What doesn’t kill you makes for a great story – two new memoirs examine the risky side of life

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She questions whether women like herself – that is, the well-educated, sexually liberated beneficiaries of second-wave feminism – are really better off than their 1940s counterparts.

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The Conversation

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https://theconversation.com/what-doesnt-kill-you-makes-for-a-great-story-two-new-memoirs-examine-the-risky-side-of-life-227150

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

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HR, Head, Excitable Boy, Monster Energy, Progressivism, Face, Human, Learning, Risk, Memory, Name, Essay, Shock, Education, Travel, Angel, Diary, Politics, Commodore, Bucking horse, Life, Student, Eye, Adolescence, Datsun, Woman, Male, Sydney University Dramatic Society, Peisley, Hachette, Embarrassment, System, Mouth, Injection, Catharsis, Collection, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Instinct, Virtue, Hand, Syndrome, Fear, State, Book

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READING, VIETNAM, AUSTRALIA

Summary

Key Points:

She questions whether women like herself – that is, the well-educated, sexually liberated beneficiaries of second-wave feminism – are really better off than their 1940s counterparts.
But it isn’t quite the avant-garde art crowd looking for anonymous vaginas to cast in their latest 16mm masterpieces either.

Reconstructed from the travel diary the author kept at the time, the adventure is everything you could possibly hope for in a road trip – provided you (or your daughter) aren’t the one taking it.
Datsun Angel proves the old adage about time and tragedy making for champagne comedy.
It self-consciously situates itself as a cross between the substance-induced exuberance of Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, and the provincially impassioned politics of Australian novelist Xavier Herbert.

For all her progressivism, there is a note of nostalgia ringing through Broinowski’s recollections.
Datsun Angel harks back to a looser – dare I say, more enjoyable – university experience.
The narrative promises, against well-intentioned assurances to the contrary, that what doesn’t kill you will, at the very least, make for a good story later on.
Broinowski goes part way towards acknowledging as much when she ends her postscript with: “If you’re male and reading this, kudos.

Detachment

Let me borrow one instead from the middle-aged Elmore Leonard fan whom Gordon encounters in the State Library Victoria early in the book: “dickhead”.
Yes, that about captures it: the protagonist of Excitable Boy is an unequivocal, grade-A dickhead.
Fortunately for Gordon (and dickheads more generally), the affliction may be chronic, but it need not be terminal.
This denotes an overriding structure or cohesion that I felt somewhat lacking from the work as a whole.

Detachment characterises much of Gordon’s storytelling as he kicks his younger self around the back alleys of Melbourne like a half-squashed can of Monster Energy Drink.
To be honest, I still haven’t made my mind up if Gordon’s aversion to Aristotelian catharsis is one of the book’s virtues or vices.
Detail has to be controlled by some overall purpose, and every detail has to be put to work for you.
Detail has to be controlled by some overall purpose, and every detail has to be put to work for you.
It is often difficult to gauge what overall purpose the details are serving in these essays, beyond fidelity to memory.

Luke Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.