

I have yet to read The Return by Hisham Matar, but I understand that A Month in Siena grew out of the time he needed after writing The Return to come to terms with not being able to find out anything about what happened to his father. Such a profound loss needs a special solace.

A Month in Siena is part of that process for Matar. It's about art and history and philosophy and sociology, but underlying every chapter, every idea, is the loss and grief for his fatherless state.

Tollund Man by Seamus Heaney

In my previous post, about The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, I referred to Heaney's poem about the bog man found in Denmark in the 1950's. To find out how Tollund Man and Achilles go together in my universe, you'll have to read the post.

As always, though, I'm fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves about our past and how they inform our present day concerns. Seeing the Irish Troubles through the sacrificial death of an Iron Age man is just one example.

Photo by Krystian Piątek on Unsplash

THE TOLLUND MAN
I

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.


II

I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.


III

Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,

Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.

Given that it's Anzac Day in Australia, where we honour the fallen and remind ourselves about the sacrifices made by those who have gone before, 'lest we forget', this seemed like an appropriate poem for the day.

We have an entire world history of sacrificing our loved ones to the gods, to war, to causes beyond our ken. Will we ever learn the lessons?

Jennifer @Holds Upon Happiness posts a lovely Poem for a Thursday each week. I'm enjoying sourcing poems from my recent reads to join in with her as I can.

It might seem sacrilegious to finish a post about war and sacrifice with football, yet surely, our love of sport, is just another example of conflict and sacrifice just played out on a smaller field and with less carnage.

So Go the Mighty Bombers!

From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting by Judith Brett

From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage by Judith Brett was a surprise bestseller at work in the week leading up to the recent NSW state elections. I'll be curious to see if it has the same surge during the weeks leading up to our Federal elections in May.

Brett has written a fascinating and informative book about the history of voting in Australia. It's a bit dry in places, but the slimness of the book made it a quick, easy read. 

I loved all the facts and stats that Brett listed in the her introduction. Which I will include below because I want to have them to hand. The rest of the book basically expanded on and explored in detail, the points below.

Voting is compulsory in 19 of the world's 166 electoral democracies and only 9 strictly enforce it.

People from our sister democracies are often astonished that Austraians are compelled to turn up to vote: it seems an affront to freedom. We in reply are appalled at their low turnouts and the election of leaders and governments by a minority of voters.

In Australia registration has been compulsory since 1911. Turnout in Australian elections is always above 90 percent of registered voters, and in the high eighties of those eligible to enrol.

Australians wanted their governments to have the support of the majority of electors, they preferred their elections to be orderly and they were happy for them to be run by government officials.

The US and Australia were both settled by people from the British isles, who brought with them political traditions and ideas of their home country, but they were settled in different centuries. 

Where the US favours liberty and rights over democracy and majorities, we favour democracy and majorities over liberty and rights.

The early settlers to America left Britain when parliament was still struggling to wrest control of government from the monarch and when individuals were persecuted for their religious beliefs. America's informing spirit is the seventeenth century English philosopher John Locke.

By the time the Australian colonies were establishing their political institutions, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British parliament had well and truly defeated the autocratic monarchs...the foundational thinker...for Australians...was the philosopher and political reformer Jeremy Bentham. 

He argued that rights are created by law; that without government and law there are no rights. 

The federal government did not tax income until 1915, when it needed to raise money to fight the Great War. By then settler Australians' view of government as a major source of benefit rather than a circumscriber of freedom was entrenched.

Preferential voting is as distinctively Australian as compulsory voting. Both ensure that the governments we elect have the support of the majority of voters.

I knew most of this stuff in a very general sort of way. What was useful was having it all in one place and written in such a readable, quotable style.

But the one fact that really got me thinking and wondering was the name of our foundational thinker - Jeremy Bentham - who?

I've heard of John Locke, America's political 'informing spirit'. Why haven't I heard about the guy who inspired our political system before? 

What did he believe? Who was he? Why did he matter to Australia?

Brett covers off a lot of this in her book, but I wanted more.
So I googled.

Jeremy Bentham was born 15 February 1748 in London to a wealthy Tory family. He was considered to be a child prodigy - reading as a toddler, learnt Latin at three and played the violin at seven.

According to wikipedia he was,

sent by his father to The Queen's College, Oxford, where he completed his bachelor's degree in 1763 and his master's degree in 1766. He trained as a lawyer and, though he never practised, was called to the bar in 1769. He became deeply frustrated with the complexity of the English legal code, which he termed the "Demon of Chicane".

He wrote a Short Review of the Declaration that was published with John Lind's rebuttal to the American Declaration of Independence. He was a firm critic of the revolutionary idea of 'natural rights' independent of law, calling them "nonsense on stilts". He claimed that it described how things ought to be rather than how things actually were; about wishes and beliefs rather than facts and reality.

Bentham believed that rights were created by laws, and that all laws and rights require government. If and individuals rights cannot be interfered with, it then implies that rights must also be enforceable.

