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Gordian Satire is a study of the novels of David Foster, focusing on the effect of their complexity on reader reception. The main Foster novels under consideration are those he has produced since the beginning of the 1980s, namely: Moonlite (1981), Plumbum (1983), Dog Rock (1985), The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross (1986), Testostero (1987), The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover (1988), and Mates of Mars {1991). In five chapters, the thesis examines how Foster's fractured and idiosyncratic vision affects different facets of his fiction. Chapter One concentrates on the structures of the novels, using the notion of entropy as an analogue for the way Foster's plots tend to fragment and disintegrate as they progress. Chapter Two examines the complexity of Foster's use of language. The unusual nature of the novels' satire is the subject of the third chapter, which draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's theories on the French satirist Rabelais to highlight the medieval and Renaissance qualities of Foster's satire. Chapter Four explores the texts' repression of emotive themes such as death, love and sex, while Chapter Five discusses the implications of the politically extreme tone of many of die novels. The question of reader accessibility is never far away from the analysis of the complexity of various aspects of the novels. In the context of the threat posed to fiction by the increasing popularity of other entertainment media, the thesis periodically weighs the merit of Foster's characteristic refusal to orient the reader against a more accommodating, "seductive" approach to fiction.
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TmS SHEET IS TO BE GLUED TO THE INSIDE FRONT COVER OF THE THESIS Gordian Satire The Novels of David Foster
by Steven Conte
Thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Arts (Honours), Department of English, University College, Canberra, University of New South Wales. 1994.
304916 Abstract
Gordian Satire is a study of the novels of David Foster, focusing on the effect of their complexity on reader reception. The main Foster novels under consideration are those he has produced since the beginning of the 1980s, namely: Moonlite (1981), Plumbum (1983), Dog Rock (1985), The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross (1986), Testostero (1987), The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover (1988), and Mates of Mars (1991). In five chapters, the thesis examines how Foster's fractured and idiosyncratic vision affects different facets of his fiction. Chapter One concentrates on the structures of the novels, using the notion of entropy as an analogue for the way Foster's plots tend to fragment and disintegrate as they progress. Chapter Two examines the complexity of Foster's use of language. The unusual nature of the novels' satire is the subject of the third chapter, which draws on Mikhail Bakhtin's theories on the French satirist Rabelais to highlight the medieval and Renaissance qualities of Foster's satire. Chapter Four explores the texts' repression of emotive themes such as death, love and sex, while Chapter Five discusses the implications of the politically extreme tone of many of the novels. The question of reader accessibility is never far away from the analysis of the complexity of various aspects of the novels. In the context of the threat posed to fiction by the increasing popularity of other entertainment media, the thesis periodically weighs the merit of Foster's characteristic refusal to orient the reader against a more accommodating, "seductive" approach to fiction. Acknowledgements
I wish to express my gratitude to my supervisor Dr Susan Lever for her advice and assistance during the preparation of this thesis. Additional thanks are due to Associate Professor Joy Hooton for making possible my initial enrolment in the Masters program. Peter Looker and Catherine Pratt provided valuable inspiration and dissent. Table of Contents
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Entropic Novel 15
Chapter 2 Preaching in Gibberish 51
Chapter 3 Joking in Earnest 85
Chapter 4 The Absent Subject 121
Chapter 5 Offending the Zeitgeist 144
Conclusion 181
Bibliography 185 Introduction
No one ever liked modern jazz, it was like modern poetry. Though it compelled a kind of reluctant, begrudging admiration, it wasn't pleasant to listen to. .. . It was difficult and thoughtful music, and even difficult, thoughtful people like mindless, simple music to relax with. Plumbum (p.388)
On the evening of the 12th of September 1991, shortly after 9 p.m., David Foster clambered onto the small stage at the end of the bar of Tilley Devine's, a popular cafe in the Canberra suburb of Lyneham that had once catered exclusively for female customers, and which still retained the atmosphere of a feminist enclave. On this evening the cafe had attracted slightly older patrons than usual, including members of the Canberra literati and interested readers of Australian literature, as well as a sprinkling of Tilley's habitues, all present to witness readings by distinguished Australian writers. A video camera recorded the night's proceedings.! The author, wearing a black leather jacket, pulls up a bar stool, draws heavily on a cigarette and rests a bottle of beer on the keyboard lid of the piano provided for visiting jazz musicians. After adjusting the
1 Videorecording No. 1256, Australian Defence Force Academy library, Canberra. microphone he observes to the audience that the last time he came to Tilley's he was refused entry, and without further preamble begins to tell a fishing story, frequently pausing to pull on his cigarette and drink his beer.
Foster is promoting his latest novel. Mates of Mars,^ but at no stage does he actually mention the book, choosing instead to recount his experiences as a deckhand on a prawn trawler in the Gulf of Carpentaria, experiences which provided part of the background material for the novel. He speaks softly with a broad Australian accent, smiling rarely and conveying the impression that he couldn't care less whether the audience likes him or not. Several minutes into the talk he contradicts this apparent indifference by pausing, and in exasperation urging the silent people to "Give us a go". Oddly enough, this plea seems to work. Foster's one-liners and wry observations begin to meet with laughter. His foreign accents and sound effects go down well. Against all expectations the author is proving to be a performer, but just as he appears to have won over the audience he makes a comment that seems calculated to cause maximum offence to these particular people. Having described the sight on a passing trawler of a woman at the sorting trays wearing only a G-string, he pauses and smiles: "Shameless tart, ay."
I have recounted the "reading" in Canberra that night because it reproduces many of the key features of David Foster's fiction, as well as illustrating some of the problems of its reception. The subject matter, for example, is vintage Foster: hard manual labour in a meticulously observed Australian environment. The uncompromising, almost hostile delivery is equally typical, as is the apparently contradictory desire to be understood ("Give us a go")—contradiction of any kind is especially
1 Foster, Mates of Mars, Penguin, Ringwood, Vic., 1991. 7 typical of Foster's fiction. Slow, understated beginnings followed by accelerations are also a feature of many of the novels, and Foster is of course a comic writer, a manufacturer of gags. The similarities don't end there. David Foster is an author who plainly enjoys subverting the reader's expectations, and his refusal to read at a book reading is in this sense characteristic. The failure to mention the book at all, the sense that the real subject matter is missing, or present only by virtue of its absence, also typifies his fiction. But Foster is never content just to surprise, he must also provoke, as his selection of a sexist remark at a women's venue demonstrates. In life, and especially in his satire, he is a kind of reverse chameleon, emphasizing particular political colours in order to stand out in whatever environment he finds himself: red amongst conservatives, blue amongst radicals. At a fashionable book reading, no less than in his novels, this can lead to ambiguity. Do chain-smoking and drinking, for instance, signify bohemianism or working-class pride? Is the male-chauvinist wisecrack a kind of vulgarity, or evidence of a profound and sophisticated conservatism? It's difficult to escape the conclusion that Foster's guises actually represent an attempt to discomfort as many people as possible as often as he can, and it is surely significant that the Foster persona which would have been least threatening to an audience at a book reading, the quiet scholar we sometimes meet in the novels, was absent that night at Tilley's. In his fiction, Foster's unwillingness to present an acceptable or coherent political face produces a pervasive kind of satire. No personal failing, no creed or institution escapes vitriol or ridicule, though some targets, such as British imperialism or statistical method, come in for more intense attack than others. Even when Foster finds an activity he approves of—the martial arts, for example—he cannot restrain his 8 tendency to debunk. The resulting moral and political ambiguity of the novels is one of their most compelling features and makes the work of some of Foster's more commercially successful rivals look lightweight and elementary in comparison. Yet this very complexity also limits the appeal of his books. Despite their comedy they are "difficult and thoughtful" works, and those readers who are not discouraged by complexity may retreat from Foster's satirical cannonade when it turns, as it will, on them and their beliefs. More fundamentally, it may be that the anarchy of the novels disrupts the value systems which all readers, arguably, look to literature to reinforce. In any case, the ideal audience for Foster's fiction does not exist. It would be made up of readers invincible to satirical attack, who have a fascination for the minutiae of manual labour, a limited interest in rounded characterization, a passion for scientific theory and an affection for extinct philosophies. In reality, the readership for serious Australian fiction is mainly composed of the kind of people Foster addressed in Tilley Devine's: mostly middle-class, tertiary-educated people, the majority of whom are women, whose political views are probably left-leaning and whose preference is for fiction that explores interpersonal relationships.
David Foster was born in 1944 and, after training as a bio-chemist in Sydney and Canberra, travelled to the United States for post-doctoral research. Disillusioned with science and the generalizing impulse of scientific method he returned to Austraha in 1971, aged 27, and began to devote himself to writing fiction. His first work, a collection of three novellas entided North South West,^ written before leaving for the States, was published in 1973 with the assistance of the recently founded Literature Board, and throughout his career he has continued to receive 1 Foster, North South West, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1973. funding in the form of grants as well as the usual subsidies to publishers. The Pure Land,^ Foster's first novel, shared the Age Australian Book of the Year award, and was followed by a book of poems,^ a collection of short stories entitled Escape to Reality,^ and a science fiction novel. The Empathy Experiment,^ which was written in collaboration with the scientist D.K. Lyall. Moonlite,^ published in 1981, surpassed all Foster's previous works in scope and originality and marked a new stage in his development as a writer. The novel won the National Book Council Award for Australian Literature, received critical applause and created an on-going problem for Foster, whose subsequent books (unfairly in my opinion) have often been compared unfavourably to Moonlite. His next novel, Plumbum,^ was a particular victim of this syndrome. The more whimsical and gentle Dog RocK^ won a new audience for Foster in Australia, and The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross,^ which he had begun writing early in his career and eventually edited severely for publication, became his most popular book overseas, probably on account of its pared-down style and the absence of Australian references. Testostero,^ an absurdist comedy of manners, followed in 1987, and in 1988 he published The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover,^^ a sequel to Dog Rock, causing one reviewer to claim that Foster's recent books had been an extended holiday from
1 Foster, The Pure Land, Penguin, Ringwood, Vic., 1985. Originally published by Macmillan, 1974. 2 Foster, The Fleeing Atalanta, Maximus Books, Adelaide, 1976. 3 Foster, Escape to Reality, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1977. 4 Foster, The Empathy Experiment, Wild and Woolley, Sydney, 1977. 5 Foster, Moonlite, Penguin, Ringwood, Vic., 1987. Originally published by Macmillan, 1981. 6 Foster, Plumbum, Penguin, Ringwood, Vic., 1983. 7 Foster, Dog Rock, Penguin, Ringwood, Vic., 1985. 8 Foster, The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross, Penguin, Ringwood, Vic., 1986. 9 Foster, Testostero, Penguin, Ringwood, Vic., 1987. 10 Foster, The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover, Penguin, Ringwood, Vic., 1988. 10 more substantial fiction. i Two novellas, published together as Hitting the Wall in 1989, redressed any perceived deficiency in moral seriousness, and then in 1991 came Mates of Mars, undeniably a major work, which nevertheless received no nominations for literary prizes and which failed to sell in large numbers, despite positive reviews. For most of his literary career Foster has lived in the small town of Bundanoon, south-west of Sydney, where he grows his own vegetables, keeps a cow for milk and cheese, and produces his own honey. He also has six children, which has ensured that self-sufficiency has been a financially unrealistic option. As well as the small income from his writing and grants from the Literature Board (since 1991 he has also been a recipient of an Australian Creative Fellowship) Foster has had to work at a number of manual-labour jobs, mainly as a postman, and although these experiences have contributed to his fiction he is obviously sometimes bitter about the necessity of living by other means than writing. In his interview with Candida Baker for the first Yacker book he blames his relative lack of commercial success in Australia on a critical incomprehension of satire, claiming that "the standard of literary criticism in this country would have to be the lowest of any English- speaking country. . Foster ascribes the limited publication of his work overseas to the presence in his novels of an Australian vernacular and, in the case of British publishers, to outright colonial oppression.^ But how accurate are these accusations? An analysis of reviews and criticism of Foster's work reveals that early in his career critics did fail to understand what he was doing, although to be fair to the critics, Foster himself admits to having had the same problem. From the
1 A.P. Riemer, 'Respectable, but they fail to shine', The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 1988, p.77. 2 Foster, in Yacker, Candida Baker (ed.), Picador, 1986, p. 123. 3 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 11 appearance of Moonlite in 1981 most reviewers acknowledged the satirical content of Foster's novels, although not all of them welcomed it. Bearing in mind that they were more enthusiastic about some of the books than others, a crude classification of the reviews into the categories of negative, qualified and positive shows that about 30% are negative, 30% qualified and 40% positive. These figures may be more unfavourable than they look—in a literary culture that heaps praise on fashionable authors it may be that readers pay more attention to a negative review than they do to a range of positive ones.
Foster's complaints against the international market are more difficult to assess. If foreign pubHshers really regard the presence of an unusual vernacular as a liability, what explains the success of novelists like Salman Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul and the whole phenomenon of the Empire writing back? Foster's own explanation is that in order to demonstrate political correctness the British literary establishment makes exceptions of a handful of writers whom it finds less threatening, and he makes the observation that although Rushdie was bom in India he is also an Englishman with a degree from Cambridge. i In view of the strong anti-English sentiments in Foster's fiction this theory does have a certain plausibihty, at least in his case. In regard to the United States, where film distributors occasionally sub-title British and Australian films, it's easier to accept that publishers would have problems with the presence of an unfamiliar idiom in foreign fiction. The issue of Foster's poor marketability is directly linked to the central concern of this thesis: the complexity of David Foster's fiction. For the purposes of this study I intend to concentrate on the seven novels Foster has produced since 1981, when his fiction entered its mature phase—if the word "mature" can be used to describe the compelling
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 12 weirdness that has characterized all the novels since Moonlite. At times I will also refer to Foster's other work, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as the work of other Australian and international writers. Broadly speaking, my method will be to analyse, in five chapters, the structure, style, satire, themes and politics of the novels, exploring how the complexity of these aspects of the novels affects their readability. My analysis will draw on a number of strands of reception theory, although the discussion arising from the issues of reception will be more broad-ranging. David Foster's novels are battlefields on which all kinds of ideologies, including those of literary value, vie for supremacy, and I intend to wade part-way into the melee of modernism and postmodernism, high art and popular culture. Chapter One examines the structure of Foster's novels. It begins by using the notion of entropy as an analogue for the characteristic acceleration and structural disintegration of the narratives, examining how these apparent "errors" of construction actually add to the eccentric appeal of the novels, even as they pose potential problems for readers. The chapter continues with an analysis of Foster's manipulation of tense and point of view in the construction of the Dog Rock novels. It then concentrates on Plumbum, examining how more extensive editing might have clarified parts of the novel. The chapter's final section identifies the surprisingly simple structures beneath the surface chaos of the novels, and discusses the effect of this contradiction on the interpretation of the theme of freewill. Chapter Two investigates Foster's use of language, beginning with his extensive vocabulary. His use of metaphor and simile, as well as the effects of his intricate sentence structures, are further topics. The chapter continues with an analysis of the way Foster's habitual use of present tense contributes to the flippant tone of many of the novels. It then 13 explores the apparently contradictory impulses, evident in the presentation of dialogue and narrative lists, to liberate and also control the direction of the narrative. After examining Foster's "experimental" expression, the chapter concludes by discussing how the complexity of the novels appears to affect their reception, especially given the reduced profile of literary fiction in contemporary culture. Chapter Three analyses Foster's satire. Critics have frequently commented on the strangeness of Foster's vision, and I argue that this is largely because his satire has more in conmion with Classical Roman and medieval varieties of satire than it does with modem, post-Enlightenment examples of the form. To illustrate this case I draw on the work of the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin on the medieval French writer Rabelais. Bakhtin argues that successive generations of critics have mistakenly regarded Rabelais as a purely negative satirist, ignoring the allusions in his work to the positive, generative spirit of medieval carnival. Foster's novels also possess a "carnivalesque" spirit, although like the work of Rabelais, they are deprived of positive connotations by their distance in time from an authentic carnival culture. To illustrate the true context of Foster's work I refer to Foster's long essay on satire, which argues that satire is always about the decline of civilization, and that the satirist paradoxically both laments and encourages this process. Chapter Four explores Foster's treatment of potentially emotive themes such as death, love and sex. I argue that the texts attempt to avoid coming to grips with these issues by both trivializing and exaggerating them. Death, for example, is ubiquitous in the novels, yet the treatment of it is unrelentingly frivolous. This has a turbulent effect on the presentation of the theme; death is exaggerated in order to deflate its significance, yet the strategy is so absolute that it finally draws our 14 attention to the anxiety about death at the heart of all the novels. The treatment of other emotional themes in the novels is similar. Chapter Five evaluates the extremist presentation of the issues of race and gender in the novels, which seems so out of step with the Zeitgeist. Foster's treatment of race, for example, particularly of the problems of Australian Aborigines, often verges on outright racism. In the case of gender the picture is clearer—Foster is an unashamed sexist, although this does not rule out surprising insights into the predicaments of women in a patriarchal society. The chapter attempts to determine whether or not the apparent repudiation of humanist values in the novels represents an attempt to come to terms with the Zeitgeist, however negatively. Like so many other aspects of Foster's fiction, this question is not staightforward and unproblematic, but complex and contradictory. 1. The Entropic Novel
Celsius said the energy of the world is constant the entropy of the world tends to a maximun entropy times arrow a powerful concept its everywhere folks you cant escape it Time's Arrow', North South West
The central difficulty of David Foster's work is its complexity, but the complexity is of a particular kind. Foster's novels are never of the carefully-wrought variety, rather they are ragged and apparently chaotic. Their complexity is more like the complexity of nature than of machines, and this is as true of the novels' structures as of any other feature. In his early work Foster explored the philosophical implications of entropy, the principle (enunciated in the second law of thermodynamics) that energy and heat gradually disperse throughout the universe, leading eventually to a theoretical state of bland uniformity, a kind of cosmic gruel. A sandcastle, goes the classic example, is always washed away—it never spontaneously reconstructs itself. To Foster, the scientist, this dictum is not only an emblem of death, but of absolute, final dissolution. In 'Time's Arrow', the third novella of North South West, the protagonist is a young man obsessed by the principle of entropy, and Foster emphasizes the theme by removing all punctuation from the text. The technique is witty, but difficult to read. Moreover, the notion of an entropic text is strictly speaking nonsense, for as Foster himself comments, "Both life and knowledge ... are characterized by low entropy. Both are improbable. . .".i In other words, in cases such as the
1 Foster, 'Chaos is normal', Australian Book Review, No. 119, Apr 1990, p.24. 16 creation of novels, entropy seems to be reversed—things gain complexity rather than lose it. Sandcastles get built. Apologists for the second law of thermodynamics characterize this kind of activity, of which life itself is an example, as a merely local and temporary gesture against an overall trend towards universal decay, but the point remains that any work of art, no matter how apparently chaotic, is a highly structured artefact. Foster's novels, however, are less neatly structured than most, and they emphasize the process of entropy with a characteristic acceleration and disintegration of plot towards the end of each story. Moonlite is the clearest example of this pattern because the first half of the novel. Acts One and Two, with their painstaking descriptions of the outer Hebridean islands of Mugg and Hiphoray, develop the narrative so slowly that Act Four seems especially madcap by comparison. And like the eponymous hero of Tristram Shandy, the protagonist of Moonlite Finbar MacDuffie is not bom until well into the story, and even then his role is so limited that Acts One and Two read like one long introduction. The demand this makes on readers accustomed to an author clamouring for their attention from the very first line is immense, and those who make the effort face a further obstacle when they reach the final act, in which Finbar enters the chaotic goldfields of the New West Highlands. The ground that Finbar (now Moonlite) treads at the diggings is literally unstable, and the rapid succession of events in the final act seem to belong to a different book than those of the beginning. Even Foster seems conscious of the problem: It's probably asking a lot of the reader, isn't it—to accept a slow, measured beginning and then to tolerate a rapid acceleration.!
1 Foster, interview, Feb 1993. 17
Readers who enjoy the dense, even ponderous plotting of Act One are unlikely to also appreciate the narrative cascade of Act Four, and presumably the reverse is also true, although it's difficult to imagine the ideal readers of the final section making it past the opening. The critic A.P. Riemer is clearly a member of the former group:
None of [Foster's] works, to date, is entirely satisfactory ... all too often one feels that matters are getting out of hand, and that bizarre invention is made to stand in for careful construction or for a concern with form and structure. ^
Riemer's comments were written in 1987 but it's likely he would have had similar reservations about Mates of Mars, which rockets into absurdity at the same rate as Moonlite. In the words of one reviewer,
The substantial characters of the first half degenerate into flat improbable stereotypes in a rushed, sketchy, almost cartoon reality. . . . Nicknames are given, cliches spoken, and so much happens offstage or stands divorced from reasonable cause and effect that our interest wanes.^
This criticism ignores the satirical effect of the novel's accelerated ending, and in one detail it is simply inaccurate, for although the account of the heroes' adventures in the Top End is rushed, in no sense is it "sketchy". Like Moonlite, Mates of Mars is rich in descriptive detail, but in this novel Foster not only maintains the level of detail but intensifies it as the story enters its final, lunatic phase. The description of life on a prawn trawler in the Gulf of Carpentaria is particularly vivid, and were it not for the satirical component of 'FV Roper Cherie', critics might have recognized what an impressive account of manual labour it is. The
1 A.P. Riemer, 'Bare-breech'd Brethren: the novels of David Foster', Southerly, No.2, June 1987, p. 127. 2 Terry Dowling, 'Yen for yin among macho mates', The Weekend Australian, 17-18 Sept 1991, Weekend 5. 18 solidity of the setting also provides an ideal framework for the excesses of the plot. C.S. Lewis remarked that
Gulliver is a commonplace little man, and Alice a commonplace little girl. To tell how odd things struck odd people is to have an oddity too much. ^
Mates of Mars may be a story of how odd things struck odd people, but the "things" which happen to the characters are not odd in the sense C.S. Lewis meant; they are not supernatural or fabulous. Even the apparently supernatural events at Neverfuckinlose are attributed to natural causes— the savagery of the mates to adrenalin rushes, Cyril's sudden death to AIDS. Mates of Mars is an inverted version of Gulliver's Travels or Alice in Wonderland in that it tells how commonplace physical things, like life on a trawler, strike odd people. Foster avoids the danger of having an oddity too much by building a convincing stage for his satire. The same is not true of Moonlite. Here the final part of the narrative is odd in every sense, including the supernatural. Finbar's life in Boomtown careers uncontrollably like a dream, and while Foster obviously intends this effect, the change is difficult to appreciate after the density of the rest of the novel. The passages in which Finbar is "treated" by an Aboriginal shaman are particularly difficult. This section takes the form of a series of dreams in which Finbar rediscovers then repudiates his spiritual, imaginative self. The status of events here is uncertain; Finbar is repeatedly described as waking up when he is actually entering a new phase of the dream. The uncertainty continues in the penultimate chapter when Finbar has his throat cut by a Chinese miner, only to laugh off the assault and continue speaking, (p.211). Are we to believe the narrator when he asserts that Finbar is finally extinct, or does the loss of his spirit
1 C.S. Lewis, quoted by Jim Mackenzie, 'An oddity too much'. Nation Review, 16-22 Feb 1978, p. 13. 19 render him physically invulnerable? The description in the final chapter of a hearse thundering out of town suggests that Finbar is dead in every respect, but is the hearse really a hearse or a form of rapid transport for Finbar the would-be Premier? These questions create more than the usual uncertainty of an open ending, and risk simply frustrating or baffling the reader. It could be argued that baffling or alienating readers in order to shatter their complacency is a valid literary aim, and that in this sense Moonlite is a more daring work than Mates of Mars. Could the physical realism at the end of Mates of Mars, for instance, actually subvert the novel's theme of disintegration and entropy by imposing a more familiar order on the narrative? I would argue that this is not the case, that clarity and descriptive realism in this instance actually enhances the entropy theme by providing Foster with vivid symbols of disintegration. The trawler itself is one such symbol:
"Starter's gone to the auxiliary. Solenoid's burnt out. I thought I heard something. That means we can't turn off the auxiliary. And the Araldite bandage we put on the hydraulic line is leaking badly, Vincent. I just can't believe this boat would have no gas bottle on board." (p.334)
With comic inevitability the FV Roper Cherie falls apart beneath the feet of its skipper. Sven drops anchor while he considers the boat's problems, only to realize he has no hydraulics to retrieve it. The crew abandon the nets for the same reason. The symbolism is obvious but effective, and for once Foster has the perfect rationale for using his beloved descriptions of mechanisms. In some of the other novels Foster uses the same technique, though less effectively. In Plumbum the bodies of the band members are the major site of deterioration. Pete destroys his fingers in a guitar duel, Jason loses his eyes to rapacious ophthalmologists, Sharon severs one of 20 her own fingers and has her face slashed open by Pete, Felix drinks himself to death and Rollo almost does the same. In Moonlite, the alcoholic decHne of Finbar fulfils the same function, but the process is described less vividly than in Plumbum and the symbolic impact is correspondingly less. When it is handled less effectively, the acceleration of Foster's novels risks alienating readers who prefer a more sedate ride, but when the pace seems to increase naturally out of the demands of the plot it becomes a powerful symbol of the frenzy of western society, which Foster diagnoses as its death throes. In Chapter Three I will talk at greater length about Foster's theories of the decline of the West, which are complex and even contradictory (is it reasonable, for instance, to characterize a frenetic process, or for that matter an energetic novel, as entropic?). It may be that the acceleration of Foster's fictions, which is so crucial to their effect, may be incidental rather than planned. When I asked Foster about this feature of the novels his reply was disarming: I probably just get sick and tired of my own voice. . . . It's to do with my own sense of restlessness with what's happening in the manuscript. I just want to get things happening after a certain time.^
This explanation will ring true for anyone who writes and knows the contingent nature of the process. Fiction, especially, is an art of the achievable—an author first achieves something and then calls it art. Those who dislike the acceleration of Foster's novels might criticize his lack of discipline and restraint in the writing of his work, but if we accept that his endings have a unique literary effect and even carry a great deal
1 Interview, Feb 1993. 21 of thematic significance then the "accident" of their composition is irrelevant. In a similar vein, Umberto Eco has attributed the success of Casablanca as a cult movie to the shoddiness of its construction, its "unhinged" quality, which he argues permits the film's mythic archetypes to run riot in a way that would be impossible in a more unified and original work.i Casablanca succeeds, in its own terms, because of its imperfections, and Eco observes that this phenomenon is not limited to popular culture, citing T.S. EHot's opinion that the fascination of Hamlet is due to the play's unsuccessful fusion of earlier versions, (pp.201-202). The argument is persuasive, and particularly relevant to the reception of fiction, because so much of the pleasure we take in drama and fiction depends on the presence in a work of fruitful ambiguity, and nothing is so ambiguous as a formal mistake in a work's construction. Indeed, if we regard any art as a series of conventions, then the main distinction between serious and popular art may be the readiness of "high" art to break those conventions, committing what are strictly speaking formal errors, such as the absurd acceleration of a fictional narrative. In these terms the only perfect works are well executed formula films and novels, and a flawed but successful popular film like Casablanca begins to look more unusual than a flawed but successful Hamlet. I will return to the issue of breaking narrative conventions later, but first I want to examine a few more examples of Foster's manipulation of plot and structure. One typical ploy is the false crescendo. This involves the creation of some event or apparent narrative climax, such as the chaos of Bangkok in Plumbum, only to move on to a more extreme version of the same phenomenon, like Calcutta. The movement in
1 Umberto Eco, 'Casablanca: cult movies and intertextual collage', Travels in Hyper Reality, San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986, p. 198. 22 Moonlite from the squalor of Mugg to the absolute squalor of Hiphoray is another example of this technique, which Foster explains in the following way:
I sometimes set up a false expectation by having an interlude. . . . You are presented with something as an antithesis and then you go on to a bigger antithesis, and I like that effect, I do it deliberately. I like that false crescendo effect. . . saying here's this and then there's this, and then there's this A
Here, then, is an effect which Foster very deliberately intends, but it's interesting to note that when pressed he is prepared to admit that "an unsympathetic editor" would eliminate such interludes from his work, with the implication that they probably pose difficulties for some readers. Why would this be the case? On one level, we have a simple question of narrative economy— two episodes are used to illustrate the same situation, however different in degree—on another, the problem is aesthetic. A good analogy, for anyone who has climbed or walked in mountain areas, is the false summit. If we apply this metaphor to Plumbum, for instance, then comfortable Canberra might represent the lowlands, Sydney a foothill, Bangkok a mountain and Calcutta the still higher peak concealed behind it. Reaching Calcutta will have a certain effect on the reader—the existence of an even more chaotic city than Bangkok is a surprise—but the climb from Bangkok to Calcutta is relatively moderate, and the contrast between Canberra and Calcutta is less immediate because of the interlude in Bangkok. The literary effect is ambiguous in precisely the same way that a false summit is ambiguous, and a simpler, even smaller literary achievement than Foster's depiction of Calcutta might have been
1 Interview, Feb 1993. 23 more immediately striking, just as a mountain like the Matterhom is more aesthetically striking than the taller Everest. Simplicity in fiction is not always preferable, but complexity narrows a writer's potential audience, and whatever their merit Foster's false crescendos add to the structural complexity of his novels. If the inclusion of certain episodes in the books is sometimes curious, the brevity of others is also intriguing. Consider the following account of Finbar's birth: "Flora gives birth at new moon, declining midwifery. Her son is very pale, with strange eyes." (p.49). In the complete text this passage seems even more absurdly brief than it does here, as it appears within an exhaustive description of fowling. The narrator's report of Reverend Campbell's death is also extremely perfunctory: "Campbell is dead, stricken with heart attack and Hiphoray is incommunicado." (p. 109). Part of the effect here is comic, but not all. The absurd descriptions of momentous personal events also imply a degree of contempt for the task of characterization itself, and may even represent an attempt to repress particular themes, a possibility I'll examine in Chapter Four. In structural terms they create narrative black holes that suck in more meaning, inviting more interpretation than their length would seem to warrant. A similar turbulence is created by the sudden irruption of trivial material into relatively more important parts of the narrative:
Rollo's got Italian blood, and he thinks a bit like a Scotsman; he's going to do what they do. Identify the market, then create the product. The Sony type recorder. But in the meantime . . . All of a sudden Felix appears, breathing heavily. "Rollo! Gimme an arm wrestle!" "No! You'll break my arm." 24 "I'm gonna clean this place up, Rollo. I'm going to rid the police force of corruption and get the metro finished and rectify the power situation and house the people and clean the streets, using a thin broom and a cane basket." And he hurries off to do it. (p.272)
Needless to say, Rollo returns to his contemplation of economics when Felix's interruption is over. Foster's digressions are not always so brief. Dog Rock and The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover are, like Tristram Shandy, substantially made up of digressions. The rambling structure is one method of characterizing the narrator, D'Arcy D'Oliveres, but digression in the Dog Rock novels is fundamentally a solution to the problem of how to write interestingly about the minutiae of small town life. The absurd murder mystery plots are a way of organizing descriptions of everything from beekeeping and the politics of owning roosters to the operations of bakeries and railway lines, and any aficionado of detective stories with a keen desire to know who dunnit will soon realize that the plot is incidental, the digressions central. D'Arcy alerts the reader early: "I shall use the present tense to conceal the thinness of my material." (p.4). The material of the plot is decidedly thin, but the description of Dog Rock at night, which follows D'Arcy's admission, is extraordinarily rich in detail. Yet however logical the rationale for using digression in the Dog Rock novels, the technique still has a dislocating effect on the narratives. The urge to know what happens next remains in even the most sophisticated readers, and Dog Rock and Coathanger Cover frustrate this urge. The "anxiety" will be even greater for readers of conventional detective stories, who are schooled to look out for the significant detail embedded in the narrative. Foster's murder mysteries are observation run 25 mad; everything is significant and simultaneously irrelevant because the reader is deciphering the novels on at least two levels. What, for instance, are we to make of the antics of Solomon, Bottler and the other animals in The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover! At first glance nothing could be more pastoral, but no sooner have we consigned the animals to the kinder, gentler and merely descriptive compartments of the novel than they appear to become crucial to the gruesome plot. Our attention flickers between rival readings because in practice it is impossible to compartmentalize a Foster novel; its constituent parts melt together, producing a characteristically blurred effect. It's possible to argue, as Foster himself does, that this effect represents the true complexity of life,i but undeniably it makes exceptional demands on readers. Foster increases the structural complexity of the Dog Rock novels by the way he chooses to tell them. The use of a first person narrator would seem elementary enough, but as the following passage from Dog Rock demonstrates, Foster's use of tense is not so simple, for D'Arcy often relates information that he cannot possibly have access to.
