The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 41

THE SUNDAY AGE AGENDA 23 JUNE 1996 REVIEVVbooks nna en TOPSHELF ill A'x ill v'r2''1 I -m Justine Ettler's 'River Ophelia' became a bestseller despite the critics' hostility. Now she has a new novel out. Michele Griffin reports. NEVER neglect a girlfriend in your pursuit of a boyfriend because men are never as significant as they look and women are inevitably more so but most important of all never say no to adventures even when they become terminal because you never know how things will tum out in the end and even if everything turns out to be a total here-we-go-again-you-can-say-goodbye-to-your-sanity disaster it doesn't seem to matter because everything's always OK anyway and even if you end up feeling like the biggest loser in history you'll still end up feeling like something and something isn't that bad no matter how nothing seems. Got that? Justine Ettler, now 30, wrote her manifesto at the age of 21, at the tail end of the novel she submitted for her creative writing course at UTS in Sydney.

The novel, 'Marilyn's Almost Terminal New York was rejected by her teachers and reviled by her peers, but Ettler filed away the manuscript and went on to have plenty of her own almost terminal adventures. In 1989, she deferred her masters degree in literature to run off around the world with the manager of rock band REM. "I met the manager of the band in Sydney and started a romantic involvement with him. I was totally bowled over by his Southern charm, and he invited me to come on tour with REM. The romance didn't ever quite kick off, and the lifestyle wasn't for me.

"I got sick within a month from all the late nights partying. I went to a party at the house of the bass player from U2, and at 5am, there was this big jam with REM and the Go Betweens and the Waterboys and members of 172. I'm glad I did things like that." In 1992, she won a scholarship to research her PhD in the US, but diverted the funds and time into writing her second novel, a pornographic satire called 'The River Ophelia'. "I was reading about masochism and I found writing about it academically really frustrating, so I thought I'd write a short story. I'd "I think David Marr's opinions came from real feelings of discom- fort about women's Ettler says.

"I write about women's-sexuality in a very confronting way. I think (pornographic words) are very exciting. I don't think they're rude or offensive." Last month, Ettler's first novek'; 'Marilyn's Almost Terminal New York Adventure', was finally pub- lished by Pan Macmillan. The no- tices were much more positive, but Ettler doesn't necessarily see that as a good sign. "1 was shyer when I wrote 'Marilyn'," she says.

"I don't, know how I got so open with 'The River Ophelia'. I was 27. They say women reach their sexual peak 30, so maybe I was just hotting up." ETTLER recently came down, to Melbourne for the Next Wave writers festival, where she took part in a panel on "dirty real- A good literary theorist, she-knows it's the wrong term for her work but, a good modern author, she knows it's all grist for the pub- licity mill. She will happily agree to being a dirty writer but a Little creatures named after John Wayne live in the toilet bowl, and men named Twentiethcentury Fox have affairs with Australian girls-named Marilyn Monroe. Justine, the character, discusses her thesis with a lecturer called Bataille while- they romp around in full view of the wife.

Ettler does move in racy Sydney circles, but she swears her life isn't that lively. Her brand of pastiche could be described as 'Penthouse -Forum' crossed with 'Post-Modernism for Beginners'. "Where does the realism come in?" she asks. Not that she thinks her subject matter is that wild any- way. "It's not bad behavior, it's just stuff you're not supposed to talk about at bourgeois dinner she says.

Next stop, New York again. Etder plans to spend three months there writing her next novel and shmooz- ing American agents. The next-novel is about the son of a media -mogul and an American woman, who murders her two children. characters are named after famous movie stars. I feel the film makers of this country have been a bit slow to pick up the film rights to 'The River Ophelia'.

This, time I'm not giving them any way out. I'm casting the film in the novel." Stay tuned for Justine Ettler's- almost terminal Hollywood adventures 4lc I Under siege: Justine Ettler remains Picture: PENNY STEPHENS great man himself was impeccably turned out in what could only be an Armani suit." Unfortunately, the great man himself, Ettler's literary inspiration, had not had time to read her book, not even the pages where she mentioned his book. In March, Philip Adams was rendered speechless by a sexually explicit reading Ettler gave at Tasmania's Salamanca Writers' Festival. "I know he was mortified by what I read," she says proudly. In April, David Marr came back on air after his last shift on Radio National's 'Arts Today' program to say that 'The River Ophelia' was a "truly terrible book" and he wished he had said so to Justine.

just finished reading 'American Psycho' and Kathy Acker's novels, and I was so inspired I couldn't stop. I just took the idea of the feminine martyr or victim and pushed it to the extreme." In 1994, the manuscript was snapped up by Nicki Krista, the ul-tra-sawy publisher at Pan Macmil-lan, who knows a controversial best seller when she sees one. Krista recognised that the "almost hysterical acceleration of her tired and feverish to quote Ettler from her first novel, would appeal to the 'Cleo'-reading post-feminist twentysomething book-buyer. She knew it was raw enough to be scandalous. She wasn't wrong.