He argues that the concept of the individual pursuing his or her own happiness cannot be necessarily declared "right", because often these individual pursuits can lead to greater pain and less pleasure for a society as a whole. Therefore, the legislation of a society is vital to maintain the maximum pleasure and the minimum degree of pain for the greatest number of people. (wikipedia)

The trick of course, for all governments, is to legislate "good laws".

Bentham was very concerned about the idea of "sinister interest" or how the vested interests of the powerful conspire against the wider public interest.

He was a firm atheist and an advocate of secular positivism, which has been described on wikipedia as,

information derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all certain knowledge. Positivism also holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws. Introspective and intuitive knowledge is rejected, as are metaphysics and theology because metaphysical and theological claims cannot be verified by sense experience.

His most famous idea though was the "greatest-happiness principle". Where one must always act to produce the 'greatest aggregate happiness among all sentient beings, within reason' (wikipedia). The philosophy of Utilitarianism evaluates actions based on their consequences and whether or not these actions cause pleasure or pain. The moral status of these actions is classified by the "happiness factor" of 12 pains and 14 pleasures.

Bentham's political position included arguments in favour of individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the abolition of slavery and of physical punishment (including that against children), the recognition of animal rights, the right to divorce, the promotion of free trade and usury and the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Bentham died on the 6th June 1832 in London. He left his body to science for dissection and preservation as an auto-icon (a word that Bentham coined to describe the process of dead body being "preserved, clothed, and displayed as though still living, as a memorial to the deceased"). (OED)

Who knew?

Non-Fiction November - Week 3

Week 3: (Nov. 12 to 16) – Be The Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert (Julie @ JulzReads): Three ways to join in this week! You can either share three or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

This year I've been reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo one chapter at a time with Nick and his band of merry followers. The whole chapter a day thing hasn't always gone to plan - Les Mis in fits and starts would be a better description of my reading year!

I find myself constantly fascinated by this period of history - the various stages of the French Revolution, the wars with England and Spain, the art and writers from this time. I was one of the few readalong participants who enjoyed Hugo's two week diversion back in time to 'witness' Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo!

In the past I've read two of the four Max Gallo Napoleon books (but ran out of steam).

I have The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Miserables by David Bellos by my bed to start very soon (I've waited until this close to the end in case there were any spoilers in it, which I believe there are!) so I'm hoping it will flesh out some of the history for me.

But I still get the Second Empire, Second Republic and Third Republic stuff all mixed up. Reading my way through Zola is helping with this, but I'd like to know more.

This is where I ask for your help.

Have you read any really good (non-fiction or fiction) about the French Revolution through to the Third Republic era?

Or perhaps something more general that brings that time (the mid 1700's through to the late 1800's) in Europe to light?

Help me become a French Revolution/Republic expert in the future.

2017 Be the Expert - Man's inhumanity to man/Holocaust literature.

The Ides of March

I've had a peculiar day.

People have been sharing their tales of woe and weirdness with me all day.

Acquaintances, not quite strangers on the street, but close enough, sharing intimate, private details with me. I've been hugging people left, right and centre and listening to the most extraordinary stories.

All of this weirdness got me thinking about the Ides of March.

The day that Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.

It was obviously a very weird day for Caesar and the Roman Republic as well.

A major turning point in history, in fact.

Where Rome moved from being a Republic (albeit a Republic fraught with internal tensions) to a fully fledged Imperial Empire by 27 BC.

A period of civil war, executions and unrest followed Caesar's death, until his great-nephew and adopted son Octavius was able to consolidate his power base and take control.

500 years of the Roman Republic over, just like that.

In a blink of an eye.

The Death of Caesar (1798) by Vincenzo Camuccini

Change has been on my mind a lot lately.

The passing of time, the march of generations, yet the continuity and sameness of it all.

Things that once seemed so important and necessary and definite have faded, been forgotten.

Other ideas and feelings have become the important things to hold on to.

Yet these too will pass.

All those people, the regular folk, the Plebeians of Rome, spent their days going around doing their daily thing. Working, eating, spending time with family. Worrying if they had enough food, frightened when someone got sick, hoping that all those people running around trying to rule Rome didn't muck things up too much.

Just like us.

All their fears, loves, dreams, hopes and concerns are now nothing to us.

They were important to them at the time, just like ours are to us, but one day they will all be gone too.

Empires, republics and nations come and go.

Just like us.

Rulers, leaders, dictators and tyrants come and go.

Just like us.

One day, this time will be but a blink in the eye of history.

Our stories will have disappeared as too our fears, loves, dreams, hopes and concerns.

Why hold on to the shitty stuff?

Let it go.

If all we've got is this brief time, this brief, always changing time, then why not hold onto the good stuff? 

Honour our sorrows, not wallow.

Learn from our trials and tribulations, not ignore.

Acknowledge our fears, then laugh at them.

Hold on to all that is good.
Fight for kindness, peace and safety.
Revel in love, beauty and hope.

Let go of all that is holding you back.