Dion Belvedere slams down the receiver and heads off home [on his motorcycle] to grab some shuteye, waking in quick succession Ivor Cruikshank from Lancashire whose wife Nora cleans the school; Mignon Calvary who lives above the pharmacy with her Sydney Silkie and her memories; the dear sweet spinster sisters Iris and Boronia Lily white . . . ; that odd pair in the pottery and half of Railway Parade, (p.22)
Dion's inconsiderate behaviour occurs while D'Arcy is on night duty at the telephone exchange, and D'Arcy's delight in gossip is so great that it's almost possible to believe that he might later gather information about who was woken by Dion's motorcycle, but this explanation ignores one
1 Videorecording No.263, Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. 26 crucial fact: D'Arcy narrates this event before his shift finishes. This is made clear in the last sentence of the chapter, "I am off duty in one hour . . (p.34). In terms of classical narrative technique Foster appears to commit an error here by giving his narrator access to information beyond his immediate purview, and readers can only wrench the story back into a semblance of logic if they accept that D'Arcy is not reporting but largely inventing his account of events. This is made even clearer by the existence in the same chapter of the bakery narrative, a blow by blow description of Dudley Semple's overnight work in the bakery, which mostly takes place while D'Arcy is asleep on a camp bed in the exchange. The implication is that D'Arcy (not to mention Foster) has at some time stayed up all night at the bakery and can therefore construct this particular description from memory. This capacity lends D'Arcy an authority that he doesn't really deserve if we bear in mind his tendency to invent rather than strictly report. It is the authority of an omniscient rather than a first person narrator, and while this ought to make him seem like a convenient vehicle for the narrative rather than a believable, coherent character, the reverse is actually true—we are inclined to treat D'Arcy's improbable insights as entertaining and creative gossip from a rogue with a cavalier disregard for the strict demands of truth. The technique of having D'Arcy narrate the story as it unfolds is also more complex than it first appears, although the slightly awkward use of tense in the opening sentence of Dog Rock signals what is ahead:
It was ten o'clock on Sunday night when I arrived in Dog Rock so I saw at once the sort of place it was and is. (p.l)
After relating the opening chapter largely in the present tense Foster begins to alternate between the past and present as D'Arcy ducks in and out of the reader's "line of sight", generally between the end of one 27 chapter and the beginning of another. D'Arcy "returns" at the beginning of each new chapter and relates, in the past tense, what has happened in the intervening period. After this update Foster fills the middle of the chapters with D'Arcy's digressions, reminiscences, theories and speculations. Finally, the chapters burst into action or conversation which D'Arcy relates in the present tense as he experiences it. The overall effect is of a narrative advancing incrementally. Such complex manipulations of chronology only begin to make sense when we realize that in Dog Rock (though not in The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover) DArcy is addressing the reader as if she were physically present, effectively turning the novel into one long gossip session. Periodically D'Arcy actually gives the reader a physical role to play:
What can we see? Blessed tomato plants everywhere, but look! A sawhorse. A router, some netting. There's a pile of little boxes on the floor. Lift one up, so I can look at it. (p. 140)
In this scene D'Arcy is investigating a greenhouse for clues to the murders, but soon after he is discovered by the tenants. Dodger and Malbane, two of the town's five artistic layabouts whom D'Arcy refers to collectively as Balthazars. The reader, however, is not apprehended with the postman, even though ostensibly she has just been helping him lift crates. A more deliberately postmodernist author would not have hesitated to plunge the reader into the action completely (indeed, the neat machinery and implacable logic of a classically postmodern text would have demanded it), so what are we to make of the more ambiguous cameo appearance of the reader in this scene? Is Foster making a half- hearted postmodernist gesture, drawing our attention to the relationship between author, narrator and reader but failing to carry the demonstration 28 through to its logical conclusion? Or is the narrative narrowly reaUstic after all and D'Arcy a lonely and unbalanced man who talks to an imaginary friend? Neither possibility seems entirely satisfactory and the truth probably lies somewhere in-between: Foster may rope the reader into the narrative to create a localized comic effect and not really care about the contradictions. He may even prefer them. The same narrative pattern is repeated in The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover but this time Foster provides a more logical rationale for D'Arcy's stream of confidences, which are addressed not to the shadowy reader but to a very real (in terms of the novel) shaggy dog. The hound finds his way into DArcy's company after Hooch, his bikie owner, is killed in an accident that looks like murder. D'Arcy sets to work to expose the perpetrator, addressing his theories and suspicions to the dog, although the identity of DArcy's companion is not clarified until some way into the story. This gives Foster some amusement at the expense of his readers, who will naturally assume (especially if they have first read Dog Rock) that D'Arcy's chatter is directed to them:
Here's your milk, as you prefer it; blood temperature, frothy and fresh, (p.9)
Short of actually speaking, the dog participates fully in the action, and the fact that D'Arcy speaks to him at such length becomes crucial, since much of the plot turns on the fact that Purvis, the corrupt cop from the city, monitors D'Arcy's conversation with a radio transmitter attached to the dog's collar. The explanation of who speaks to whom is elaborate but ultimately logical, and quite different from the unresolved ambiguities of D'Arcy's soliloquies in Dog Rock. Which method works best is probably a matter of personal preference. What is clear is that technical differences between the Dog Rock novels prevent them from forming a seamless and symmetrical artistic pair. 29 Once we accept that Foster is in the habit of making difficulties for his readers the question arises about what attitude he takes to the intervention of editors, who might be expected to attempt to iron out parts of his work which are likely to reduce the marketability of the novels. Clearly such intervention is limited, and the reason is simple: Foster forbids it:
Penguin give me what they call an editor but I reject every suggestion that they make. ... I just can't conceive of this notion of editing. . . . Artistically, I think it's indefensible. It may have a market purpose, but no painter would allow anyone else to get up and start touching up the clouds. ^
In a few sentences Foster reveals assumptions that have a profound influence on his work: that the writer must be completely loyal to his or her muse, and that commerce is antithetical to art. While few would reject these principles outright, most would now qualify them heavily; poststructuralist theory stresses the intertextuality of art, as well as the way in which its creation is a collective act, and the new academic regard for popular culture challenges the notion that art and money are fire and water. In any case, Foster displays a naive disregard for the fundamental connection between capital and the art of the fiction. Novels, unlike paintings, require a substantial investment of time and money before they can be brought before the public, and it could be argued that the risk incurred by publishers entitles them to make non-binding editorial suggestions to an author. Foster actually admits that some of his work would have benefited from firm editorial control, yet still insists he probably wouldn't have accepted it at the time:
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 30
If someone now came to me and said, You could take all that Franklin River stuff out of Plumbum, I'd say, Yeah, you're right. In retrospect, I'd change things if I could, but at the time I don't want any interference. 1
The first of the Franklin River passages referred to by Foster is a type of dream sequence in which Jason imagines himself as a 19th century convict imprisoned on remote Sally Island at the mouth of the Gordon, the river to which the Franklin is a tributary, (pp.65-66). The second is a facetious questionnaire, attributable to Pete, about the conservation battle to prevent the damming of the Franklin, (pp.66-67). Neither has relevance to the plot or even the characterization of Jason and Pete, and Foster is right to say that they could go. It's just a pity he wasn't of the same opinion at the time of publication. If some passages could be profitably (in every sense of the word) removed from the novels, others cry out for amendment or clarification. The opening chapter of Plumbum is one example. The novel begins with a description of the Blackman Brothers Band recording their first album in a tiny studio outside Canberra, and as a technician asks each band member to perform while he adjusts the recording equipment the narrative launches, not into a description of the music, but into a series of first person passages in which the band members introduce themselves to the reader. This inventive device allows Foster to begin likening the voices and personalities of the characters to the sound of their instruments, a daring literary experiment which completely succeeds stylistically. The trouble is, Foster doesn't begin the experiment until several pages into the novel, and, when he does, puts unnecessary obstacles in the way of the reader's understanding. The technician's first request to Pete to begin playing, for example, is followed not by a first person passage from Pete but by a third person impersonal narrative that
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 31 describes Jason's early life and the shady past of Jason's father Arthur. After a second prompt from the technician, Pete begins speaking in his own voice:
I first met Jason in that park in Hackett Gardens. I was standing on a swing in my Mitchell blue sock and Sinatra red shirt, waiting for a chick to front. Lucky for her, one never did. . . . I found myself diverted from the dark desire to propagate by Eric, a mongrel dog. He was adolescent like me, black and white like me, friendly, and we soon had a good thing going, (pp.11-12)
Unfortunately, because this passage does not follow the technician's first cue to Pete, the reader has no particular reason to identify Pete as the speaker. Foster then perversely compounds the confusion he has created by having Pete recount his first childhood meeting with Jason, when the very first paragraph of the novel introduces them as brothers. If we knew for certain that the first person narrator was Pete then we might be merely intrigued by this mystery or even guess the truth: that Jason and Pete are adoptive brothers; but without any guidance we are more likely to suppose that the first person narrator is an entirely new character, possibly a Nick Carraway figure who will narrate the action from the margins. Even if it becomes clear to us in the course of the next ten pages that we are listening to Pete our initial misunderstanding will prevent us from comprehending the chapter's basic scheme, and this is disastrous for our understanding of what's happening when it comes time for the next band member to introduce himself. Moreover, Foster again compounds our difficulties by making the band member who speaks second the least coherent, for the technician's next request is for keyboards, and Rollo the keyboard player has a tenuous grip on reality. Indeed, Rollo's conception of his own ego is so fragmented that he refers to himself (though not exclusively) in the third person and by nickname, 32 and this further decreases the reader's chances of recognizing that this bizarre narrator is a member of the band, let alone that he is speaking about himself:
The MACHINE never learned piano as a kid. The DAD worked in a produce store in that part of a country town where railway workers and trotting trainers yield to ovals and graziers. When the MACHINE left school it got a job in the public service (Census & Stats) and drove back from Canberra every Friday night for seven years. I stayed home . . . (p.23)
Having refered to himself both as "the MACHINE" and the more orthodox "I" Rollo then calls himself by his full name (though in the third person) and relates how he was spurred by an irradiated platypus, a stroke of luck which transforms him into a "HUMAN PLATYPUS DUCK". Within the very first paragraph of Rollo's potty autobiography we therefore have four identities to choose from, and none is more confusing to the reader than the conventional "I" who stays at home while the rest go to Canberra. Felix's hilarious and phonetically spelt soliloquy, when it comes, does not reinforce the chapter's basic pattern as it should because Foster has not established the pattern clearly. The same is true of the more comprehensible self-portraits of Sharon and Jason. When the technician asks Pete and Jason to play together the narrative transforms into an account of Pete's return to Canberra as a washed-out muso who is approaching middle age and curiously in need of the love and support of the brother he half despises. The writing here is particularly moving; in fact, the entire chapter is full of brilhant passages which are marred by their poor arrangement. In Plumbum in particular there are a number of passages, mostly located towards the end, that would have been more effective in earlier sections of the novel. Two examples stand out. The first is in Chapter 33 12, which partly describes preparations for the first gig of Plumbum's "triumphant European tour", starting in Utrecht, Holland, (p.303). At the end of the previous chapter the band is rescued by its promoter Nick from the obscurity and squalor of Calcutta, and after an undisclosed lapse of time the band has become world famous. The narrative leap is daring, but Foster immediately frustrates the desire of readers to find out about the new circumstances of the band. Instead of the anticipated account of big-time fame, Foster gives us a dissertation on the tribulations and characteristics of the small time muso. The piece is interesting and amusing but it belongs so obviously to an earlier part of the novel—when the members of Plumbum were themselves small time musos in the Blackman Brothers Band—that its placement seems consciously ironic. Perhaps Foster regarded it as another variety of "interlude", a deliberate lull in the action, but while it was a good idea to reduce narrative pace in the interlude between the chaos of Calcutta and the frenzy of the Plumbum concert the progress of the plot would have been better maintained if the subject material of Chapter 12 had been more relevant to the story at hand. In fact the existing descriptions in the second half of the chapter of each band member's preparations for the concert already fulfil this function admirably. The distracting quality of the small time muso section is increased by an uncertainty, similar to that in Chapter 1, about the identity of the narrator. At the beginning of the chapter Pete is described, in the third person, on his way to see some classical music: They're queuing for tickets on the wet bricks that afternoon as Cleanhead Piet, wearing a black wig, heads off for the Brahms recital at the Concertgebouw. (p.304) 34 The point of view then changes into the more ambiguous second person—"When you love a woman like Sharon, you suffer" (p.304)— before changing into the first person in the small time muso section: "I once did a gig with a guitar player who let a rival sit in." (p.307). Who is the narrator here? The tone and subject material of the account make Pete the probable candidate, but the fact that Pete has been described by another narrator in an earlier but undifferentiated part of the text throws the reader into doubt. The implied author figure "Foster" is another possible narrator here, but although Foster's idiosyncratic personal voice impregnates the third person narrative throughout the novel, at no other point does he refer to himself in the first person. Whatever the answer— if there is an answer—changes in point of view are certainly likely to throw the reader off balance. The second passage that seems to belong to a different part of the novel occurs at the end of the same chapter, and describes the arrival of the Blackmans, many years earlier, at Knockembandy, a small rural property in northern New South Wales where the family lived for one year during Pete's high school years. The narrator here is definitely Pete, although he does "interrupt" the preceding third person narrative in yet another point of view shift. And once again the case for moving the whole piece to the beginning of the novel, where an account of the year at Knockembandy already exists, seems overwhelming. After all, it describes significant past events in the lives of Arthur and Hennie Blackman, characters whose only other appearance in the novel is at the beginning; and it provides an insight into the childhoods of Pete and Jason which could have contributed to their characterization much earlier. True, the passage precedes a description of Pete's visit to rural Kinderdijk, where he begins to fantasize about retiring to a windmill, but 35 the thematic link between the two settings is too tenuous to justify holding up the narrative with the flashback to Knockembandy. It is probably no coincidence that many of the passages of doubtful relevance seem to cluster toward the end of the novels, as if Foster were almost reluctant to conclude his stories. Or perhaps he's just unsure how to go about it:
Ending books like mine is always the hardest part. When I get, say, three or four hundred pages up, if I think I've got an ending I stop there. . . .1 have no preconceptions as to where it's going to stop. . . . This tradition [of satire] is very hard; just look at some of those Monty Python films where they end up in an absolute and utter shambles, walking off the set, completely repudiating any attempt at ending anything. l
Foster is clearly thinking here of the Python film The Holy Grail, which ends when King Arthur and his knights are arrested at the head of a huge army by a squad of riot police wielding truncheons. But while this particular ending is certainly absurd it is not without dramatic force, and the absurdist crucifixion at the end of another Python film, The Life of Brian, demonstrates that satire can appropriate quite traditional endings. Indeed, the freedom of satire from the constraints of realism may allow it to intensify the climax of a narrative to a spectacular degree. Perhaps Foster's failure to do so has other reasons:
It's hard to resolve, or give the impression of resolution in the type of fiction I write because there tends to be an endless dichotomizing going on and you think. Well, how's all this going to be tied together?^
The "endless dichotomizing" of Foster's work is a feature I will discuss in Chapter Three, and it's easy to see how this response to the complexity of
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 2 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 36 the real world might make him reluctant, at a conscious, intellectual level, to give the novels neat endings. But Foster may have more basic reasons for concluding his stories the way he does:
I like [a story] to end in a rather forlorn way, because that's the way I feel about it. 1
You get the sense that here, at an emotional level, is the true explanation. Of all the novels, the one that seems to cry out most for a sharp, satirically intensified finale is Plumbum, and it's for this reason that I've examined the way Foster protracts the narrative leading up to the novel's logical climax: the concert at the Utrecht Musiekcentrum. The description of the concert contains some of Foster's most original writing. What, for instance, could surpass the following sentence, with its masterful penultimate clause, describing the band's entry onto the stage?
Under cocksroar crowdspant and above the aerial pisshiss, Jason can hear the impassioned cursing, and weeping, of his elder brother, (p.344)
Unfortunately, Foster soon abandons direct description of the concert in favour of a technique of description by analogy, again destroying the momentum of the narrative. The "interruptions" can infuriate, and never more so than when their self-contained brilliance seems to offer the promise of whole short stories, or even new novels:
every vehicle in West Benelux has backed out of the car port and blocked off the autobahn. Pet poodles bark their heads off as 20,000 Russian tank captains ... sit throbbing at the controls of the second echelon of ten- wheeler T62 blue Warsaw Pact main battle tanks, rolling down the Northern Freeways. The first echelon, webbed in artificial fog and manned by doomed, irradiated 'walking ghost' casualties, has stopped off to allow the crewmen time to weep and defecate, (p.364)
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 37
The war which Europe appears to have been spared is brought eerily before us, but what is it doing here? The concert, Foster seems to be saying, is literally indescribable, yet the direct descriptions that do exist are wonderful, and there seems no reason why they could not stand alone. Having sapped the dramatic impact of the description of the concert Foster seems impelled to search for another ending, a forlorn, diminuendo denouement. This is provided by a trip to the countryside the next day, during which Pete and Jason, with Sharon in tow, visit their Dutch relatives. This section adds little to the novel and the true conclusion doesn't begin until Pete sees an old colleague on television at a local jazz festival and abandons his startled relatives to find him. The colleague is a small time vibraphone player called Barney, and after tracking him down at the festival Pete asks to be allowed to have a jam session on stage with Barney's band. Unfortunately, Barney has recognized Pete as the bass player of the notorious rock band Plumbum, and resolves to humiliate him on stage. Barney and his drummer begin the performance at a tremendous pace, hoping that the interloper will fail to keep up, but Pete answers every challenge, every increase in tempo:
Pete's right hand, speed typing, is holding that four to the bar. His left hand recounts, in deaf and dumb language, the complete works of Balzac. (p.391)
The duel ends when Barney is struck down by heart attack and the drummer's leg is severed by the implosion of the bass drum. Pete sustains terrible injuries to the hands: Pete's right hand is a flower of bloodied flesh; it resembles the hand of a revolutionary bomber. The fingers on Pete's left hand have worn back to the second joints; it resembles the hand of a leper, (p.392) 38 These images alone seem to justify the continuation of the novel beyond the Musiekcentrum concert, and the jazz duel itself is worth keeping, but a ruthless editor might have suggested that a modified version of the duel precede an intensified version of the concert, at which Pete could suffer the mutilation of his hands. The rationale for this happening at the concert exists already, for the band plays more maniacally than usual in its attempt to kill the chosen audience victim of the evening, the bodyguard Max, whose tantric powers defend him against Sharon's fatal charisma. An ending of this kind at the concert would have given the conclusion a more immediate dramatic impact.
The movement of the novels may often be unnecessarily complex, but as you would expect with Foster's fiction, the situation is not so simple—at a deeper level his plots can be quite schematic and orderly. This apparent paradox can be explained if we recall that a constructed object such as a novel can at best only feign the process of entropy. No novel can exist without some kind of structure, and although Foster's novels may be less meticulously organized than most, the structures that do exist are often surprisingly simple and old-fashioned. Foster's description of Calcutta suggests how order and apparent chaos can exist simultaneously:
There's something in this endless repetition of the same pattern with variations, the open-fronted warehouse with the old man sitting out front, the junk spilling over the footpath—clothing, lathes, timber, motor scooters—that seems to be imploring, demanding, resolution, but of what kind and in what form? . . . Actually, the variety is fairly hmited, it's the unit of repetition that has changed, (p. 189)
Anyone who has walked past the hundreds of street vendors in a third world city, all selling the same merchandise, will appreciate the accuracy of these observations, and Foster's structures vary as little, or even less. 39 than the essential patterns of a third world city street. His favourite plot is picaresque, episodic, and like many authors who have belonged to this novelistic tradition Foster draws on the still older convention of the quest. Moonlite, Plumbum and The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross are Foster's most obvious quest novels, but the characteristically circular structure of the quest plot is present in varying degrees in all the novels. Like Homer's Odysseus and Joyce's Bloom, Foster's characters tread circuits which are both geographical and symbolic. Return, however, is not always treated as positively as it is in the Odyssey or Ulysses. In the words of A.P. Riemer,
nothing [in Foster's novels] is achieved: where we arrive is no different from the place we have left behind, or, if anything, it is worse. l
The presence of circular structures is especially clear in Foster's early work, and it's worth examining a novel from this period in order to appreciate his long obsession with this particular narrative pattern. In The Pure Land, for instance, the circular movement is clearly geographic. The novel begins in the 1920s in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, where Albert Manwaring is a modestly successful but discontented landscape photographer. When the opportunity comes up to work as a pornographer in the United States Manwaring kidnaps his thirteen year-old daughter Janet from his estranged wife and leaves the country. In America the focus of the story moves to Janet, who changes her name to Jean, marries a travelling entertainer, bears a son, divorces and then remarries. Her second husband is an academic, and Jean settles down to a life of domesticity which is every bit as unsatisfactory as her father's earlier existence in Australia. Gradually the story begins to concentrate on Jean's son Danny, a character whose early life clearly
1 A.P. Riemer, 'Bare-breech'd Brethren', Southerly, No.2, June 1987, p. 135. 40 resembles Foster's own. Danny trains as a scientist, loses faith in the scientific method and, disgusted by the corruption and decay of modem America, travels to Australia, "the pure land" of his forebears. The circuit is completed when Danny moves to Katoomba in a vain attempt to discover his roots. At the end of the novel he is still awaiting his "Land of Purity", which he believes may be "just around the next bend." (p.235). The circularity of the grandfather and grandson's quest for fulfilment permeates the novel with a strong sense of futility, an emotion which fills many of Foster's later novels, and often for the same structural reason. Not that the circularity in Foster's other books is always so clear as it is in The Pure Land. Mates of Mars, for instance, may begin and end in Sydney but the characters follow two distinct routes: the Singapore- Malaysia-Sydney journey of Vincent and Bruce, and the Sydney-Top End-Sydney loop (with interludes in gaol for Bruce and Sven) completed by the four surviving main characters. Moreover, Mates of Mars conforms less strictly to the circular pattern in that the surviving characters all demonstrate a degree of personal development by the end of the story. The Dog Rock novels are certainly not picaresque, but they do follow the characteristically circular course of detective stories and traditional pastoral tales, from order to disorder to the eventual restoration of certainty or community harmony. Testostero, on the other hand, has more in common with Mates of Mars. Here the basic circuit of Venice-London-Berkshire-Scotland-London-Venice is complicated by subsidiary expeditions to Australia. Additionally, Noel, Leon, Judy and the Contessa are unquestionably better off at the end of the novel than they were at the beginning, however bitingly ironic the commentary on Noel's career change from poet to gondolier: 41 he feels, in his heart, a strange sense of solace; of triumph, and of self- satisfaction. For to write poetry is commonplace enough and more to be pitied than applauded: but to live in Venice is an achievement to be envied by every sophisticated person, (p. 188)
Were it not for the fact that the object of Christian's quest changes throughout the novel, The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross would be the perfect picaresque circular quest, and even this one qualification seems less significant when we recall that Christian's ambition to own his own castle does remain constant, even if it is obscured at times by more pressing and immediate goals. Christian's journey from Germany to Italy, Rhodes, Syria, Palestine, Morocco, Spain, France and back to Germany follows the clearest and most extensive circular route of all Foster's novels. Even the book's cover illustration, of a dragon swallowing its own tail, seems to emphasize the importance of circularity in the novel. The novel's medieval setting, the minimalist plot, the ingenuousness of the protagonist, even the Mediterranean itinerary are all reminiscent of Voltaire's Candide. It is therefore intriguing to learn that Foster had not read Candide before composing Christian Rosy Cross, and that one of the key similarities—the pared-down plot—was the incidental result of his failure to get the novel published in its original, longer form.i This raises questions about the nature of the influences on writers, and seems to support the post-structuralist contention that an author's work is affected (even effected) by currents running through a culture, which may echo those of another culture or another time. Of course it is also possible that Voltaire's composition of Candide was influenced by Fama Fraternitatis, the Rosicrucian text upon which Foster's novel is based.
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 42
The circular structure of Plumbum is not geographical, at least not literally. I have already examined the movement of this novel from comfortable Canberra to Calcutta and eventually Utrecht, an apparently linear progression, but while our view of Utrecht is almost entirely limited to the inside of its Musiekcentrum, it's worth noting that this civilized and tidy Dutch city is as Canberra-like as any you'd find in the northern hemisphere. Perhaps there is even an echo of Canberra's public gardens and deciduous trees in the forests outside Utrecht:
just 100 metres off the road, pine gives way to larch and beech. Golden larch; golden beech. . . . Piet walks in silence for a time, then stops dead in front of an Escher woodcut; a small pond, reflecting the trees and filled with floating beech leaves, (pp.378-379)
A.P. Riemer notes that Holland is also present at the very beginning of the novel—in the apocryphal personal history of Jason and Pete's father Arthur Blackman, once Arthur Schwarzmann. Jason and Pete's visit to their relatives in Apeldoorn creates a narrative loop back to these early references, although the connection is highly tenuous and ambiguous because previous hints suggest that Arthur was a German war criminal rather than a medical student in Utrecht, as he claims. True, Pete and Jason do seem to locate some Dutch relatives, but even this apparently indisputable reality is brought into question by Pete's elaborate fantasy of having spent his childhood in Holland. In fact, these "memories" are so vivid that they are likely to convince or at least confuse inattentive readers. What is certain is that all the characters, with the possible exception of Jason, make no personal progress, or, as A.P. Riemer claims, are worse off at the end of the novel than they were at the beginning. 43
The same is definitely true of Finbar MacDuffie in Moonlite, whose career in the New West Highlands ends in squalor, whatever the uncertainty about his ultimate survival. In this way the story hearkens back to the original filth of Mugg and Hiphoray, although in another sense the loop is asymmetrical because Finbar is not bom until some way into the narrative. The correspondences between beginning and end, however, go beyond the squalor of both settings. At some stage of their reading of Act Two of Moonlite most Australian readers will recognize the similarities between the colonization of Hiphoray by imperial Britain and the European occupation of Australia. Both islands exist on the edge of their particular hemisphere, both are virtually the last land mass in their region to come to the attention of colonizers. Above all, both sustain an indigenous people who maintain a subsistence way of life and whose culture is severely damaged—in the case of Hiphoray, destroyed—by invaders. Foster is careful, however, not to reduce the fate of Hiphoray to a simple allegory of Australian colonial history. Apart from the obvious physical differences between the two environments, the economic circumstances and culture of the MacEsaus of Hiphoray is quite distinct from that of the Aborigines of the New West Highlands. The most obvious difference is the contact, albeit limited, that the MacEsaus experience with the outside world before the modern intervention in their society gets under way in earnest. This contact takes the form of the annual visit of the factor from Mugg, who is sent by the Maclshmael to collect a tribute from the islanders. We also learn that many years earlier a cathoHc priest lived on Hiphoray, although the culture of the islanders shows no sign of Christian influence—the MacEsaus are primarily worshippers of a sun god, Bel, a type of deity which is ahen to the cosmology of the Aborigines. Other differences are economic, for while the islanders are primarily hunter 44 gatherers they also cultivate grain on a haphazard basis, as well as owning a few cattle and semi-domesticated sheep. Unlike the Aborigines the islanders are permanently settled. Having noted the differences between the MacEsaus and the Aborigines we can now examine similarities. The most obvious of these is the effect colonization has on the two peoples, as Foster clearly intends the sufferings of the MacEsaus to parallel those of Aboriginal Australians following European colonization. The narrator's description of the fate awaiting the MacEsaus is not, however, very complimentary to the islanders, and if taken as an analogue to the experiences of Aborigines it comes close to perpetuating racial stereotypes:
Within a few short years the island will be irredeemably spoilt, and the islanders, squatting like gulls on a garbage tip, sufficiently greedy and lazy to repel even a steerage class tourist. Thereafter the people will die or dissipate if they are lucky, and if they are not, become the stalking horse of many a fanatic, anxious to deprive them of those vices they have come to love with a fervour distasteful to witness, (p.74)
Foster's attitude to the "aboriginal question" is an extremely complex issue which I will examine more thoroughly in Chapter Five, but for now it's worth noting that despite the potentially offensive portrait of Aborigines in Moonlite Foster clearly contrasts their creativity and imagination with the callous stupidity of the miners at Boomtown. A more important similarity between the MacEsaus and the Aborigines is spiritual, because although the islanders worship a sun god they also believe in a spirit world populated by beings they call the Host and the Sidhe. This world view has much in common with those of the Aborigines, and Foster makes the connection explicit by giving the name "Wawa" to a creature in the (only) MacEsau folk tale as well as the monster in the stories of the Aborigines whom Finbar encounters near 45 Boomtown. With some irritation, Finbar himself recognizes this and other correspondences:
What worries Finbar most, are the pointed references to his own childhood ... It has to be sheer malice. The Host, for example, are spirit-familiars, souls in the form of birds. The Wawa from the Hiphoray saga is actually mentioned by name (p. 184).
The Wawa later disembowels Finbar (in a dream?) and inserts quartz crystals in his stomach, (pp.205-206). What Finbar doesn't know is that his contact with the Aborigines was foreshadowed before his birth and on the other side of the world. In the opening scene of the novel Finbar's father Lamech experiences a strange vision:
Before him, rising from the mist, is a great water. He stares at it fascinated, and after a while sees a woman emerge from the ground nearby as though risen on the crest of a wave. . . . She sings, but not in Gaelic. Mmwawa mmbaba, she sings. Lamech has seen and heard enough, but as he turns, she does likewise and her face is black, (p.2)
A more prosaic connection between Hiphoray and the New West Highlands is the similar abuse their environments suffer at the hands of the colonizers. When the Reverend Campbell arrives to convert the MacEsaus to Christianity one of his first acts is to release a pair of breeding rabbits, which he tells Flora will "improve the standard o' life". (p.59). Later on he introduces Cheviot sheep to the island, an animal which turns out to be ill-suited to the craggy terrain. The more nimble native sheep are driven over cliffs, and Campbell then tries and fails to establish an island wool industry, in the process taking the men away from their fowling. The parallels here between Hiphoray and Australia are obvious. Although the wool industry in Australia (and presumably in the New West Highlands, though it's never mentioned in the novel) is 46 successful, in both cases native species are displaced or exterminated. Rabbits run rampant in both environments, and in neither place do they "improve the standard o' living." Finally, towards the end of the novel there are surprising repetitions, or near repetitions, of sentences that occur at the beginning, as if Foster were trying to emphasize the loop in the narrative at a purely textual level. At the beginning of the novel, for instance, Lamech exhales "with the short, reflexive gasps the lungs adopt when shedding poisons" (p.2); at the end Finbar's lungs do the same, only with "short, sharp gasps . . .". (p.190). Similarly, we see the effects of drink on the priest on Mugg in "the vascular spider on his nose, and his gown, with its sleeves shiny through wear and falling to the tips of his middle fingers" (p.l), while in Boomtown the priest who exorcises Finbar "is a drunkard, well known round town, with a vascular spider on his nose, and a cassock with sleeves shiny through wear and falling to the tips of his middle fingers." (p.199).
