Eternal light

Death, grief and survival: two new Australian novels reinvent the elegy for an age of climate catastrophe

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Parent, Language, Climate, Simone Weil, Elegy, First Nations, Sadness, Family, Student, Death, Emotion, Transit Lounge, Infant, Taste, Happiness, Narelle, Golf, Love, Trauma, Affection, Grief, Miner, Thought, The Animals, Dog, BB, Animal, Woman, Invention, Eternal light, Life, Cry room, Time, Reading, Book, Entertainment, Tourism, Toy, Malaysia Airlines, Echolalia, Dobermann, Balboa Bay Resort

Both novels feature protagonists who lose parents and partners, and both explore their themes via writer-narrators who are producing fictions.

Key Points:

Both novels feature protagonists who lose parents and partners, and both explore their themes via writer-narrators who are producing fictions.
In the story, Susie is employed by a crying room where people go to express their emotions.
She thought of the clink, clink, clink of sharp metal implements chipping away patiently at cold, dark, stone.
They reminded Susie of miners in a cave, with a small circle of light above them to illuminate their features.
She thought of the clink, clink, clink of sharp metal implements chipping away patiently at cold, dark, stone.
The tree, growing against the odds in a hot climate, amid the bones of a long-dead calf, symbolises hope.

Distruped expectations

Briohny Doyle’s Why We Are Here, which might be labelled as autofiction, also disrupts expectations.
She lives in a condemned apartment, with trappings of faded grandeur, making Silver City almost affordable.
When Franz is expelled by the closing of the borders, BB remains alone with her dog Baby and spectral visitations from “Him”.
BB imagines these pronouncements are philosophical observations by Simone Weil, whose book Gravity and Grace she reads as a “vision of surrender”.
Although she finds a language to engage with troubled dogs like the Doberman, she’s distrusted by local trainers who see her as competition.

Elegy

Maybe it’s elegy.
Maybe it’s elegy.
They decide that elegy is having a moment, but that it’s also “problematic, Judeo-Christian, colonial, or at the very least nostalgic”.
But in elegy, the way a person dies is not the point.
With the climate catastrophe looming in the background, Doyle and Shirm are renovating the elegy for the current moment.

An unreliable narrator and a stormy relationship propel Stephanie Bishop's moody new novel

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

The graceful image of the human body arises precisely, here, in the loss of any referential particularity.

Key Points:

The graceful image of the human body arises precisely, here, in the loss of any referential particularity.
The graceful image of the human body arises precisely, here, in the loss of any referential particularity.
Read more:
Ian McEwan's Lessons, his most autobiographical novel, is a new experiment in vulnerability

Creative synchronicity

Caruth’s example describes the synchronicity inherent in the artistic creation.
At the same time, it recognises that “direct or phenomenal reference to the world means, paradoxically, the production of a fiction”.
Their anniversary is a moment for the couple to reflect on all they have achieved together, but also for resentments to build.
Rather like an Ian McEwan novel, The Anniversary depicts this moment of high drama in its first few pages.
Read more:
'If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again' – in A Country of Eternal Light, Paul Dalgarno explores a life fragmented by grief

Traumas and losses

J.B.’s life has been punctuated by a series of traumas and losses, including, most prominently, the disappearance of her mother when she was just a child.
At the same time, J.B.’s memories of those experiences have become blurred, not only by the passing of time, but by her fictionalisation of them.
For example, J.B. records her niece saying: “Tell him, Lucie – she might have even said Aunt Lucie at this point”.
It is a subtle correction, but one that catches the reader – well, what did she say, we wonder.
And if J.B. cannot get this detail correct, what else might she be misremembering or failing to record?
[…] I could not tell them that all too often I doubt my own version of events.
A probing profile article refers to her migrant parents, her father’s life in India, her childhood in the Australian bush.
One gets the sense that J.B. is finely crafting her life for us, painstakingly editing, revising the manuscript of her experiences.

LA Art Show Wraps Up Successful Return with Impressive Global Lineup and An Impactful Climate Agenda

Retrieved on:

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Guided by the leadership of LA Art Show producer and director Kassandra Voyagis, the fair kicked off the City's art season, uniting galleries, curators, collectors, and celebrities alike.

Key Points:

Guided by the leadership of LA Art Show producer and director Kassandra Voyagis, the fair kicked off the City's art season, uniting galleries, curators, collectors, and celebrities alike.
LA Art Show 2023 saw a larger global presence than ever before with over 120 galleries and 35% higher attendance than last year's show, bringing the total attendees to around 60,000 people.
Visitors gathered to see iconic LA artist Robert Vargas live painting a powerful mural as part of the series, The sacRED Project.
A few LA Art Show 2023 highlights included:
Ramona Otto's Holy Cow: Pray For Peaceful Coexistence made its debut at LA Art Show (bG Gallery).