Et tu.
Et te.

#justsaying

barrangal dyara (skin and bones) Jonathan Jones

I had a rather unexpected, almost obsessive response to Jonathan Jones' installation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney last year. 

It touched me in ways that I'm still finding hard to catch and define.

My fascination kicked in at several levels:

the fire

the architecture

the history

the cultural aspect

the loss

the healing

the blending of histories

the time & place....

In 1879 Sydney hosted the International Exhibition. 

A specially designed building was erected on the edges of the Botanic Gardens to house the exhibition. It was grandly called the Garden Palace.

Tragically the Garden Palace and everything inside was destroyed by fire in 1882.

Stored inside was a huge collection of Gadigal artefacts of cultural and historical significance.

Over a hundred years later, Jones went searching for some of the cultural material from where his family came from. He discovered that most of it was destroyed in the Palace Garden fire.

The sense of loss and forgetting around this event spurred Jones on to find a way to reconnect and understand what happened here.

" Perhaps the fire was a kind of cultural burn, regenerating the site for future generations."

The outline of the Garden Palace depicted in white shields.

The project put together an information booklet for visitors.

In it Jones said,

"as I've worked on the project, the garden palace has become a symbol for the repercussions of forgetting. So many people I've spoken to about the project hadn't known the history of this enormous building that once dominated Sydney's skyline both physically and conceptually. I've begun to question what else we can forget as a community, if something so grand and visible and spoken about has disappeared from our vision. Aboriginal communities have often been the victims of Australia's ability to forget. In this way the Garden Palace became a fault line in the nation's memory, which has enabled the project to bring to the fore other forgotten histories."

Barrangal dyara means 'skin and bones'.

The project consisted of three components - a native meadow of kangaroo grass, thousands of white shields and several soundscapes.

The four different types of shields marked the boundary of the original building.

They also "echo the expansive rubble that remained after the fire."

These shields are "void of unique markings or personal designs, speaking to the erasure of cultural complexities through collection."

The exhibition ran from 17th Sept - 3rd Oct 2016.

I visited it three times, as well as the concurrent exhibition at The State Library.

Shortly afterwards I spotted this lovely cloth bound book commemorating the exhibition.

I knew that I had to have it!

It combines photographs and archival information from the Botanic Gardens site and the Library exhibition as well as essays from various people involved in the project, Aboriginal elders, architects, artists and historians.

It was utterly fascinating and absorbing.

The exhibition felt like an important moment in our Australian consciousness as well as a personal journey that I'm still exploring.

#AusReadingMonth

#NonFictionNovember

Dark Emu Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? by Bruce Pascoe

Dark Emu Black Seeds challenges the orthodoxy of how Australia was settled and what the settlers actually saw when they arrived.

To the victor goes the spoils...as well as the right to write history their way.

Reading E.H. Carr's What is History? during my first year at Uni was the first time I had cause to think about the nature of history, facts and evidence. I was amazed, at the tender age of 18, to think that facts where selected by historians to suit the story they wanted to tell. They decided which facts were important and which ones weren't. Personal bias and agenda abounded.

The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate.

It was also the first time that I considered the role of revisionism in history and how modern thinking could colour how we viewed the 'historical facts' at different times throughout history. Carr also went on a bit about the progress of man towards some kind of better, more evolved state which was an idea that even at the tender age of 18 I struggled to swallow!

The progression of man towards some better end was definitely in the minds of many of the early white explorers and settlers to Australia. To that end, they saw everything about the Aboriginal way of life as backward and evidence of their lesser standing. This belief made it easier for them to dismiss and ignore any signs of civilisation or community. And to deny Aboriginals many basic human rights, including the most basic of all, life itself.

Pascoe writes with a barely contained anger. By the end of this slim volume it's hard not to acknowledge that this anger is justified. Through his anger, Pascoe explores the writings and texts of many of the early explorers, settlers and historians. He pulls out all the documentation showing examples of large, established Aboriginal settlements, farming and fishing industries, food storage as well as the finely tuned water and fire management that many people may already be familiar with.

It's fascinating stuff and I urge you to read this book to see all the evidence for yourself.

I've just started reading Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India which addresses many similar issues. In his Introduction, Tharoor discusses the idea of reparation, but personally feels that atonement is probably a more do-able option. He also discusses the idea of
teaching alternate histories or histories told from the other side of colonisation in schools throughout the former Empire.

Books like Tharoor's and Pascoe's are a good start.

It seems improbable that a country can continue to hide from the actuality of its history in order to validate the fact that having said sorry we refuse to say thanks.

 

The Australian Dream: Blood, History and Becoming by Stan Grant

The Australian Dream: Blood, History and Becoming by Stan Grant is the feature essay in Issue 64 (2016) of the Quarterly Essay.

Journalist Stan Grant received a lot of unexpected publicity in 2016 when a speech he gave at the Sydney Recital Hall in 2015 about the Australian dream and what it actually looks like to the Indigenous population, suddenly 'went viral'. His speech promptly 'became all things to all people'.