The correspondences, loops and circular structures of the novels have a direct bearing on a theme which it could be argued is implicit in all fiction: the twin question of freewill and predestination. Freewill is a structural issue because any highly structured novel subverts the illusion that characters act independently of their creator in a world subject to accident and chance. Of course a novel free from structure and the manipulation of its author is as impossible to imagine as a truly entropic novel, but different degrees of structuredness determine the extent to which the lives of the characters appear to be predestined, and this in turn affects what the novel implies about freewill and predestination in the real world. The structure of one of Thomas Hardy's more tragic novels, for instance, could be likened to a funnel, because as the story progresses M the range of actions open to the characters diminishes as their fortunes decline. Naturally, the structure of a classical tragedy is fairly inflexible, because the traditional attitude to freewill is pessimistic, and there are also formal requirements that the tragic outcome flows from the actions of the protagonist. Yet even within such severe constraints there is scope for an author to convey a more optimistic attitude to freewill than the one offered by Thomas Hardy. Shakespeare's tragic plays, for example, generally manage to avoid giving the impression of predestination by presenting characters with genuine choices at every turn—we get the sense that Macbeth and Hamlet don't have to act the way they do. Moreover, the fate of the characters is never sealed until the end of the play, and many critics have observed how the conclusions of two plays such as Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet—one comic, the other tragic—could be reversed without significant alteration to what goes before. Comedy, of course, allows an author to structure the work less tightly because in comedy almost anything goes, but a tragic play like King Lear can also follow a roller-coaster course that ought to be more suited to comedy. It could even be argued that the velocity with which the audience's hopes are raised and dashed actually intensifies the tragic effect of the final act of King Lear. Foster's novels are neither purely tragic or purely comic, but satirical, a hybrid form which suits Foster's complex worldview. We have also seen that structurally the novels are neither exquisitely organized nor entirely chaotic, or perhaps it is truer to say that they are both simultaneously—chaotic on the surface and deeply structured. As a result, the "philosophy" the books project on the issue of freewill and predestination is (characteristically) ambiguous; the rich detail of the settings and the zany turns of the picaresque narratives suggest a world of unlimited possibility and choice, while the repetition of motifs. 48 foreshadowing of plot developments, and vast looping structures imply that our fates are predetermined, regardless of the choices we make. Textual evidence on the question is also contradictory. The following repartee, in Moonlite, between Mungo and Lady Virginia Creeper, supports predestination:
'My head, dear lady, is in the clouds, but my feet are on the ground. I am happy but dishonest; my compatriot [Finbar] is honest but unhappy. We simply approach the same end, but from opposite directions.' Then I hope he does not become dishonest and you . . .' 'But my dear lady, that is quite inevitable!' (p. 138)
Another exchange, this time in Plumbum, confronts the issue more directly; Jason is attempting to convince Pete to join the band:
'Then you won't do it of your own free will?' 'What do you mean "of my own free will"? What are you going to do, enslave me? Chain me to a bass box?' (p.62)
Later, in Bangkok, the whole band is literally enslaved when the members are unable to buy their way out of the contract they have signed to play in a brothel for Japanese businessmen. The captivity, however, is short, for the band is liberated by the promoter, Nick, only to sell itself body and soul to this apparently benign Mephistopheles of rock 'n' roll. This second bondage is absolute, and all the band's suffering in Calcutta, and ultimately its destruction in Utrecht, flows from Nick's infernal contract. Yet just as we are tempted to conclude that we are all pawns of powers greater than ourselves we come across this next passage:
Every soul in Hell is there of its own free will. And the gate, contrary to popular opinion, is never closed. You can walk out, if you want to, and you want to. You just don't know that you want to. (p.337) 49 This is the narrator speaking, and opinions expressed by Foster in an interview for Westerly seem quite in line with these last conclusions. In response to a direct question about the degree to which our lives are predetermined, Foster replies,
Indian philosophies say that you are responsible for being here, responsible for being where you are. That is probably the most productive way to look atit.l
Perhaps he was feeling decisive that day. This final quote from Plumbum is a better example of the confused treatment of freewill in the novels themselves. It describes the dispute between Jason and his father over the death of the blues singer Blind Willie Dickenson while crossing a Canberra road. In Arthur's opinion WilHe was actually sighted and saw the truck that killed him coming: Arthur maintains that Blind Willie was either depressed by Canberra or caught in a web of circumstance which left him no option but to act as a blind man would. This is an interesting theory ... and it can't be disproven; but it has the effect of leaving Jason ambivalent, his whole life long, as to whether he has witnessed pathetic farce or an act of superhuman will. As a result, he tends to confuse the two. (p.6)
On balance I think the novels do give a stronger impression of chaos and the possibility of freewill than of order and predestination, because surface complexity is more immediately apparent to a reader than fundamental structure. If we were to imagine a continuum of fiction stretching between extremes of chaos and order, placing the novels of, say, WiUiam Burroughs at one end and those of Hardy at the other, then Foster's work would undoubtedly occupy a place nearer to Burroughs'—
1 E.A. Travers, 'On the philosophical: an interview with David Foster', in Westerly, No. l, Autumn, 1992. 50 and not only because both authors are satirists. That a case can be made, however, to situate Foster's novels at either end of the spectrum betrays the presence of profound structural contradictions. 2. Preaching in Gibberish
1 have the truth' shouts Christian, time and again. 'You only think you do! Oxo bspfsuchg, opsope dxoos ossg voggpobb, upsbchopsfpompsb!' The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross (p. 123)
The difficulty and complexity of David Foster's fiction lie not only in its structure but also in its expression. Whether it's the choice of vocabulary, the use of imagery and tense, or the presentation of dialogue, Foster's manipulation of language is highly idiosyncratic, although the influence of other writers is occasionally evident, especially that of Joyce. Indeed, at times Foster's expression seems to have more in common with the early experiments of modernism than it does with the relatively unchallenging literary language found in many recent postmodern novels, which are often more concerned with decentring conventions of narrative structure rather than of literary style. At the simplest level, Foster's passion for rare and unusual words creates obstacles for those who are not prepared to read with a dictionary by their sides. Often the offending word is scientific and its use justified given that Foster is writing about scientific concepts, but in the majority of cases it is a Latinate version of a more common word of Anglo-Saxon origin. Clearly, the sophistication of a writer's vocabulary is a relative matter, and there will always be erudite readers who enjoy esoteric words, but it is equally certain that many will be baffled by them. By using the full range of his extensive vocabulary in fiction, Foster reveals himself to be a writer with little interest in reaching a wider public. 52
Although this approach shows a lack of regard for the populist origins of the novel it is no great crime in itself, for the best novels have always offered their readers more than entertainment. Arguably, however, a point may be reached where the complexity of a writer's vocabulary interferes with the capacity of a text to communicate itself clearly to the majority of even the most educated readers. George Orwell, not the most frivolous figure of literary history, was certainly of this opinion, and Foster's writing falls foul of two of Orwell's famous rules of written expression: "Never use a long word where a short one will do", and "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.The Latinate adjective "proximate" in the following sentence from Moonlite is one example of Foster's breach of Orwell's advice: "The cattle would seem no closer, though [Lamech] has heard the proximate slop of their summer scourings . . .". (p.2). Some of Foster's reviewers have commented favourably on his impressive vocabulary, including Myfanwy Gollan in the Sydney Morning Herald, who made the observation that Foster "is a guardian of language, keeping it alive by using it"2 (although whether it is the role of the novelist to conserve language or revolutionize it is debatable). It is also true that Foster often uses overblown vocabulary for comic effect:
On the causeway, Isaac Improvement helps Thomas Lobster from a rock pool, into which he has slipped while evading a minatory bull seal, (p.l 1)
Here the comedy depends on the disjunction between the absurd scene being described and the almost exclusively literary term "minatory"—a
1 George Orwell, 'Politics and the English language', The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume IV, Sonya Orwell & Ian Angus (eds), Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1969, p. 169. 2 Myfanwy Gollan, 'Comic traditions, verbal acrobatics', in The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 Feb 1987, p.43. 53 simple trope which is the mainstay of the satire of Moonlite, especially in the first two acts. This is not to downplay the damaging effects of elevated vocabulary on the readability of Foster's fiction—the language of Moonlite remains difficult, regardless of the comedy—but it does indicate that we may be looking at a general difficulty of satire, rather than a problem peculiar to Foster. Latinate expression is common in the work of satirists like Pope, Swift, Johnson and, in the 20th century, Joyce. It may be that the satirical stance demands the superior tone and emotional distance which is conferred in our language by a Latinate vocabulary. What is certain is that Foster's support of endangered words adds to the irritation with which many reviewers and readers respond to his work. Another frequent comic ploy that depends on the peculiarities of Foster's written expression is the dissonant image or simile. The following simile from Christian Rosy Cross ignores traditional precepts of "good" writing by its sheer improbability, which diverts attention away from the noun it is meant to be illuminating:
Christian . . . moistens one finger and dissolves with his touch a feather of alum on the bench; it tastes like the bleached bones of a great, extinct seabird. (p. 15)
The image is particularly absurd if we recall that Christian is only five years-old at the time this action takes place—clearly it is not he but the narrator who is the "author" of the simile. Perhaps we can even trace its inspiration to the feather metaphor in the earlier part of the sentence. If so, what we have here is an example of verbal play taking precedence over the considerations of narrative realism and psychological plausibility. 54 Deliberately anachronistic similes and metaphors are a recurring feature of Foster's ostensibly historical novels Moonlite and Christian Rosy Cross. The following example from Moonlite is typical:
the cry of a passing whitearse, like a jammed cashregister, catches in the open mouth of the priest, (p.9)
The incongruity of the cashregister image in the context of a backward early 19th century Hebridean island immediately draws attention to the role of the narrator, whose intrusion exposes the artificiality of the narrative. This is an exemplary postmodern strategy, achieved, in this case, by an idiosyncratic use of language rather than some flamboyant postmodernist/19th century device such as the narrator addressing the audience directly. But despite the undeniable postmodern effects of Foster's disruptive use of metaphor and simile, the practice may be primarily a satirical tool rather than a consciously postmodernist technique, especially if we consider that a modernist writer like James Joyce, who often argued for the effacement of the narrator, was not above using an intrusive narrator if he found himself in satirical mode, which was often. The following line of dialogue from Ulysses is spoken by the foolish librarian Mr Best: "Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young."! Here the narrator's use of the adverb "youngly" in the attribution of dialogue anticipates the character's subsequent use of the word "young", destroying the illusion of a narrator describing events as they unfold. Nothing could be more calculated to highlight the role of the narrator, a reversal of Joyce's usual practice that only makes sense if we accept that he has temporarily allowed the demands of satire to override his own literary doctrine.
1 James Joyce, Ulysses, Penguin, 1986, p. 160. 55 A more mundane yet unavoidable issue in any discussion of literary expression and readability is the contentious question of prose rhythm and sentence structure. If the response of reviewers is any guide, many readers have difficulties with Foster's expression in this regard. Referring to a passage of 'The Job' (p. 101), the second novella in Hitting the Wall, the reviewer Jenna Mead complained of
the awful over-writing—the repetition on absent "smiling", the lead-footed pun on "conceive", the over-blown clausal syntax, the pompous "frequently regretted"—and its ludicrous failure as the speech of a petty crim ... A
And this was "leaving aside" Mead's central (political) objections to the piece! Although her subsequent criticisms of the first story, 'Eye of the Bull', completely neglect the satirical dimension of the novella. Mead's attack on 'The Job' is in my opinion justified, although the novella was written and published at the beginning of Foster's career, and only resurrected as a companion piece for 'Eye of the Bull'. Nevertheless, the kinds of criticisms made by Mead, especially of Foster's clausal syntax, recur in reviews of his more recent work. Adrian Mitchell's criticisms in a review of Testostero ai*e the most comprehensive:
[Foster] tends to like long sentences with subordinate clauses piled up like early morning traffic, parentheses push their way thi'ough, too many things jostle to be said at once, and participal phrases arrive like unexpected additions to the family.-
In contrast, however, Myfanwy Gollan's review of the same novel praises Foster's "lovely, lucid prose"!
1 Jenna Mead, Untitled, in Island Magazine, No.39, Winter 1989, p.87. 2 Adrian Mitchell, 'Satiric portrayal of our travellers', in The Weekend Australian, 28 Feb-1 Mar, Magazine 15. 56 Notions of what makes prose rhythmic and readable are clearly subjective, and an examination of Foster's syntax provides ammunition for both his critics and his admirer on this score. The second sentence of the following passage from Plumbum, for example, seems to display some of the "tin ear" complained of by Adrian Mitchell:
People will tell you Canberra in the 1950s was like a big country town. Strictly speaking, not so: the cachet—that strangely remote and disorienting lustre—was there, (p.5)
The syntax of the sentence may be impeccably correct, its structure elementary in comparison with the intricacies of, say, Henry James, but in a world in which some editors of mainstream publications regard subordinate clauses as overly complex, Foster is doing himself no favours with the reading public by lacing a sentence with dashes and a colon. In this particular case the brevity of the sentence also magnifies the disruption its punctuation makes to the rhythm. Foster can produce similar difficulties, however, in much longer sentences:
[The Venetians] laugh and chatter, drink their cups of coffee, skol their wine, and strut through the dogshit wearing ankle-length coats of ocelot and possum—Tasmanian opossum, Rankenfile's seen it advertised in the furrier's window; she'll be making some inquiries into that when she gets home—and how they sneer, these painted faces, caked with makeup produced at the expense of blinded rabbits and the flesh of the last whales— at Rankenfile, who dresses sensibly and knows what's good for her skin. (p.6)
The sentence does have a certain implacability, which comically mirrors Rankenfile's irate state of mind, but its punctuation also seems to make the rhythm stumble in a number of places for no thematic reason. This is particularly true of the third and final dash, which causes uncertainty about which of the sentence's clauses are meant to be parenthetic. 57
In a sense it's unfair to dip into an author's entire work to retrieve a couple of awkward sentences—an easy enough exercise with the work of any writer. To redress the balance it's worth noting that Foster's comic timing, particularly his placement of sentences within paragraphs, is often brilliant. His speciality is the comic concluding sentence of a chapter, the prose equivalent of the rhyming couplet of Elizabethan drama. Testostero, with its numerous short chapters, contains many fine examples which are, unfortunately, difficult to present in quotation as the comedy depends on the events of the entire chapter and the rhythm of preceding paragraphs. Foster's occasional mastery of syntax can be appreciated, however, in the following epic sentence from Dog Rock, which is delivered by D'Arcy D'Oliveres and well worth quoting in full. The subject of the sentence is Justice Barney Bolch-Corio, the fifth victim of the infamous Queens Park Ripper:
He left a well-bred wife, a well-educated child, a Filipino housemaid and a collection of antique furniture so valuable and so heavy that no removalist would shift him from his home, which he'd socially outgrown, as it was situated at the far end of a Dunfegan driveway so wet and so steep that schoolboys are still finding bits of the Bechstein grand piano that five years ago got away from seven sturdy men, bolted down the drive, rocketed off a ledge, and overshooting completely the house, jungle and pool area of industrialist Sir Watto Urbanski—to the astonishment of the visiting French fencing team barbecuing by the pool—plummeted into a two acre nature reserve at the foot of the scarp, where it cut a swath twenty feet wide through the last remaining stand of red cedar in the whole of Middle Arm. (p.66)
The rampant rhythm of the sentence contributes to the effectiveness of this comic gem in two major ways: it faithfully reproduces D'Arcy's manner of "running off at the mouth", at the same time evoking the progress of the runaway piano with remarkable accuracy. The lengthy 58 fifth clause sets this literary feat in motion by mimicking the initial acceleration of the piano, while brief subsequent clauses impel the sentence onwards by launching the instrument down the slope with two blistering verbs. Without doubt, however, Foster's masterstroke is the clause describing the astonishment of the French fencing team, which he suspends between two dashes at the same point in the sentence that the piano flies over the visitors' heads. The virtuosity is remarkable, but is Foster making a virtue here of his propensity to create compound sentences that in many other cases simply harm the readability of his prose? As I've already argued, the answer to the question is largely subjective, but it remains a possibility that the complexity of Foster's syntax is just another of the many complexities that deter readers of his fiction. A refreshingly simple feature of Foster's style is his customary use of the present tense, although in this respect he is characteristically out of step with the conventional Hterary preference for past perfect tense. We have also seen, in Dog Rock and The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover, that Foster is capable of combining present and perfect tenses to create sophisticated chronological structures, but with the notable exception of the first half of Mates of Mars, all of his other novels from Moonlite onwards use the present tense to describe direct action. What explains this idiosyncracy? What are its effects? The first thing to note about Foster's present tense narratives is their apparent naturalness. Readers of Mates of Mars, for example, who I have questioned on this issue seem to have rarely noticed the change to the present tense that takes place on page 213. Similarly, it's possible to read any of the novels that are exclusively in the present tense without noticing any undue awkwardness on account of this device. This is extraordinary if we bear in mind how rarely we read entirely present 59 tense novels—or how conspicuous the technique seems when we do. In a novel like Amanda Lohrey's The Reading Group^ for example, it is seldom possible to forget the presence of the present. Unlike Foster's novels, however, The Reading Group is a tense, sombre work; one that evokes a sinister world of political intrigue in Australia's near future. It is devoid of humour. By using the present tense in a narrative of this kind an author always runs the risk of producing a pretentious, portentous tone, and perhaps the only way of combating this danger is to ensure, as Lohrey does, that the subject material is genuinely portentous, thereby justifying the use of the present tense. Foster's novels are by no means as restrained as Lohrey's, suggesting that the satirical work is another category of novel—perhaps the only other category—that can "get away" with using the present tense throughout. This is probably because satire permits a relaxation of the (doggedly insistent) demands of realism in fiction which lead most authors to adopt the tense that is considered the most realistic: the past perfect. This arises from the convention, originating from the oral tradition, that stories resemble genuine accounts of past events, with the result that they are naturally enough delivered in past tense. In contrast, the present tense destroys the brittle illusion that the words on the page record true events, as the action "takes place" before our eyes. Perhaps even in this sophisticated age only a patently ridiculous story can seem reasonably "natural" in this context. The premise of this theory can be tested by looking at the effects of the past tense in the opening half of Mates of Mars, using this section of the novel as a kind of control sample for the rest of Foster's work. A marked difference in tone becomes immediately apparent. Mates of Mars begins, at least, in a more measured, restrained fashion than most of the 1 Amanda Lohrey, The Reading Group, Picador, Sydney, 1988. 60 other novels, even taking into account the relatively slow openings of the other books. Foster introduces characters with an almost 19th century patience, so that Sven for instance does not appear until the novel's third part, more than 100 pages into the story. Comedy is present, but without the manic, despairing quality so common to Foster's other work, and chapters like the one describing Bruce's youthful experiences in a railway goods yard read like conventional "serious" short stories (indeed, Foster contributed the goods yard chapter to the Expressway short story collectioni). Most striking of all, however, is the unusual depth of characterization in the first half of the book. Without entirely rejecting the opportunities for comedy, Foster treats the situation of the newly crippled Steve with particular sensitivity. We see a lonely, unhappy man who will not leave his home out of terror that his disability will make him vulnerable to his enemies. After several paragraphs at the beginning of the novel in which Steve contemplates the difficulties of his new life we encounter the following passage:
He pushed the wheelchair to the window and stared out, even though it was dark. All he could see, with the bedlight on, was his own reflection in the glass pane. (p. 12)
This is a profoundly un-Fosterian scene: characters are rarely given such an opportunity to withdraw from the cascade of narrative events and indulge in self-examination. The description of Steve's reflection in the window emphasizes his introspection. Could it be that the use of the past tense actually produces the moderate tone of the early part of Mates of Marsl The capacity of a technical choice of this kind to effect such a change cannot be underestimated, epecially in the case of a writer whose control of tone is
1 Helen Daniel (ed.), Expressway, Penguin, 1989. 61 not always certain. After all, Foster was expressing the desire to discover a gentler, more lyrical voice up to five years before the book's publication, yet the intervening novel, Testostero, fails completely to realise this ambition. The idea of a tense-influenced tone seems even more persuasive if we examine what happens to the tone of Mates of Mars after the narrative switches to the present tense. This occurs when the action moves to the Top End, a setting in which the behaviour of the characters seems magically transformed into the ridiculous mould we recognize from the previous novels. The change is most noticeable in Steve, who by this stage has severed his legs and taken to walking on his knuckles. As Jade observes, Steve is no longer worried about appearing in public, and his ludicrous readiness to join in any pub brawl that might eventuate is in sharp contrast to his earlier fears of physical vulnerability:
'You're not too embarrassed to go in a pub walking on your knuckles,' says Jade. 'I admire your courage.' 'It's not so much courage,' replies Steve . . . 'these blokes'll be so tanked you'd be riskin a clean shirt to kick'em in the gut. Mind you, if someone wants a blue, I'm only too happy to oblige. Any number, any time, anywhere. That's my motto.' (p.217)
It is finally impossible to decide with any certainty whether the differences in tone and characterization in Mates of Mars are "caused" by the use of two tenses, but this remains an intriguing possibility. Dialogue is another facet of expression that Foster deploys in an unusual fashion. Three factors distinguish it from the dialogue of many other writers: an anti-naturalistic use of narrative within speech, a minimal dependence on attributions, and the creation of recognisably individual voices. Together these measures create an energetic and vivid form of speech that is constantly destabilized by the contradictory presence of absurdist and realist techniques. 62 Foster's unabashed insertion of narrative description into the speech of characters often looks perilously like plain literary ineptitude. The following example is taken from a scene in The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover in which D'Arcy and Sergeant Cadwalloper lie in wait beside a paddock to investigate the activities of two murder suspects. It begins when D'Arcy notices the approach of the first man:
'I think that's Hornery, isn't it? Can you make out a figure in the paddock? I'd know the shape of that stock hat anywhere.' 'Quiet. There's someone coming up the lane.' 'It's Soon Fatt with a canister of semen, an applicator and a box of rubber washing-up gloves. They're on special at the supermart.' 'Sssh. Let's hear what they have to say. Keep that dog under firm control.' 'Look Sarge! Hornery's holding up the two top strands of barbed wire, while Soon Fatt bends down to scramble through!' 'Oh you idiot! I missed what they were saying because of you.' (pp.98- 99)
The transparency of the ploy of forwarding the narrative with patently unrealistic dialogue alerts us to the fact we are reading parody, but parody of what? Does writing of this kind actually exist outside the compositions of schoolchildren? If it does, the target is unworthy of attention, and a more probable explanation is that Foster is not so much breaking literary conventions here as exaggerating them in order to expose their artificiality. After all, while D'Arcy's second and third contributions in this passage are clearly ridiculous, his first would be acceptable in most fiction, yet all that distinguishes it from the others in terms of forwarding the narrative is greater stealth. Of course the central paradox of all such parody is its tendency to simultaneously promote what it seeks to satirize, and it cannot be denied that the progress of Foster's narratives often depends on the parodied devices. 63
In contrast to the anti-naturalistic effect of the parodic component of Foster's dialogue, the scarcity of attributions has an ambiguous effect on its "realism". In one sense, Foster's restraint with speech attributions reduces the strangeness of his present tense narratives by alerting the reader as rarely as possible to the inherent ludicrousness of having a narrator commenting on the action as it unfolds in the present. On the other hand, the sparing use of attributions may draw attention to the artificiality of the dialogue just by virtue of being different from conventional dialogue in fiction, which generally goes to greater lengths to orchestrate speech, especially conversations between quite large numbers of characters—a Foster speciality. Long passages of unnarrated and unattributed dialogue may also remind readers of scripts, thereby foregrounding the question of genre, a process that Foster encourages in Testostero by presenting thirteen central chapters in the format of a play. On a more mundane level it must be said that the absence of dialogue attributions is occasionally disastrous to the clarity of Foster's texts. Chapter 10 of Testostero is one such case. The chapter describes a dinner party in Venice attended by six guests, including the main characters Leon and Noel. At no stage in this scene does Foster use attributions to clarify which of the six characters is speaking, and the only narration he uses is a scene-setting first sentence, "The dinner party." (p. 18). The voices of the characters are differentiated from one another, but because the scene occurs so early in the novel it is impossible for a first time reader to identify them with any certainty. It's one thing to embed pleasures in the text for those who take the trouble to read a novel a second time; quite another to make the basic meaning of the text all but incomprehensible to a first time reader.
Generally Foster's ability to differentiate the voices of his characters prevents confusion of the kind that occurs at the beginning of 64
Testostero. Indeed, his skill in this area would be the envy of many realist writers and makes possible his sparing use of attributions. Foster's mastery of accent and intonation is therefore the linchpin of a style of rendering dialogue that displays both realist and absurdist characteristics. This contradiction generates an unsettling turbulence for the reader, although this is probably less of a deliberate literary effect than a haphazard consequence of Foster's desire—in some ways antithetical to the freewheeling spirit of satire—to portray spoken English with a care and accuracy that would be the envy of many realist writers. To this end the novels reproduce, at one time or another, a host of dialects and almost all the main varieties of English, including the standard American of Colt Cargo, the assumed southern drawl of Roland Rocca, the Scots of Finbar MacDuffie, the Maori of Felix Farquahar, the Indian of the inhabitants of Calcutta, and a range of English regional and class accents from the arisocratic twitter of Lady Cynthia Love-Lamington to the cockney of Percy DeLilo. Australian English is in a sense a separate category, but there is also an array of foreign accents. Now and again Foster is too ambitious in this regard. The following exchange from Mates of Mars is the first in the novel between Vincent Cheng and Bruce Nonnemacher. The conversation takes place in a Singapore dojang as Vincent corrects Bruce's fighting stance:
I'm a't' conference,' said Vincent, slowly, after a lengthy pause. 'So you're a scientist,' persisted Bruce. 'Come from round here?' 'Kee' your ba' strai',' snapped Vincent. 'You mus' a'ways kee' your ba' strai'!' (p.56)
Foster is clearly at great pains here to render Vincent's Chinese accent accurately, but for the remainder of the novel Vincent's speech is presented in a much more conventional manner, so that in the succeeding 65 chapter his Enghsh has become sufficiently idiomatic for him to declare, 'There's no hotel, mate .... You're in the country now.' (p.64). The contrast between the two accents is too stark for us to accept the first as a stronger version intended to orient the reader (so to speak) to Vincent's way of talking. Lapses and inconsistencies of this kind, however, are rare. With the exception of the satirical rendering of accents in the 'Intermezzo' section of Testostero, Foster's attempts to replicate the accents of both native and foreign speakers of English are impressively successful. Vernacular Australian has a significance in Foster's novels that sets it apart from other, essentially decorative English accents, however expertly rendered they might be. Of primary importance is the conscious literary nationalism—which I noted in my introduction—that drives Foster's ambition to record Australian English as he hears it spoken. Whether or not this aspect of his novels harms their potential sales overseas must remain a moot point, but perhaps it is enough to know that Foster believes it does and yet still insists on the "long term fatality"! of trying to cater for an international market by reducing the local flavour of dialogue in Australian novels. Of course the Australian vernacular is not a monolithic structure but a house of many rooms, and it's not the salon (or indeed the bedrooms) that Foster is interested in but the cellar, the laundry and the tool shed. The life of a language, in Foster's view, comes from the working classes:
The traditional Australian argot has been virtually lost by the bourgeoisie in this country. The only place it's been preserved to some extent is amongst the working class.^
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 2 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 66
Such a view seems unduly pessimistic about the inventiveness of contemporary Austrahan speech, which Foster himself often celebrates. Nevertheless, it's the presence of a working class "Australian argot", traditional or otherwise, and especially in combination with philosophical and scientific speculation, which lends Foster's work its unique flavour. By letting characters "speak for themselves" in dialogue which is only lightly mediated by a narrator, Foster displays a willingness to renounce a degree of control over his texts. In contrast, another characteristic feature of his expression, the list, betrays the opposite tendency. Foster's novels are littered with lists. The following example from Plumbum, describing Rollo's synthesizer, is typical:
You know the KORG rhythm ace, how it uses bass drum, snare, cymbal, hi-hat, conga-tom and rim shot-cowbell-clave (a mere six frequencies) with forty-eight programmes (three ballad; three bossa; three five-four; three swing; six disco; twelve rock; three pop and one each of shuffle, enka, tango, samba, beguine, rumba, mambo habanera, afro, cha-cha, march, foxtrot, jazz waltz, waltz and rock waltz) to supersede the average cocktail drummer? (p.328)
Although its subject material is completely different, this sentence uses a comic technique not unlike Judy Rankenfile's recitation of grievances against the Venetians: a wholly excessive list is rounded off with a clause which can only seem bathetic. The ploy has less to do with content than sentence rhythm, and because a single glance is enough to establish the content but not the humour of a list, it is interesting to speculate how many readers actually read Foster's lists, as opposed to surveying them as a single block of text before passing on to the next piece of narrative or dialogue. 67
The novels themselves contain a couple of explanations for the presence of lists in the texts. In Dog Rock, a novel sown with numerous botanical lists, D'Arcy complains that
Of the 776 local residents only five know the common name of this tree [the native daphne] . . . and only one knows its botanical name: moreover, this scholar is not in the habit of speaking to his neighbours, whom he secretly regards as a job lot of ignorant colonials, (p.7)
The scholar is of course D'Arcy himself, and he often reiterates his contempt for people's ignorance of nomenclatures, botanical or otherwise. The following passage is an attack on the local artists and mystics:
I see signs of a self-defensive mysticism among the local Balthazars. If it's a crime to give a thing a name, you don't feel so bad about being ignorant. I'll guarantee the guru at the ashram can't tell one boronia from another, (p. 102)
D'Arcy's views on this subject are at one with his creator's. When interviewed, Foster explained his dislike of the "international fable", stripped of local references, by commenting that "a tree is never a tree for me—it's a stringybark or something. This attitude might be linked with an earlier comment by Foster that film and television have usurped the storytelling role of fiction, with the result that novels should now concentrate on "portraying complexityIn this context, Foster's lists can be seen as an attempt to express the multifariousness of the physical world. Inevitably, the process of naming also represents an attempt to control the threat posed by complexity, as the following description from
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 2 Videorecording No.263, Australian Defence Force Academy library, Canberra. 68
Plumbum makes clear. The scene takes place as the band enters its Sydney squat for the first time.
Cities depress Jason. In what does the abundant filth consist? Perhaps if we analyse it, we deprive it of power. Blue plastic ministraws from Prima fruit juice cartons, portions of broken cinnamon milk crates, garment labels, white dog shit, cigarette butts, cigarette packets, dehydrated sputum, horsehair from old sofas, tines from red combs, silver foil, crystalline soot, scraps of old newsprint, nail clippings; cast-off tyres; cast-off cars; cast-off houses; cast- off women; cast-off men; cast-off kids; cast-off social workers; cast-off professors of social work. (pp. 140-141)
Despite the comedy of this passage, it successfully conveys the "substance" of Jason's depression. Moreover, the surrealistic development of the list broadens the scope of the despair it engenders by including society's human detritus, infusing the passage with an interest which is often missing from Foster's other lists. One of these less successful examples occurs in Testostero, where we encounter a letter— from Leon in Sydney to Noel in London—which contains an essentially tedious description of the operations of the Marrickville pool, (pp.94-97). The passage is not strictly speaking a list, but the itemization of Leon's duties is not enlivened by any narrative. Foster clearly believes that middle-class readers ought to be interested in the jobs of working class people, a reasonable enough proposition, but the pool information in Testostero is poorly integrated into the narrative. Foster has Leon express the following lame rationale for its presence: "I'd like to describe the operation to you, Noel, as it may help me remember it." (p.95).
In his review of Mates of Mars Jeff Doyle commented favorably on the novel's list-making. 69 Foster's prose is often incantatory. He knows for example the power of the list.... Cumulatively these lists are both hilariously comic—and mystical and meditative: "kick", or "kiap", and other specific jargon repeated some dozen or so times in a paragraph, invites rhythmic reading for the mind's ear.l
"The power of the list" is also evident throughout the opening act of Moonlite, with its long passages of botanical and geological observation. These descriptive lists help establish the novel's setting and, by conveying more than just information, are some of the most effective in Foster's fiction. Powerful descriptive lists are also a prominent feature of the Calcutta section of Plumbum. Of particular note are the descriptions of the stalls of the turmeric merchants (p.236), of the "endless phantasmagoria of music" heard by a blinded Jason on the streets (pp.244-245), and the evocation of Free School Street outside Nick's recording studio, (pp.210-212). This last passage has some of the impact attained by the work of the doyen of literary lists, Georges Perec, whose Dante-inspired portrait of decending circles of an industrial hell is probably the most awesome and powerful list ever assembled in literature.2 Foster's passage uses the same kind of implacable accumulation of detail to convey the multiplicity of life in Free School Street, and ends with the observation that "It's quiet at this hour, but by 8 a.m. Free School Street will come to life." (p.212). Through comedy and a purposeful use of detail, Foster ensures that this particular list animates the novel's setting. Having examined the complexity of lists, I'd now like to pass on to the intricacies of what I will call Foster's "experimental" expression, although this description is somewhat vague and even misleading, since 1 Jeff Doyle, 'Heart of Australian Darkness', in The Canberra Times, 24 Aug 1991, C9. 2 Georges Perec, Life: A User's Manual, translated by David Bellos, Collins Harvill, London, 1987, pp.358-361. 70 much of the writing I am referring to has the sHghtly old-fashioned air of certain kinds of early 20th century modernist fiction. Nevertheless, the term "experimental" does serve to distinguish this particular use of language from Foster's more conventional expression. Reviewers of the novels often mention the apparent influence of Joyce on parts of Foster's work, particularly the flights of poetic or prosaic nonsense that take off in Plumbum and Christian Rosy Cross. The following paragraph from Plumbum "describes" the Musiekcentrum audience's excited sexual response to Sharon's performance:
Soft pylons! Tractable lozenges looming large! The cobweb mobpleb mossclub dishcloth hallucination yields again to the bright light at the end of a pulsating tunnel, which proves to be the indole ring adobe hut of Salty Serontonin from the Marble Bar bottle shop. (p.361)
Of course, a mode of expression which for Joyce was joyful iconoclasm assumes a quite different significance at the jaded end of the twentieth century—generally, that one of Foster's characters is under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The following exchange between Christian and an imaginary page boy takes place in Christian's head after he consumes half a barrel of hashish.
There's no stopping till you reach rock bottom, and this is it!' 'I think I'll give it a miss' says Christian. 'I don't feel good, and hopooid vodgrais Ipbs epgraooob oosfxsg.' 'Gpdsxogh bxgg' laughs the page, and down they go. (p. 121)
Christian is subsequendy convinced that his experiences on the drug have revealed to him the meaning of life, and promptly sets out to spread the word in the "Reformation of the Whole Wide World". Unfortunately, a plague of rival prophets makes it difficult for him to disseminate the 71 truth, until in desperation he decides to share some of his stash with a would-be disciple, a Jerusalem Jew. The effect is considerable:
'Amazing' says the Jew, shaking his head in disbelief. 'Oxus beefsteak, who would have thought it? Opsoap winebar dopehead downo, if upjack arsetit pompchat wishbone. I gotta go straight off and warn my colleagues!' (p. 124)
Interestingly, the Jew's insights are almost identical to the nonsense words used by a sober Finbar MacDuffie, in Moonlite, to describe the misconceived mathematical work he has produced under the influence of alchohol:
Ludicrously wrong! And the numerology! Oxus beefsteak! Or opsoap winebar dopehead downo, if upjack arsetit pompchat wishbone! (p. 156)
In Plumbum, an inebriated Rollo makes similar observations, this time about road surfaces: The machine decides tar lacks tarmacs; tar maks tarlacks, latex rolex, alltrucks tollmax, poleaxe pillman by pipkins pollmate, pickaparadiddle through pullmans parallax, pain if a pied pried polo played parallel, pleasures through plentiful pillows of pocketmoney? (p.25)
In another effort to portray the effect of a drug, Foster engages a stoned Christian Rosencreutz in conversation with a number of inanimate objects. The most loquacious of these is a barrel used as a ballot-box in the election for the viceroy of Damascus: 'Have you seen our girlfriend?' says the bottom of the barrel. 'My word, she's a little charmer. We refer to our copper fittings. Chuck us one down, why don't you.' (p. 117) 72 The talking barrel bears a striking resemblance to a number of talking objects in the brothel scene of Ulysses, including a fan and a shoe belonging to one of the prostitutes. i The hallucinatory quality of Joyce's scene is also meant to reflect the effect of a drug on the viewpoint character, Leopold Bloom—in this case alcohol. Foster's experimental expression has other functions besides portraying the effects of intoxication or stupor. It is a key part, for example, of his characteristic comedy of excess. The following passage from Plumbum is part of a much longer paragraph that partially depends on its length for comic effect, although this extract does illustrate how extravagant language contributes to the comedy. Notice the Joycean amalgam of Latinate and archaic expression:
by all the apocrine glands of every warrior who ever swore, by hook, he would not rest by glade-dimpled beehive vernal. . . and forswearing homely pleasures of tabby fire by slow shore, smote hundreds and thousands of sophisticated heads off, bespectacled, banal arteries to pour, like ichor from Old Jove's almanac . . . (p.341)
Etcetera. It hardly seems worth mentioning that this particular flight of fancy takes off from a description of the Plumbum road convoy driving along a Dutch autobahn. Here plot becomes a mere pretext, as it does in Ulysses, for the play of words. In the description of the Plumbum concert this play takes the form of what one critic has seen as a parody of the Book of Revelations.2 This is a persuasive rationale for the presence of the apocalyptic language and imagery that describes the concert:
Felix, with a flash of kettledrum thunder, evokes and awakens the fourheaded gigawatt demiurge Gog Magog Mamirv and Marv, which
1 James Joyce, Ulysses, Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1986, pp.430-432. 2 Narelle Shaw, '"Nothing is random": David Foster's Plumbum', in Southerly, No. 1, March 1990, p.87. 73 offers, at a price, a hard target kill capability launch on warning hair trigger perceived vulnerability interdiction search and destroy strategic deterrent deployment effective first strike threat, but this is rejected, (p.362)
This monster subsequently "stalks out, yawning quantum algorithms", evoking Yeats's "rough beast" slouching towards Bethlehem to be bom.
