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A Paperback Education: Out-Kick and Out-Run Me

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A Paperback Education: Out-Kick and Out-Run Me ENDNOTES 100 per cent in his Latin exam; (it that through both the guidance he was later rumoured that he provides for Jem and Scout and 1. Katharine Susannah Prichard, cheated, but as the exam was an the understanding, even tender- Coonardoo, Pacific Books, oral it seems hardly possible). He ness that he displays toward Boo Sydney, 1971 (1929), p.198. struggled with most other subjects Radley, Atticus is attempting to 2. R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, CUP, New York, 1989, though, with English Literature live a moral life, which of itself is a p.xvi. being his nemesis. somewhat over-inflated liberal 3. Drusilla Modjeska, ‘Introduction’ Forever determined to estab- notion considering the level of in Coonardoo, A&R, Sydney, lish difference between myself and violence being acted out against 1993, p.vi. my brother, literature became my the black community around him 4. Susan Lever, Real Relations: The Politics of Form in Australian thing. I read every Penguin at the time.” Fiction, Halstead Press in ‘classic’ and modern ‘master- “Does Camus encourage the association with ASAL, Sydney, piece’ that he was set during high reader to see Meursault as a 2000, p.61. school. I cruised through Dickens nihilistic character or do we and Hardy before moving on to actually come to value the need Enza Gandolfo is a Melbourne the modernists, devouring Harper for an ethical life through his writer and a PhD student at Victoria Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, vacuous state of mind?” University. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye This was a difficult one to (naturally), and one of my all- answer. Meursault was a hero of time favourites, The Outsider, by mine at the time. I do not know if Albert Camus. My brother could it was the intention of Camus or A paperback education: out-kick and out-run me. He not, but The Outsider was always could also punch the shit out of worth reading if one had any self- Atticus Finch, Camus and me when necessary. But he didn’t doubt before a night of car-theft Kenneth Cooks Wake In know plot development and and freeway cruising. Meursault Fright characterisation if they bit him on was a cult-figure on our public the arse. housing estate and the shared TONY BIRCH He realised this very soon after reading of his moral psyche was coming close to failing his first that “Meursault doesn’t give a When I was a kid there wasn’t year in high school. He made a fuck”, regardless of the book’s much that my older brother did decision to stop reading books somewhat ambiguous ending. not do better than me. He was altogether, turning both the But I had to provide my good at almost everything, reading and essay writing over to brother with something a little particularly sport. He won the me. And on the night before an more sophisticated than this if he school handball championships English exam we would go up to was to impress the examiner. every year, captained the football the roof of our Housing Com- “It’s matricide. That is the team and never lost a game of mission flat and feed the pigeons answer to your question, brother. marbles. He even excelled in while he fired questions at me. Matricide.” business. When the school “In To Kill A Mockingbird is “How do ya spell it?” tuckshop was on its knees the Atticus Finch aware of his com- “Forget the spelling, for now. headmaster put him in charge. plicity in the act of racism?” Just know the question in order to Within a term the tuckshop was I would begin by teasing him know the answer. How does The turning a profit, even after my with a “fucked if I know”, before Outsider begin?” brother had creamed a percentage strutting my stuff. He shrugged his shoulders. He so he could buy a friendship ring “Yes, Atticus is aware of his hadn’t read the book, of course. for his girlfriend. complicity, but to what degree he “MOTHER died today. Or, He was not quite as good at is conscious of this is a debatable maybe, yesterday; I can’t be the books though. He was a point. What however is more sure.” walking slide rule and for reasons central to the question that you “See, matricide. Meursault still unknown was the only student pose is how and to what extent he emotionally assassinates his mum in in the history of our school to get acts on this awareness. It is clear the first passage of the text. What 169 2002 overland 129 happens from there, the funeral, and New South Wales. ‘The bush’ So while Wake in Fright has the emptiness contained in his was both a place that their families most often been discussed as a love-making with Marie, the had come from ‘before mission book about the violence surround- murder . the subsequent plot is days’ and a sanctuary they ing ‘the bush’ or big, wild country small potatoes for Meursault’s sometimes returned to, if only towns in rural Australia, for me, attempt to reconcile with his occasionally. as a teenage boy, it was centrally mum.” In Kenneth Cook’s ‘the bush’, and more simply about men; men I placed a hand on his shoulder or ‘outback’, there is no escape who drink too much and don’t while looking up to the vastness of and no sanctuary. From the look after themselves or those the clear, empty universe above. opening pages of Wake In Fright, around them. “I’m sorry about this one. It’s with schoolteacher John Grant Toward the end of the book a slim volume but that’s Camus, stuck in the one-teacher, one-pub when John Grant eventually always asking the big questions.” town of Timboonda, to his decline becomes degraded by his own from (somewhat pompous) stupor to the point where he I did not take my reading and respectability during a journey attempts to take his own life, I understanding of writing too through hell in ‘the Yabba’ thought of some of the men I seriously. After all, it was done so (Bundanyabba), the Australian knew and the momentary shame that I could prove to my brother landscape is presented as genu- on their faces on mornings before that I had something over him; inely ‘frightful’. they forgot themselves with that I was better than him at As I read the book in a single another drink. I left the library something. I only read what he sitting on that detention afternoon with that thought. had to, or was supposed to have it struck me, even then, that the read. I didn’t really care about landscape of Wake In Fright was When my brother was about to books. They were useless. Or the represented in a vastly different start his final year at high school characters and the writers them- way to the narratives contained in his girlfriend became pregnant. selves. Then I found Kenneth the stories of the people I knew. He left school and went to work Cook’s Wake In Fright. ‘The bush’ was a place they in a printing works in Fitzroy. During my third year of high wanted to get back to, while the They got married and I was best school I was given a one-week landscape of ‘the Yabba’ and the man at the wedding although I detention for setting a grass fire in country around it was alienating was only sixteen. So I am not sure Burnley Park. My punishment and violent. if it was legal. If he had stayed at was spent in the library stacking While I could not express an school that year we would have books. I was supposed to be understanding of Cook’s view of done very well. The set text was under the supervision of the duty the Australian landscape, I did Wake In Fright. librarian but when I reported relate strongly to other aspects of there she was on the phone the book, that I see now as Tony Birch is a writer and academic talking to a boyfriend. So rather representative of some of the based at the University of than stack I grabbed a copy of the universalities contained in the text. Melbourne first paperback that fell into my The place of alcohol in Wake In hand and sat on the floor and Fright, the violence it created and began to read. the claustrophobic presence of Wake In Fright felt both men who spent too much time A Curate in Bohemia familiar and distant. I had never with each other ‘sharing a drink’ been out of the city and all that I was something I knew then as an JEFF SPARROW knew about ‘the bush’ was entirely negative experience through stories that I’d heard during my own childhood. I knew Like everyone else, I first encoun- when I was quite small; aunties the men in Wake In Fright. I tered Norman Lindsay through and uncles talking about ‘the knew the corrupt copper, the no- The Magic Pudding, a book bush’ as a place that they escaped hoper alcoholic doctor, and the which, though it arrived with the to as young Aboriginal kids living text’s version of ‘mateship’ based grim warning that it was ‘an on reserves in country Victoria on a shared violence. Australian classic’, I actually 130 overland 169 2002 Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne Author/s: Birch, A.
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