The Australian Dream essay formed part of his response to this media frenzy after a year of 'contemplation, reassessment and revelation'.

He also wrote a book called Talking To My Country which became 'his very personal meditation on what it means to be Australian, what it means to be indigenous, and what racism really means in this country'. It was published by Harper Collins in March 2016 and has been on our bestsellers list at work throughout the past year.

Grant was born in 1963, a time in Australian history, when Aboriginals were still 'counted among the flora and fauna, not among the citizens of this country'. During this era Grant's family became part of the 'burgeoning Indigenous middle class: confident, self-assured'. He successfully finished his schooling, went to uni and went on to travel the world.

However hard it has sometimes been, and whatever grievances I still hold, becoming more engaged with mainstream Australia has made my life richer. (pg15)

It would be almost impossible to write an essay like this without referencing the many appalling statistics about Aboriginal health, incarceration rates and drug and alcohol use. Grant discusses candidly and with sorrow these figures as well as the many programs set up over the years that have failed to create any meaningful change for the '20 per cent of the Indigenous population (who) live in remote areas, but their disadvantage is so acute that it obscures the successful lives of others'.

The report Mapping the Indigenous Program and Funding Maze (2016) reveals that 550 000 people identified themselves as being Indigenous in the 2011 Census and that '65% (360 000) are in employment and living lives, not noticeably different from the rest of Australia'.

'Indigenous people are fewer than 3% of the total Australian population, yet compromise 9% of players in the AFL. In the NRL, they constitute around 12%'.

'There are around 30 000 Indigenous university graduates in Australia; in 1991 there were fewer than 4000'.

Many of these figures surprised me. Media reporting on Indigenous health and issues usually focuses on the problems. Grant also noticed this which led him to explore the meaning and interpretation of history, the role of unreliable memory and the way that holding onto suffering and trauma actually has the tendency to 'sustain victimhood'.

He is keen to find a way to change the story - from one of sadness, displacement and loss - to one of 'resilience, pride, intelligence and dreams'.

Part of that story talks about the diversity and differences ('we are not all the same') that began to occur within Aboriginal groups during the 'assimilation phase' of the 1940's to 1970's. Those that 'threw off the heavy hand of government control' are just as big a part of the Indigenous story as those who were 'left behind'. All these groups were 'products of history, economy, timing and luck'.

Grant rails against the 'identity police' who demand conformity within the Indigenous community and he cautions against idealising 'people in remote communities living outside mainstream Australian life.'

We are products of the same dispossession; my son's ancestors endured a similar history of injustice, exclusion and suffering to that endured by the forebears of the boys of Don Dale. We are products of Australia: its misery and its glory. Colonisation shattered the world of my ancestors. (pg59)

Just 20 per cent of the Indigenous population live in remote areas, but their disadvantage is so acute it obscures the successful lives of others. (pg64)

This article and Grant's initial speech has been an attempt to balance the story - to factor in the some of the success stories that have grown out of the years of injustice.

One thing is undeniable: tens of thousands of Indigenous people are transforming their lives through their own efforts.

This review is part of my Deal Me In Short Story challenge with Jay @Bibliophilopolis.

Travels With Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski

The plan was to reread Herodotus' The Histories in January/February along with Ruth @A Great Book Study.

The reality however, turned out to be a little different.

I knew I was going to be away for most of January, and as much as I wanted to take The Histories with me, I knew I wouldn't be able to do it justice on the road...or so I thought, until I read Travels with Herodotus (2004) by Ryszard Kapuscinski .

Kapuscinski's reminiscences of travelling with Herodotus throughout his extensive journalistic career was not only a great book for me to travel with, it also made me wish that I had actually packed my copy of The Histories.

I was tempted by people still unmet, roads yet untraveled, skies yet unseen.

I first heard about Kapuscinski last year, when one of our regular customers requested a copy of the book. It sounded like my kind of thing, so I ordered a copy for myself as well...and waited for the right time to dip into it.

Kapuscinski reread The Histories so many times during his lifetime, that he became an unofficial Herodotus expert. He quoted excerpts from the book and found that his experiences as a journalist often complemented those of the ancient world.

One must read Herodotus's book - and every great book - repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.

As I read Kapuscinski and his excerpts of The Histories, I found myself making connections between what I was experiencing in Cuba and Mexico with what I was reading. I also found myself drawing parallels between the rise & decline of the Persian empire with news coming out of the States.

It seems to be easier to fool a crowd than a single person.

Xerxes is unbalanced, unpredictable, an astonishing bundle of contradictions. 

Travels with Herodotus is almost like a Herodotus primer - Kapuscinski discussed who Herodotus was, what his aims were, how he went about gathering his information as well as going over some of the controversies and criticisms surrounding the book and the author's technique.

Memory, perspective and time are themes that both men returned to over and again.

His book is yet another expression of man's struggle against time, against the fragility of memory.

I loved the mix of personal and historical, of current and ancient. Kapuscinski was a thoughtful and thought-provoking writer.