Foster's experimental expression is a crucial exhibit in any debate about the readability of his fiction, for writing which is sometimes intended to represent the effects of drugs and alcohol must also inevitably inflict mind-altering sensations on the readers. Whether that sensation is of sedation or intoxification will vary from one individual to another, but it is possible to make two helpful generalizations about Foster's expression: it challenges rather than seduces and confounds rather than flatters. These observations can also be extended to the total effect of the novels, and I would argue that these tendencies place Foster's fiction firmly in the tradition of "serious" high modernism, a heritage that the author himself claims for his work.i By making such a classification I do not mean to ignore features of the fiction that appear to place it in the postmodernist category—genre swapping and anti-realistic characterization, for instance—instead I want to suggest that Foster's unwillingness to please, his stubborn determination to make the reader work rather than play, imply an indifference for reader-accessibility which is basically anti- postmodern. My argument is an unavoidably awkward one, for consciously postmodernist or feminist writers often speak of making the reader "work" at their texts, as opposed to remaining a passive consumer, but the essential idea here is of reader participation and play. In the words of the critic, Robert Dunn, postmodernism involves "A shift from the values of seriousness ('intellect') to those of play ('pleasure') 1 David Foster, 'Satire', in The Phoenix Review, No.2, Summer 1987/88, p.79. 74 accompanying the growth of mass culture. For all their (brittle) comedy, Foster's novels are very much products of the intellect. Readers may admire the wit and virtuosity of Foster's texts, but if the frequently negative response of reviewers is any guide, the difficulties of the novels often deter reader participation. At this point I'd like to test the notion of reader exclusion from Foster's novels by turning to a study of reading habits which was conducted in France and Hungary in 1979 and subsequently reported in an essay by Jacques Leenhardt.2 The study involved 500 readers of different social backgrounds from both France and Hungary. Researchers gave the subjects two contemporary novels to read, one French and one Hungarian. Both were translated, naturally enough, into the languages of their respective foreign audiences. After reading the novels the groups were then asked to complete two questionnaires, the first about their own lives and reading interests and the second about the novels. This second questionnaire (devised by researchers from both countries in an attempt to reduce its cultural specificity) tried to establish the readers' opinions about the behaviour of the characters, the relative importance of plot points, and the "literary effects" created by each book. (p.211). By correlating these data with the personal information from each reader, the researchers hoped to determine how and if class and national culture affected readers' interpretations of fiction. The French novel was Les Choses, by Georges Perec, which tells the story of a young, well-educated French couple who are lured away from a supposedly meaningful and useful life by the blandishments of the consumer society. The Hungarian novel, Rozsdatemetd, by E. Fejes, 1 Robert Dunn, Postmodernism: populism, mass culture, and avant-garde', in Theory, Culture and Society, No.8, 1991, p.ll3. 2 Jacques Leenhardt, Towards a sociology of reading', translated by Brigitte Navelet and Susan Suleiman in The Reader in the Text, Susan Suleiman & Inge Crosman (eds), pp.205-224. 75 explores the history of a large Hungarian family from the end of the fascist regime in 1945 to the height of communism in the late 'sixties. While noting the plurality of opinion in the subjects' answers, the researchers believed they could detect two distinct national modes of reading and interpreting the novels. For the French readers this involved "an emphasis on the logic of the novel, and constant attempts at causal explanations." (pp.216-217). In the French reading, Leenhardt argues, "determinism is one of the essential principles." The Hungarians, on the other hand, preferred "a judgemental code in which a hierarchy of values is predominant; good and evil are the criteria for a moralizing approach to the novel." (p.217). In the view of the researchers, these modes of reading caused the audiences of both countries to oppose the foreign text "with a violence that aimed at reducing its strangeness." (p.215). In the case of the French readers of Rozsdatemetd, this involved restructuring the novel's fragmentary narrative of family incidents around a central hero. In the words of Leenhardt, "The attitude of this disconcerted Trench] reader thus results, paradoxically, in the production of certitude." (p.216). The Hungarian reading of Les Choses, on the other hand, was less uniform, but still involved a large degree of stereotyping and "restructuring". For example, the novel's few overtly dramatic scenes were preferred by twice as many readers in Hungary as in France, apparently because these scenes permitted the Hungarian readers to mobilize moral judgements about the actions of the characters. Intriguingly, 55% of Hungarian readers approved of the characters' ultimate surrender to the consumer hfestyle, citing their own ideal of "a normal, very calm" and affluent existence as the reason for coming to this conclusion. The French readers, many of whom already enjoyed such an existence, presumably felt freer to assent, at least in theory, to the novel's critique of consumerism. 76 Borrowing from the terminology of linguistics, Jacques Leenhardt argues that the readers in the study sought the maximum degree of redundancy in the novels; that is, the more they were able to take for granted, both in terms of literary conventions and ideology, the happier they were. In fact, this impulse was so great that readers attempted to manipulate their reading of the novels to suit their own prejudices. Importantly, Leenhardt also points out that in some cases the opposite occured: the fiction appeared to "short-circuit" readers' values, at least temporarily. (p.221). A study of this kind is vulnerable to all sorts of objections, particularly the charge of cultural and linguistic bias, and without a more thorough knowledge of the data it is impossible to come to an informed opinion about the authority of the researchers' interpretations. Nevertheless, the study's conclusion—that fiction both affects and is affected by the values and expectations of readers—seems reasonable enough, even if it does emphasize the latter effect. Its significance for the work of David Foster is also clear, because Foster's fiction is characterized by a very low level of redundancy. As we have already observed, the novels constantly subvert conventions and confound readers' expectations—whether these expectations are to do with structure, expression, or ideology (a feature I intend to explore at greater length in Chapter 5). In short, the novels contain much that is strange to "the average reader". In this respect they are identical to the innovative fiction of those prominent writers who have continually redefined literary conventions, but in the case of a conspicuously uncanonized writer such as Foster there seems little doubt that a majority of readers "do violence" to the spirit of his fiction (or even stop reading it altogether) rather than assimilate the onslaught of novelty in the novels. Negative critics of Foster's work may actually number amongst these excluded readers, who 77 have been freed, as it were, to impose their own Hterary and ideological prejudices on the texts from the outside. This in turn explains the uniformity of the criticisms of Foster's work, which tend to focus on its vulgarity, apparent disorder and objectionable politics. To simplify the terms of the discussion I would like to posit two basic categories of texts, two different kinds of writers: the frontal assault variety, who try to storm readers' defences by force; and the Trojan horse variety, who attempt to lull the reader into a false sense of security as a prelude to introducing subversive ideas by stealth. The first group are the obvious iconoclasts, intent on challenging the reader by destroying conventions; at first they tend to make litde progress with the public and have to wait until readers have adjusted to the newly-created conventions before the authors receive the recognition they deserve. This occurs later in their careers or after their deaths. The second group consists of writers who are content to work within existing conventions, or who prefer to manipulate those conventions only slightly in order to reach a greater number of readers, at least initially. They aim to seduce rather than shock. Of course this group contains a large number who will fade into obscurity, but it also boasts writers such as Dickens, George Eliot, Steinbeck and Hemingway. It appears that posterity will reward these apparently less adventurous authors as long as their work is well written and sufficiently original in its content. It is clear that Foster belongs to the former, "crash through" category of writers (it is even tempting to see Pete Blackman's inability to attract women, in Plumbum, as a kind of allegory of Foster's failure to seduce readers). Perhaps if we could confidently assert that the negative effects of this approach are only temporary, that Foster's work will endure because of its difficulty, then we could dismiss concerns about the 78 readability of his novels. The critic Karlheinz Stierle, for one, has an optimistic view of the increasing sophistication of literary fiction:
The history of fiction is the history of its rising complexity, always indicating increasingly complex skills of realization. Concurrently, the history of reading competence shows a tendency toward a growing complexity.!
In other words, readers (or perhaps a proportion of readers) have always demonstrated an ability to at least follow the innovations of avant-garde fiction. In another positive view of the complexity of fiction, Susan Suleiman quotes Wolgang Iser's comparison of a fictional text with the constellations of the night sky, in which different observers are able to perceive any number of patterns.2 By implication, a more complex literary firmament makes for richer interpretations and reading experiences. Extending the celestial metaphor, Suleiman cites Hans- Robert Jauss's notion of the reading public's "horizon of expectations", which at any given time marks the boundary of the audience's notion of what constitutes literature, (pp.35-36). Naturally enough, this horizon changes as avante-garde writing and other cultural changes recondition reading tastes. The metaphor is both useful and persuasive, although as Suleiman points out it would be more accurate to speak of "horizons" and "publics" than a single homogeneous readership. The conclusions Jauss draws about literary value, however, are extreme. The first sentence of the following passage is Jauss's; Suleiman is responsible for the second sentence and the italicization in the first:
1 Karlheinz Stierle, The reading of fictional texts', translated by Inge Crosman and Thekla Zachrau in The Reader in the Text, 1980, p.89. 2 Susan Suleiman, 'Varieties of audience-oriented criticism', in The Reader in the Text, p.23. 79
"The distance between the horizon of expectations and the work, between the familiarity of previous aesthetic experiences and the 'horizon change' demanded by the response to new works, determines the artistic nature of a literary work . . . the smaller this distance ... the closer the work comes to the realm of 'culinary' or light reading." Misunderstood or ignored masterpieces, by the same token, are works whose distance from the horizon of expectations of a given time is so great that it may take generations before they are incorporated into the literary canon, (pp.36-37)
My main objection to these conclusions is based on Jauss's apparent endorsement of novelty as the main criterion of literary value, which if taken to its logical conclusion would lead to a mandatory experimentalism in fiction. The possibility of a thoroughly bad avant- garde text, for instance, is not canvassed at all, although the theory correctly identifies the prerequisite in most Western art for at least some degree of originality. A brilliantly executed romance or detective story, for example, could never be regarded as great literature unless it transgressed the boundaries of the genre in some way. Even someone working within a previously prestigious style would find it difficult to achieve serious recognition if he or she failed to update the genre, a dilemma that forms the basis of Robertson Davies' novel. What's Bred in the Bone, whose hero becomes a maestro in the painting style of the Old Masters but remains unable to express himself in a more modern idiom. i The topic of artistic and literary convention has become particularly fraught since post-structuralist and feminist critics began emphasizing the unavoidably political nature of literary expression. According to this approach, conventional narrative structures or unadventurous expression lead to textual closure and a reinscription of Eurocentric or patriarchal modes of thought. This is undoubtedly true,
1 Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone, Penguin, 1987. 80 for by its very nature literature involves the imposition of some kind of pattern on the text, and while fiction is produced within a culture tyrannized by the Logos, or Western model of thinking, it will naturally continue to reproduce logocentric values. The critic Michel Beaujour has gone so far as to claim that all fiction, open or closed. Western or otherwise, is in one sense authoritarian, since the "conclusions and interpretations" fiction invites from readers are "on the side of the law (or at least of some law, which may be waiting in the wings for its opportunity to become legal)," with the result that "even the radical roman a these ... is a stalking horse for the law of the father and for social dictatorship."! This is an extreme position, but by ignoring the material reality of culture, "pure" post-structuralism does appear to overstate the capacity of avant-garde art and literature to challenge the hegemony of the Logos. The act of reading a book, for instance, remains a profoundly middle-class activity no matter how revolutionary the text, not least because the book remains a commodity in the capitalist economic system—the basis of much Western ideology. It is also clear that apparently avant-garde texts are, in their own way, just as dependent on literary conventions as traditional fiction, since ^^conventional fiction defines itself against the conventions it repudiates, thereby entering a dialogue with the past. In this sense, radical texts actually reinscribe traditional conventions by opposing them. In the words of Jonathon Culler,
The activity [of writing a poem or a novel] is made possible by the existence of the genre, which the author can write against, certainly, whose conventions he may attempt to subvert, but which is none the less the
1 Michel Beaujour, 'Exemplary pornography: Barres, Loyola, and the novel', in The Reader in the Text, p.345. 81
context within which his activity takes place, as surely as the failure to keep a promise is made possible by the institution of promising. ^
Clearly, not only is the capacity of literature to change general culture severely limited, its ability to evolve itself is by no means absolute. The picture, however, is not entirely gloomy. In a modest fashion, fiction may in fact routinely subvert dominant ideologies, even if in some respects it simultaneously reinforces them. Ironically, the idea that fiction can be subversive was first proposed during the 18th century by conservative critics of the form, who were particularly worried about the deleterious effects of novels on the imaginations of women. We now tend to regard subversive tendencies much more positively. In an attempt to balance his case about the inherent conservatism of the novel, Michel Beaujour advances the following, more positive argument:
Although in practice the novel can be made to convey the Christian or Communist messages of self-oblivion, deferred gratification, desire for the law, its deeper appeal always lies in the depiction of sin, error, disorder, in all that is transgressive, excessive. Muckraking is indeed a good term for the ambiguous novel: no matter who handles the rake, and to what law- abiding purpose, he exploits the allurements of muck, and muck sticks to the rake.^
Beaujour speaks here of the "ambiguous novel", but it could also be argued that the inherent ambiguity of language bestows the allure of the transgressive on all fiction—certainly on all self-consciously literary fiction—however apparently conventional it might otherwise appear. Moreover, even the simplest genre novel provides the reader with an imaginative zone which is fundamentally the same as that offered by the
1 Jonathon Culler, Structuralist Poetics: structuralism, linguistics and the study of literature, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, p. 116. 2 Michel Beaujour, in The Reader in the Text, p.348. 82 most highly-lauded avant-garde text. Both kinds of book not only sanction fantasy within their covers but demand it. The increasing focus on the role of the reader provides another possible argument against the automatic privileging of avant-garde texts over more conventional work. In her introduction to The Reader in the Text, Susan Suleiman observes the explosion of interest in the 1970s in reader-response issues such as "the performance of reading, the role of feeling, the variability of individual response, the confrontation, transaction, or interrogation between texts and readers. . (p.4). She goes on to state that "reading consists ... of a process of decoding what has by various means been encoded in the text." (p.8). In other words, the critical site of fictional creation is located between the text and the reader. By implication, an author has a responsibility to pay attention to this "area" in order to ensure that the text is transmitted as clearly as possible to the reader. Of course the work itself need not be conventional or simplistic, but the importance of clarity only increases if a novel is especially complex or bizarre. Dostoyevsky, for instance, claimed to want to achieve "complexity with simplicity" in his novels. In contrast, the reader-text nexus in Foster's novels often appears to be "smudged" or faulty. Finally, I'd like to return to Karlheintz Stierle's positive attitude, quoted earlier in this chapter, to both the growing complexity of fiction and the increasing sophistication of readers. Both propositions are clearly true, but I'd like to take issue with the notion, implicit in Stierle's argument, that this process can continue indefinitely, or even for any significant period in relation to the short history of the novel. Ever- increasing literary complexity is as improbable as indefinite exponential growth in an economy or population, and the interest of critics in complexity—of theme, structure, expression—not to mention the 83 increasingly complex form their interest takes, indicates that literature has probably entered a period that could be characterized as baroque. If all things remained equal we could confidently predict a return to classical literary values, but things are not remaining equal. The culture which produces literature is changing. Fiction now finds itself in competition with other entertainment media such as film, television, and the nascent virtual reality. In this respect it is important to recall that early modernist movements were partly a reaction against the growing influence of popular culture, which the modernists saw as an expression of crass bourgeois consumerism. It may even be that by privileging complex fiction, like that of Joyce, modernists were making a virtue out of the failure of their work to appeal to a broad reading public, whose tastes, since the time of Dickens, had lagged behind the developments in fiction. As I've already noted, Foster's work has much in common with early modernism, both in its condemnation of bourgeois values and its disdain for literary convention. As a result, it also lays itself open to the charges of elitism that have been levelled against modernist literature in the past twenty years—a particular irony given Foster's working class sympathies. The picture is further complicated by Foster's own practice of incorporating popular culture into his literature, a quintessentially postmodernist procedure; but as I have already argued, the tendency of his fiction to exclude readers overrides these apparent concessions to readability. Ultimately, his work may indeed overcome these drawbacks and "crash through" to widespread acceptance, but it is also worth considering that postmodernism's preoccupation with the pleasure of reading may not only be a political reaction against the elitism of modernism but also a practical response to the encroaching threat of other media. By neglecting, rather than renewing, conventional pleasures of 84 the text such as plot and character, writers hke Foster may ensure that fewer and fewer people read literary fiction. 3. Joking in Earnest
7 know duplicity when I see it!' 'Aye, and you see it everywhere! You judge like a saint, hut you have no love in your heart.' Moonlite (p. 107)
The aim of this chapter is to define the nature of David Foster's satire. This is a somewhat paradoxical task, since the divergences in Foster's fiction from what we commonly regard as satire are precisely those features that account for its special flavour. For this reason I will now propose a "standard" form of satire from which Foster's work departs, taking as a model the satire of writers such as Swift, Johnson, and Voltaire, who set the tone of the modern genre by taking up the instrument of reason to expose the folhes of society. This formulation is undoubtedly an oversimplification (especially in the case of Swift); but the generalized picture of the modern satirist as a rather distant, ultimately reasonable figure has been substantially true until quite recently. Would-be satirists such as Brett Baston-Ellis are now throwing the genre into crisis by withdrawing the traditional voice of moral authority from their work, while in the case of Foster the authoritative voice is not so much missing as fragmented and confused. The confusion extends to the tone of Foster's novels, which oscillates from satirical farce to tragedy, from joyful word-play to violent or despairing anger. Above all, however, Foster's satire is the satire of excess. Borrowing from the theories of the Russian literary historian Mikhail Bakhtin, as well as from 86
Foster's own ideas about satire, I will argue that the extravagance of Foster's fiction has a partly medieval, even classical Roman character, and that many of its most perplexing features are caused by Foster's haphazard application of these earlier forms of satire. The first stop on any journey through Foster's satire must be the author's own essay on the subject. 'Satire', written in 1987, is an erudite, provocative piece in which Foster attempts to define the nature of the form.i The essay contains some brilliant insights but Foster tailors his definitions of the genre to match his own literary practice, so that the piece reads like an apologia for his own brand of satire. It begins, for example, by tracing the word "satire" to the Latin word "satur", meaning full or replete (p.63). Foster goes on to connect the word "farce" to the Latin verb "farcire", to stuff, and concludes that a satirical work should therefore be "stuffed full", dense and rich. "If not," he states dogmatically, "it's not satire." Quoting the classical scholar Gilbert Highet, Foster then offers the following definition of classical Roman satire:
A continuous piece of verse, or of prose mingled with verse, of considerable size, with great variety of style and subject, but generally characterised by the free use of conversational language, the frequent intrusion of the author's personality, a predilection for wit, humour and irony, great vividness and concreteness of description, shocking obscenity in theme and language, an improvisatory tone, topical subjects and the general intention of improving society by exposing its vices and follies. Its essence is summed up in the phrase 'ridentem dicere verum', joking in earnest, (p.64)
Foster has spoken about the extraordinary length of time it took for him to realize what form he was writing in,2 so it's easy to imagine how gratifying it must have been to discover a definition of satire that seems
1 Foster, 'Satire', in The Phoenix Review, No.2, Summer 1987/88. 2 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 87 to encapsulate his own work (although he does express scepticism about the "improving" qualities of satire). At first glance the correspondences appear to validate Foster's variety of satire, but it might be asked whether similarity to a 2000 year-old literary form is really such a recommendation. At the very least the similarity must create problems for readers accustomed to a more recent model of satire, and Foster's logic is certainly faulty when he declares that satire is only satire when it conforms to the original precepts of the genre. Such a view ignores subsequent changes in satire, particularly those wrought during the Enlightenment, when satirists like Voltaire became committed to exposing the follies and injustices of their societies with reason and logic. The targets of ancient satire may have been the same, but as Gilbert Highet's description of classical satire makes clear, the attacks of Roman satirists were not guided by any commitment to an over-arching principle such as reason. Nevertheless, Roman and Enlightenment satire probably have more in common with each other than medieval and Renaissance satire have with either, and it is the similarity between the work of Foster and the early Renaissance satirist Rabelais which I would now like to examine in detail. In Rabelais and His World^ Mikhail Bakhtin attempts to elucidate the work of this Renaissance French writer by exploring the culture in which Rabelais wrote. In Bakhtin's opinion, the bewilderment experienced by many post-Renaissance readers of Rabelais's novel Gargantua (1532) has been caused by their failure to make this hermeneutic effort, with the result that even scholars of Rabelais were inclined to use anachronistic literary models as the basis of their interpretations, (p.3). Primarily this involved seeing Rabelais's vigorous
1 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, translated by Helene Iswolsky, Indiana University Press, 1984. 88 folk humour as purely negative satire, ignoring its positive significance as an expression of resistance against a gloomy "official" medieval culture. (p.9). In this context, we can see Gargantua as a Renaissance work intent on destroying ailing medieval orthodoxies with the aid of medieval folk humour, a paradoxical project since success rendered both obsolescent, although writers did subsequendy integrate folk laughter into the new official Renaissance culture. This process, Bakhtin argues, was a direct result of the positive, generative aspects of Rabelais's folk humour. As the medieval world receded, however, subsequent generations of readers were unable to appreciate the positive dimensions of Rabelais's work, with the result that they came to regard its rustic vulgarity and obscenity as a rather repellant form of negative satire. Clearly there is a parallel here between Rabelais's work and Foster's. By identifying the similarities I am not making a case for the presence of some underlying positive ethos in Foster's fiction so much as demonstrating how its alien variety of satire is prone to the same incomprehension as that suffered by Gargantua. The key term Bakhtin uses to describe the spirit of medieval folk culture is "carnivalesque", since the popular culture of the time found its clearest expression on the numerous feast days of the medieval calendar. Bakhtin describes how popular celebrations ran in tandem with ecclesiastical ceremonies that were themselves overlays of earher pagan rituals. During carnival time authority was mocked and social hierarchies inverted in games and celebrations, although Bakhtin never comes to grip with the possibility that these customs may have been tacidy endorsed by medieval authorities to provide an outlet for the peasant class's resentment of the feudal structure. In other words, carnival folk culture occupied the same ambiguous position in regard to authority that the novel has occupied ever since, although this ambiguity is not especially 89 harmful to Bakhtin's argument about Rabelais's subversive use of carnival culture in literature. An essential ingredient of the carnivalesque spirit is excess. Carnival is also ubiquitous. Bakhtin argues that Rabelais's contemporaries were especially equipped to appreciate the polyphonous carnival spirit of his novel:
They could be interested in the high level of the problems and ideas expressed in the novel's prandial talks, as well as in the trivia, abuses, indecencies, pedantry, and farce, for they knew that one logic pervaded all these elements which in our eyes appear so different. (p.61)
Bakhtin's description could well describe the work of Foster, which is similarly heterogeneous. Unfortunately, the recent popularity of postmodernist pastiche doesn't appear to give modern readers of Foster the same entree into his work that an understanding of carnival culture gave to contemporary readers of Rabelais. In our eyes the diverse elements of Foster's fiction often appear to remain diverse. Ironically enough, this may be because Foster's novels are not recognizably postmodernist pastiches, but authentically carnivalesque works devoid of the original positive connotations of the genre. Another feature of the carnivalesque is the all-embracing nature of its laughter. Paraphrasing the German critic Jean Paul, Bakhtin identifies this impulse in the work of Shakespeare, whose fools have a way of "deriding the entire world". "Jean Paul," Bakhtin writes,
understands perfectly well the universal character of laughter. "Destructive humour" is not directed against isolated negative aspects of reality but against all reality, against the finite world as a whole, (p.42)
Once again the parallels with Foster's work are clear, for he is a writer who turns his satire onto a wide range of targets, without coherent 90 guiding principles. In the same essay in which he insists on saturation satire, Foster argues that "a satirist sets out to draw blood, and flails about wildly in all directions, until gradually, like any fighter, he learns to pick his openings." (p.64). If by this statement he means to imply that he himself has gradually learned "to pick his openings" he is clearly thinking wishfully, for Foster remains a flailing fighter. Elsewhere he is prepared to admit this:
I'm a natural born debunker. I can't help myself. When I turn my attention to any subject, that's what results.^
The particular subject Foster is speaking of here is the martial arts, and the admission that Mates of Mars satirizes the subject is particularly significant because it contradicts an earlier statement in which he stressed he had no intention of ridiculing the martial arts in the book.2 The fact that Foster was unable to protect a personal sacred cow from the blows of his own satire underscores the ubiquitous nature of the laughter in the novels, but it also demonstrates its ambiguity, since Foster's esteem for the martial arts prevents the satire from becoming uniformally negative. Mates of Mars also celebrates the martial arts. The resulting ambivalence is typical of Foster's satire, for despite the apparent tenacity of his opinions he is not always as certain as he appears. This tendency is best expressed in his first book. North South West:
surely it is not correct for men to proceed like this, proposition and contrariwise, proposition and contrariwise? Not merely can I see both sides of the story—I favour both impartially! (p.51)
1 Foster, quoted in 'Foster vs the world (and me)', by Rosemary Sorensen, Australian Book Review, No.l33, Aug 1991, p.l4. 2 Videorecording No.263, Australian Defence Force Academy Library, Canberra. 91
Seeing both sides of the story creates an ambivalent form of laughter when Foster examines a subject satirically. Rabelais's humour is similarly ambiguous, but the cause is quite different—a tension between the positive spirit of carnival and the satirical purposes Rabelais puts it to. Bakhtin writes,
this laughter is ambivalent: it is gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking, deriding. It asserts and denies, it buries and revives. Such is the laughter of carnival, (pp.11-12)
Later Bakhtin contrasts Rabelais's merry universe with "Swift's gloomy world" (p.308), and the degree of gloom in some of Foster's worlds (Moonlite, for instance, is not particularly bright) makes it clear that his work is not always so similar to Rabelais's. Nevertheless, the ambiguity and ubiquity of Foster's satire makes it quite unlike mainstream satire, which is more likely to direct unequivocal condemnation against a selected range of targets. I would now like to examine a number of specific similarities between Foster's novels and Gargantua, beginning with the presence of vulgarity and obscenity. In Rabelais's work, argues Bakhtin, obscenity is never merely obscenity, but "grotesque realism" associated with the positive values of fertility and generation:
To degrade is to bury, to sow, and to kill simultaneously, in order to bring forth something more and better. To degrade also means to concern oneself with the lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore relates to acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy, and birth. Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a destructive, negative aspect, but also a regenerating one. (p.21) 92 Bakhtin later identifies an embodiment of these principles in Rabelais's account of the siege of Paris. In response to the high-flown comment that "cities need no stouter or safer walls than the valour of their citizens," a character replies,
"I have observed that the pleasure-twats of women in this part of the world are much cheaper than stones. Therefore, the walls should be built of twats, symmetrically and according to the rules of architecture, the largest to go in front, (p.313)
Baktin argues that the significance of this passage goes beyond a simple satire on the easy morals of Parisian women to include a playful and ambiguous argument about the power of the "material bodily procreative principle" to overcome militarism. The critic of Moonlite has no recourse to a philosophy of this kind to explain the way in which the narrator chooses to describe the symptoms of the illness suffered by the passengers of the John Barleycorn:
The end result is the same in each case, debilitation, horrific thirst, and an arse like a tart's twat or billposter's bucket, (p. 165)
It even appears probable that the sentence's second simile is designed to qualify the first, rather than the ravages of the illness. Despite its apparent similarity to the obscenity in Rabelais's novel, Foster's obscenity appears to be nothing more than descriptive. Or is it? The obscenity in Foster's novels does seem to focus on aspects of the bodily "lower stratum" which Bakhtin would classify as generative. In Plumbum, for example, Sharon's convulsions on the stage are likened to those of "a woman giving birth to a magic musk melon" (p.354), while the narrator of Christian Rosy Cross delivers a panegyric on the merits of afterbirth, (pp.3-4). On the other hand, it's difficult to 93 see any justification for Noel Horniman's comment, in Testostero, that he realized Venice was a city of assignation when he "sniffed it out near the fishmongers" (p. 163)—presumably an allusion to women's genital odour. Does all obscenity deserve the cachet of association with the "bodily procreative principle" just because it refers to reproductive organs? Or is the principle itself only relevant to an early 16th century work, no matter how much the contents of Foster's fiction might have in common with Rabelais's? If so, it follows that the context in which literature is read is ultimately more important than the contents of the work itself. Foster does not confine his obscene allusions to the female anatomy; on the same page of Plumbum that features "poppling invaginated fart sounds" we learn that "A flood of childhood reminiscence, poised behind a ruptured dijk wall, is held at bay only by Pete's penis, rammed in the breach." (pp.374-375). The most notable penis in Foster's oeuvre, however, undoubtedly belongs to Christian Rosencreutz. Its spectacular length is reminiscent of the men with "disproportionate phalli (wound six times around their waists)" that Bakhtin cites as an example of the bodily grotesque in Gargantua. (p.328). Bakhtin notes that Rabelais's fascination with appendages and orifices goes beyond the genital organs, to embrace the nose, the mouth, the ears, the belly and the anus. These organs are significant, Bakhtin argues, because they are sites where the body comes into direct contact with the outer world. "The acts of the bodily drama," he says, including "Eating, drinking, defecation and other elimination (sweating, blowing of the nose, sneezing)," as well as copulation and pregnancy, all "take place in this sphere." (p.317). He then contrasts Rabelais's concern for these matters with the preference of later artists and writers for the "closed, smooth, and impenetrable surface of the body", and he goes on to ascribe 94 this change to the increasing emphasis in European culture on the individual as a discrete entity, separated from the social body. Michel Foucault has drawn similar conclusions about the significance of the declining incidence of public punishment in the west,i and if we consider the virtual effacement of the body in the work of a writer like Jane Austen, who was intimately concerned with individual identity, Bakhtin and Foucault's theories seem very persuasive. How they apply to the novels of David Foster is not so clear. It may be that the obscene component of his fiction challenges the notion of ourselves as separate from the material world. In the immortal words of D'Arcy D'Oliveres in Dog Rock, "it's the end of more than bad smells when people start thinking their shit doesn't stink." (p.ll8). Accounts of bodily abuse and injury are another shared feature of Foster's novels and Gargantua. We have already encountered a description from Plumbum of the damage Pete suffers to his hands during the guitar duel outside Utrecht; another absurd accident occurs earlier in the story when Pete visits Rollo's bathroom in suburban Spence:
Pete is shocked and distressed to find three pubic hairs. He is blinded by one, stumbles over another, impales his finger on the third. (p.51)
Later on in the novel the injuries sustained by the characters cause permanent damage, but Pete emerges from his tangle with the pubic hairs as unscarred as any cartoon character. The same cannot be said of the injury prone Steve, in Mates of Mars, although there is a touch of cartoon unreality in the ease with which he bounces back from the effects of his injuries, at least in the second half of the novel:
1 Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. Penguin, 1991, p.lOl. 95
Not only does Steve survive Jade's emergency tracheotomy—except for the fact that he tends to whistle now, when the wind's blowing the wrong way— but he retains full bladder control and limited use of his stumps, (p.255)
Similarly flippant accounts of shocking injuries also exist in Gargantua. Bakhtin relates an incident from the novel in which the hero, Pantagruel, visits "the island of the Catchpoles", a people who "earn their living by letting themselves be thrashed." (p. 196). Naturally enough, one of Pantagruel's companions, a friar, takes advantage of this opportunity and pays twenty crowns for the privilege of beating a Catchpole. In due course the Catchpole falls to the ground "a battered pulp", only to rise soon afterwards as "happy as a king—or a pair of kings, for that matter." Bakhtin interprets this reference to royalty as a deliberate allusion to the carnival practice of ridiculing and then destroying an effigy of a king dressed in a clown's costume. The custom was a straightforward gesture of revolt against the hierarchical social structure, but it was also enacted at the time of a king's death in much the same way that carnival dummies of winter or the dying year were mocked and destroyed, (p. 197). This suggests a connection between physical abuse and death, but also between death and rebirth since the passing of a season or a monarch heralded the beginning of something new. For Rabelais this meant the dawning of a new era. In contrast, Foster projects a gloomy future for the world, and his images of bodily suffering and injury are not redeemed by positive associations with a folk culture. Insofar as suffering and injury invoke the idea of death, the presence of bodily abuse in the novels represents the threat of death, a topic I will explore more fully in Chapter Four. In the meantime it is enough to conclude that the exaggerated physical suffering and injury in the work of both Foster and Rabelais represent an assault on social norms. 96 The Foster novel that makes the most damaging attack on the idea of social order is Testostero. The setting of Venice during carnival is a none too subtle declaration of this intention, but the novel's convoluted plot and fragile, provisional characterization are also quintessentially carnivalesque. Other Foster novels are darker, more bitter, but none express the disintegration of social structure and personal identity so insistently. Disturbingly, Testostero hnks the fragmentation of the public and the private worlds by playing with the idea that identity is wholly determined by social roles. This is a profoundly medieval notion, but one which has intriguing parallels to recent post-structural arguments about the provisional nature of personal identity. As a result, Foster's characters are both rudimentary representations of particular social attitudes as well as modern exemplars of the constructedness and fluidity of personality. The threat to order is expressed in its simplest form in Testostero by the wildly swinging fortunes of the characters. The novel borrows this characteristic from the 18th century Venetian comedia deU'Arte, particularly The Venetian Twins by Goldoni, but the tradition is much older and can also be found, for example, in a late-Renaissance tragedy like King Lear, where similar events are symbolized by the spinning wheel of fortune. The following passage from Bakhtin highlights the significance in carnival folk culture of sudden reversals of fortune:
We find here a characteristic logic, the pecuhar logic of the "inside out", of the "turnabout," of a continual shifting from top to bottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies and travesties, humiliations, profanations, comic crownings and uncrownings. (p. 11)
Testostero is filled with these sorts of events. When Noel Horniman takes his first walk through the back-alleys of Venice he stumbles across 97 a scene of gangland violence, which he later describes to Judy in the following fashion:
'I found myself in a campiello where two little guys had this big guy stretched over a wellhead. While one of them held his arms, the other was preparing to smash his kneecaps with a slaughterman's hammer and put out his eyes with an icepick.' (p. 14)
The "big guy", Stronzo LoZanni, is saved from this dire fate when Noel intervenes on his behalf. The unlikely pair then go to a local bar, where Stronzo celebrates his rescue without any apparent concern over the fact that his enemies remain at large in the city—the carnivalesque turn of fortune must be absolute as well as abrupt, leaving no room for doubts or ongoing fears. Nowhere is this more evident than in the novel's accounts of that most extreme reversal of fortune, violent death. The carnage of assassination and coronary which takes place in the novel's ''Intermezzo'' is generally treated casually by the survivors. True, Noel's adoptive mother Edna is somewhat upset when her husband dies of heart attack, but Lady Cynthia revives Edna's spirits a couple of minutes later by proposing a trip to Austria, which she recommends on account of it being "just like The Sound of Music." (p. 145). An even more characteristic expression of the carnivalesque in Testostero is the sudden transformation or exchange of personality. Character mutability of this kind is closely related to reversals of fortune, since a character's fate is often determined by his or her new role, but its greatest significance lies in its disruption of the social order. Bakhtin speaks of the importance to carnival of "the reversal of hierarchic levels:"
the jester was proclaimed king, a clownish abbot, bishop, or archbishop was elected at "the feast of fools," and in the churches directly under the pope's jurisdiction a mock pontiff was even chosen. (p.81) 98
We can find literary expression of these kinds of carnival customs in the work of a dramatist like Shakespeare, indicating just how far the spirit of medieval carnival percolated into mainstream Renaissance culture. In King Lear, for example, the chaos of the kingdom is symbolized not only by the reduced circumstances and powerlessness of Lear but also by the necessity of other characters such as Edgar and Kent to adopt the identities of people at the bottom of the social scale. The fact that these characters are forced to "play the fool", not to mention the explicitly carnivalesque behaviour of Lear's jester, also indicates the influence of medieval carnival culture on Shakespeare's Renaissance drama. Of course the fool is a character that recurs in one form or another in many of Shakespeare's other plays. In Testostero, the drama of shifting identities focuses on the separated identical twins Leon and Noel, whose very names are interchangeable when inverted. The twins (who are actually two-thirds of identical triplets) choose to swap identities after learning that their psychologist father Cyril Surtout-Spoton (who is ultimately revealed not to have been their father at all) had them separated at birth as part of an experiment designed to identify the relative influences of nature and nurture on childhood development. This involved bestowing a privileged English upbringing upon the first triplet, sending the second to Australia ("the most deprived cultural environment conceivable to an English gendeman"), and consigning the third to a sensory deprivation tank as a "control", (p.69). The experiment is compromised, however, when a midwife takes pity on the triplet designated to enter the tank and sends him to his true father in Venice, a gondolier turned mafia boss named Testostero Ciaponi. The experiment lapses altogether when Noel's adoptive mother in Sydney fails to keep in touch with Noel's father. These events take place before the narrative action commences, and at the 99 beginning of the novel Noel and Leon meet by chance in Venice. After a complicated series of misunderstandings they establish their kinship by conducting DNA tests at Leon's laboratory in London, and subsequently decide to swap identities. This development is particularly ludicrous since Leon is an effete homosexual psychologist and heir to a baronetcy, while Noel is a crass ocker poet with a job as a pool attendant in Marrickville. The swap, however, is not a strictly carnivalesque exchange of high status for low since Leon's private and professional relationships with his father are extremely subservient, and financial difficulties during his childhood meant that he had to do "the work of five gardeners" before the age of ten. (p.69). Nevertheless, the mechanics of the plot are pure carnival. After a period in which Leon—not knowing how to swim—tries to do Noel's job in Sydney while Noel impersonates Leon in London, separate traumatic incidents erase the memories of both twins, completely plunging them into their new roles. When Leon returns to London with Noel's personality the scene is set for still further confusion as the twins are repeatedly mistaken for each other. At the end of the Intermezzo section, Foster unravels the tangles he has created by restoring Leon and Noel's memories with the counter-trauma of twin gunshot wounds. In the final section of the novel the cast returns to Venice where Leon and Noel set out to uncover the mystery of their birth. Here they discover that the third triplet is actually Testostero's errant son, Ruffiano Ciaponi, who has earlier had a sex-change operation and become Cortesana Lottotatz in order to escape the consequences of a vendetta with his father. This final transformation is potentially the most interesting since it involves a repudiation of the socially prestigious (particularly in Italy) male role for a female one. The sexual ambiguity and miscegenation of Cortesana's relationship with the black American, Colt Cargo, with its echoes of Othello, are other fascinating 100 complications. Foster characteristically chooses not to explore these issues at any length. Testostero, Dog Rock and The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover are notable amongst Foster's novels for the inventive and punning names of their characters. In this the novels have something in common with satire from every period, since the anti-realistic dimension of the genre permits authors to indulge in comical and whimsical naming. Distinctive appellations are certainly a feature of Rabelais's fiction, for example. Foster's punning names are often strikingly effective in the way they illuminate character—an important attribute for an author with limited patience for detailed characterization. In the case of the Australian professor. Perry Patetic, for example, the pun on the latinate word "peripatetic" not only draws attention to the character's expatriate condition but also conveys something of his professorial air. Another example from Testostero is Friedrich Frieloder, whose name signals his unscrupulous nature as well as being appropriately Teutonic for his occupation of psychologist. Perhaps the best of Foster's names, however, come from Dog Rock. Who could forget the evocative handle of the town trollop Kirsty Cockburn, or the pharmaceutical and medical allure surrounding the names of Nordette Pruvagol the pharmacist and Paxyl Opfinger the doctor? Amongst the town's blue-collar residents, Duncan Dropkick and Ben Chuckyfried are clearly typical, but my own favourite name from Dog Rock belongs to a character who receives only a passing mention, the retired waterside worker Estivador Orloff. This name uses a pun on the Spanish word for stevedore, "estibador", to give us "Stevedore all off", suggesting a history of militant unionism as well as migration from some unspecified European country. Estivador, D'Arcy tells us, once knew but has now forgotten the names of the "lavish constellations" 101 in the "mysterious southern skies." (p.8). With one name and four lines Foster gives us the essence of the character's history and inner life. Playful and comical naming of characters is one of the few features of the novels that comes close to expressing the kind of joy which bubbles through the work of a "satirist" like Rabelais. Foster's jokes and one-liners are another expression of this untroubled play. This "gag writing" is in marked contrast to the situation comedy of the novels, which is always tinged with at least one other emotion, whether it be fury, pathos, or despair. One of the most hilarious scenes in Moonlite, for instance, takes place when Finbar lambasts a congregation of students in the Jesus Christ College chapel, but the comedy is complicated by the intense emotion of the scene, along with any pity we might feel for the hero's isolation, (pp.129-130). Foster's one-liners are generally free of these sorts of distractions. The following statement is made by Felix, Plumbum's drummer: That guy must be ambidextrous, Pete. I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.' (p. 148)
Foster has spoken about his attraction to the profession of his father, who was a vaudeville entertainer, and occasionally he gets the opportunity to take on the role of standup comedian at readings like the one at Tilleys. Usually, however, his talent for one-liners must find expression on the page. The following exchange between Cyril Surtout- Spoton and Judy Rankenfile in Testostero takes place after Leon is saved from near-drowning in the water pipes of the family's lodge in Scotland:
'Certainly, there's been some brain damage, but he assures me he feels well able to cope with life in Australia, and I think we best get him on a plane at once.' 'But why the Scots accent?' 102
The result of brain damage.' (p.85)
Passages like these appear to contradict Foster's contention, expressed on a number of occasions, that his comedy contains "more wit than humour",! although distinguishing between the two is a subjective operation. The sheer corniness of some of the jokes indicates at least an occasional preference for plain laughter over incisive and clever witticisms. The following observation is made by the murderous Bert Arblaster, in Dog Rock, after D'Arcy reveals that his prosthetic arm conceals a perfectly normal limb:
'You can't prove a thing boy, or you wouldn't have shown your hand.' (p. 157)
If simple humour contains at least some of the generative energy of Rabelais's folk laughter, then Foster's satire is not entirely negative. Occasionally, Foster's more esoteric wit conveys the same sense of untroubled joy as his unsophisticated humour. The following passage from Dog Rock is a fine example:
One of the wattles in the park is called Acacia brownii, and I was pointing it out to a pair of hikers once when one of them turned to the other and said, 'Oh yes; the flowers look just like little arseholes, see?' (p.74)
Foster also uses mock scientific language to satirize science itself. In Christian Rosy Cross, for example, we find a number of descriptions of alchemical experiments which parody the language of scientific reports, including one in which the alchemist Cornelius remains unaware that the cylinder of gold he discovers in his lab is actually a dildo belonging to his sister, (p. 19). Foster also uses scientific expression for comic purposes
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 103 when his narrators relate quantities and figures with absurd exactitude. In Dog Rock, for example, D'Arcy speaks of the capacity of the native daphne to
colonize every local plant community, from the dry sclerophyll snappygum forest of the sandstone near the substation, where it seldom attains a height greater than twenty-nine feet, to the wet sclerophyll ribbon gum and turpentine forest of the gullies, where it usually attains a height of thirty feet six inches, (pp.6-7)
Bakhtin comments on the use of the same comic technique in Gargantua, citing a scene in which a character reports that "six hundred, no, more than six, indeed, more than thirteen hundred and eleven dogs appeared on the horizon." (p.464). In Bakhtin's opinion, Rabelais's impossibly precise and unrounded figures are "grotesque" in their asymmetry. They become numerical expressions of the facetious and untidy spirit of carnival. Other expressions of high philosophy and esotericism in Foster's novels have a far more complicated effect. Often these passages are varieties of the "prandial talks" that Bakhtin identifies in Gargantua (p.61), and appear to function as a counterweight to the obscenity and abuse found in much satirical writing. This, in any case, is the rationale that Foster puts forward in his essay on satire to explain the function of philosophical speculation in his fiction, commenting that "no one learns better than the satirist the value of a good moral guarding block" (p.64), although the impHcation here that high-minded philosophical discourses are somehow more moral than other styles of satire is highly questionable. In fact, this kind of writing is often the source of the greatest ambiguities in Foster's fiction. In one extraordinarily dense passage in Moonlite, for instance, the narrator mounts an argument about the decline of civilization, taking as a basis the decadence and fall from 104 grace of the individual, in this case Finbar. In the midst of this dissertation we find the following sentence:
The study of the forbidden transition is a marker of social death, which, Uke a library of comparative theology, confounds the brain, perverts the spirit, undermines reason and eviscerates myth. (p. 150)
To all appearances, Foster means us to take the surrounding argument seriously, yet the overstatement and overblown rhetoric of this central sentence disrupts the persuasive force of the rest of the passage. Different aspects of the text are effectively working at cross-purposes here, reminding us of Foster's wry admission about the all-encompassing nature of his satire. This problem, if it is a problem, is particularly evident in Dog Rock and The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover, which are essentially dissertations on life delivered by a buffoon. Furphy's Such is Life falls into the same category and is subject to the same basic question: can a clown speak sense through a static of nonsense? The traditional answer to this question has been yes, but in satire the practice generates contradictions and uncertainties. In the final two chapters I will examine the consequences of these kinds of turbulences.
If excess is one of the defining features of Foster's satire, another is anger. This often takes the form of a righteous moral indignation, probably founded on frustrated idealism, but the cold fury that periodically surfaces in the novels goes entirely beyond the requirements of conventional satire for a degree of moral outrage. The cruel, malignant strand of Foster's satire is one of the secrets of its power, and may partly account for the extremes of approbation and detestation that the novels provoke. 105
In his essay, 'Satire', Foster makes a distinction between two varieties of satire, one "toothless", the other "biting", (p.65). Quoting Pope, he claims that the toothless satirist is "Willing to wound yet afraid to strike", since the aim of this kind of satire is to "divert and entertain". Without deriding these goals, Foster makes it clear that he is more interested in biting satire, which he claims "is filled with an often egotistical sense of moral outrage and indignation; it is violent; and it is unashamedly cruel." Clearly he is thinking here of his own work. We have already encountered examples of violence in the novels; I would now like to examine the sense of moral outrage in Foster's work, before exploring its cruelty. In his book. The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Terry Eagleton argues that "the moment of modernity" occured at that point in history—around the beginning of the Renaissance—when scientific inquiry and artistic expression broke free from the structures of the church. i According to Eagleton, at this time art and literature became "autonomous of the cognitive, ethical and political". This argument may seem to ignore the subsequent struggles of western artists and writers with censorship and state interference, but looked at from another perspective these conflicts only underline the increasing conceptual distance between the arts and the apparatus of church and state. The break, however, was by no means absolute, and while artists may have been freed from the ethics of the church, for instance, they rarely abandoned ethics altogether. Indeed, in some instances literature in particular has actually taken up the ethical baton from an increasingly exhausted and ineffectual church. Literature's recurring condemnation of unbridled materialism is perhaps the clearest and most significant example of its championship of what was once an
1 Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, USA, 1990, p.367. 106 exclusively religious ethic. In fact the anti-materialist message is so common to fiction that it could almost be regarded as a defining feature of the form: whether a novel privileges heroism or romance, existentialism, socialism, or religion, the essential message is that money isn't everything. This is particularly true of the largely negative satires of a writer like David Foster, whose attacks on materialism have something in common with the phillipic of Old Testament prophets. Foster's denunciation of materialism is never of primary importance to the novels, but the issue is always prominent. In Moonlite, for example, the ravages of capitalist consumerism is a major theme. The topic finds its most devastating expression in the description of the effect of tourism on the island of Hiphoray. The following sentiments are expressed by one of the island's first, well-heeled tourists, who is amusing himself by tossing coins to the MacEsaus down a cliff face:
Bless my soul, will you look a' that lad? He's got his mouth so crammed wi' coin he could be a squirrel. The last time I had such fun was the handicapped children's party, (p.73)
The human dignity of the MacEsaus is the first victim of the arrival of capital on Hiphoray; not long afterwards it is the environment of the island itself as the MacEsaus begin to discard their consumer durables on middens which have previously contained only biodegradable waste. The resulting piles of rubbish become "a constant source of annoyance" to visiting photographers (p.79), an ominous prelude to the indifference with which the outside world comes to regard the island once its peculiar way of life has been destroyed. Foster's evident concern about capitalism's sometimes devastating impact on the environment is perhaps surprising for someone who has little time for what I will call, for want of a better description, New Left 107 ideology. In Plumbum, for example, the narrator provides us with an environmental audit of European Community milk aid to India which would do honour to a Greenpeace economist (p.384), and a similar critique of the prawn industry appears in Mates of Mars. (p.295). Not surprisingly, however, even Foster's apparently sincere expressions of environmental concern are sometimes ambiguous. When Jade criticises Sven, in Mates of Mars, for dumping rubbish overboard from the Roper Cherie, the satire is directed against the redneck attitudes of the men on board, but Jade's irate and ineffectual idealism, expressed through the voice of the narrator, is also a target:
'But Jade,' explains Sven, 'If we hope to avoid suspicion, we have to behave the way a normal fishing vessel behaves.' Laughter all round from the boys on the back deck. Good one, Sven. Laugh as the world chokes through male shortsightedness and avarice. (p.303)
In Moonlite a similar ambiguity exists in Foster's portrayal of the impact of rampant capitalism in the New West Highlands. On the one hand, he clearly condemns the colony's greedy commercialism, which he contrasts directly with the spiritual values of the Aborigines. Finbar's descent into alcholism is particularly significant in this regard since rum is the colony's standard currency. Foster presents Finbar's final transformation into a bottle millionaire and unprincipled politician as the ultimate depravity. The total picture, however, is less clear, for the egalitarian social changes underway in the colony are themselves a consequence of its unrestrained commerce. This is radical capitalism in action—the kind that tramples traditional gender roles by filling factories in wartime with women, or which privileges a person of wealth above someone whose status is dependent on ancient distinctions of rank or nobility. Gold has turned the society of the New West Highlands upside- 108 down. When Finbar takes a coach from Cholmondeley to the goldmining centre of Boomtown he learns that it is the coach driver who takes precedence over the passengers. At the beginning of the journey, this gentleman, Irish Mick MacMahon, orders Finbar's Dutch partner to fetch the stones he needs to egg on the foremost horses of his massive team:
'Grab us a few goolies will you sport,' he says to Clogwog. 'Why me.' 'Cos this is not the Fatherland, sez bossman ere, sez e!' (p. 169)
Yet even the exhilarating independence of the colonials is not all it seems—Foster does not perpetuate the myth of Australian egalitarianism without subjecting it to some very close scrutiny. When MacMahon delivers a diatribe against "those whinging, whining Poms", for instance, Finbar's artless response is all too pertinent: "'Fuckin oath dead set my dear. But don't they own the place?'" (p. 171). The completeness of English authority in the colony is emphasized a few pages later when Finbar learns that all Boomtown's gold eventually "goes back to London." (p. 175). Occasionally Foster produces satire of a conventionally straightforward kind. Sometimes this even takes the form of an attack on a prominent individual, a mode of satire which is very common to other satirical works but extremely rare in Foster. One such exception occurs in Moonlite when Donald engages a visiting member of the Menzies clan in a conversation about the Scottish defeat against the English at Culloden. With some prompting from Donald, the visitor relates the story of one of his kinsmen, who, lying wounded on the battlefield, saw the "German king's son, a big fat fella, ridin by on his horse." In the words of the wounded Menzies, "Ah did but see him ridin by but Ah shall hate him till Ah die!" (p.75). This is of course an allusion to Robert 109
Menzies' notorious paean of praise to Elizabeth II, an unseemly historical irony given Menzies' ancestors' resistance against the English monarchy. The targets of Foster's satire are rarely so specific. On the contrary, they are generally so diffuse and diverse that his attacks appear to be motivated by the kind of "deep and catholic hatred" that Jason Blackman ascribes to his brother Pete. (p.34). The following passage from Plumbum, for example, contains attacks on both open- and close- mindedness:
You will sometimes see a middle-aged man holding the jaws of his mind open with every intellectual prop and pole at his disposal. In such a state, he resembles a bivalve mollusc, constrained to sup whatever shit floats by. Well, that's one mistake Krauts don't make. They come equipped with a cranial sphincter, (p. 10)
In Moonlite we encounter a similar, blanket-condemnation of the English gentleman, whose criminal ignorance of colonial flora and fauna is only equalled, in the eyes of the narrator, by his excessive knowledge of plant and animal life in his native country, the result of having "nothing better to do than report on his surroundings." (p.l34). The Enghsh gentleman appears to be damned regardless of his behaviour, a suspicion confirmed by the narrator's concluding observation that "the ideal society would contain no English gentlemen." I have already remarked how the ubiquitous nature of Foster's satire is partly the result of his ability to see many aspects of a question simultaneously. In Plumbum Foster ascribes a similar perceptiveness to Pete Blackman, whose response to the prospect of losing an eye is characteristically misanthropic:
'I'm going to lose my eye, man. Still, I guess one's plenty: the more eyes you got, the more ugliness you see.' (p.56) 110 Of course it is not Pete's destiny to be spared in any way from the ugliness of the world; this is a privilege reserved for Jason, whose blinding in Calcutta merely exacerbates his tendency to ignore ugliness and evil. The true moral hero of the novel is in fact Pete, since his disgust with the world flows directly from his greater sensitivity to its injustices. The kindness and moral sensibility which forms the basis of Pete's satirical response to the universe are evident on a number of occasions. When he takes a taxi in Canberra, for example, we are told that he "always gives a generous tip. Pete can imagine what a rotten job driving a cab would be." (p.78). Later we learn that "It's a favourite game of his to think of all those occupations that would not exist if people could trust each other, and law is at the top of the list." (p.80). This is Pete the disappointed idealist. When Jason takes Pete to the temple at Wat Pho in Bangkok to show him the statue of a malevolent Buddha, we get an inkling of the psychic cost of forever regarding the world with a jaundiced eye. As they stand before the statue Jason tells his brother about samrambha yoga, "the path to enlightenment through sheer hatred", prompting a flood of tears from Pete, whose usual sardonic composure is shattered by Jason's instinctive understanding of the personal pain behind his unyielding exterior, (pp.188-189). Further poignant proof of Pete's sensitivity comes when he subsequently decides to commit suicide:
Four human beings are now dependent on Pete and, without Sharon's love, that's more than he can bear. He's going to shoot himself, tonight, (pp. 199- 200)
Foster characteristically punctures the emotional force of this revelation when Pete also resolves to slaughter a few Japanese before he goes. Pete's violent impulse to massacre Japanese businessmen is typical of the many other expressions of violence and cruelty in the novels. Ill which according to Foster are a vahd aspect of the "truth" of his satirical vision. Quoting Emerson he writes, "Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none."i This is a commendable tenet if it means presenting the brutahty of existence with unshrinking honesty. Such an explanation does not, however, account for the more bizarre and ambiguous manifestations of violence and cruelty in the novels. In the Dog Rock novels, D'Arcy D'Oliveres' occasionally brutal treatment of animals falls into this category of cruelty. In Dog Rock we encounter the following passage:
I like a piece of pumpkin as well, but I've killed no tomcats this past twelve months, and pumpkins need tomcats. . . . nothing gives them that good early start they need like a fat young tomcat, (p.38)
On the very same page we learn that D'Arcy also bears a particular animosity towards dogs, which is perhaps not surprising given his occupation as a postman. When he recounts the story, in Dog Rock, of Fargo's motorcycle accident—apparently the result of an encounter with a dog—D'Arcy tells us that
I'd been on the point of complaining to Mrs Jennings that day it nipped me in the socks, that it ought to be put down, or failing that, kicked to death. (p.38)
As things turn out, however, complaints are not an adequate expression of D'Arcy's dislike for this particular animal. At the scene of the accident he takes matters into his own hands:
Being a reasonable person, I assumed the dog had caused the accident. Maybe I was a little overtired, but I picked up a brickbat I found by the
1 Foster, 'Satire', p.65. 112
track and smashed it down on the pup's skull; death was practically instantaneous and I dare say perfectly painless as well, (p.39)
The key words in this passage are "reasonable" and "practically", the first because it introduces a note of cold deliberation into the description of the killing, the second because it draws attention to the gap between D'Arcy's "testimony" and reality—soon afterwards we learn that the pup experienced "death throes" during which it was still capable of gnashing a number of pension cheques in its jaws. It is interesting to note, however, that Foster softens the brutal picture D'Arcy draws of himself in this scene by having him make the admission that "Perhaps I was a little overtired". The issue is further complicated by the fact that a long-haired Tibetan mastiff is DArcy's main confidant and companion in The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover, although this particular dog's unorthodox vegetarian upbringing at the local ashram makes it an atypical example of the species, and DArcy even enlists its aid to deter one of the hostile hounds on his postal beat. (p.29). D'Arcy's intermittent sympathy for animals also extends to bees, as he's a keen beekeeper. His response to the burning of Terry Derry's illegal hives is quite emotional:
I'm that upset, I'm frightened I could speak out of turn were my hands not fully occupied. There's not much you can give a bee in return for honey, outside of a home, and burning those hives . . . well, I'd just as soon not think about it. (p. 131)
This outburst of sentiment does serve as a comic counterpoint to his nonchalant revelation, in the very next paragraph, about the discovery of Derry's dismembered body in a shallow grave beneath his hives, although this does not entirely invalidate D'Arcy's grief for the bees. Yet even this high regard for insects takes on a sinister aspect when we learn that it was 113 a swarm of bees that killed all but one of the inmates of Miss Hathaway's Hospice for Homeless Horses, whom D'Arcy has previously described as fit only for the knackery. (p.41). The suspicion that he may be concealing his guilt in this matter is later heightened by an intemperate remark that he adds to a description of the dangers of professional beekeeping:
As vicious stocks are the hardest workers—and what makes them vicious is the sight of all those useless bloody horses doing nothing all day—the full- time bee man often keeps bees of a temperament the amateur would not wish to know about, (p.48)
The repeated hints and allusions to D'Arcy's animosity towards animals in the early part of Dog Rock serves the purpose of preventing us from identifying too closely with D'Arcy, leaving open the possibility that he might be the murderer. He is after all a self-confessed puppy killer. Our suspicion that D'Arcy may be playing a sinister double game is later satirized and (almost) dispelled when he makes the following ingenuously self-incriminating statement:
I hate to agree with the Sergeant, but a recent arrival does seem the most likely suspect. A foreigner, I should imagine, we have a host of foreigners in Dog Rock, (p.55)
Of course D'Arcy later proves to be as innocent of the Queens Park Ripper murders as he is of the massacre of Miss Hathaway's horses, although Foster finally leaves the reader uncertain about whether D'Arcy is really a parrot smuggler, as he claims towards the end of the novel, (pp. 145-146). His subsequent denial to Bert Arblaster throws the earlier confession into doubt, although the confession makes little sense if he is actually innocent, while the same is true of the denial if he is guilty. In any case, the bizarre expressions of hostility towards animals in Dog 114
Rock have an unsettling effect which is quite extraneous to the satirical comedy of these episodes. Nor is this diminished by D'Arcy's occasional feelings of kindness towards animals, which actually only deepens the strangeness of the animal theme in the Dog Rock novels. The ambiguity is neatly illustrated by D'Arcy's hobby of butterfly collecting, a pastime he likens to the search for happiness:
you think in the beginning you can catch it with your bare hands but you wind up chasing it with a bloody great net. (p.75)
To extend the metaphor, D'Arcy is in the habit of killing happiness by trying to pin it inside a glass case, but when he recalls an encounter with "the most beautiful butterfly" he had ever seen we discover that he can be both wise about happiness and kind to animals:
I think it was new. I'm pretty sure I could have attained immortality through it. God, was my heart pounding as I reached up—I had no net— and it just let me take it and I held it, pulsing, in my hands. I must have stood there quite some time before I let it go. (p.75)
As the controversy over American Psycho demonstrates, ambiguous portrayals of violence and cruelty can have a seriously destabilizing effect on satire, since without the clear intervention of an implied author it is not always possible to determine whether a work is condemning or celebrating the subject it purportedly satirizes. In theory at least, Foster shows himself to be acutely aware of this problem:
While ever a vestige of censorship exists, pornography will be eager to pass itself off as satire; and so what distinguishes satire is a question of fundamental, even forensic importance. ^
1 Foster, 'Satire', p.68. 115
He continues by warning against the dangers of irony, which he argues is "only truly justified in a morally homogeneous society", illustrating this argument with the example of the provincial bumpkin whose "first acquaintance with a vice is through a satire on that vice." (pp.68-69). To avoid this possibility "A satire must contain explicit authorial comment". The problem is, Foster's own interventions tend to be either contradictory or superfluous. In Moonlite, for example, we find the following clause at the end of a description of the squalor which descends on the MacEsaus after the arrival of outsiders: "all this despite a regular attendance at church and sanctimonious sabbatarianism." (p.88). The adjective "sanctimonious" is unnecessary here, and Foster's essay probably over- emphasizes the need for explicit authorial comment when implicit comment is often less disruptive and equally clear. Foster does frequently use the more subtle method of authorial intervention, although this by no means ensures that the novels are morally coherent or consistent. This is just as well, since coherence of this kind would almost certainly destroy the energy of his fiction. Nevertheless, Foster does fall into the trap of moral muddiness that he seems so intent on avoiding. In some parts of his essay he seems aware of the impossibility of maintaining the moral high ground:
The satirist 'plugs in' to the forces of damnation, and seeks to deploy them to his own ends. . . . not infrequently, these forces end up using the satirist to their own ends. (p.68)
The "forces of damnation" of which Foster speaks are a manifestation on the personal level of what he sees as the wider forces of social decline. The notion of civilization's decline is central to Foster's theory of satire. "Biting satire," he argues in his essay, "is very Roman, and Roman of the Roman decline." (p.65). 116
it is a form developed in, and appropriate to, a civilization in decline. The satirist . . . must relate to the old ways, for they provide him with his moral sense and his literary skills. But at the same time, when he attacks barbarism, he must know what he's talking about, and he uses barbaric techniques to do so. . . . He observes and laments his own destructive impulses. Society in dechne is his premise, and his only subject, (p.68)
Despite their sweeping nature, the assertions in the final sentence of this passage are very persuasive. Foster's own novels, for example, are much more about ends than beginnings, whether the subject is the life of an Australian country town or the fate of white Europeans on the fringe of a developing Asia. The picture of the satirist as an historically-minded barbarian beating on the gates of a decaying civilization is also very appealing. This description could certainly apply to a satirist like Rabelais, whose essential subject is the passing of the medieval world, however much his work heralds the arrival of a new epoch. The idea of the satirist as someone participating in decline, of hastening corruption, is also truer to the ambiguous nature of Foster's novels—whether that ambiguity is expressed in structure, expression, or theme—than the stereotype of the morally righteous satirist. Foster's contention that satire requires an identifiable authorial voice suggests that he prefers his own work to contain some identifiable moral core, but in practice his fiction refuses to become so static. The theme of social disintegration finds frequent expression in the novels themselves, as Foster examines the decadence which he believes is a social prerequisite for his own work. Moonlite, for example, is partly a study of the hero's descent into immorality, mirroring the decline of a whole society. Finbar's encounter with three itinerant whisky makers is a crucial episode in this process, not because he is immediately corrupted but because this is the moment he begins to analyse corruption itself: 117
[Finbar] doesn't hesitate to ask questions, for when criticizing the Devil, it's best to know what you're on about, (p.l 11)
The problem for Finbar—and for innocents of all kinds—is that knowing the Devil it is only one short step from supping with him. In Plumbum we find the first expression of Foster's concern that satire itself might occasionally be the instrument of introduction:
The practice of Tantra presupposes a certain level of social decay and moral corruption. Like satire, it can actually debauch the unsophisticated by execrating vices they had no idea existed. (p.281)
Foster may be overestimating the reach of satire here, but he is surely correct in implying that the form participates in the decline which he argues is also "its only subject". In the novels this is a deeply ambiguous process, since they often express approval for traditional virtues of strength and duty, while at the same time exposing their tendency to crush the individual. When Christian—"echoing" modern Californian pop psychology—^blames the incarceration of the viceroy's songbirds on "their fathers", in Christian Rosy Cross, the Gatekeeper dismisses his argument with contempt:
'Don't give me thatl You don't find yourself in a cage for no good reason! Besides, adversity is good for a cagebird, no less than a man. (p. 108)
The Gatekeeper makes the broader implications of this homily explicit by likening Damascus's slave-mercenary Mamalukes to hawks transformed into decadent songbirds by the destruction of their homeland at the hands of invading Mongols, (p. 107). To hearken back to Gargantua, the welfare of a society depends on the stout-hearted valour of its citizens, or 118 in the case of Damascus its foreign slaves. Unfortunately, the city's confidence is misplaced when it comes to the younger Mamalukes, who have been softened by years of peace, so that when Tamerlane the Mongol Emperor postpones his attack on the city, its younger defenders are excessively relieved, (pp.83-84). In contrast, the old Mamalukes are "bitterly disappointed" by the missed opportunity to become martyrs in battle. The city's respite, however, is only temporary:
Tamerlane has the sense to see, that if he bides his time, these old Mamelukes will soon be dead and their place taken by the young ones. (p.84)
Later we learn that the differences between the younger and older Mamalukes occasionally erupts in streetfighting, and given the novel's parallels with the 1960s these battles could even be likened to the demonstrations against the Vietnam War. At the very least, the generation gap between the old and young Mamalukes is reminiscent of the differences between the youth of the 1960s and their parents, many of whom served in World War II. It is not easy to determine how seriously we are meant to take the arguments in Christian Rosy Cross about the importance of warfare in maintaining the vigour of society. Foster's treatment of the issue, at least, is never overtly satirical. The following opinions on the matter are expressed to Christian by the Viceroy.
'Barkuk is a very bad sultan indeed! In all the years he's been sultan, he hasn't waged one single war. Of course, the Syrians are happy; this is what they call "stability." In fact, stability requires continual warfare, for economic reasons. Also, deprived of a problem for longer than two generations, you lose the capacity to solve it. (p. 111)
The narrator treats the question with a medical metaphor: 119
Infectious disease is the scourge of monastic life (as above, so below: the enlightened mind operates from the collapsed immune system—anyone for unilateral disarmament?), (p.68)
The implication being that the admirable policy of unilateral disarmament is also the most foolish—that enlightenment is synonymous with weakness. The Gatekeeper expresses the idea more comprehensively:
what we have in Damascus is the "twihght" system, suitable for empires at their peak, that is, on the way out. The ideas of an empire at its peak, when implemented, bring about its downfall. These are your so-called "enlightened" ideas. What we need to study are the ideas before the peak, that lead to that peak when implemented! (p.l 10)
Foster's obsession with societal decline is at the core of a conglomeration of questions that define and shape his satire. To begin with, understanding and exposing decadence is a deeply paradoxical project, since it inevitably involves the partial promotion of corruption, in much the same way that an anti-"vice" campaigner like Fred Nile raises the profile of the culture he attacks. Foster is similarly expert on the question of decadence, and to complicate matters further he knows that a civilization often produces its finest and most humane ideals during its decline. On the other hand, he also appears to want his work to project a kind of traditional moral authority, yet his fiction simultaneously announces the end of morality. It participates and revels in decay. Occasionally Foster "observes and laments his own destructive impulses", conscious, perhaps, that his fiction is mostly bereft of the positive components contained in the work of a satirist like Rabelais. What flows from the successful "prosecution" of Foster's satire is not rebirth but darkness. 4. The Absent Subject
You're horn a clown. A clown is a wound that will not heal; a clown is too serious to let you get away with it; a clown is a paladin who spits on his gifts—life is a clown. No clown dies a clown's death. David Foster—from work in progress.