White, through EDITOR'S CHOICE 'Ecstasy' by hvho Welsh, Jonathan Cap, $19.98. IRVINE Welsh's latest offering dispels any suspicion he might be a one-book wonder. These three novellas "three tales of chemical romance" suggest rather a writer who Is hitting his straps, a writer who might soon fairly lay claim to the mantle of literary greatness. It Is bleak stuff, of course, but more accessible and more disciplined than his cult hit In 'Lorraine Goes To Livingston', the action takes place In an English hospital where the nursing staff take more drugs than the patients and a wealthy philanthropist does unspeakable things In the mortuary. In 'Fortune's Always Hiding' the central characters are two punks who share a birth defect and a burning desire to exact appropriate revenge on the people who marketed the drug responsible.

Armless but not harmless. And in 'The Undefeated' a bored middle-class wife abandons her comfortable existence for the uncertainties of life in the arms of Lloyd, an amiable no-hoper who's had enough of Ecstasy-Inspired love and is looking for the real thing. Black humor, brilliant dialogue and wicked stories from a writer who, one suspects, knows his subjects all too well. Andy Walker BIOGRAPHY 'Machlavelll In Hall' by Sebastian da Onula, Papermac $29.95. A rather handsome trade paperback of the book which won the Pulitzer prize for biography a few years ago.

Sebastian de Grazla Is fascinating in the way he manages to place this most complex and inscrutable of political thinkers in the context of his native You can smell the bonfires and wince at the thought of the rack. The supposed dlabollst of political theory comes across as a truly Renaissance man, not just a literal one, because he Is shown as a deeply political figure who suffered the reality of the nightmare world In which he pondered with such lucidity. Peter Craven FICTION 'Pussy, King of tha Pirates' by Kathy Acker, Pan Uacmlllan, $18.98. 'PUSSY, King of the Pirates' Is In some ways, the epitome of postmodern prose. It Is "difficult" meaning Its non-linear narrative embraces multiple perspectives and repetitious images.

The writing is episodic and surreal as we begin the journey from a brothel in Alexandria, meander to England, before finally landing on Treasure Island. (Stevenson's classic is apparently the underlying inspiration.) There is a lot of clinical sex, veiled anger and mentions of a iost "father figure" In the novel. Her language, paradoxically simple and opaque, will be familiar to her cult following. But the uninitiated, particularly those seeking a comforting straightforward narrative, will be frustrated by the disparate voices, heavy-handed symbolism and seeming lack of direction. Thuy On OUR TOWN 'Melbourne Grand Boulevard: Tha Story of St KHda Road' by Judith Raphael Buekrlch, State library of Victoria, $49.95.

IN A particular sense the history of St Hilda Road Is the history of Melbourne or at least a sharp reflection of it. What began as a dusty and at times perilous track through the bush became in time an avenue of dreams. For a while It was home to the get-rich-qulck merchants of the late 19th century who built grand (sometimes grandiose) monuments to their own success. Their eventual Inheritors were the greed-ls-good developers of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s whose visions of commerce and utility transformed the city's premiere thoroughfare. But it is also an avenue rich in the symbolism of the city's history and culture: the Shrine, the Arts Centre, the grand private schools are all at home along Its tree-line path.

This generously Illustrated linear history explores the road's development over Its 150-year life, especially the chaos wrought by lack of planning. What might have been a truly magnificent boulevard has, like much of Melbourne, been redefined by the mediocre. Robin Boyd decried the tragedy of St KHda Road's transformation, but Buekrlch Is more circumspect: "The pity Is not so much that usage changed from residential to commercial, but that too many of the Interesting buildings In the various 19th and 20th century styles were destroyed." John iehauMe A cerebral look at love's passion River Ophelia'. of the 1980s and post-structuralist theory six months over deadline. "I did get in trouble, but I finished it in two years, which isn't too bad." In December 1995, Ettler swung an invitation to Bret Easton Ellis' Christmas party in New York.

"Basically, it was a scene straight out of 'American Psycho'," she says somewhat disconcertingly. "There were beautiful girls running around in very short skirts, and as I walked in I was offered a 100 per cent proof Stoli. One wall of the apartment had been converted into a bar, and there were five full-time bar staff making every cocktail you could dream of. The room was packed with models and actresses. "Donna Tartt was there.