How often do we consider the fact that the treasures and riches of the world were created from time immemorial by slaves?

Like Herodotus, his work was journalistic, anthropological and philosophical in nature.

The present existed always, that history is merely an uninterrupted progression of presents, that what for us are ancient events were for those people who lived them immediate and present reality.

Kapuscinski was a Polish journalist and foreign correspondent post-WWII. He spent time in India, China, Africa & Latin America - and wherever he was posted, he took his copy of The Histories with him. In 1999 he was made 'journalist of the century' in Poland.

Travels with Herodotus was translated by Klara Glowczewska in 2007.

The Histories by Herodotus - Readalong

I first read The Histories at school.

I was studying Ancient History and we were meant to read a handful of chapters in Herodotus that related to the topic we were focused on.
But I fell in love. I couldn't get enough of this world and these people that I knew nothing about. I wanted to know more. Much more.

Over the summer holidays I brought my own copy of Herodotus (& The Peloponnesian War, but that's another story!) & I read the book from cover to cover, underlining and highlighting as I went.

Yes, I have been a bookish 'conchie swot' geek all my life!

I've been wanting to reread it ever since (& The Peloponnesian War).

Ruth @A Great Book Study is working her way through Susan Wise Bauer's book, The Well-Educated Mind. She has now reached the History section...and the first book on the list is Herodotus The Histories.

Given our holiday plans for January and my intention to host my very own #HLOTRreadalong2017 starting in February it will be a juggle. But I'm willing to give it a shot!

My school copy fell apart years ago - being held together with nothing but tape and contact.
I had purchased a new copy a couple of years ago in the hope I would find time to reread it soon.

First published in 441BC, Herodotus is often referred to as the father of history. The translator of my current 2003 Penguin Classics edition is Aubrey de Sélincourt.

One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the "Histories" describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to repel the might of the Persian empire. 

But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants. 

With its kaleidoscopic blend of fact and legend, the "Histories" offers a compelling Greek view of the world of the fifth century BC.

How to Read History:

According to Susan Wise Bauer, these are questions to consider when reading a historical work.

Level I:
Who is the author, and does he/she state the purpose for writing?
Who is the story about, and what are the major events?
What challenge did this hero/heroine face, and what causes this challenge? What is the result of the hero/heroine?
Do the characters progress/regress, and why?
Where/when does the story take place?

Level II:
What are the historians' assertions, and what questions is he/she asking?
What sources does the historian use to answer them?
Does the evidence support the connection between questions and answers?
Does the historian list his or her qualifications?

Level III:
What is the purpose of history?
Does this story have a forward motion?
What does it mean to be human?
Why do things go wrong?
What place does free will have?
What relationship does this history have to social problems?
What is the end of history?
How is this history the same as - or different than - the stories of other historians who have come before?

Are you game?

Are you ready to go back in time, to the beginning of Western civilisation?

Brona's Salon: Historical Fiction

Whilst doing some research recently about Kate Grenville's The Secret River, I came across this fascinating article in The Quadrant from 2014.

This particular paragraph got me thinking -

Jewish scriptural writers have a tradition called midrash, which means writing about the present through the lens of the past. Writers of history run the risk of a sort of midrash in reverse—writing about the past through the lens of the present. Historians try as far as possible to avoid doing this—for novelists, the situation is not so clear-cut. Characters in novels are always hybrids, partly based on real people, but often stitched-together attributes of a number of different originals.

As a lover of history and historical fiction I have been exposed to oodles of midrash in reverse over the years.

Historical fiction is at it's best when it provides a fresh, modern look at what went before. It cannot change what happened, but it can provide insight it the why and how it happened. It has a licence to play with the nuances, but not with the basic facts that the reader knows or has ready access to. It can bring to life a time long gone. It can makes us feel like we are there witnessing the events - with one foot in the past (where the characters are experiencing their version of now) and one foot clearly planted in our now (giving us the advantages of hindsight).

I'm also curious about how we apply midrash in reverse to our own life stories. Maturity and experience can give us remarkable insights into our past behaviours and actions, but we can never go back to change what happened or whisper words of wisdom to our earlier selves. All we can do is use our new hard won insights to help us move forward. We can apologise for our past wrongs and learn from our mistakes.

To my mind, truly great historical fiction illuminates the past in such a way that it makes us feel unsure of what might happen...even though we know exactly what does happen!

Historical fiction that allows its characters to inhabit their times, so that we can actually see it through their eyes as being the modern, new world that they're living through, can be a difficult task and is often where writers of historical fiction come unstuck.

My current read is one of those books where the writer has achieved this incredible feat of making the past come alive. Which brings us nicely into the realm of Brona's Salon.

Brona's Salon is a new meme which aims to gather a group of like-minded bookish people 'under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation.'

(wikipedia)

I will provide a bookish prompt or two to inspire our conversation.
However please feel free to discuss your current read or join in the conversation in any way that you see fit.