The above quote from a forthcoming novel (Foster is currently writing a book with a projected length of 1000 pages and a tentative completion date around the turn of the century) occurs in a description of the work of a rodeo clown. The subject is typical Foster but the passage displays a degree of emotional rawness, even sentimentality, which is unusual in his work. Defiance does persist in the image of the spitting paladin, while the assertion of the clown's immunity to a foolish death contains more than a touch of bravado, but neither of these assertions erases the pathos of the first line. Such openness is atypical of Foster's work and may indicate that he is now pursuing the kind of lyricism he admires in the later work of the Roman satirist Horace. Time will tell. It is the aim of this chapter to examine the more distorted expression of emotion in Foster's existing work. I will argue that the texts attempt to repress and trivialize themes such as death, love and sexuality, only to paradoxically emphasize their importance. Perhaps the most intriguing comments in Foster's essay on satire concern what he calls the psychology of the form. Foster uses the example of William Burroughs, who he argues 121
exposes one aspect of satire's mysteries: the unstated crime that the satirist feels himself to have committed, but which is never alluded to in his writings. In Burroughs' case, the killing of his wife . . . Without delving too deeply into the psychology of satire, I feel that every satirist may well have a guilty conscience over some incident he cannot face or discuss openly, and that the complex nature of satire as a form may originate in the psychological need to externalise this guilt, (p.77)
We might quibble that the end of Burroughs' novel Queer does in fact deal with the killing of his wife, but this need not invalidate Foster's observation that satirists often seem to be projecting some private guilt or anger onto external subjects. On the other hand, the phrase about not delving too deeply into the psychology of satire is an almost comically transparent demonstration of the tendency to avoid psychological inquiry. This is also in keeping with the frequent expressions of contempt in Foster's work for psychology—especially in Dog Rock and Testostero. I would also argue that the passage's focus on the emotion of guilt is unduly narrow, since a satirical work is likely to repress or externalize a whole cluster of emotions, especially around desire and loss. This is certainly true of Burroughs' response to the death of his wife. By exploring these issues I do not propose to assemble a psychological profile of David Foster, but to establish whether his work displays a recognizable psychology of satire. One of the clues to the emotional component of Foster's fiction is the recurring theme of art's origins in personal suffering. The idea is scarcely original but its presence in the outward-looking genre of satire is somewhat unusual. Its expression in Plumbum—in the form of dissertation on the nature of "soul" in jazz—has an extraordinary cumulative power:
Now, soul may come from the heart, or the balls, or the head, or even the hip pocket. . . Like the related philosopher's stone, it exists wherever a man 122
or woman matures in a hostile environment. It is the frictional heat generated, the water used to douse the flame, the scar tissue formed by the burn, the buried memory of the event, (p.77)
Felix's "attachment" to his rickshaw finger bell after Plumbum's rescue from Calcutta is a more comical expression of the same theme. When Nick asks him whether he is going to remove the bell, Felix replies,
'I can't take it off, Nick. It's stuck! Besides, I don't want to take it off. I'm going to wear it the rest of my life, to remind me of what I've been through.' (p.296)
Rickshaw finger bells subsequently become one of the band's most successful merchandising products, along with plastic imitations of the scar on Sharon's cheek—another emblem of suffering. Foster also links creativity to a sense of personal inferiority. In Mates of Mars we learn that "the divine spark has gone" from Bruce Nonnemacher.
The creativity of most men is limited, as most are able to overcome their sense of inferiority eventually, (p.362)
The implication being that the essential goad to creativity, at least amongst men, is a desire for social recognition and acceptance. Mates of Mars argues that physical mastery is another route to acceptance for men. In 'Satire', Foster implies that the sense of personal inferiority in some men is often physical, and that this is particularly true of satirists!
Pope was five foot tall and a cripple. Voltaire was five foot two. A true satirist... is less a man who responds aggressively to social injustice, than a man abundantly overendowed with aggressive impulses ... Of course he developed his aggression from some initial injustice, we all do. But Pope cannot afford to vent his spleen on the tall and well-formed, (pp.67-68) 123
In other words, satire is an externalized public expression of the satirist's private feelings of inadequacy, physical or otherwise. Although satire may be motivated by the peculiar psychological condition of the satirist, emotions and personal psychology are rarely the ostensible subjects of the form, and this is as true of Foster's novels as any other satirical work. As a result, we can often only detect the emotional component of the novels from brief clues and allusions, and despite Foster's willingness in his non-fiction to acknowledge the significance of emotion and personal trauma in the formation of satire, his own works actively repress and trivialize emotional themes such as death, love and sexuality. Paradoxically, this process often merely emphasizes their importance in his work.
The threat of death is one of the more interesting themes that lace Foster's novels, primarily because it is treated differently on textual and sub- textual levels. All Foster's novels, from Moonlite on, have featured wholesale death, but with some rare exceptions death is ostensibly treated as a trivial or even comical matter; time and again the expiry of major and minor characters is recounted dismissively or flippantly. As the corpses pile up, however, it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that Foster's trivialization of death has a suspiciously obsessive quality. Plumbum contains some of the most bizarre and seemingly callous accounts of death in Foster's work. Some cases are so improbable that the reader is clearly not intended to accept their "reality", even within the satirical frames of the novels. The following is a description of a mishap suffered by Pete as an aspiring drummer at a school concert:
in the space of one bar, both sticks break, the snare opens in a wide grin, and the cymbal falls off its stand, rolls off the stage and decapitates the 124 female school captain, who's chatting up the deputy head. As a result, I'm keen to return to Canberra when the time comes, (p. 18)
The death of an old man in Calcutta under the wheels of Nick's rig has a slightly more plausible ring:
The White has the loudest air horn in India. Despite this, we ran down an old man. I didn't run him down, mate, he threw himself under the wheels! (p.204)
It's typical of Foster's satire that it should exploit an opportunity here to make a comic allusion to the deaths of fanatical Hindus under the wheels of ceremonial juggernauts. Indeed, this is the only logical reason to include a description of this particular death at all. Other deaths, such as Felix's (or Steve's, in Mates of Mars), seem to warrant a fuller description than the few paltry lines they actually receive, but it's the description of the death of Pete's adopted son, the street urchin prodigy Satya, that most strongly conveys the sense of something vital happening in the wings while trivialities occupy the foreground. As the boy lays dying Pete gets trapped in a surreal argument with Rollo about the merits of eastern versus western medicine and the best way to overcome third world poverty:
'My son will go to an expensive doctor, one trained in the Western tradition!'.. . 'Let these people take care of their own problems; they created them. Why should I bail them out. Each year India gets forty per cent of the World Bank's IDA credits, yet it has the fiftieth [sic] highest GNP in the world.' (p.240)
The treatment of the subject of death in Moonlite has much in common with the rest of the novels; the MacEsaus, for instance, have a phlegmatic attitude to "going over" the island's cliffs while fowling, and 125 the community's midwife routinely smears the umbilical cords of newly born infants with dung, inducing tetanus, although this "hideous" practice has the beneficial effect of controlling the island's population, (p.87). Foster treats one particular death, however—of Finbar's mother Flora— with greater gravity. Flora and most of the MacEsaus die of starvation while Finbar is studying mathematics at Jesus Christ College in the English university town of Newbridge, but due to the death of Reverend Campbell, the only literate person on Hiphoray, Finbar is cut off from news of the island. Finbar's distance from these events is temptingly symbolic of a psychological distance from the reality of death. Death in this case is something that happens far away, beyond the immediate purview of the narrative. Consequently, when Mungo tells Finbar that he has dispatched a gillie to gather news from Hiphoray, Finbar fears the worst and immediately plunges into his studies with fanatical zeal, choosing a problem "incapable of solution but amenable to attack" (p. 151): a mathematical explanation of the glory, an optical phenomenon which he once witnessed in the mist of Hiphoray. Finbar clearly uses work, and reasoning in general, as a way of suppressing emotion. It's a trait he demonstrates earlier in the story: when the warden of the college shows Finbar a mirror inside the door of a wardrobe, exposing him for the first time to his own reflection, Finbar is shocked by the "pallid horror" before him:
No sooner has the door shut, than the horror sits down on a pair of boots and starts to compose questions. What is the essence of this phenomenon? Can it be reproduced? Does it occur elsewhere, if so where? If not, why not? What are the natural laws, on which such phenomena are based? (pp. 120- 121)
This same tendency is evident when Mungo brings up the subject of the island: 126
'By the way, ma gillie will be back soon, wi' news o' your island for ye.' 'I don't really know to what extent I should pursue the rainbow.' (p. 144)
Finbar is speaking here of the phenomenon of the rainbow, but his avoidance of Mungo's comment is so studied that he might as well be referring, as Mungo quips, to the proverbial pot of gold. The scene which describes Finbar's reaction to the news of his mother's death is a fascinating example of the attempt to suppress death and rationalize grief. This time, however, Finbar is not the guilty party, for the intensity of grief utterly overwhelms his reason, and his demented keening shows for the first time that he is capable of truly human emotion. In this scene it is Mungo who demonstrates a reluctance to give death its due. Mungo's attempt to comprehend the sound Finbar is making replicates Finbar's rationalizing before the mirror:
By turns, he examines the phenomenon, ignores it, rejects it, attempts to cram it in a number of mismatched categories, and finally repudiates it with scorn, like a member of the Royal Academy inspecting a modern work, (p. 152)
Mungo's futile attempt to apply logic to Finbar's display of grief ceases when an "atavistic trapdoor in his brain" opens up and he decides that Finbar is actually a man of the Sidhe. For the narrator, however, there is no such retreat into irrationality; on the contrary, the description becomes more distant and pedagogical as it goes on:
The keen of the condemned male soul is one of the rarest sounds in Creation, but those who have heard a woman keen will know what it does to the nerves. It is so unlike any other sound, that when heard for the first time, it has the impact of a curare dart: the brain literally drops everything, to work out what it can be. The obvious military potential is exploited in the pibroch, where the pipes are meant to imitate the sound . . . (p. 152) 127
The narrator/implied author then goes on to actually inject humour into the account, ensuring that this potentially very moving scene generates as little sentiment as possible. Having suggested that the keening might be produced by an animal, the narrator dismisses the idea with the following explanation: "reason and experience say otherwise, for if it were, we should all be vegetarian." The scene concludes with the observation that "Finbar is quite incapable of thought, indeed he asks for a Turf Guide . . .".
The rejection of sentiment in favour of distant intellectual speculation and "pre-emptive" humour is a hallmark of Foster's work, and because both are traditionally masculine discourses it's possible to regard Foster's work as representative—some might say symptomatic—of the characteristic male response to threatening and disturbing emotions. This is as true of love—and I mean this word in its broadest sense, encompassing affection, respect, compassion and forgiveness— as of any negative emotion, for if Foster uses philosophy and humour to try to fill in the void of death, he also crams them into any cavity where love might possibly settle. This tendency to forestall love manifests itself most clearly in the dismissive attitude of Foster's male characters to women. Consider Pete's attitude, in Plumbum, to his younger brother's sexual success with women: Boy, does he know how to win women. He always had that homo's knack of treating a woman as a human being. While I'm goggling at her tits or confecting some crude innuendo, Jason is holding forth on the retail price of bread or the quality of carpets, (p. 16)
Pete describes Jason's seduction technique in the following terms: 128 He tangles a woman's brains, then plucks at her heartstrings: before she knows it, she's on her back with her pants off. (p. 15)
Of course we can easily dismiss Pete's attitude here as an expression of the character's malicious jealousy, but comments made later in the novel by Jason indicate that Pete's opinion of him may not be so far off the mark:
When you take a woman, you make some older man's bones your own; what he came with and what he left behind, the sum being the woman he lusted for. The man who wants your wife is you, and wants to crush your living bones. The man who wants your daughter sucks the marrow of your dreaming. Every woman is the creation of some other man's dream, (p.31)
Even if we were to acknowledge a kernel of Freudian truth in these observations, the portrayal of women here as passive trophies in some male psycho-sexual death struggle is patronizing, and while it would be naive to ascribe the attitudes of a fictional character directly to the author, I think it is possible to infer from the presence of similar ideas elsewhere in the narrative that Jason's opinions are a provocatively expressed version of Foster's own. If that were the whole story, if the passage were only a patriarchal polemic, we could dismiss Foster as a male-chauvinist dinosaur, but the case is more complicated. Jason's thoughts continue with the following extraordinary statements:
A man creates his mother retrospectively, on the basis of what he has learned to love, in the course of his Ufetime, through the bodies of other women. Man creates himself through love. (p.31)
The male-supremacist dogma is the same, but the unexpected allusion to the man's mother, the one female figure who has exercised an undeniable authority over his life, changes the tone by evoking a time when the man was a small and vulnerable boy. As we have already 129 seen from the death of Flora, in Moonlite, the subject of mothers is a touchy one in Foster's fiction, and in Plumbum it is curious to note that the role of Jason and Pete's mother Hennie is almost completely ignored. The allusion to mothers in Jason's contemplation on women as items of exchange between men becomes particularly significant when in the next paragraph his thoughts unaccountably turn to the inadequacy of language. The passage, which is worth quoting at some length, begins with Jason expressing his desire to give one of his girlfriends a "moment of true insight."
Language is only an attempt to find and rekindle such moments as these. Until we have shared that moment, we cannot save each other. Language remains an attempt, on the part of some, to rekindle in others what they have lost in themselves. ... At the moment of awareness, language dies and music is reborn. Language leads towards, but effectively debars us from, such moments. In leading others, we lose our own way. In following others we forget what we have lost. (p.31)
The obsessive repetition here of the themes of language and loss, following so closely on the heels of a comment about the role of mothers, illustrates, intentionally or otherwise, the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, which propose that an infant's expulsion from the paradise of sensory oneness it experiences with its mother is inextricably bound up with the acquisition of language. Words, Lacan maintains, are the medium through which we distinguish our own ego and slowly discover the complexity of the world. In the process, the particularising tendency of language fragments our sense of self. In this context, literature becomes a paradoxical and doomed attempt to recapture a sense of wholeness by manipulating the very medium that 130 destroyed our psychic unity in the first place. ^ To quote Foster again (and I think it's clearly Foster speaking here, rather than Jason, whose interest in language does not extend elsewhere in the story beyond rock lyrics): "Language leads towards, but effectively debars us from, such moments." What we have, then, in the passages I've quoted, is a bombastic declaration of men's power over women, followed by a strangely forlorn admission of loss; a loss which sounds suspiciously like expulsion from the Eden of a mother's all-encompassing love. Foster has effectively subverted, either knowingly or unknowingly, the patriarchal values he expresses through Jason. His own complex line of reasoning exposes the emotional poverty behind the male quest for power. Foster went on, four years later, to explicitly satirize the desire of male writers to recapture the memory of their mothers' affection through words. The following passage, from Testostero, describes the work of the Australian ocker poet, Noel Homiman:
Horniman's poems are love poems, but of a distinctly contemporary kind. They are nothing less than the carnal record of one man's spiritual quest. He was born knowing he must find her, whereupon she would provide him with his needs. His tongue and lips, and later on his penis, would be the instruments of this search. Even as the cord which joined him to her was cut his lips were struggling to create her . . . (p.5)
The spirit of Lacan is powerfully present here, although it is finally impossible to tell whether or not Foster is partly satirizing his own literary motivations in this passage. His fiction is engaging here with the themes of language, love and loss, but indirectly, at several removes.
1 Colette Soler, 'Literature as symptom', in Lacan and the Subject of Language, Ellie Ragland-Sullivan & Mark Bracher (eds), Routledge, New York, 1991, pp.215-216. 131 Foster's work may express a covert yearning for values and qualities traditionally designated as feminine, but on the surface the search for personal wholeness is always an intellectual or, in the case of Mates of Mars, even a physical exercise. We have already seen in Moonlite that Finbar MacDuffie interprets his world in a very conscious, intellectual fashion, but Finbar is also a child of the stone- age whose education only imperfectly chisels him into a rational 19th century man. The rough edges show. Finbar cannot entirely forget the mythopoeic, pantheistic dimension of his upbringing, even when he is caught up in the great Clearances of the Hebridean islands and forcibly transported to the New West Highlands. Nevertheless, when the brutality of existence threatens to overthrow his reason altogether he prefers to blunt his senses with alcohol rather than attempt to synthesize his two ways of perceiving the world. In the words of the old Chinese Ah Wat: "Gotta holda two views at once. The Tlute [Truth] is not this, is not that, is a combination." (p. 189). Despite this good advice Finbar continues to ignore the demands of emotion and imagination, and the whole aim of the ceremony the Aborigines perform on him when he stumbles into their camp is to unite both sides of his personality. This process involves staking the subject to the ground for two days of enforced detoxification, administering human blood, and inducing a series of hallucinatory dreams in which he is torn apart by a Rainbow Fella and reassembled with his spirit intact. In the final dream it only remains for Finbar's Aboriginal friend Sunbeam to persuade Finbar's spirit to rejoin its body lying asleep on the ground, but at the last moment the spectral Finbar questions Sunbeam's instructions:
•Why. Who is he?' 'You mate. He's you sleeping there. Now lie on top of him, nice and easy, and most important, face to face.' 132
'What? I can't. I can't stand the sight of the cunt!' 'What! He's all right mate, all what's wrong with him he hasn't been out in the sun long enough.. . .' 'I—I can't. Roll him over, I'll try from behind.' '. . . Get in you bastard, get in quick! From the front!' (p.206)
Finbar's spirit continues to hesitate and eventually flies away in panic, condemning the corporeal Finbar, when he wakes, to such spiritual and emotional poverty that he accepts an offer to become a politician. Finbar's revulsion at the sight of his own body is a powerful symbol of self-loathing. The incident also contains some very clear homosexual imagery: Finbar literally cannot face the prospect of entering the body of the man beneath him from the front; instead, he begs to be allowed to "try from behind"—the less emotionally confronting mode of entry. It is the emotional, rather than the homosexual, component which may be most significant here. The British writer and psychologist Heather Formaini has argued that, while we are probably all bisexual to some degree, the kind of homosexual sex engaged in by many men of all nominal sexual persuasions—typically fast, furious and impersonal—is a reflection of men's failure to form affectionate and loving bonds between each other. i In Finbar's case, the reluctance to enter his own body "from the front" also represents a failure to love and accept himself. In addition to the explicit homosexuality of the English psychologist, Leon, in Testostero, there are a number of examples in Foster's novels of attractions between ostensibly heterosexual male characters. The most notable of these occurs in Mates of Mars, between Wolfgang the lethal nightclub bouncer and the student, male model and martial arts champion Sven Scrimshaw. This unlikely duo only see
1 Heather Formaini, Men: The Darker Continent, Mandarin, London, 1991, p.23. 133 each other when Wolfgang has organized a session of "banning", a co- operative activity (which Foster was at pains to deplore when I interviewed him) involving the seduction of a woman by the first man and the concealment of the second nearby until the time comes for him to break cover and join in. "Wolfgang," we are told,
wasn't really Sven's friend. They'd had nothing in common. Wolfgang had only used Sven because Sven was a stayer and so good looking that when it came time for her head to be turned, the chick was less likely to freak out. But always, there were those few minutes when the legman had to ride'm. (p. 128)
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this practice is the reduction of the woman to a mere junction between the penises of the two men:
Sven could remember holding Wolfgang's arm [in a high five] over Kathy's body. At one point, they'd had an Indian arm wrestle. But the main game had been to stare into each other's eyes, watching for the pupils to dilate. . . . It was a bit like 2-man pinball. The one who lost control first lost the match, (p. 118)
Foster cannot be unaware that he is describing homosexual sex by proxy, and sure enough he acknowledged, when interviewed, the presence of an attraction between Wolfgang and Sven, although he interprets its significance somewhat differently:
The male bonding that goes on in a fighting pack is very intense. ... I think it's a basic form of male bonding that goes right back to hunting in groups, and I think it's imprinted on us. It's not necessarily sexual, but I think it can spill over into sexuality. . . . There is a very strong proscription on it ever becoming sexual, because the dangers of it ever becoming sexual are fully appreciated I think. But people who say Australian men don't know how to 134
be affectionate—that's just nonsense. I mean, there's a great deal of physicality on football fields for instance. ^
We might object here that Wolfgang and Sven are never actually part of the same "fighting pack", or that the only affectionate contact Foster can envisage between them is as unrelentingly physical as a tackle or a scrum. In fact, the kinds of male bonding described in the novel are essentially the same as rapid impersonal sex. Mates of Mars may not suppress the notion that men can be attracted to each other, but it does try to impose a narrow, physical idea of the form such an attraction might take. Condemning the novel on these grounds may seem like criticizing its model of men's mutual affection for not being sufficiently middle-class, not gentle or articulate, but I would argue that the novel itself implies that there is a place for kindness and intimacy in the interaction between men, regardless of class. One of the absent subjects of the novel may be the importance of this variety of affection between males. Signs that the connection between Wolfgang and Sven may be more fundamental than first appears only occur in the novel after Wolfgang's murder. The identity of the killer (or killers) remains a mystery, but unlike Wolfgang's employer and closest mate Steve Overton, Sven shows no interest in hunting down the perpetrator/s, and his initial response to the news of Wolfgang's death is mild. Soon after, however, Sven begins to act strangely. Over the course of several weeks he befriends a retarded young man named William at a local bus stop, and after discovering that William is a virgin who admires him for his success with women, he hatches a plan to use William as a bunning partner. The woman Sven targets is one of his intermittent lovers, a
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 135 sophisticated North Shore university teacher called Sarah, and as well as the usual challenges of bunning, Sven must organize William's deflowering in such a way that Sarah doesn't even notice the presence of a third person! Little wonder that Sven worries that "the challenge" may be too great even for him. Significantly, he also wonders "if his behaviour was not some kind of warped response to Wolfgang's death, (p. 127). Improbably enough, the bunning goes off as planned, and Sven must subsequently face Sarah's demand that he take responsibility for the resulting child. Sven's unusual response to Wolgang's killing does not end with the bunning. He next decides to give up his engineering studies to become a martial arts movie star, and when this fails to take off, goes so far as to successfully apply for Wolfgang's old bouncing job in Steve's security firm. In the meantime he burgles Wolfgang's flat, taking only a few magazines and tapes, including a tape Wolfgang made of himself and his fellow bouncers having group sex with women. The burglary itself is never directly narrated, and the reader must piece together the facts from a scene in which Steve visits Wolfgang's flat with his friend Cyril, who happens to be an aboriginal tracker. The next we hear of the tape is a brief description of Sven playing it to himself in his room:
trembling, he lay back on the lounge, put on the earphones and played the tape again, softly. It was destroying him, this tape. (p. 159)
Given that "Wolfgang wasn't really Sven's friend", the intensity of Sven's reaction to the sound of Wolfgang having sex is bewildering— bewildering, that is, unless we accept that his bond with Wolfgang went beyond the comradeship of shared sexual exploits, as Foster himself— to judge by his talk of men hunting in packs—would have us believe. 136
The text itself suggests the presence of something stronger; the presence, for want of a better word, of love.
While my analysis of the affinity between Sven and Wolfgang illustrates how Foster is reticent about intimacy, it risks giving the false impression that his descriptions of sexual activity are entirely uninhibited. This is not the case. A close examination of Foster's novels shows that their openness about sex is more apparent than real. Sex is analysed, discussed, hinted at or alluded to; but with one brief exception the act of lovemaking is never described directly. Foster often narrates the prelude to a sexual encounter, only to cut to a different scene when the action threatens to become erotic. Sven's encounter with the island woman Black Coral is a typical example. When he offers a lift to the naked beauty standing beside the road the scene rapidly draws to a conclusion:
It's too late already to stop what's going to happen, so may's well lay back and enjoy it. But no going down. (p.250)
The reluctance expressed by Sven here to engage in oral sex—a reluctance that increases as the story progresses—is never explained, but it's a good analogue of Foster's reluctance to write about intimate sexual relations. Presumably Foster avoids this kind of scene for the same reason he avoids portrayals of emotional intimacy, although to be totally fair, profound and erotic love scenes are not a common feature of the satirical tradition Foster is writing in. What is truly surprising is that Foster fails to embrace sex scenes of a farcical nature. The inherent comedy of the sexual act should be fertile territory for a satirist like Foster, but when the opportunity arises he repeatedly declines to 137 directly satirize sexual behaviour. The first description in Mates of Mars of a bunning, for example, takes the form of a vague and veiled recollection which occurs to Sven soon after he learns that Wolfgang has been killed, (p. 118). When Sven organizes the bunning session with William we learn more about the practice, but once again this information comes to us from Sven's memories of Wolfgang and never takes the form of direct description in flashback, (p. 126). In contrast, Sven's subsequent instructions to William about what to do at the bunning are very explicit, but again this is not direct narrative action and Foster later refrains from offering us a description of the actual bunning. This may be the correct narrative choice in this particular case—certain scenes have more dramatic impact when left to the imagination of the reader—but Foster makes the same choice virtually every time. The only description of sexual intercourse in any of the novels is an obscene travesty that occurs toward the end of Plumbum when Felix enters Rollo's room "wearing" a schoolgirl who has won a date with him in a competition:
The girl's wrists and ankles have been strapped together behind Felix' back with leather thongs so that Felix can go about his business with the girl impaled on his massive member, as he didn't really have time for a date today, with the cymbal salesman due any minute. (p.318)
This sole direct description of lovemaking in Foster's fiction is ludicrously remote from reality, as if he can only relate sexual activity by distancing it from any recognizable experience. In this context it is interesting to note that a large number of Foster's major characters are either asexual or in some way sexually crippled. Finbar MacDuffie, for example, appears to have no sexual life whatsoever; and while three of the five members of Plumbum are either sexually active or even 138 voracious, both Rollo and Pete suffer a lack of sexual confidence. In Pete's case this expresses itself as envy of his brother's supposed sexual stamina:
Later in life, when I learn the little squirt can hold an erection all night, I come to see it as just another instance of my own lack of self-control. Maybe a woman instinctively feels that the man who comes on strong won't be able to keep it up for more than two minutes, (p. 16)
Rollo's problems are even more profound: his libido is actually non- existent until one night in Bangkok when he is ensnared by a beautiful and insistent prostitute who turns out to be a man. Unfortunately, the transvestite infects Rollo with an untreatable case of gonorrhoea, cruelly terminating "A sexual flowering briefer than that of the Pennsylvanian cactus." (p. 187). The roll call of the sexually halt and corrupt in Foster's fiction continues, rather spectacularly, with Christian Rosencreutz, the hero of The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross. Christian's difficulties begin in puberty when, as a young ward in a Franciscan cloister, his two-foot long penis begins to suffer from acute priapism. Later we learn the origin of the problem: Christian has neither farted nor ejaculated in his entire life, leading one of the monks to question whether "a boy who can't masturbate is meant for monastic life." (p.34). Like Rollo, and despite his priapism. Christian seems to have no libido, and his activities as a boy prostitute in the local brothel not only provide no relief, they also lead to his contraction of leprosy. After much suffering and a journey to Venice, Christian is cured of his disease, although his insistent erection remains, and when he winds up in Damascus it is only a matter of time before he is sold into slavery as the male concubine of a local emir. When Christian eventually regains his freedom he joins the quasi-mystical Lodge of the 139
Gatekeepers, only to have his penis severed in an accident with the heavy city gates, (p. 114). Foster could scarcely have mutilated his hero's sexuality more completely. D'Arcy D'Oliveres, the hero of Dog Rock and The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover, may not be sexually incapacitated but he is sexually frustrated. This aspect of D'Arcy's personality is never strongly apparent in the novels, and a cursory classification might even place him in the asexual category of Foster's characters, but D'Arcy's libido occasionally reveals itself. In the following passage D'Arcy describes, from the vantage point of the Dog Rock telephone exchange, his reaction to the struggles of a telephonist with the gearstick of her car:
I have been to drive-in theatres in my time and must confess I find a stimulus in such restless front seat activity .... had she found it necessary to return to the exchange, for whatever reason, there could be no telling what might not have befallen her there, (p.2)
D'Arcy's sexual longings are rarely stated so explicitly. More often they must be inferred from his fruitless, almost perfunctory pursuit of the local pharmacist Nordette Pruvagol. D'Arcy's celibacy is one of the sad consequences of his inability to find a mate, a failure which he rarely acknowledges, even to himself, and then only under the influence of alcohol:
the worst of my job is, I don't get the chance to meet unmarried women under sixty. That last observation came to me as a flash of blinding insight. Blame it on the House of Lords Scotch whiskey . . . (pp. 139-140)
In Testostero, Noel Horniman has yet another kind of sexual problem. As his surname makes clear, Noel has never been a sexually bashful man, but as the novel gets underway we learn that he has been 140 impotent for some months. Surprisingly, his concerns about this condition are artistic, rather than sexual.
the pleasure he's been deriving from sex is so slight he doesn't miss it, and no doubt it's only temporary; but the penis of the poet is his organ of perception, and Homiman's world is pointless now, and dull. (p. 10)
Noel later regains his potency when he falls in love with an Italian contessa, Cortesana Lottotatz, but this attraction turns out to be fundamentally misconceived, for Cortesana is actually Noel's missing triplet, Ruffiano, who has disguised himself by having a sex-change operation, thus escaping the wrath of his mafia father Testostero, with whom Ruffiano has a vendetta. When Noel is eventually appraised of these facts he renounces all interest in women (not to mention poetry) and joins the ranks of the humblest gondoliers, ferrying locals across the Grand Canal. Mates of Mars also has its share of sexual oddballs and misfits. Steve Overton, strongman and recent paraplegic, is startlingly frank about his complete lack of interest in sex: "'Never fucked man, woman or dog in me life,' he admits, 'wouldn't be guilty of it.'" (p.286). Sven, in contrast, begins the novel a confirmed philanderer, but by the end of the story he has become a devout and celibate Buddhist monk. The path to enlightenment, however, is rocky and painful: Sven must first undergo the ordeal of an unrequited passion for fellow martial arts enthusiast Jade Muldoon, and later—in yet another scene of penile mutilation—he is sub- incised with a rusty and bloody razor by a group of Aborigines seeking retribution for his indiscretion with Black Coral. Ironically, it is from this episode rather than his earlier promiscuity that Sven contracts AIDS. The disease gives Sven pause for thought, especially when he winds up in Goulbourn Gaol for piracy, but his HIV positive status is really only a 141 catalyst for a process of spiritual regeneration that was already underway, and his subsequent loss of sexual desire is wholly due to this hard won equanimity. In a letter he writes to Jade from gaol, Sven claims to feel "completely sexless. Perfectly balanced, as I often feel, I no longer need, or crave, romance." (p.379).
