Begetting, Flesh and Text

Begetting, Flesh and Text Deborah Robertson This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of Murdoch University, 2017. Acknowledgements My deepest thanks go to my supervisor Professor Vijay Mishra for the inspi- ration of his own scholarship, and for the immense wisdom, patience and en- couragement he has offered me in the preparation of this thesis. I would also like to express my appreciation for Professor Mishra’s unfailing kindness and support when we were both colleagues in the School of Arts at Murdoch University. Also at Murdoch University, my sincere thanks must also go to Cheryl Mil- ler, who saved the day every day, and whose generosity and understanding helped to make my time in the School of Arts so rewarding. Thank you to all my colleagues in the School of Arts, and to the many students I was privi- leged to teach over the years. In Melbourne, my thanks go to Sian Prior, Petra Kayser, Ursa Rosner and Gideon Haigh for the many gifts of their friendship, along with my colleagues and students at RMIT, all of whom have helped me to make a new home. ii I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary education institution. Deborah Robertson iii Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................... v Man of Aran A novel ........................................................................................................................ 1 On Failing Better An essay .................................................................................................................. 236 Only a Fairy Tale A story ............................................................................................................ 274 Bibliography ......................................................................................................... 307 iv Abstract This creative writing thesis is a study of the meaning of childlessness in today’s globalised world, as well as an examination of the ways in which, in the First World, science, commerce and individualist ideology have sought to redefine the human desire for one’s own child as a human need. In a novel, ‘Man of Aran’, I explore the existential nature of this desire for someone whose experience is largely neglected by public discourse on the subject – a man alone. The novel attempts to understand how constructions of heterosexual masculinity isolate the man in his grief, and in his relationship to others. In an accompanying story, ‘Only a Fairy Tale’, I continue the analysis of reproductive desire, but move beyond the private realm of the novel to explore the ethical implications of redefining a desire – even one so deep and fundamental – as a need. My subject here is the opaque and shape-shifting practices of assisted reproductive technologies, which in their most interven- tionist forms exploit the unequal power and opportunity of the world’s women, while at the same time creating new categories in our social or- der: those who can afford to purchase parenthood, and those who cannot. Bridging the novel and the story is a reflective essay, ‘On Failing Better’, which serves as an account of the relationship between the two works, as well as an elucidation of their creative processes and the contexts from which they arose. In particular, the essay identifies the novel and the story as auto- biographical works, informed both by my own childlessness, and by experi- ences that have led me to a personal reappraisal of human-centred ideas of ‘flesh and blood’. The essay examines both the restrictive and enabling nature of the osmosis between self and imaginative work, and reaches for an understanding of what literary measures of ‘realisation’ and ‘success’ might mean when art is intimately connected to life. v Man of Aran A novel There’s something he never talks about, although he’s not exactly the silent type. He has come to the grey stone island in the Atlantic because it’s his sister’s home, and she needs him. He’s more at ease in cities, but he’s lived in many places and knows how to make the best of things. And he has work to do; he fills his days with work. Every morning he sits down at the pine table in front of the window in his rented cottage. It’s a stone cottage, painted white. It was once the home of a fisherman and his wife and children, all of them working hard, praying to survive in this harsh, stony place. Now every morning he opens his laptop, looks out at the sea and writes about big business and the lies it tells. He was a boy, then he was a boy reporter, and now it seems he is a man who chastises the world. He’s tired of it, but that’s another thing he doesn’t talk about; he’s tired of being him and of never being anyone else. His back hurts. It’s an old injury, and the hours he spends sitting at his desk don’t help. But it’s nearly time to meet his friends, and a walk to the vil- lage will do him good. He reads the last few paragraphs and makes some corrections. Below him, moving slowly across the green lowland, is a large white horse. He loves this horse. The animal is there every morning, it’s the first living thing in his day; his heart rises to it when he comes down the stairs and draws back the curtain. And later, when he looks up from his work, he watches the horse’s long white neck bend to the grass and his thoughts relax for a while. He gets up from the table and carries his mug into the kitchen. The sim- ple fisherman’s shelter is now cottage-chic; white walls, whitewashed floor- boards, gleaming white goods. He opens the pantry door. He checks inside the fridge and notes that he’ll need butter, milk and eggs. He squeezes the bananas in the bowl on the bench. He can remember a list of up to ten items 2 – it’s something he taught himself when he was a boy, his fingers represent- ing the things he mustn’t forget. In the bathroom he checks his reflection in the mirror. Three-day growth, it’s one of the good things about the way he’s living now. After the years of suits and ties and clean shirts, now it was shave or don’t shave – who gave a rat’s arse? All through the winter he’d worn a beanie his sister knitted for him, but now that the warm weather is here he notices how much his hair has grown. It’s dark hair, unruly, shot with silver. A scar like a thin white slug bisects one of his eyebrows, but there’s no pirate story to tell. He’d simply walked into a door one night, groping his way to the toilet in a new lover’s apart- ment, trying not to wake her, trying to be quiet. The gap between his two front teeth makes him look like a rogue, although he’s never been much good at roguishness. The gap between his teeth can make him look as though he’s laughing when he’s not. He’s tall and lean-hipped, and he walks back through the living room and takes the stairs two at a time. There’s a Johnny Cash song in his head. Country music, he thinks, what is it they say? Three chords and the truth? In the loft where he sleeps there’s more white, and silence, and the sky- light in the ceiling casts a religious light. He picks up his wallet from the table next to the bed, checks for cash, slips it into the back pocket of his jeans. Picks up his phone and checks the battery. There’s a presence beside him. He feels this presence whenever he comes up the stairs and the light is hushed, holding can almost see. A baby lying in the centre of the bed, barricaded by pillows. A tiny baby asleep, dreaming of its recent voyage, or gazing up at the brand new sky. He goes back down the stairs, singing the Johnny Cash. It’s a song about a man down real low, but he’s not low, he’s forty-three years old today, there’s still time. He walks over to the table in front of the window and looks again at his work. He makes another correction, and puts the computer to sleep. His sunglasses are new and expensive. When he puts them on, he looks like one of the Chilean miners emerging into the light after three months un- der the earth. He moves quickly towards the door. You never know what is waiting, you just never know. He is full of hope. And this is what he doesn’t 3 talk about: he wants to be a father, now, not later. He doesn’t want to waste one more minute of his life. He pushes the door wide open – he does everything with more force than is ever necessary – and steps out into a day of salt-scented sunshine. 4 His friends from Galway are waiting for him outside the café in Kilronan. They’re sitting beneath a blue and white umbrella. He bends down as Claire offers him her smooth cheek. She’s wearing a red and white gingham dress, and he’d lay her out on the table if he could, eat bacon and eggs off her. Claire is from Chicago, but he’s known Patrick since they were boys, and he’s prepared at any moment for his old friend to irritate the shit out of him. On a summer morning, Patrick is wearing black jeans and black boots, a black leather biker’s jacket with a hundred zips.

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