Amusement, refinement and knowledge will surely follow!

What are you currently reading?

The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore

A thrilling novel based on actual events, about the nature of genius, the cost of ambition, and the battle to electrify America—from the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game and New York Times bestselling author of The Sherlockian.

New York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. The person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history—and a vast fortune. A young untested lawyer named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes a case that seems impossible to win. Paul’s client, George Westinghouse, has been sued by Thomas Edison over a billion-dollar question: Who invented the light bulb and holds the right to power the country?

The case affords Paul entry to the heady world of high society—the glittering parties in Gramercy Park mansions, and the more insidious dealings done behind closed doors. The task facing him is beyond daunting. Edison is a wily, dangerous opponent with vast resources at his disposal—private spies, newspapers in his pocket, and the backing of J. P. Morgan himself. Yet this unknown lawyer shares with his famous adversary a compulsion to win at all costs. How will he do it?

In obsessive pursuit of victory, Paul crosses paths with Nikola Tesla, an eccentric, brilliant inventor who may hold the key to defeating Edison, and with Agnes Huntington, a beautiful opera singer who proves to be a flawless performer on stage and off. As Paul takes greater and greater risks, he’ll find that everyone in his path is playing their own game, and no one is quite who they seem.

How did you find out about this book?

One of our regular customers at work mentioned a great review she had read about this book.
By the time she had finished telling me about it, I knew I would have to read the book myself!

Why are you reading it now? 

This close to Christmas I have trouble concentrating and staying focused.
I either need to read quick, easy kids books or a book that will totally suck me in from page one.
I suspected that The Last Days of Night might be one of those.

First impressions? 

And it was.

From page one, with its map of New York, I was hooked.
I'm now 38% through and I can barely put it down to write this post!

It's entertaining, informative, engaging and fascinating.
I feel like I'm living in New York circa 1888.

Which character do you relate to so far?

Our narrator, Westinghouse's lawyer, Paul Cravath was a good choice by Moore.
This was his first big case, so it almost reads like his coming of age story - full of the fumbling foibles of youth, and its arrogance as well.
It's easy to feel for Paul as he tries to make his mark on the world, to become one of New York's main players...only to discover that he may not like the game that everyone is playing after all.

Are you happy to continue?

Most definitely.

This is a ripping yarn with some dramatic images and tantalising scenes.
From the opening scene of a Western Union electrician being burnt alive above the streets of Broadway to one of Marguerite Westinghouse's famous dinner parties.

Where do you think the story will go? 

We all know where this stories goes.
It's what happens along the way that makes this so fascinating.
Some of the details may have been lost to history, but Moore has unearthed and enhanced them to create this wonderful book about ambition, power and progress.

Top left, clockwise - Paul Cravath, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse, J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison & Agnes Huntington 

What have you been reading lately?
Are you a fan of historical fiction?
What was your favourite historical fiction read this year?

The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage

The extraordinary thing about Bill Gammage's award winning book, The Biggest Estate on Earth, is how obvious what he is saying really is when you look at the records - the letters, the journals, the paintings and sketches of early colonial times in Australia.

How on earth did we not see this before?

In every early convict painting, in every journal and in every letter back home, it's there - the park like nature of Australia, the carpets of grass and lightly wooded areas. Some parts thickly clothed in forest with rivers with fordable places as if 'they had been intended for such a purpose.'

Elizabeth Macarthur in 1795 wrote about the area near modern-day Parramatta,

The greater part of the country is like an English Park, and the trees give to it the appearance of a wilderness, or shrubbery commonly attached to the houses of people of fortune, filled with a variety of native plants, placed in a wild, irregular manner.

A few early settlers made the connection between the Aborigines use of fire and these open park-like areas, but they never considered that the Aborigines used fire like Europeans used fences - as a way to create specific spaces for food cultivation, feed for animals, to preserve water and for safety and travel.

Cover image - Joesph Lycett Aborigines using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos c1820 - National Library of Australia

Before Melbourne was Melbourne, D'Urville visited the area in 1826 and wrote,

The open terrain is delightfully undulating. Here there are fine stands of trees easy to penetrate, elsewhere vast grass-covered clearings, with well-defined paths are linked one with the other by other tracks so regular and well defined that it is hard to conceive how these could have happened without the help of man.

Australia would have been one wild, uninhabitable place without the careful land management system employed by the Aboriginals. A place that would not have been appealing to Europeans looking for an easy way to rid their own country of surplus peoples!

Captain Cook noted in 1770, that the country was,

diversified with woods, lawns and marshes; the woods are free from undergrowth of every kind and the trees are at such a distance from one another that the whole country or at least a great part of it might be cultivated without being obliged to cut down a single tree.

Sydney Parkinson A View of Endeavour River 1770

Gammage relentlessly and persistently drums this message home until even the most reluctant non-believer must see what is so evident in all the paintings and writings from this time. His extensive use of primary sources almost feels overwhelming in sections, as quote after quote is used to support his premise.
If a comprehensive variety of sources and repetition can prove a point, then Gammage should consider his point proved!