The 'duckly' wonder If this is true. Certainly there Is much in White that belongs to his period and not to ours, including various unsavory prejudices. But do we require of writers that they represent only that of which we can approve? And which "we" would that be anyway? During takes it upon himself to champion the interests of various groups middle-class, heterosexual women, Aborigines claiming that White simplified and scapegoated these people in his work. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with this, but I am at a loss to explain then how White's work, say Voss' in particular, had such a powerful impact on me unless I confess to willingly participating in my own belittle-ment. Actually, I don't think it's as simple as this.

Despite the ways in which late colonial transcendentalism can be explained away as a product of market forces and a form of social and political denial, there is something in White, as there is something in Lawrence, that people, maybe especially young people, like though they would hardly get any support for this view at university. Indeed, the move to demystify writers like White and Lawrence Is now so conventional that It has become the subject of fiction in its own right. And this, perhaps, is the problem. There are people who find orthodoxy, in itself, repellent. And it may be that these will be the people who, as the downstallng of White's reputation proceeds, will be drawn to the old curmudgeon, becoming the next generation of readers of the unread Patrick White.

Christina Thompson is editor of 'Meanjin'. terms. He was the forerunner of the great realist writers, he had that ability to get right inside his characters. The writing is extremely plain but so impassioned that Jullen's story lifts up off the page. Stendhal Is above all narratively driven.

Character is revealed by action rather than long passages of analysis or reflection. One biographer said of Stendhal that he didn't put his shoes on before he started to run; he got under way and threw himself into the story. Of his greatest novel, Stendhal said he wanted to show on each page the blue of the sky and the mire In the road below. Interview by Dlanne Dempeey i unfazed by the hostile response to 'The In May 1995, 'The River Ophelia' was published. The critics, led by Rosemary Sorensen in 'The Sydney Morning Herald', condemned it with a vigor unusual in our polite literary pages.

Despite, or perhaps because of the critical vehemence, 'The River Ophelia' sold 20,000 copies in two months. It sat in the best-seller list the rest of the year. "I laughed my head off at the Rosemary Sorensen review," says Ettler, her eyes shining. "I thought, wow, I really got to you, I've dredged up all these horrible childhood memories about vomiting on a bus. I thought, this is good, I've really upset you." During the brouhaha, Ettler finished her PhD on American writers a glass an Inscrutable Intention" stuff.

But, to me, it feels as though there is something slightly grudging about this book, as though, after all was said and done, redress were the name of the game. This, of course, is how criticism advances (if you can call it that), by overturning the judgments of previous generations and finding new things to say about old texts. 1 have no objection to reconsidering Patrick White, but it does seem slightly odd to me to criticise White on the grounds that he failed to grasp (and fictionally absorb) the full implications of post-colonialism as If that were a social duty remaining to the last elitist, misogynist, racist and romantic about the value and meaning of art. During claims that White is unread and will remain so because his values are not central to our culture, because the meanings of his texts "have not been Incorporated into public I At the core of this classic Is Julien Sorel who starts life as the poor son of a sawmiller in rural France. His ambition is to get to Paris and enjoy the thrust and parry of aristocratic French life.

Julien enters a wealthy family as a tutor and has an affair with the wife, an older woman passionately in love with him. He returns her love but uses her to achieve his ambitions. The contradictions enrich the story; while intensely romantic it Is brutally realistic and almost cold and calculating. Stendhal was an Incredible psychologist at a time when psychology was in Its Infancy. He could look at people and move them across a chess board In psychological rather than social r.i 1 Cometh the hour, cometh the man: Patrick White, the writer we had to have? 'Patrick White' by Simon During, OUP, $18.95.

By Christina Thompson IN the new Issue of 'Meanjln', there Is a story by Tim Richards called 'Duckness' which might serve as a sort of commentary on Simon During's 'Patrick White'. "Rebecca was seventeen and in her final year at high school when she first read 'Women In Love'. She considered that she had been opened up by D. H. Lawrence Lawrence breathed emotion.

He wasn't frightened of excesses or contradictions or confusions or repetitions. Lawrence wasn't distant like the other authors she had read. He wrote like someone who had got his hands dirty." Rebecca's teacher, Mr Long-reach, feels differently about Lawrence. "Even pretentious old dron-ers like T. S.

Eliot never droned on like Lawrence," he tells his class. "Lawrence isn't a writer. Lawrence is a jackhammer." To illustrate his point, Mr Longreach shows how he and his friends used to substitute the words "duck" and "duckness" for every occurrence of "dark" and "darkness" in a sample of Lawrence's text. Mr Longreach flows with fatuous self-regard, he effect on Rebecca is crushing. There are a number of interesting observations in Simon During's book on Patrick White.

