Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Drops of rain, bullets of truth.

I am sitting in my car as it pours with rain, I don’t dare brave the conditions outside. If I make a run for the ticket machine my laptop could get soaked. I haven’t bothered to get a protective jacket for it yet, so it just sort of floats around in my bag. It’s a set up that asks for trouble.

Also, if I just wait around in my car for another ten minutes I won’t have to pay for parking, thus rendering redundant the dash for the ticket machine, and minimizing the possibility of drowning my cherished macbook. Yes it’s another horrible, grey Melbourne winter’s day that threatens to destroy my goodwill, but all is not lost.

I am just finishing Hunter S Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, a non-fiction novel that is constantly interesting and occasionally brilliant. I don’t hold Hunter in quite the same esteems as others, because I think he is a little inconsistent, but when he is at his most potent he is unrivalled in the field of creative journalism. His best passages make you wonder why he can’t write with such intensity the whole time. Take this stroke of genious:

“This is the generation that went to war for Mom, God, and Apple Butter, the American Way of Life. When they came back, they crowned Eisenhower and then retired to the giddy comfort of their TV parlours, to cultivate the subtleties of American history as seen by Hollywood” – p 270: Penguin Modern Classics Edition

It’s the sort of statement that few writers could make without sounding ridiculous. But Hunter writes so assuredly and with such conviction that his generalized analysis becomes truth. You can’t define an entire generation, but you can define the prevailing spirit of the times, and its overarching problems and characteristics, which is what Thompson does so vividly here.

I find Mailer and Fitzgerald to be the same way. They lull you into a state of casual interest, and then stun you with moments of zeitgeist defining analysis and wordplay. Bullets of truth penetrate from an invisible literary magnum you were not even aware they possessed. I think that is what separates literature from entertainment. If you stick with it, you will be struck with answers to the questions that cripple your sub-consciousness, even if they never make their way to your present mind. To be honest, there were about five pages in Gatsby that were memorable to me, but they made such an impression as to dwarf some of the far more entertaining fiction I have read. I still think that the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series has one of the most engrossing plots going around, and I don’t care how that sounds, but its prose style and existential depth holds no match for Fitzgerald. If you can combine both of these elements you are really on to something.

The rain has stopped, but I’m inside now so I don’t really care. That’s always the way though isn’t it?


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There was an article in The Age today about elites in Toorak buying up the properties surrounding their homes. Apparently they didn’t want to have to put up with the hassle of having neighbours. What the hell is wrong with these people? Their plots of land are so big they would need binoculars to even get a glimpse of anyone at an adjacent property. Allegedly, this is a long-seated tradition of our beloved Bailleus. It’s nice to know that the man who wants to be Premier of our state is part of a family that loves Victoria so much, they wouldn’t want any of its inhabitants moving in next to them.

Unfortunately this is not an impersonality that affects only our bluebloods; it’s also a defining aspect of semi-affluent inner suburbia. Yesterday a friend of mine told me that there was a complaint against someone I work with for being “overly friendly”. This city is full of cold barstards, I swear. We’re only happy when we’re being ignored. Warmth fills us with distrust. The only time it’s acceptable to talk to strangers is when you are intoxicated. Where is the sense of being in this thing together. Perhaps it goes back to our convict roots; maybe we’re still all scared of having the larrikin from the neighbouring hovel on Little Bourke St steal a loaf of bread when we aren’t looking. In any case Melbourne, have a little heart.

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