In his Introduction, Gammage states,

They first managed country for plants. They knew which grew where, and which they must tend or transplant. Then they managed the animals. Knowing which plants animals prefer let them burn to associate the sweetest feed, the best shelter, the safest scrub. they established a circuit of such places, activating the next as the last was exhausted or its animals fled. In this way they could predict where animals would be. they travelled to known resources, and made them not merely sustainable, but abundant, convenient and predictable.

Joseph Lycett View of the Heads 1821 Art Gallery of NSW

The Aborigines farmed Australia - every inch of it - for hundreds and hundreds of years - very successfully. It's just that their idea of farming was very different from the European model. Their relationship with the land was also very different. They were eco-warriors even before the term had been invented. They worked with (not against) the natural elements of their environment. They revered them, incorporated them into their religious beliefs and the Dreaming. Country was not to be exploited for human purpose, instead it was something to be shared and nurtured and respected so that it would provide sustenance for all.

Gammage makes extensive use of early paintings to highlight his point. Modern photographs of the same areas show that with the loss of knowledge about how the Aborigines managed the land, it has gone back to wild, dense forest susceptible to intense, unpredictable firestorms.

Eugene von Guerard Mr Clark's Station, Deep Creek, near Keilor 1867

Many of these early paintings and artists have been criticized in more recent times for their European style. It was said that they applied European standards and saw with European eyes. They didn't accurately represent the Australian environment, making it look too much like an English park, instead of the wild bush we know so well now.

Gammage argues that these artists did use foreshortening techniques and sometimes confused the shadows of clouds for distant land, but that the park-like nature of their paintings not only reflected what was there, but was backed up by what they wrote about in their diaries and letters. The loss of whole areas of kangaroo grassland and yam paddocks means that none of us now appreciate how green and verdant areas of Australia once were.

Eugene von Guerard Tower Hill 1855

The more familiar Federation colours and textures of the Streeton's, McCubbin's and Heysen's merely reflected the change of environment since European settlement (loss of top soil, the impact of cloven animals on the native grasses, the planting of European crops).
Combined with the gradual loss of knowledge as the Aborigines sickened and died with European diseases, the undergrowth built up and became messy and wild.

European culture viewed the indigenous way of life as inferior to their own. The newcomers never thought it necessary to ask permission, let alone seek advice on how to manage the country that was their new home.

In his appendix, Gammage addresses his critics and some of the problems brought up by his theory.

For me, I felt the logic and reasonableness of his argument. I was convinced by the considerable number of primary sources and their pertinence. The before and after images of Australian landscapes gave the final persuasive touch.

I'm so glad I finally finished this book (it has taken me three #AusReadingMonth's to do so). The ideas are tantalising and exciting. They gives us hope and understanding for a more productive and respectful way forward.

The pain created by our shared history can only be healed by time.
A new knowledge must eventually replace the lost, but it will only happen when we finally acknowledge the depth and importance of the old ways and the obvious and disastrous disconnect it caused for Australia's first peoples when it was taken from them.

Books like this help to pave the way forward.

The Australia Book by Eve Pownall

Next week the CBCA will announce their shortlisted books for 2016 from amongst the 80-odd books currently selected as 'notables'.

In preparation, I thought I'd like to revisit some of the older winners to get a better sense of where we've come from and how things have changed - not only for the CBCA and the choices they've made but also the type of books being written by Australian writers.

The Australia Book was first published in 1952 by The House of John Sands. Recently, Black Dog Books republished this classic award winning book.

Eve Pownall was born in 1902 in Kings Cross. She was a writer, an advocate for Australian history and an early champion for children's literature. As such she was involved in the beginnings of the group that eventually became the Children's Book Council of Australia.

The Australia Book won the CBCA book of the year for 1952. Pownall's trademark social history style was evident throughout.

They used to say when I was young, 'geography is maps, history is chaps'. Its the chaps I go looking for, and the chaps' wives and the kids...what were the kids playing? How were their mothers coping out on the frontiers.... (Writing History: A Child With a Doll, 1977, source)

After her death in 1982, Pownall's family initiated an award in her honour.
The Eve Pownall Award for Information Books eventually became an annual award in 1993 to honour imaginative non-fiction work.

There is a lot of love for this book out there in blogger land. However, I don't remember The Australia Book from my childhood. Perhaps, it was already considered somewhat dated in the early 1970's?

Which would be a shame, because despite its dated attitude towards Indigenous peoples, The Australia Book is a very good example of how to make history fun, informative and easy to read.

And when I say dated, I don't mean racist. Pownall was far more generous and progressive than that. But her version of Australian history was very Euro-centric and reflected the thinking of the times.

Her language unintentionally supported the white version of history that believed that being white equalled right. That white represented civilisation and every other way of life was somehow less.

So even though, the first page of The Australia Book acknowledged the first peoples and respected their traditions, some subtle choices of words can offend our modern sensibilities. (As no doubt, future readers will feel uncomfortable with our current way of thinking on issues to do with, for instance, refugees.)