Foster's suppression of certain aspects of death, love and sex follows a recognizable but very complex pattern. Consider, for example, the role Foster gives to the body when he tries to grapple with any of these themes. In the case of death, the body is everywhere: people are decapitated, crushed, disembowelled, and even—in Christian Rosy Cross—^bisected at the waist, (p.77). This constant carnival of carnage suggests an imperviousness to death, but in fact the unrelentingly physical presentation of mortality only disguises an anxiety about the subject which lies at the heart of all the novels. The same is true of Foster's portrayal of the physical bonds between men, which forestalls any serious examination of possibility of other kinds of affection. Conversely, Foster plays down the physicality of affection between men and women by largely avoiding heterosexual love scenes, which could involve the portrayal of a threatening degree of intimacy. The conscious responses of Foster's characters to death, love and sex are also designed to maintain a safe satirical distance from emotion. The contemplation of death, for example, is permitted, but only in an attenuated intellectual and philosophical form. The contemplation of love, on the other hand, is right out, especially of the love that might exist between men, which Foster confines to rugged settings such as shared physical combat. Discussion and speculation about sex is allowed, but sex is finally dismissed as base and messy, and characters such as Sven only attain enlightenment by renouncing it. 142 Foster's attitudes to the role of the mind and the body are not neat and coherent because his method of suppressing certain themes varies; at times he uses exaggeration, at others elision. What remains constant, however, is the tendency of the novels to avoid engagement with emotional themes, and ultimately it is the danger of emotion and the fear of intimacy which are the absent subjects of David Foster's fiction. 5. Offending the Zeitgeist
. . reactionary behaviour is common among ageing artists because they rebel, as a matter of course, against everything they encounter. Piet was most progressive once, when he lived among unprogressive people.' Plumbum (p.379)
Speaking, in Testostero, of the limited appeal of his poetry, an ageing Noel Horniman makes the observation that "The Zeitgeist is a woman or a poof. Red-blooded men are outmoded.'" (p. 156). Nowhere else in his fiction does Foster make such an acute diagnosis of one of the major obstacles to a wider public acceptance of his own work. Horniman's remark is itself a perfect illustration of the problem: the comic juxtaposition of the recondite word "Zeitgeist" with an abusive term is achieved at the risk of offending that portion of readers who would find the use of "poof" gratuitous, although this group would probably consist more of "genteel" readers than male homosexuals, and in all likelihood a more significant reason for the relatively small size of Foster's readership is his habit of opposing the Zeitgeist. Mates of Mars, for example, which is partly an exploration of male gender issues, appears to be more indebted to Hemingway for its notion of masculinity than to more recent ideas on the subject (and anyhow, as Horniman says, the Zeitgeist is a woman). Even Foster's apparently timely concern for social decline seems to have more in common with the modernists' anxious treatment of 144 the subject than it does with the devil-may-care celebration of fragmentation that characterizes many postmodernist works. It is true that the very best novels must in some way swim against the current of fashion, and that repudiation is a form of engagement with the issues of the day, but I would maintain that the best fiction also contributes to the spirit of the age. Admittedly, this proviso disqualifies most satire from the highest places in the canon. Perhaps we might distinguish those satires whose attacks are primarily directed at the lingering values of the past, thereby supporting the current Zeitgeist, from satirical works such as Foster's which lampoon new values, although this distinction is certainly more political than critical. Nevertheless, given the current popular preference for serious fiction that balances competing outlooks on life—from the tragic to the comic, the satirical to the romantic—it remains true that all satire suffers from its overwhelmingly negative demeanour. This may be merely a consequence of fashion but, to return to my arguments about the temporal specificity of Rabelais's Gargantua, the context in which a work is read can be more significant than its content. By examining Foster's treatment of issues such as race and gender, this chapter will explore how the novels either offend or ignore the current Zeitgeist. In his public statements and works of non-fiction, Foster often makes conservative-sounding pronouncements on topics ranging from militarism to homosexuality. In his essay 'Chaos is normal', which appeared in Australian Book Review, we find the following statement:
I cannot see that to regard promiscuous homosexuals and IV drug users as sinners is to be uncompassionate towards them. Attempts to vindicate their behaviour as normal simply perverts us all. ^
1 Foster, 'Chaos is normal', in Australian Book Review, No. 119, Apr 1990, p.27. 145
Foster is speaking here about the way dangerous sex and drug-taking behaviours increase the spread of AIDS, but his argument is couched in religious terms. Leaving aside the evidence from countries such as the United States that a moralising approach to AIDS is counter-productive, Foster's rhetoric on the subject seems calculated to cause maximum offence to readers with humanist values. Clearly his intention is not to persuade but to antagonize. To borrow a phrase of Edward Said's, the politics of the novels could best be described as "Tory anarchy" i— extremism that borrows its rhetoric from the right and its "demeanor" from the radical left. This is a paradox that complicates my analysis of the political biases of the novels, but it is also a familiar paradox in a world in which we now refer to New Right conservatives as free-market "radicals" and old-guard Communists as "conservatives". In many respects Foster is a radical writer, not least in the way his works disrupt the conventions of storytelling, but I believe that the political extremism of the novels is ultimately more significant than their technical radicalism. Foster's extremism is often antithetical, for instance, to the humanist values which inspire the most radical initiatives towards racial and sexual equality. Foster goes on, in 'Chaos is normal', to explicitly endorse traditional moral virtues:
certain traditional values—honour, courage, patriotism, trust—require the individual to risk, or seek out, loss, death, ill health. As our democracy degenerates to a rabble of self-seeking individuals unprepared to die for the greater good, the welfare of the individual becomes paramount, (p.28)
The rhetoric of this passage is an amalgam of New Right moralism and traditional conservative jingoism, and Foster chooses to overlook the way
1 Quoted in 'Dogged pursuit of rural follies', by Don Anderson, The National Times, 4-10 Jan 1985, p.34. 146 ruling elites have traditionally exploited the patriotism and courage of ordinary people—the slaughter on the western front in the First World War comes especially to mind. The model presented here of collective activity is destructive rather than constructive. Foster's fiction also contains declarations of crypto-conservative values. In Mates of Mars the narrator comments that
There are worse motivations than tribal obhgation, loyalty to a mate, fear of not being a real man, idle intellectual curiosity, (p.274)
This sentence is preceded by the observation that "life in the West is not worth living"—anxiety about social decline appears to be at least partly responsible for the conservative narratorial opinions expressed in many of the novels. This is related to an even broader anxiety about change itself. When interviewed, Foster commented that "Unless life holds some absolutes for you, you end up with a very trivial frame of mind, where everything is potentially changeable." This position appears to rule out the possibility of consciously selecting certain moral absolutes while still acknowledging the universality of change. An apparent reluctance to accept change is also evident in the novels. In the following ironic sentences from Plumbum, the narrator bemoans the arrival in Australia of what he regards as decadent European values:
You're behind the times, as the old geriatric said to the man in his prime of life. You're immature, (p.327)
The point is, the hypothetical old man is correct; the younger, fitter man is immature. After all, ripeness is all, and to favour youth over old age is in one sense neurotic. Foster may be right when he says that our civilization is in a state of decline, but what finally is the point of his nostalgia for a more upright but irretrievable society, especially when he 147 acknowledges, in Christian Rosy Cross, that civilizations in decline also tend to be the most humane (p.l 10)? Of course the great irony of Foster's brand of conservatism is that his fiction participates in the decline which he condemns—a feature of his satire I examined in Chapter Three. When interviewed, he claimed that he consciously strips himself of all "ideological obligation", especially of any obligation to the humanist values of many fiction writers. In this he is spectacularly successful, not because his work is somehow empty of ideology—every fictional utterance can be interpreted in ideological terms—but because the ideology of the novels is profoundly inconsistent. Naturally enough, this cuts both ways, thwarting the propagation of conservative as well as liberal-humanist values. For a novel to affirm values of any kind it must possess a minimum level of the "ideological obligation" that Foster rejects, and the absence of this sort of obligation partly accounts for the overwhelmingly negative nature of his satire. Although they are confused and inconsistent, the extremist opinions expressed in the novels are still there, demanding interpretation. Their significance for reader reception is particularly important since some critics have argued that the artistic success of a novel depends on the reader identifying, if only temporarily and in part, with the political position of the implied author. The first to mount this argument in a sustained fashion was the American critic, Wayne Booth. In his 1961 book. The Rhetoric of Fiction^ Booth hypothesizes that an "implied reader" exists in tandem with the implied author of every fictional work, and that in order to attain maximum appreciation and enjoyment from
1 Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1961. 148 fiction it is necessary for actual readers to conform as far as possible to the beliefs and responses of the implied, or ideal, reader:
The author . . . makes his reader as he makes his second self, and the most successful reading is the one in which the created selves, author and reader, can find complete agreement, (p. 138)
Booth's view that readers should subordinate themselves to the ideas propagated by a work is of course profoundly out of step with the current emphasis on the reader actively deconstructing the ideological underpinnings of fiction. Nevertheless, setting aside his authoritarian interpretation of what makes a "successful" reading, Booth's model of the reader's interaction with the text remains useful. After all, readers must still come to terms with whatever response a work appears to be demanding of them, even if they are unwilling to slavishly agree with a work's political biases. In these terms, a critical, even hostile, reading of a novel is no less successful than one in which the reader feels in tune with the sentiments of the implied author. Nevertheless, a hostile reading of a novel is generally less enjoyable than a sympathetic reading. Most of us still yearn for that rare sense of complete identification with the spirit of a work of fiction, and if readers approach a novel in a critically alert frame of mind it is difficult to then denigrate the enjoyment they might feel when a work occasionally confirms or clarifies their own outlook on life. Consensual sex is a useful analogue of the reader's relationship with a book that he or she finds appealing. The merit of the relationship can only ever be determined by a subjective evaluation of the book, and an overwhelmingly positive identification with a novel need not necessarily be the result of a naive reading. Equally, politically provocative novels such as Foster's aren't necessarily more valuable simply on account of being challenging. Nor should the satirical aims of 149
Foster's work shield it from the kind of ideological scrutiny we would direct at any other fiction. Admittedly, evaluations of this kind are subjective and unavoidably political, yet even if we were to dismiss all political objections to Foster's work we would still be left with the certainty that its inconsistent ideological content makes admiration, let alone empathy, extremely difficult. A particularly telling demonstration of extremist values in Foster's fiction occurs towards the end of Mates of Mars, when Bruce and Sven are imprisoned in two very different prisons. Bruce's gaol, a convict-built medium-security prison called Westchester, is clearly modelled on an actual prison in the New South Wales town of Berrima. In contrast, Sven is sent to Wallyworld, a maximum-security institution modelled on Goulburn Gaol. The narrator makes it plain that Wallyworld is no holiday camp, but the opening description of Westchester likens the smaller gaol to just that:
Accommodation available in colonial convict-built tourist attraction registered by the National Trust in quiet, historic village in the scenic Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Anyone for tennis? (p.345)
The analogy is tired and hackneyed, a fictional version of countless letters to the editor complaining of luxurious conditions in prisons. Foster has at times taught creative writing in Berrima Gaol, while his wife has worked in Goulburn Gaol, so he is certainly an expert on the subject. No one, for instance, would dispute his portrayal of Westchester as a kinder and gender place than Wallyworld. This does not, however, make his likening of Westchester to a health farm any less of a cliche. Lapses of originality, however, are not the most troubling aspect of the account of Bruce and Sven's incarceration. In the description of the conditions in Wallyworld we encounter the following passage: 150
Remand is the worst section of any gaol, though in the old days, the very old days, remand was all there was. Prisons were never intended as places of punishment. They were places of remand pending torture or release. You were either convicted or acquitted. You were racked, or thrashed, or pilloried, but then they let you go. No one wanted the expense of keeping you locked up forever. That made no sense and it makes no sense still. (p.367)
The assertion here that incarceration "makes no sense" could almost be interpreted as a liberal or reformist proposition, but closer examination reveals that the only reform the narrator appears to be suggesting is the reintroduction of corporal punishment and torture. The following passage implies a similarly extreme position:
More insidious are the junkies, currently 75 per cent of the prison population, who won't abide by the prison code of ethics. Of course, they won't abide by any code of ethics. In China they shoot them in the back of the head and bill the relatives for the bullet, (p.348)
We can interprete these statements in one of two ways, or perhaps a combination of the two. The first possibility is that Foster either advocates or is attracted by the idea of the torture of criminals and the execution of drug offenders. On balance, this seems unlikely. It would be naive to automatically attribute the opinions of a fictional narrator to the author, although I would maintain that it is equally naive to believe that the author never shares the opinions he puts into the mouth of the narrator, and that to always give an author the benefit of the doubt in these cases is to seriously misread the work. Nevertheless, a second possibility exists in regard to the contentious comments in Mates of Mars about crime and punishment: Foster's intentions may be purely satirical, a provocative way of drawing attention to shortcomings in the 151 contemporary prison system. Although more probable, this explanation merely underlines the negative nature of the satire. After all, few people could be unaware that Australian prisons are imperfect, yet the only alternative Mates of Mars proposes is no alternative at all. Foster himself has expressed doubts about the alleged "improving" qualities of satire. Perhaps we must regard the almost unrelenting negativity of the novels as a limitation, not so much of Foster's work, as of satire itself. The antagonistic outrageousness of many of the opinions expressed in the novels is at least partly due to Foster's tendency automatically to oppose prevailing orthodoxies, which in the context of the modern Australian literary novel are generally liberal-humanist, feminist, or sometimes—less securely—homosexual. As this chapter's epigraph, taken from Plumbum, makes clear, the same brand of conservative dissidence is also evident in the personality of Pete Blackman, indicating that Foster is well aware of this aspect of his satire. The narrator of Mates of Mars also expresses approval for a form of contrary conservatism:
[Bruce] suffered a slight lordosis, the result, no doubt, of slouching through school. Sitting up poker-straight would have been the more appropriate gesture of defiance, (p.56)
But to whom? The narrator's sentiments here indicate very clearly that it is the act of defiance itself, rather than the direction in which that defiance is expressed, that Foster considers most important. This makes for some extremely inconsistent and extreme political statements. In Plumbum, for example, we learn from Jason that
[Pete] never votes, and when he votes, votes informal. Pete, who thinks Hitler had the right ideas, only didn't go far enough, (p.35) 152
Jason is either exaggerating here or faihng to acknowledge the ironical tone in which we would expect Pete to have uttered such a statement, yet this allusion to fascism is not irrelevant to the discussion of the politics of Foster's novels. After all, European fascism partly stemmed from strands of 19th century romantic, anti-mercantile, even environmentalist idealism which appear to have much in common with the frustrated idealism that drives Foster's satire. In Chapter Three I demonstrated how Pete's misanthropy is motivated by disappointed idealism, and one of the products of this kind of intellectual disillusion appears to be a tendency to make extreme and uncompromising statements. In The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross, for example, the narrator describes Christian's comment that '"There's truth on both sides'" as an "admission of moral imbecility." (p. 159). The phrase conveys a strong sense of moral certainty, although it does stand in contrast to the numerous expressions of moral uncertainty which litter Foster's work. Clearly Foster is not himself an adherent to the most extreme views in his fiction, yet he is responsible for the terms of the debate, and one of the contending philosophies in his fiction is undoubtedly a form of moral authoritarianism. Critics of modernism have often pointed out the influence of conservatism and fascism on the movement, and this debate bears directly on Foster's fiction. Terry Eagleton, beginning with a paraphrase of a comment by Marx , makes the following observation:
sensitivity may be locked in productive conflict with the conscious ideological stance of the author. It may well be that most of the agreed masters of twentieth-century literature are all right-wing conservatives or (sporadically) fascists, but that contradiction can be resolved only by a dialectical criticism. What Yeats, Eliot, Pound and Lawrence had in 153 common was their fierce opposition to bourgeois society, to the priorities of liberal-democratic industrial capitalism. ^
Foster's work is certainly locked in a conflict between the extreme ideological positions it adopts and the humane values of traditional mainstream literature, although whether this conflict is productive or damaging is difficult to determine. In The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Eagleton traces the conservative streak of modernism to the "aestheticizing" of art which followed its severance from church and state during the birth of modern capitalism, (p.368). According to Eagleton, the aesthetic focus of modernism, the notion of art for art's sake, allowed its exponents to ignore their increasing social irrelevance. He goes on to characterize this aesthetic doctrine, descended "from Burke and Coleridge to Heidegger, Yeats and Eliot", in the following fashion:
forget about theoretical analysis, chng to the sensuously particular . . . Think with the blood and the body. Remember that tradition is always wiser and richer than one's own poor, pitiable ego. It is this line of descent, in one of its tributaries, which will lead to the Third Reich, (p.369)
In Chapter Three I examined Foster's attraction to traditional moral virtues. Other traits that place him in the conservative modernist lineage are his avowed distaste for any kind of ideological commitment in fiction (which in practice is impossible to avoid), and his belief, evidenced by his resistance to editorial intervention, in the supremacy of the individual writer's artistic vision. Additionally, Foster conveys the same sense of anguish about the marginality of art—especially in his anxiety about cultural decline and the recurring theme of futility—that Eagleton believes responsible for the aesthetisizing impulse of modernism.
1 Eagleton, 'Marxist Literary Criticism', in Contemporary Approaches to English Studies, H. Schiff (ed.), Heinemann, London, 1977, pp. 102-103. 154
It is worth noting that, apart from Lawrence, all the modernists Eagleton refers to are poets. Of these, only Pound was a confirmed fascist, yet the predominance of poets amongst conservative modernists brings to mind George Orwell's comment that while fascist beliefs may not necessarily harm the work of a poet they are always fatal to the prose writer. 1 The radicalism or, more commonly, liberal humanism of most prominent 20th century novelists (certainly there are few fascists), seems to bear out Orwell's assertion, although no simple explanation exists for the phenomenon. It may simply be that the sheer length of novels ensures that the ideological truth "will out", although by this I do not mean to suggest that progressive or liberal values have a monopoly on truth, only that the overwhelmingly middle-class and liberal tradition of the novel makes the presentation of rival ideologies in fiction extremely difficult. The focus of the traditional novel on characterization and the individual consciousness, for instance, is intrinsically humanist, and places formidable obstacles in the way of anyone attempting to portray different realities. Foster is one such author. Individual consciousness is of little importance in Foster's work, partly as a result of the generalizing sweep of his satire but also because of the recurring expressions of conservative rhetoric.
Race is one issue on which Foster veers right of the mainstream. While he displays no intentional racism, and although most of the racially offensive remarks in his fiction are clearly framed in satirical terms, he does present issues of race in the most provocative way possible. Additionally, a certain amount of unconscious racism periodically creeps into the work under the cover of racial satire. Distinguishing the racism
1 Orwell, T.S. Eliot's poetry', in T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: A Casebook, Bernard Bergonzi (ed.), Macmillan, London, 1969, p.87. 155 from the satire is of course extremely difficult, although this difficulty is itself a shortcoming if we accept Foster's own injunctions about the importance of a clear authorial voice in satire. i Australian Aborigines are a periodic target of Foster's racially specific satire, although it could be argued that what appears to be satire based on race is actually satire of culture, with race a coincidental, peripheral issue. This possibility brings into sharp focus the argument that to spare other cultures from the critical scrutiny we direct at our own is a form of reverse racism. In the case of Foster's portrayal of Aborigines this defence is mostly justified. On the rationale that good taste should never get in the way of great wit Foster exploits, most notably in Mates of Mars, the comic potential of the clash between Aboriginal and European cultures. Chapter 29 of Mates of Mars, 'Outback Radio', is one such example. Although Foster invokes the stereotype of the welfare-bludging Aborigine in this chapter, the dominant impression we get of Bravo Yankee Zulu, the Aboriginal leader the Mates hear over CB radio, is of a shrewd and confident person masterfully manipulating the system. This is certainly not a wholly positive image but it does portray an Aborigine in a position of power and influence. 'Outback Radio' is also a brilliant rendition of Top End Aboriginal idiom, shot through with wickedly funny satire. "You don't understand our traditional ways", says Bravo Yankee Zulu to a flying doctor who has refused his request to transport beer to his community:
You bin destroyin our culture for centuries. It's our turn now to destroy it for ourselves, in fact, it's our democratic right, and it's not Just de beer. (p.206)
1 Foster, 'Satire', in The Phoenix Review, No.2, 1988/89, p.69. 156
In contrast, Foster's private opinions on Aboriginal issues are uncompromisingly conservative. When questioned about the issue, for instance, he objected to my use of the (admittedly cliched) term "disadvantaged group" to describe Aborigines, arguing that special government support for Aborigines means that they are in fact an advantaged group. This kind of wilfully literal and pedantic logic is also evident in the novels. These isolated examples of unconscious racism and the gratuitous reiteration of cliched racial stereotypes are the true causes of concern. At one point, the narrator of Mates of Mars tells us that,
"Cyril never missed his home country. . . Neverfuckinlose was not so much lost to him, as buried. The smell of the fish shop was the smell of fish on the Blacksoil Plain. . . Put him somewhere where he couldn't smell, or see, home, and you might as well neck him. (p. 121)
This passage is one of a number that refers to the killing or extinction of Aborigines. The reference in the final sentence to necking is of course an allusion to the deaths of Aborigines in custody, and with an ambiguous use of the word "you" Foster manages to imply that their hangings are, or even should be, murders rather than suicides. It's the cruel casual "might as well", casting Aborigines in the role of victims, that is objectionable here. Admittedly, to criticize the satire on these grounds is to risk sounding humourless, and Foster is certainly right in saying that laughter is no respecter of either good taste or ideological "correctness". In Dog Rock, for example, D'Arcy describes the original Aborigines of the area as "mercifully extinct", an amusing enough line given the quotidian horribleness of the town, but also despicable given the history of the Aborigines. And even if some moral judgements of Foster's politics are deflected by considerations of literary or comic merit, they tend to be all 157 the more severe if a questionable statement appears to serve no literary or satirical purpose. In the midst of a discussion about the treatment of Aborigines by European Australians we encounter the following passage in Mates of Mars:
And let the Japanese, looking to their hairy Ainu, and the Americans to their Navaho, ask themselves how they would have coped with Java Man . . . (pp.197-198)
Java Man? This description of the Aborigines is intolerable for a number of reasons; it is not funny, it is condescending and, most damningly for Foster the ex-scientist, it is factually inaccurate, since Java Man, otherwise known as Pithecanthropus, was a member of the now extinct Homo Erectus genus and therefore not, in strictly scientific terms, even human. 1 Foster does occasionally produce startling insights into the Aboriginal world-view. When Bravo Yankee Zulu speaks of visiting Canberra with his brother he describes the city as
'de dirtiest, filt'iest place we ever set eyes on. Not'in but dead leaves everywhere, I don't t'ink I ever seen so many dead leaves round one camp.' (p.208)
More commonly, Foster is content to observe Aboriginal society through the eyes of outsiders; indeed, he insists on it. In an interview for The Independent Monthly following the publication of Mates of Mars he commented that I feel closer to the growling, racist grader-drivers of Katherine than I do to the full-blood Aboriginals who to a certain extent are still a mystery to me
1 The Macquarie Dictionary, 2nd revised edition, Macquarie University, Sydney, 1987, p. 1299. 158
and to every white man with whom they've ever interacted, and I hke it that way.l
This statement has interesting parallels with an admission Foster made, in the interview I conducted with him in early 1993, about certain difficulties he experiences with characterization:
As a writer, and as a man, I have problems with creating female characters. It represents I think, if anything, a respect for women, a feeling that I don't really understand women . . . and that I really don't want to feel as though I understand them to the extent that I can create female characters ^
Both statements display an admirable caution about appropriating alien viewpoints for fiction, yet it is equally clear that for Foster this difficulty is neither a goad to further effort or even a cause for regret but an excuse not to do the hermenuetic work necessary to comprehend what I will call, for the want of a better description, the other. In a similar vein, Foster has castigated white liberal southerners for what he regards as their mistaken empathy for Aborigines and corresponding misperception of white working-class Territorians.^ The second part of this complaint is undoubtedly justified, but what Foster calls mistaken empathy is more often a sympathy on the part of white liberals for the plight of Aborigines, a stance that does not necessarily presume any special degree of understanding. The elision in Foster's argument is small yet significant since the polemics he habitually mounts, both inside and outside his fiction, are often based on these kinds of small exaggerations and distortions.
1 In 'An Unfashionable Talent', by Michael Duffy, The Independent Monthly, August 1991, p.41. 2 Interview, Feb 1993. 3 Foster, in 'An Unfashionable Talent', p.41. 159
The Japanese are the racial group that suffers the most sustained criticism and satire in Foster's fiction, yet paradoxically these attacks never develop into outright racism, although their very frequency can make them appear to. What probably saves Foster's portrayal of the Japanese from the shortcomings in his treatment of the Aborigines is the complete absence of Japanese characters in the novels. However critical Foster may be about Japanese culture or international behaviour he is quite uninterested in the Japanese as individuals. This has its positive as well as negative effects. In the words of the narrator of Mates of Mars,
The Japanese ... are past masters at self-effacement. You cannot hate Japanese, except as a concept. They are too clean and obliging, (p. 197)
Some might interpret the condescension of this statement as inherently racist, but the comic bathos of the final sentence does put the passage into a satirical frame. The following comment, made by D'Arcy D'Oliveres in The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover, is even more deliberately ridiculous:
'personally, I've no time for the Japs. They don't believe in house numbers, you know.' (p.83)
Although not directed specifically at the Japanese, Rollo's surrealistic nightmare of Asian hordes overrunning Coolalie, his property in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, is the same kind of satire, though on a grander scale:
The Asians have torn down the boundary fence and, surging between Rollo's legs and up over his arms, make haste into the top paddock, leaving behind only the sunbleached bones of his prime brood mares and the once- black loam stripped to the bedrock. And still they come. (p.377) 160
Foster obviously glories in the absurdity of this passage, which makes it all the more interesting that he is able to speak seriously in public—as he did during an address to students at the Defence Force Academy in Canberra on the 4th October 1993—of his belief that displaced Asians will eventually overrun Australia. Of course facts of this kind do not make Foster's fictional treatment of these issues any less satirical, but it does demonstrate the complexity of his satirical intentions and the degree of self-satire in the novels. More significant in Foster's treatment of the Japanese are the numerous observations and criticisms made with no apparent satirical intent. Clearly these are meant seriously. When Rollo decides, in Plumbum, to set up business in Calcutta he selects Japan as his target market:
Rollo can see that by 1990 the Japanese will be the only people in the world with spending money. . . . They flood the West with their cars and hi fis, but what do they buy from us? Our coal, wool and iron ore, certainly, but their cartels beat us into the ground pricewise. (pp.271-272)
Considering that Plumbum was written in the early 1980s, Foster's prediction about Japanese spending power in 1990 is impressively accurate, even if their supremacy has slipped somewhat in more recent times. The analysis of Japanese buying practices is also correct, although whether Foster is critical or admiring is unclear. No such uncertainty exists, in Mates of Mars, about the attitude to the Japanese of Bruce Nonnemacher and Steve Overton. Foster presents Bruce's hostility, in particular, as a comically extreme obsession, yet this does not prevent him from using Bruce or Steve as mouthpieces for making genuine and often reasonable criticisms of the Japanese. The 161 following exchange, concerning the presence of golf balls in shipping lanes, takes place between Sven and Steve on board the Roper Cherie :
'Golf balls are common here. The Japanese belt them off the tankers. . .'. This is the Coral Sea, isn't it? Didn't we once fight a war here against the Japanese?' 'That's right. Won it too.' 'Yet 40 years on, they're free to waste golf balls. That really offends me.' (pp.331-332)
Nor does the narrator of Mates of Mars stay silent on the subject. Speaking of the highly-prized tiger prawn, the narrator declares.
They're the biggest and best prawn in the world and too many Japanese retirement villages, space station and cattle studs will cramp their style. And then the denizens of Tokyo will wonder why their sushi bars aren't what they were, and it will serve them right, (p.316)
The narrator is equally strident in the brief description of Bruce's trial for piracy, which ends with a well-known quote from Arthur Calwell:
Foolish Nonnemacher attempts to denounce, from the dock, the Japanese nation . . . but one crime jurists will not abide, in this bicentennial year, is racism. Never mind the Japanese are the most racist people on earth: Two Wongs don't make a white. (p.341)
It's left to Vincent, the Chinese, to make the opposite case. Speaking of Bruce's anti-Japanese article in the newspaper, Vincent remarks,
how would he know? He's never even been there. Anyhow, what's he trying to do, stirring up all this racist hatred? (p.371)
The fact that an opposite case exists at all demonstrates again the complexity of the novel's pohtical disposition. 162 If Foster's critique of the Japanese largely manages to steer clear of racism, the same cannot be said of a number of minor comments directed at other ethnic groups. In Plumbum, for example, the portrait of Felix occasionally descends into tiresome stereotypes:
If this guy were hungry and Pete the last moa on earth, there'd be fowl in the pot tonight. (p.61)
Admittedly the narrator filters this comment through Pete's viewpoint, but this does not excuse the unoriginality of the cannibal allusion. Other passages in Plumbum display an apparently unintended and unconscious racism. Speaking of Sharon's hatred for a young Thai pop star, the narrator observes that, "To make matters worse. Pooh is a good-looking girl, well able to pass as a European." (p. 184). Although Foster places "good-looking" and "able to pass as a European" in separate clauses of this sentence, their juxtaposition is enough to suggest a causal relationship between the two ideas, perpetuating the myth that a dash of the occidental is enough to transform otherwise unremarkable Asian women into beauties. A number of the most clearly racist comments in Foster's work are concentrated in one long paragraph of Plumbum that ostensibly describes the symptoms of Europe's supposed social decline. The passage begins with a description of modem Amsterdam:
The Dutch took to dope like they took to tulips. There's an evil sensuality on the face of every second passer-by. . . It's the look of an old, tired, worn-out civihzation, a colonial has-been, whose sins, in the form of disgrunded black men, are coming home to roost. It's the smirk on the face of a coal-black Surinamer smoking a fat jay, with his arm round the waist of a beautiful, fresh-faced Fries girl, (p.326) 163
The equating here of miscegenation with the dechne of civihzation is so outrageously racist that it seems impossible for the passage not to have some kind of satirical function. It seems no coincidence, then, that the passage continues with a discussion of the Weimar Republic, yet this topic seems to merely serve as an introduction for more flagrantly racist remarks:
It's the look the Krauts of the Weimar Republic came to equate with cultural decadence. It's a Jew's look: conniving, sensual, bisexual, arrogant, bespeaking the soul corrupted by vice and a monkey cunning with duality. It's the look of whore who enjoys her work. (pp.326-327)
Foster is clearly aiming at maximum provocation here, yet the satirical function of this diatribe is unclear. The succeeding short paragraph describes the "feeling of evil" that Australian travellers perceive as they walk the streets of Amsterdam, yet despite this statement's comic ambiguity it basically reinforces the theme of the earlier passage. The scene's final two sentences describe Pete's reverence before a Flemish still life in the Rijksmuseum, and while his absurdly ecstatic admiration for the painting's "translucent asparagus spears" does satirize the cultural achievement of the civilization the narrator believes to have been lost, this does not explain the function of the scene's racist remarks. The anti- semitism in the first passage is also reminiscent of a sentence in Mates of Mars that speaks of Bruce "having been endowed with a certain rat cunning." (p.354). Given Bruce's Jewishness, this remark inevitably recalls the propaganda efforts of Goebbels to liken the Jews to rats. Whether or not the allusion is intentional is difficult to say, but either possibility involves a strong degree of insensitivity on Foster's part. It is conceivable that any of these comments might have been acceptable if the presentation of the satire met Foster's own criterion of authorial 164 clarity, but this is not the case. Ultimately it is a complex and confused presentation of racial satire which produces the ugliest sentiments of any of the novels.