Among these I would cite the discussion of White's period, especially the list of cultural events that emerged contemporaneously with his canonisation and the characterisation of White as a transcendentallst (a description that never occurred to me but that I Immediately recognised as apt). I also accept the relationship During posits between the kind of Action White wrote and the kind of TONY MANMIY (Books include 'The Children Must Dance', 'Smyrna' and 'All Over the Shop'.) Favorite book: 'Le Rouge et le Nolr' by Stendhal. THE Individual's Journey through the labyrinth is a wondrous thing. Whether or not the goal is achieved doesn't matter; It's the Journey that fascinates. And this is Napoleonic furope a volcanlcally -1 'Love, Again' by Doris Lessing, Flamingo, $29.95.

By Brenda Niall IF a famous and much-admired novelist, late in her career, seems to lapse from her own high standard, what is a mild-mannered reviewer to do? Of course there are plenty of evasive strategies. One way out is to use most of the available space in plot summary, add one or two ambiguous sentences which don't quite add up to an opinion, and call the novel "brave" or That's what I might do now, if only the famous novelist were not Doris Lessing. She despises such polite evasions, and says so in her new novel. Planting this little tripwire Lessing makes it impossible for the reviewer to avoid judgment. A work of art, she says, deserves an honest verdict: is it good or bad? But first, Mrs Lessing, something must be said about the novel's plot, character, ideas: we don't have to hurry.

The story of 'Love, Again', concerns Sarah Durham, a competent, successful writer and theatre manager, 65 years old, who falls passionately in love, not once but twice, in the space of a few weeks. The first is Bill, a handsome 26-year-old actor, who is gay. The next is Harry, 35, strongly attracted to Sarah, but committed to his marriage. There's also Andrew, who pleads for Sarah's love and is rejected. Parallel with Sarah's story is the obsessive love of rich, elderly Stephen for a long-dead French composer, Julie Vairon, whose story is the subject of a play, written by Sarah and produced with Stephen's financial backing.

Stephen's passion is briefly transferred to the young women who play the lead in two productions of 'Julie Vairon'. His marriage is a charade. It suits his wife to stay with him in their stately country house, but she takes their housekeeper as her lover. For Stephen and Sarah, Julie Vairon dramatises the choice they face as old age approaches: if life must be lived without passion, is it worth having? lulie refused to compromise and killed herself. The novel charts Stephen's drift towards death and Sarah's struggle for renewal.

This Is a slow-moving cerebral novel. Nothing much happens: one kiss, lots of longing. All the passion Is In Sarah's miml Her sufferings, criticism that was in vogue when he wrote and the way these two fit together, hand In glove. But I am slightly baffled by two claims: that White was the "great" writer that Australia had to have, and that White became a "great" writer because he set out to become one, strategically positioning his work where the mantle of greatness would land on it. On the one hand environment, on the other ego.

It seems the thing that cannot be said Is that White was unusually good at his craft which is precisely what During's astute discussion of White's narrative technique reveals or, to put it another way, that White was a gifted writer. Maybe if I'd had to read as much Patrick White as Simon During obviously had to read in order to produce this little book, I'd have been heartily sick of him too. I'm a great fan of Conrad's but 1 can only read him so long before I tire of all that "Implacable force brooding over My Favorite erupting society. The tone is journalistic in that It takes you through the lowest level to the highest levels of society. Stendhal his real name was Henri Beyle was an acute social observer.

He literally saw a clipping In a newspaper about a young man who murdered his lover, an older woman, In a church. From this he conjured 'The Scarlet and 'he Black'. Doris Lessing: Demands an verdict of her readers. expressed rather conventionally in. terms of red-hot knives and daggers-.

of ice, are never disturbing: much emphasis is placed on strength and competence that her---survival is never in doubt. Sarah js wonderful: in self-congratulatory' reveries she tells us so herself. Her love objects are unrealised: mali: cious Bill is a stereotype and kindly -Henry a blur. The novel is at its best in scenes in Provence, where the play 'Julie Vairon' is staged. There s.

a 'Midsummer Night's Dream' mad-' ness which makes the antics of various would-be lovers acceptable in their theatrical terms. Here too lessing evokes a sense of quite magically. Z.l In the end, Sarah, resourceful as always, diagnoses her own cas Her need for love stems from hood deprivation, when her young -er brother took first place with their mother. This is all rather briskly -tidied up. If failed maternal love is Sarah's problem, why isn't her rela-tionship with her own adult children given space? It's plausible that, in her obsesseddepressed state, Sarah has effaced them, but Lessing makes nothing of this pre-sumably significance absence.

Now to face Doris Lessing's chal- lenge for reviewers. Is 'Love, Again' a good novel? I still flinch from the yes no absolutes. But if a good noLCt el is tested by its capacity to the reader's mind and heart, th.l-'Love, Again' failed for me. Brenda Niall is the author of giana: a Biography of 1.