For example, Pownall wrote about some Aboriginal traditions like this -

From its plants they made their simple medicines.

The moon watched their feastings, their corroborees, their lean bodies painted queerly as they danced and sang.

And her version of first contact looked like this -

Aborigines stood on the cliffs, shook their spears and called "warra warra!" which means "go away!" But the white men took no notice. This time they had come to stay.

The explorer's found much land which was rich and fertile, but only the aborigines lived there. 

Pownall was very thorough in her selection of historic events - explorers, Cook, Arthur, convicts, rum, Macarthur, Bligh, squatters, penal colonies, early settlers and wool. The gold rush, advances in technology, cotton, sugar and the use of Kanaka's  - "Blackbirding was very like slavery..." (more white history revisionism that has yet to be addressed satisfactorily in our country to this day. But that's another story.) Our relationship with New Guinea, bushrangers, the various wars, early law making, Federation, the Great Depression and life up to 1952.

From other lands come immigrants for Australia. Some do not speak English. Some come from countries where life is very different from ours. In large camps, they are taught how Australians live so they quickly become new citizens.

Loose smut of oats - Margaret Senior

One of the successful techniques that Pownall used in writing this book, was her sense of history unfolding gradually and logically. She created an easy to read flow of information with causal links and useful details.

The lovely illustrations by Margaret Senior have added to the appeal of The Australia Book over the years.

Senior wrote and illustrated several children's book during this time before devoting herself to wildlife studies. The University of Newcastle now presents the Margaret Senior Wildlife Illustration Award annually.

Her illustrations for the book are warm, graceful and humanistic.

Pownall finished her book with some speculation about what our future lives might look like. She discussed the advances in aviation and left her young audience with this tantalising promise -

Perhaps YOU will fly in one that shoots through the air like a rocket.

And finally -

Every country is now close to every other country. When atomic power is used for everyday things, we will be closer still. 

I know my two almost grown booklets would be challenged by this notion. That the people alive in 1952 could possibly think that they were as modern and as connected and as technologically advanced as they now think they are would mess with their heads completely!

It is those elements in Pownall's book that make it still so worthwhile and relevant today. The differences between her now and then and our now and then would make for great classroom discussions.

The glaring (to us) omissions from her historical record would also make for an interesting discussion about how and why history is revised. Which could lead to a debate about what will future generations think about us.

How will the future view our living history?

Radioactive: Marie and Pierre Curie - A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

I first heard about Radioactive during Non-Fiction November last year. It sounded delicious and exactly my cup of tea, so I put my order in at work straight away.

For my Yr 12 HSC (many, many moons ago) Science Depth Study I chose to learn about Marie Curie.
In those pre-computer, pre-internet days, I had to rely on my local library and my science teacher to source the information I needed.

I devoured impossibly obtuse science texts and difficult, dry biographies. I became obsessed despite of, or maybe because of, the Herculean nature of my undertaking.

But it wasn't the science that grabbed my attention so decidedly.

It was the fact that Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize for science and then the first person - male or female - to win it twice. It was rejoicing in a woman tackling a 'man's job' and doing it well - very, very well. It was the romantic working partnership with Pierre. It was the generational love of science they fostered in their daughters and grandchildren as they all followed in their scientific footsteps. It was the complicated, ethically fraught philosophy of discovery, patents, shared knowledge and how to use this new science - for good or for bad.
And it was also the frustration of hindsight. Watching Marie and Pierre work day in, day out with no protection around radioactive substances, knowing what we know now, how they were in fact, hastening their own deaths.

When Radioactive turned up in the new year I was thrilled to see the oversized, colourful, textured cover peeking out of the eco-bubbles. I was instantly transported back to my 17 yr old self - the enthusiasm I had for learning and knowledge, the belief that I could do anything and the birth of one of my many obsessions that has lasted a lifetime.

If not for Katie's Reluctant Romantic challenge to read outside my usual genres to find a new love, Radioactive may have lingered on my TBR pile, like so many other wonderful books *sigh* despite my obsession with the topic.

However Radioactive does not fit neatly into the graphic non-fiction definition. In fact, it doesn't fit neatly into any known genre! Redniss does not use the comic strip format, but her art work is an integral part of the story and she created her own font for the text.

It is non-fiction - part biography, part scientific treatise, part philosophical discussion.
And it is beautiful.

Redniss uses a process called cyanotype printing to create these images, which she describes in the notes at the back of the book. She also uses photography, drawings and maps.

I guess it doesn't matter, in the end, what genre this is (unless you're trying to shelve it in a library or book store!)

All you really need to know is that this book is bloody brilliant.
It satisfied everything my 17 (and my 47) yr old self could ever want from this topic. It was knowledge, it was beautiful and it touched my heart. It also left me craving more.

If you know of any other books that treats history, biography, science and philosophy like this one, please let me know. I want more!

This is my new genre to love!
Whatever it is.