Foster's novels generally convey an aggressively conservative attitude to gender relations, although the case is complicated by occasional displays of insight or empathy into the inequalities suffered by women. Of course these insights don't transform the parts of the novels in which they occur into anything resembling the genre that Foster describes as "women agonizing over their relationships and domestic situation",i but in his own way he does grapple with that part of the Zeitgeist that Noel Homiman calls "woman". The extreme rejection of gender equality in Foster's novels include sexist remarks in humour, cliches and sexual stereotypes, and disturbing hints of cruelty and hostility towards women. At the more innocuous end of the scale are jokes like the one in the following scene from Dog Rock. The paragraph begins with the police sergeant showing D'Arcy and the local Post Master a photograph of the body of the Queens Park Ripper's second victim:
He produced a photo. It was the photo of a woman's body, lying at the foot of an escalator. The PM took one look at it then rose from his chair, moving unsteadily towards the door of the residence. . . . The woman's corpse was not a pretty sight but then, she was not a pretty woman, (p.53)
The "politics" of this passage are similar to those surrounding D'Arcy's comments about the extinction of Aborigines: the joke is distasteful given the high level of violence against women in society, yet it is also
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 165 genuinely amusing. The dilemma brings to mind the recent dispute over a Berlei lingerie advertisement featuring a woman sawn in half by a magician, although Foster's joke is superior to the humour of the ad. Whether or not comic merit justifies this kind of humour is another matter. On balance, a clear satirical intention probably does justify imagery that in another context would be gratuitous. In a similarly minor vein are occasional examples of sexist language, where the sexism is apparently unconscious and serves no satirical purpose. The following scene from Mates of Mars describes the beginning of one of Jade's women's self-defence classes: "There were 16 girls training tonight, ranging in age from 14 to 50." (p. 172). It is just possible that the term "girl" might be used affectionately by someone like Jade to describe a 50 year-old woman, but it is the narrator who is clearly responsible for this sentence. The ideological misdemeanour is slight but in some ways more telling than Foster's more outrageous transgressions, which after all are meant to be provocative. In contrast, his use of the word "girls" to describe women appears to have been unconscious. More deliberate, though no less contentious, is the maxim, attributed to Jade, that "a woman's scream is her most effective weapon":
Scream at the top of your voice, she said, even if there's no one within miles. It frightens him, it humiliates him, it draws attention to him. But more, it has a profound psychological effect upon him: it makes him realise he is dealing with a creature he cannot understand, because he will never, ever scream, when he is attacked, (p. 173)
The logic of this passage is suspect in a number of places. How a woman's scream "humiliates" an attacking man, for instance, is unclear; gratification seems a more likely emotion. The assertion that men never scream when attacked is also doubtful, yet even if we accept this theory, the argument that an assailant is less likely to continue an assault if he 166 realizes he is dealing with an alien "creature" is extremely questionable. The typical human hostility towards the unknown may even partly explain why men assault women in the first place. Like a woman screaming to demonstrate her difference from men, Foster's male characters, not to mention his male narrators, repeatedly characterize the gap between the sexes as a gulf. In one respect this is not surprising, since satire thrives on contrasts and extremes, although it is also possible to imagine a form of satire—potentially just as shocking— that would emphasize similarities rather than differences. In any case, Foster chooses to draw attention to the distinctions between men and women in much the same way that he highlights the differences between races. This can be an ideologically ambiguous process, since some strands of feminism attempt to do the same thing, emphasizing qualities traditionally designated as feminine in order to celebrate them. At one point in Testostero, a description of Venice appears to do something similar when the narrator uses stone and water, traditional symbols of masculinity and femininity, to exemphfy differences between the sexes. The passage contrasts the flexible, feminine principle of water—"purified by cycling through the thighs of beautiful women"—to the gloomy, immobile, faintly phalhc "stone heads looking down from watergates", ultimately concluding that "Water seems very confident of victory here and stone certain of defeat." (p.28). The analogy is generous to the feminine principle but nevertheless emphasizes the distinction between male and female. This kind of differentiation of masculinity and femininity, occasionally taking the form of a male romanticization of women, has the cumulative effect in Foster's fiction of objectifying women. This is significant since it is the male imagination's subtle transformation of women into objects that ultimately justifies a variety of male behaviours 167 towards women, the most extreme being rape and violence. In due course I will examine the allusions to rape in Foster's work, but first I want to refer to the attitudes expressed towards women in the novels which create the environment, as it were, in which the idea of rape can be repeatedly raised. A contributing factor in the objectification of women in the novels is the construction of an intellectual framework which justifies the process. The following passage from Plumbum, describing the fate of Sharon and her mother and sister after the death of Sharon's father, propounds what I will call the caveman model of social interaction:
Three attractive, neurotic women left manless in a city of hustling carnivores: they must have known what would happen to them, somewhere deep inside. A large, wealthy man is required to keep an Australian woman safe. Size and wealth, and Sharon's father had both, because he was strong. (p.385)
While a degree of overstatement here—"neurotic", "hustling carnivores"—indicates the presence of satire, the opinions expressed still contribute to the underlying philosophies of the novel. In Mates of Mars we encounter a similarly elemental theory:
every time a man and a woman meet for the first time in our society, they size each other up as potential mates. . . It is one of the reasons life lived in the midst of strangers is so exhausting. The other, of course, is that men instinctively size each other up physically. Could I cop this guy in a blue is the unspoken question here, just as important as, if not attendant to, Could we fuck, she and me? (p. 169)
Two things stand out about this passage. The first is the shift from a generalized to a specifically male perspective, establishing, if we didn't know already, that the narrator's sex is male. The second salient feature 168 of the passage is the connection, made freely by the narrator, between sex and violence. At least one of the models of love offered in Plumbum is ferocious. When Pete is suffering from Sharon's rejection of him after the band's success, Jason formulates advice for his brother as they prepare for the Utrecht concert:
Piet: lovers should not be friends. Lovers devour each other neat. Lovers should not forgive. . . The elements should not be neutralised in love. . . forgiveness is not love (in fact, love being dangerous, you have attempted something less). Pete: love is allyaneed. (p.345)
The variety of love described in the first paragraph seems to possess a tough legitimacy, yet in reality it is just another constructed metaphor, not dissimilar to the Renaissance model of love as sickness. This is love as hand-to-hand combat. The connection between love and violence is not explicit, as it is in passage in Mates of Mars about sizing up potential mates, but for this reason it is perhaps all the more insidious. The modern virtue of friendship and the Christian virtue of forgiveness are both seen here as antithetical to love, yet in its own way this fierce variety of love is just as romantic as the Beatles' platitude (seemingly far more appropriate to Jason) that opens the succeeding paragraph. The juxtapostition of these disparate loves destabilizes the authority of both. The extract from Sven's diary, in Mates of Mars, describing his impressions of two anonymous women, is one of the clearest examples in the novels of the male objectification of women. As is often the case with Foster, however, the basic political question is complicated by considerations of literary value, since the diary extract contains some of the finest writing in the novel: 169
She was slightly built, but with the most unusually straight spine, such that the indentations formed where her shoulderblades protruded were quite pronounced. There were clefts there, dimples to which a man's fingers would be drawn, (p. 104)
Sven's portraits of the women create a vivid impression not only of their appearances but also their personalities—their personalities, at least, as Sven imagines them to be. Such a conventionally masculine mode of inductive thinking may be a fine way of deciphering the structure or properties of objects, but when it is directed towards another human being it tends to preclude empathy, which is essentially a process of imagining outwards. Fascinatingly, Foster portrays Sven as being aware that his diaries are somehow unacceptable:
Sven had a sense of the fury they might arouse in a modem woman, though such fury would always confound him. He was a man and proud of it. Even so, every month or 28 days he destroyed the diaries, (p. 104)
It is difficult to know what to make of this apparent parody of the menstruation cycle. Foster may be contrasting Sven's periodic act of destruction with the rhythms of the female reproductive system in order to make a case about the essential sterility of all male activity, although if this is the case then pregnancy would have been the more suitable counterpoint. The allusion undercuts Sven's feeling of pride in being male, but it is ultimately impossible to determine whether the implied author shares Sven's disregard for the probable attitude of women towards the diaries. Inductive logic—reasoning from the outside in—is only one short step from penetrative thought. The following passage from Plumbum is delivered by the narrator, before moving to the point of view of Jason: 170
Hell is a charged maze and men with swords, dragons of various kinds and women not only block the path but form the hedge. One of them is a hole. All of them are holes to Jason, (p.337)
It is difficult to imagine a more phallogocentric discourse. (Do men, for instance, form a hedge along the path of women in hell?) The obscene dimension of this imagery is particularly clear since we learn several pages earlier that the blinded Jason has begun to donate his sexual services to adoring disabled fans. (p.324). In another sense this passage is a reworking of the 19th century division of women into whores and saints: woman in the plural line the way to hell, one woman promises escape. Both propositions are of course illusions, male fantasies projected onto the blank female object:
Sharon! says Pete. I was all set ready to love you, when my brain inverted you. Don't move yet, it said: that angel is really a devil. But I was impatient, so I just left, to follow my path, like a Mobius strip, back into my brain, (p.337)
And as the following sentence from Plumbum demonstrates, if women are objectified often enough, they become objects:
A broken white plastic mop handle fucks a disembowelled pink floral mattress, (p.335)
Despite the presence here of symbolic phallus, it is the mattress which is the grammatical and, I would argue, visual and symbolic object at the centre of the sentence. The image of evisceration is also another symbol of extreme violence towards women. The sex/violence nexus appears time and again in Foster's novels. When Pete participates, in Plumbum, in a communist party attack on 171 members of the Ananda Marg in Calcutta, we encounter the following passage:
There's a woman sitting next to the driver, and Pete, for some reason, goes for her. He dislikes women, if the truth be known. Especially women who indulge in orgies to which Pete was not invited, (p.283)
The woman turns out to be Sharon, who has been caught up in the cult, and to disguise her rescue Pete slashes her cheek open with an ankus. "She deserves that, anyway," comments the narrator, via the consciousness of Pete, "for all the heartache she's caused Pete. Then he saves her life, which shows he still loves her." (p.284). The pattern of hatred for women and extreme adoration for one particular woman is again evident, only this time Pete's dislike of women as a group finds expression in his violence towards the one woman he supposedly loves. While an actual rape never occurs in Foster's fiction it is contemplated a number of times. When Sven unsuccessfully propositions a woman on a bus, in Mates of Mars, he chooses to think of the episode as a deliberate error:
A Grand Prix driver, for instance, will often, in practise, push until he spins out. He needs to discover how fast he can go and remind himself why he cannot go faster. But the urge to go faster remains in him, just as the urge to seize a woman, in silence, and rape her, remained in Sven. (p. 109)
The racing car analogy implies that Sven sees rape as somehow impossible, the equivalent of making a car go faster than conditions allow. The text itself, however, particularly the chilling phrase "in silence", exposes this nonsense for what it is, making Sven's capacity for rape all too believable. Noel Homiman, in Testostero, is another character who is aroused, at least on one occasion, by the idea of rape, although Noel's 172 outrageously satirical surname, along with the absurdity of the scene, makes the tone of this revelation less sinister than in the comparable scene in Mates of Mars. The action takes place when Stronzo LoZanni insists on seeing a photograph of the birthmark on Noel's erection so that he can identify him as the true son of Testostero Ciaponi:
'Ah, but you see I can no longer maintain an erection under stress. The flash would put me off.' 'Then you are not your father's son!' The thought of raping Cortesana enables Noel to achieve identification. (p-179)
Despite the comedy of this scene, rape is again equated with extreme sexual arousal. It is one thing for Foster to portray male characters with rape fantasies, which no doubt reflects, after all, a common reality; it is quite another to ascribe dismissive opinions about rape to a female character. This occurs in Plumbum when Sharon is fantasizing about making love to a woman as a man, the text making its habitual leap from sex to rape:
No woman ever need be raped, not if she doesn't want to be. The magistrates are right. I suppose that's why I feel so guilty about those five guys—it needn't have happened, (p.30)
Foster's comic and satirical intentions here are obvious, but it remains doubtful whether this excuses the travesty of having a female character dismiss the reality of rape. Sharon is clearly not a rounded character but a projection of male fantasies, and as Foster's admission about his difficulties with female characterization indicates, there are relatively few significant women characters in the novels. Of these, Sharon is one of the most vividly realized, but there are also more independent female characters, such as 173
Flora MacDuffie in Moonlite, Judy Rankenfile in Testostero and Jade Muldoon in Mates of Mars. The personality of the first of these women is an odd combination of assertiveness and passivity; when we first encounter Flora she is the docile child bride who worries about her pet kid during her wedding ceremony, (p.9). When The Maclshmael, the chief of the clan, evicts his own people from their island, however, it is the intelligent and articulate Flora who stands up to him. Later, she repeatedly saves the population of Hiphoray from starvation when the laziness, pride and stupidity of the male islanders prevent them from gathering and storing the necessary provisions for winter. On one of these occasions Flora even persuades the women not to feed their husbands until the men agree to go fowling for gannet. For the men, the most shocking aspect of this development is the fact that the women have been engaged in a rudimentary form of political activity:
'I'm sorry,' says Donald, 'this was my daughter's doing. She held a meeting yesterday.' 'A woman's parliament my dear?' 'If you like.' 'But women can't talk! They have no eloquence. And to starve a man is to starve a family.' (p.41)
Foster's sympathy for Flora in her battle with the patriarchy is clear. In fact the narrator announces, on the very first page of the novel, a sympathy with the position of women in society:
The island silence ... is suddenly vanquished by the spontaneous keening of a woman, that cry of rage and grief shunned by men in their death agony. In this cry, women express their contempt for the science, art, religion and politics of men. (p.l) 174
Later this sympathy extends, almost incidentally, to the ghastly Lady Virginia Creeper, who despite her wealth, or because of it, is powerfully constrained on account of her sex:
'Just look at that view,' says Lady Virginia, inhaling as deeply as her corsets will permit, (p.74)
Foster also displays a degree of empathy towards women when—in one uncharacteristically sexually-charged incident—Flora appears to experience a lesbian attraction to one of the island women:
Before they know it, they are wrestling in the mayweed and quite enjoying themselves. . . [Flora] shrieks and dances till Mary pulls her down. Something in the heady stench of the urea, oil and sweat is beginning to intoxicate these widows, and Flora is relieved to see the boys, hurtling over the grass as though in fear of their lives, (p.53)
This episode represents perhaps the greatest possible threat to male power, and it is significant that the interruption of the boys is caused by the arrival of a vessel containing the Reverend Stewart Campbell, a representative of the law of the Father. Flora subsequently capitulates to the will of this intruder and becomes his agent in the conversion of the MacEsaus to Christianity. She ultimately pays for her submission, appropriately enough, with death by starvation after the island's culture is destroyed as a consequence of Campbell's interference. If Foster shows sympathy for the struggle of Flora MacDuffie against the stupidity of men, he goes out of his way to ridicule modern feminism in his portrait, in Testostero, of Judy Rankenfile. In Judy we encounter the stereotype of the angry, counter-culture feminist. "What a life!" she thinks angrily, during a first shopping expedition in Venice: 175
The women have all the time in the world—no goats, no bees, no loom, no vege garden—nothing better to do than spend hours a day shopping, gossiping to everyone, (p.5)
Foster satirizes Rankenfile's narrow-minded rejection of the Italian way of life: her desperate search for a supermart to avoid the bother of buying from specialized shops, and, when she finds one, her hypocritical condemnation of its "poisonous smallgoods, pickled in nitrite and other carcinogens." (p.6). At one point she observes that "the Revolution is wasting its time in this place." (p. 12). In the light of this militant feminism, Judy's subsequent romantic infatuation for Leon Hunnybun is all the more incongruous and ridiculous. The fact that Leon is homosexual is simply an additional turn of the satirical screw. In keeping with the rest of the novel the satire is crude and unsubtle, the narrator at times making explicit, sometimes cliched contributions. When Leon is attempting to convince Noel of their twinhood, for example, we encounter the following sentence from the narrator:
But luckily, in this case, he has a woman's heart as ally, and what could be more unscientific? (p.60)
Compared with the vapid Judy Rankenfile, Jade Muldoon, in Mates of Mars, is an altogether more formidable and intelligent woman, although her feminism is by no means exempt from satirical attack. Jade is certainly the most rounded of all the female characters in the novels, although Foster has himself speculated that Jade may have been "masculinized" by his attempt to "get inside" her character. i He is of course alluding to her Amazonian strength and lethal side-kick (perhaps literally so in the case of Wolfgang Coogan), indicating that Foster
1 Interview, 19 Feb 1993. 176 regards strength and power as inherently masculine qualities, although, to be fair, these are still broadly accepted assumptions in our culture. In contrast, Foster uses Sven's infatuation for Jade as the basis of a critique of traditional male gallantry and romanticism towards women. After courting Jade for some time Sven is horrified when she finally responds by attempting to seduce him—he desires romance not sex, at least initially:
'Jade, I want to respect you. I want to be virtuous.' 'And what do I get out of it, Sven? Bad poetry?' Sven can't answer this as he doesn't really know what women get out of courtly love, if anything. All the books he has read on the subject were written by medieval men, from a male viewpoint, (p.240)
This acknowledgement that courtly love is an inherently male form of expression is particularly interesting in the light of Foster's earlier writing about romance. In Plumbum, for example, the expression of romantic love by men is equated with seeing women truly!
Anyone who's read a single book knows that romantic love was invented, right here in Europe, by a man holding back in a beech wood. And when a man holds back, he sees a woman for what she is. And the more he holds back, the more he sees. The female orgasm was first discovered, in a beech wood, by a converted Jew. (p.386)
The converted Jew is supposedly Lancelot, delaying his orgasm until Guinevere achieves her own climax. How seriously we are meant to take these sentiments is unclear. Certainly they are introduced with comic overstatement, and while romantic love might in practical terms delay the onset of a sexual encounter—as it does (permanently) between Sven and Jade—it does not follow that the man's orgasm will also be delayed as a consequence of the wait. In any case, the argument presented by Foster Ill here is too tortuous to make perfect sense, while the status of the whole passage is thrown into doubt by its satirical introduction. While the novels display sometimes confused attitudes to romanticism, from florid intensification to satirical scepticism, Foster does appear, in Mates of Mars, to dismiss Jade's feminist-inspired belief that she should be treated, whenever possible, as one of the boys. The following exchange takes place as Jade attempts to discourage Sven's attentions:
'Look, I like you, OK? It's not that I don't like you. . . But I want to be treated like anyone else. Surely you can understand that?' 'That's impossible, I'm afraid. You're not like anyone else.' (p.232)
This is true enough—in some respects Jade is more manly than the men, more manly at least than Nonnemacher, although this is not so surprising if we accept the information, delivered by the narrator in parenthesis, that "women's testosterone levels are rising while men's decline." (p.278). When the Mates take to sea it is Jade who volunteers to secure a stabilizer to the Roper Cherie's boom after Bruce refuses the job. Soon afterwards Bruce loses his job as deckhand to the stronger Jade. (p.308). In the words of a bemused Sven,
'You know, in the old days ... the cooks on these Gulf trawlers were all fat and ugly and had rings through their noses and tatts on their arses . . . Now they're all beautiful young women with higher education. What does it mean?' (p.306)
What indeed. Foster ultimately appears critical about the new assertiveness of women in this most traditional of male workplaces. When Jade rouses the sleeping crew with the time-honoured chant, '"Wakey, wakey, hands off snakey'", the narrator's judgement is sarcastic: "She can be tough and vulgar too, she can be anything a man can." 178
(p.317). After informing us that there are no all female crews in the Gulf trawler fleet, the narrator goes on to offer the following extraordinary explanation:
Why? Because there's a certain strain in pretending to be boys and doing all the tough jobs traditionally done by men, which is not to say it can't be borne; modern feminist determination knows no boundaries, and indeed what little driving force there is in contemporary Australian society, aside from sheer greed and there isn't much, would appear to derive from women and the satisfaction they feel in doing what their mothers told them they never ought to. But if there's no man about, both to be given the finger and, hopefully, to help out with the heavy lifting from time to time, the novelty no doubt wears off. . . (p.322)
The narrator neutralizes his apparently generous comment about women being the driving force of society with the heavy qualification of "there isn't much", thereby taking a swipe at the inertia of the nation as well as the supposedly limited motivation of women. The paragraph continues with the comment that "male skippers like to have women on board too", with the implication that the presence of women at sea is wholly decided by men, apparently on account of women's superior prawn-sorting ability. The narrator goes on to qualify even this mild acknowledgement of women's skill with the following remark (also taking the opportunity to make a gratuitous allusion to Aboriginal alcoholism):
just as . . . the most drunken drunken white Top Ender [is] drunker than the least drunken black, so the fastest male sorter is faster than the slowest female, (p.322)
The predominant attitude in the text to the participation of women in traditionally male workplaces is thus ultimately negative. This is in keeping with the overall political thrust of the novels which, despite their 179 frequent ideological contradictions and confusion, convey a politically extreme tone. Conclusion
"I believe that my work represents an achievement of some kind."
"I have come to realize that I have failed as a writer."
David Foster—interview, 19 February 1993
At the heart of this thesis lies the question of what, if anything, determines literary value. In regard to Foster's fiction, the question is difficult to answer. The novels are certainly idiosyncratic. Foster's expression is recognizably his own, and consists of a unique blend of philosophical speculation, obscenity and impressively realistic dialogue. His comic set-pieces and periodic one-liners are often hilarious. The plots of the novels are compellingly weird, particularly the way in which they accelerate as the stories progress. Foster's depth of characterization is limited, althougth it is not his aim to produce fully-rounded characters, and the minor characters are generally original and distinct. Each of the novels is crammed full of enough imaginative invention to sustain five books by most other fiction writers. Whether this is a recommendation is difficult to say; certainly there is no other Australian fiction quite like it. It may be that the question of literary value is no longer as relevant as it was when critics felt confident enough to slot a given work into its "rightful" place in the hierarchy of the literary canon. Today, novels are not works of art to be consecrated by a select group of commentators so much as experiences to be enjoyed by individual readers, and in this context Foster's own contradictory assertions of success and failure. 181 quoted above, are finally the most accurate summary of his fiction. In keeping with this confusing verdict, I have attempted to show where the complexity of Foster's work may hamper readers' enjoyment of a set of novels that undoubtedly represents "an achievement of some kind." At the beginning of Chapter One I stated that the complexity of Foster's fiction is more like the complexity of nature than of machines. The contradictory extremes of order and chaos in a typical abstract expressionist painting is another model for the complexity of the novels. A reader's perception of their structures, for example, will be influenced by both their surface chaos and more fundamental structural circularity, and the question of which impression predominates is ultimately subjective. Without denying the subjective nature of this kind of judgement, I have tended to criticize Foster's complex portrayal of complexity, where a more orderly approach might have paradoxically increased the reader's appreciation of the intricacies of the novels—in much the same way that stylized dialogue in fiction generally gives a more convincing impression of speech than a transcription of a genuine but unstructured conversation. The parallel between Foster's fiction and abstract expressionism offers other insights. The growing public acceptance of a painting such as Blue Poles, for instance, demonstrates how a work of art can influence the criteria by which it is judged, effectively advancing an audience's "horizon of expectations". Yet if the critic Karlheinz Stierle is correct in claiming that fiction has tended to increase in complexity throughout its history, what are we to make of the way increasing familiarity with a work reduces its initial strangeness? Could Foster's work, for instance, modify reading tastes and become increasingly explicable to subsequent generations of readers? Unfortunately, Foster's novels may not currently enjoy sufficient popularity to achieve this degree of influence in the 182 future (the satires of Rabelais and Swift, for example, were very popular in their day). This makes it all the more frustrating when parts of the novels appear to place obstacles in the way of the reader without adding any particular literary distinction to the work. This is perhaps most true of Plumbum, which in my opinion deserves the ambiguous status of flawed masterpiece. We might ask whether the process of canonization or the ability of a work to shift the public's tastes are accurate indications of literary merit, but whatever the answer to these questions, the future standing of Foster's novels is uncertain. It is by no means true, for instance, that the best works of fiction are always initially neglected by an uncomprehending public. For every Moby Dick there are numerous novels whose value is recognized more or less immediately after publication, and even those works whose technical innovations place them "ahead of their time" usually win enduring regard for the way they encapsulate the essence of their age. Whether Foster's novels achieve something of this kind is unclear. Their very chaos and unpredictability are representative of the times, but Foster is also politically out of step with his contemporaries—in a way that Rabelais, for instance, was not. In the words of Noel Horniman, in Testostero:
I'm sorry I'm out of fashion. I'm sorry I'm not what you people want. But I am what you people made me, and you have a responsibility to me.' (p. 12)
Judy Rankenfile's response to this declaration of defiance, however, could easily be shared by some of Foster's readers:
'We have a responsibility to youl What about your responsibility to meT 183
Whether that responsibility has a political dimension is unclear. In ordinary circumstances, poHtical consistency is the last thing we expect of a novelist, but Foster's assertions of the need for a guiding authorial voice in satire, along with the declarations in the novels about the importance of enduring values, often make their inconsistent and extreme politics seem hypocritical. Perhaps the apparent shortcomings of the novels are finally not so much due to their author as to satire itself. Satire is by definition a limited literary form. In the current period of promiscuous literary borrowing it is just one of many genres routinely plundered by novelists, but despite the apparent polyphony (even cacophony) of his novels, Foster remains essentially faithful to the principles of satire. In this sense his novels are anachronistic, while the complex, Gordian tangle of their satire serves to magnify their strangeness. Bibliography
Primary Sources
North South West. Macmillan, 1973. The Pure Land, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1985 (originally published by Macmillan, 1974). The Fleeing Atalanta, Maximus Books, Adelaide, 1976. Escape to Reality. Macmillan, 1977. The Empathy Experiment (with D.K. Lyall), Wild & Woolley, Sydney, 1977. Moonlite, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1985 (originally published by Macmillan, 1981). Plumbum, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1983. Dog Rock, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1985. The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1986. Testostero, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1987. The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1988. Hitting the Wall, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1989. Mates of Mars, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1991. 185
Reviews
North South West The Adelaide Advertiser. 'Light relief from serious Foster', by Katherine England, 11 Feb 1989, p. 11. The Age. 'Only two-thirds of one good novel', by Rod Nicholls, 2 February 1974, Extra 12. The Canberra Times. 'In a new direction', by David Swain, 21 Dec 1973, p.9. The Herald. 'Clever writing and a bit of arrogance', by Neil Jillet, 1 November 73, p.32. Nation Review. 'The Ocker rooted in our racial unconciousness', by John Tittensor, 21-28 December 1973, p.328. The Sun Herald. 'Scientist turns writer', by L.V. Kepert, 18 Nov 1973, p.27. The Weekend Australian. 'True love on the assembly line', Carl Harrison- Ford, 24 Nov 1973, p.27.
The Pure Land The Adelaide Advertiser. 'In search of fulfilment', by Katherine England, 19 Oct 1974, p.24.
The Fleeing Atalanta The Weekend Australian. 'Love more deaf than blind', by Tim Thome, 14 July 76, p.20.
Escape to Reality The Adelaide Advertiser. 'The grim realities', by Anne Summers, 4 Feb 1978, p.2. 186
The Sydney Morning Herald. 'Style, and a suppressed rage', by Wendy Blaxland, 14 Jan 78, p. 17. The Weekend Australian. 'Misfits and depressives in the raw', by Peter Corris, 5-6 Nov 77, p. 12.
The Empathy Experiment The Age. Untitled review by George Turner, 1 April 1978, p.24. Nation Review. 'An oddity too much', by Jim Mackenzie, 16-22 Feb 1978, p.l3. The Sydney Morning Herald. 'Pruning the brain', by Wilham Noonan, 12 August 1978, p. 19. 24 Hours. 'Science fables', by Damien Broderick, Feb 1978, p.62. The Weekend Australian. 'A nightmarish fantasy of diverting deviates', by Elaine Lindsay, 22-23 April 1978, p.9.
Moonlite The Adelaide Advertiser. 'Off-beat, heady and hilarious', by Katherine England, 1 October 81, p.27. The Book Magazine. 'Craftsmen at Work', by Stephen Matchett,Vol. 1, No.2, Aug-Sep 1987, p. 17. The Bulletin. 'Entertaining and a poser of big questions', by Manning Clark, 23 June 1981, pp.87-89. The Courier-Mail. 'Barbs of an angry man', by Thomas Shapcott, 25 July 81, p.24. The National Times. 'A most engaging lunatic called Finbar', by Rory Barnes, 24-30 May 1981, p.52. Overland. Untitled review by Michael Cotter, No.88, 1982, pp.64-65. The Sydney Morning Herald. 'Moonliting is fun', by Nancy Keesing, 6 June 81, p.46. 187
Plumbum The Age. 'Novelist intoxicated by language and rock 'n' roll', by Laurie Clancy, 28 Jan 1984, Extra 13. The Bulletin. 'An original and some vivid variety', by Geoffrey Button, 20 Dec 83, p.62. The Canberra Times. 'Cohesion wanting', by Andrew Fraser, 14 Apr 1984, p.l8. The National Times. 'Rock, manipulation and greed', by Helen Thomas, 23-29 Dec 1983, p.29. The Sydney Morning Herald. 'Compulsive or repulsive—it depends on taste', by Stephen Knight, 14 April 1984, p.41. The Weekend Australian. 'Disjunctive worlds that never make a point', by Adrian Mitchell, 24-25 Dec 1983, Mag. 14.
Dog Rock The Adelaide Advertiser. 'Stumbling into Dog Rock, Cow Flat and Foggy Hollow', by Katherine England, 23 Mar 1985, The Sat. Review p.6. The Age. 'Monologue of a postman a comic collage', by Helen Daniel, 26 Jan 1985, Sat. Extra p. 12. Australian Book Review. 'Community notices', by Kerryn Goldsworthy, No.71, June 1985, p.20. The Bulletin. 'A lethal spider under Dog Rock', by Geoffrey Dutton, 26 Feb 1985, pp.84-85. The Canberra Times. 'Promise Undelivered', by Veronica Sen, 9 Mar 1985, p.20. The National Times. 'Dogged pursuit of rural follies', by Don Anderson, 4-10 Jan 1985, p.34. 188
The Sydney Morning Herald. 'Characters fantastic populate home-grown trilogy', by Inez Baranay, 26 Jan 1985, p.36. The Weekend Australian. 'Surprise touch of nostalgia', by Adrian Mitchell, 19-20 Jan 85, p. 12.
The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross The Age. 'Novel treatment of historic hoax', by Helen Daniel, 23 Aug 1986, Saturday Extra p. 12. Australian Book Review. 'Your Authentic Picaro', by Jane Cotter, Nov. 86, pp.7-8. The Bulletin. 'Looking to comedy for some pointers', by Susan McKeman, 21 Oct 1986, p. 100. The Canberra Times. 'Modem concerns and medieval garb', by Mark Thomas, 29 Nov 1986, p.B3. The National Times. 'A waltzing heretic', by John Hanrahan, 7 Sept 1986, p.38. Overland. 'Current Trends', by David Matthews, No. 106, 1987, p.81. The Sydney Morning Herald. 'Humour's Alchemy of light', by Humphrey McQueen, 30 Aug 1986, p.42. The Weekend Australian. 'An alchemy of words', by Adrian Mitchell, 16- 17 Aug 1986, Mag. 15.
Testostero The Age. 'Pastiche and parody run amok', by Helen Daniel, 14 Feb 1987, Sat. Extra 16. Antipodes. 'Twins embody polarities in a fictional romp', by Alexandra Cromwell, Spring 1988, p.60. 189
Australian Book Review. 'It's All Done With Mirrors', by Susan McKeman, No.89, Apr 1987, pp.23-24. The Canberra Times. 'A further comedy of twinhood', by Ralph Elliott, 25 Apr 1987, B3. The National Times. 'Expect entrancing double trouble from the twins in surreal Venice', by Martin Johnston, 8 Feb 1987, p.27. Overland. 'The Literary Spectrum', by Dorothy Hewett, No. 108, 1987, p.85. The Sydney Morning Herald. 'Comic traditions, verbal acrobatics', by Myfanwy Gollan, 7 Feb 1987, p.43. The Weekend Australian. 'Satiric portrayal of our travellers', by Adrian Mitchell, 28 Feb-1 March 1987, Mag. 15.
The Pale Blue Crochet Coathanger Cover The Age. 'Another bite at Dog Rock', by Helen Daniel, 30 July 1988, Sat. Extra 14. The Bulletin. 'Dog Rock days', by Susan McKeman, 23 Oct 1988, p. 116. The Canberra Times. 'From the outrageous to the densely funny', by Jeff Doyle, 21 Jan 1989, B4. The Sydney Morning Herald. 'Respectable, but they fail to shine', by A.P. Riemer, 30 July 1988, p.77. The Weekend Australian. 'Sleuth sorts out the mail of the species', by Dorothy Porter, 30-31 July 1988, Mag.l5.
Hitting the Wall The Adelaide Advertiser. 'Light relief from serious Foster', by Katherine England, 11 Feb 1989, p.ll. The Age. 'Breaking the angst barrier', by Kerryn Goldsworthy, 4 March 1989, p.ll. 190
Antipodes. 'Novellas focus on jogging and thieving', by Charles Mann, Spring 1990, p.66. Australian Book Review. 'The Pathetic Jogger', by Mark Roberts, No. 109, Apr 1989, pp.34-35. The Canberra Times. 'Writing proves that you can make a joke out of anything', by Mark Thomas, 11 Mar 1989, B4. The Herald. 'Clever writing and a bit of arrogance', by Neil Jillet, 1 November 73, p.32. Island Magazine. 'Reviewing/Genre/Gender', by Jenna Mead, No.39, Winter 1989, pp.87-88. The Mercury. 'Fun Filler For Those Education Gaps', by Hugo Giles, 18 Feb 1989, Weekend 20. Span. Untitled review by Betty Birskys, No.29, Oct 1989, pp.115-116. The Weekend Australian. 'Walls that do a prison make', by R.F. Brissenden, 11-12 March 1989, Weekend 10.
Mates of Mars The Age. 'Matters male, martial and mystical', by Helen Daniel, 10 Aug 1991, Extra 8. Australian Book Review. 'Foster's Do—or how to kick your way to peace', by Andrew Peek, No.l33, Aug 1991, pp.12-13. 'Foster vs the world (and me)', by Rosemary Sorensen, No. 133, Aug 1991,pp.l3-14. The Canberra Times. 'Heart of Austrahan darkness', by Jeff Doyle, 24 Aug 1991, C9. Overland. 'Mates of Mars', by A.M. Hertzberg, No.l25, 1991, pp.95-96. The Sydney Morning Herald. 'It's not nice out there among the boofheads', by Rosemary Sorensen, 3 August 1991, p42. 191
The Weekend Australian. 'Yen for yin among macho mates', by Terry Dowling, 17-18 Sept 1991, Review p.5.
Essays, Articles and Interviews
Baker, Candida (ed.), 'David Foster', inYacker, Picador, Sydney, 1986, pp. 104-126. Duffy, Michael, 'An Unfashionable Talent', in The Independent Monthly, Aug 1991, pp.40-42. Dunn, Robert, 'Postmodernism: populism, mass culture, and avant- garde', in Theory, Culture and Society, No.8, 1991, pp.111-135. Evans, Bob, Artists win reprieve from daily grind', in The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 Oct 1991, p.l6. Foster, David, 'Satire', in The Phoenix Review, No.2, Summer 1987/88, pp.63-79. 'Chaos is Normal', in Australian Book Review, No. 119, April 1990, pp.24-28. Foster, Vivienne, 'David Foster', in The Phoenix Review, No.2, Summer 1987/88, pp. 114-117. Gelder, Kenneth, 'The "Self-Contradictory" Fiction of David Foster', in Aspects of Australian Fiction, Alan Brissenden (ed.), University of Western Australia Press, Nedlands W.A., 1990, pp.149-159. McKeman, Susan, 'Surpassing Lunacy', in The Age Monthly Review, April 1985, p.3. Orwell, George, 'T.S. EHot's poetry', in T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets: a casebook, Bergonzi, Bernard (ed.), Macmillan, London, 1969, pp.83-87. 192
Pierce, Peter, 'Finding their range: some recent Australian novels', in Meanjin, VoL40 No.4, Dec. 1981, pp.527-528. Riemer, A.P., 'Bare-Breeched Brethren', in Southerly, No.2, June 1987, pp. 126-144. Shaw, Narelle, 'The Passion of D'Arcy D'Oliveres: David Foster's "Dog Rock" Novels', in Antipodes, Spring 1990, pp.29-34. '"Nothing is random": David Foster's Plumbum', in Southerly, No.l, March 1990, pp.80-92. Soler, Colette, 'Literature as symptom', in Lacan and the Subject of Language, Ellie Ragland-Sullivan & Mark Bracher (eds), Routledge, New York, 1991, pp.213-219. Travers, E.A., 'On the philosophical: an interview with David Foster', in Westerly, No.l, Autumn 1992, pp.71-78. Waldren, Murray, 'The master of martial farce . ..', in The Weekend Australian, Aug 10-11 1991, Review 4. Videorecordings 263 & 1256, Australian Defence Force Academy library, Canberra.
Critical Works
Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and His World, translated by Helene Iswolsky, Indiana University Press, 1984. Booth, Wayne C., The Rhetoric of Fiction, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1961. The Rhetoric of Irony, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1974. Culler, Jonathon, Structuralist Poetics: structuralism, linguistics and the study of literature, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1975. 193
Daniel, Helen {Qd.)The Good Reading Guide: 100 critics review contemporary Australian fiction, McPhee Gribble, Fitzroy Vic., 1989. Liars: Australian New Novelists, Penguin, Ring wood Vic., 1988. Eagleton, Terry, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, USA, 1990. Eco, Umberto, Travels in Hyper Reality, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego, 1986. Formaini, Heather, Men: The Darker Continent, Mandarin, London, 1991. Foster , David (ed.). Self Portraits, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1991. Foucault, Michel, Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1991. Gelder, Ken & Salzman, Paul, The New Diversity: Australian Fiction 1970-1988, McPhee Gribble, Melbourne, 1989. Gloversmith, Frank (ed.). The Theory of Reading, The Harvester Press, Brighton, Sussex, 1984. Orwell, Sonya & Angus, Ian (eds). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume IV, Penguin, Harmondsworth Middlesex, 1969. Shiff, H. (ed.). Contemporary Approaches to English Studies, Heinemann, London, 1977. Sontag, Susan, Against Interpretation, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1967. Suleiman, Susan & Crosman, Inge (eds), The Reader in the Text, Princeton, New Jersey, 1980. 194
Other Fiction
Bail, Murray, Holden's Performance, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1988. Barth, John, The Floating Opera, Doubleday, New York, 1967. Burroughs, William, Queer, Viking, New York, 1985. Daniel, Helen (ed.), Expressway, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1989. Davies, Robertson, What's Bred in the Bone, Penguin, Ringwood Vic., 1987. Joyce, James, Ulysses, Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1986. Lohrey, Amanda, The Reading Group, Picador, Sydney, 1988. Mathers, Peter, Trap, Cassell Australia, Melbourne, 1966. O'Brian, Flann, The Dalkey Archive, Picador, London, 1976. Perec, Georges, Life: A User's Manual, translated by David Bellos, Collins Harvill, London, 1987. Pynchon, Thomas, The Crying of Lot 49, Picador, London, 1979. Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983. thesis 199 4 Ccnte Gc r «j i a n satire s the n c v e Is o • David F c s t e r C 0 Ti t e , S t e y e n BARCODE 304916 BRN 262027 ADF A L i b r a r y 08 DEC 1 994