Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Everything I Knew by Peter Goldsworthy Everything I Knew by Peter Goldsworthy. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 6595aa74bc551665 • Your IP : 188.246.226.140 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. Peter Goldsworthy. Peter Goldsworthy grew up in various Australian country towns, finishing his schooling in Darwin. After graduating in medicine from the University of Adelaide in 1974, he worked for many years in alcohol and drug rehabiiltation. Since then, he has divided his time equally between writing and general practice. He has won major literary awards across a range of genres: poetry, short story, the novel, in opera, and most recently in theatre. His novels have sold over 400,000 copies in Australia alone, have been translated into many European and Asian languages; Three Dog Night , won the FAW Christina Stead Award'; in 2003 his first novel Maestro was voted by members of the Australian Society of Authors one of the Top 40 Australian books of all time. Maestro is now available in the Angus&Robertson Australian Classics series, and his 1995 novel Wish in the Text Classics series. He wrote the libretti for the Richard Mills operas Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and Batavia , the latter winning Mills and Goldsworthy the 2002 Robert Helpmann Award for Best New Australian Work, and a Green Room Award for Special Creative Achievement. Maestro , Three Dog Night , Wish , Honk If You Are Jesus , and the short story The Kiss have been adapted for the stage. Honk won the 2006 Ruby Award for Best New Work. The short film of The Kiss , adapted and directed by Ashlee Page, won both the 2010 Dendy and AFI awards for best short feature, and an AFI award for Best Cinematography. It also won the Australian Teachers of Media Award for best short film. Paperchain Bookchat. It’s the year 1964, and 14-year-old know-it-all Robbie Burns is about to discover he still has a lot to learn. The world is changing fast, although the news has yet to reach the small South Australian town of Penola. There, Robbie leads an idyllic life of rabbiting, backyard science experiments, and hooligan scrapes with his friend Billy. Penola is oblivious even to its minor celebrity as the birthplace of the poet John Shaw Neilson, but poetry means the world to Robbie’s new teacher from the city, the stylish Miss Peach, a sixties sophisticate with stirrup pants, Kool cigarettes and a Vespa scooter. Miss Peach’s artistic yearnings and modern ways prove too much for the good people of Penola, but they fire Robbie’s precocious imagination and burgeoning sexuality, until what begins as a schoolboy fantasy has terrible, real consequences. Author: Peter Goldsworthy Publisher: Penguin Books Date Published: 27/10/2008 Language: English. Peter Goldsworthy. Peter Goldsworthy. Courtesy Book Town Australia . Peter Goldsworthy AM (born 12 October 1951) is an Australian poet, prose writer, and medical practitioner. He has won awards for his short stories, poetry, novels, and opera libretti. Goldsworthy has been described (in A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Australian Poetry ) as "one of the most skilled and satisfying poets in Australia". [1] Contents. Life [ edit | edit source ] Goldsworthy was born in Minlaton, South Australia, and grew up in various Australian country towns, finishing his schooling in Darwin in the Northern Territory. [2] He graduated in medicine from the University of Adelaide in 1974, and worked in alcohol and drug rehabilitation for several years, but, with his poetry being published in Westerly and the Friendly Street Poetry Reader , he started dividing his working time equally between general practice and writing. [3] Goldsworthy's eldest daughter Anna is a successful concert pianist and also an accomplished writer. They recently worked together on a stage adaptation of Goldsworthy's novel Maestro . Writing [ edit | edit source ] Goldsworthy's novels have sold over four hundred thousand copies in Australia alone, and, with his poetry and short stories, have been translated into many European and Asian languages. [4] He has won major literary prizes across most genres: for poetry, the short story, the novel, plays and opera. Novels [ edit | edit source ] His first novel Maestro was reissued as part of the Angus & Robertson Australian Classics series, and was voted one of the Top 40 Australian books of all time by members of the Australian Society of Authors. [5] Poetry and short stories [ edit | edit source ] His New Selected Poems were published in Australia and the UK in 2001; and his Collected Stories appeared in Australia in 2004. The Poetry Archive describes his poetry as follows: "There's a pressing sense of mortality in his work and a desire to ask the big questions, even as he satirises them. Drawn to the discipline of science, Goldsworthy's poems are full of the language of the laboratory —matter, evidence, elements, chemicals— the stuff we are made of, but at the same time frustrated by these limitations into asking what else we might be. He's interested in 'The Dark Side of the Head', the things we can only know in flashes, like glimpsing a skink, but he also retains a rationalist's scepticism of the ecstatic – that "thoughtlessly exquisite" evening sky in 'Sunset' won't fool him into rapture". [1] The Australian expatriate writer, Clive James, comments that Goldsworthy's poetry is often seen as a sideline, but argues that it is "at the centre of his achievement". James writes: "His precise wit operates on every level, from the sonic (a concealed dove really does say hidden here, hidden here) to the conceptual (the human body really is packed tight like an attempt on the record of filling a Mini). The general impression is of a fastidious insistence that the particular comes first, and any general comment that follows had better be particular too." [6] Libretti [ edit | edit source ] Goldsworthy also writes opera libretti. He wrote the libretti for the Richard Mills operas, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and Batavia , [7] the latter winning Mills and Goldsworthy the 2002 Robert Helpmann Award for Best Opera and Best New Australian Work. The Sydney premiere at the Sydney Opera House on 19 August 2006 was conducted by the composer and attended by the librettist. Film writing [ edit | edit source ] Goldsworthy wrote or co-wrote the script to several films: [8] Ebbtide (1994) [9] Passion (1999) [10] Adaptations of his works [ edit | edit source ] His novels Wish , Honk If You Are Jesus , and Three Dog Night have been adapted for the stage. Honk , was premiered by the State Theatre of South Australia in its 2006 season. It won the 2006 Ruby Award for Best New Work, and the 2006 Advertiser Oscart Award for Best Play. In 2009 Honk If You Are Jesus was adapted as a radio play by Mike Ladd for ABC Radio National and was broadcast by the BBC World Service. The novella "Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam" has also been adapted as a radio-play by Mike Ladd for the ABC. [11] Goldsworthy's poetry has been set to music by leading Australian composers including Graeme Koehne, Richard Mills, and Matthew Hindson. In 2008 Ashlee Page worked on the short film The Kiss adapted from the short story of the same name from the collection The List of All Answers . [12] Recognition [ edit | edit source ] 1979: Western Australian Sesquicentenary Literary Prize for the short-story Memoirs of a small 'm' marxist. 1982: Commonwealth Poetry Prize Readings from Ecclesiastes 1982: FAW Anne Elder Poetry Award, joint winner for Readings from Ecclesiastes 1982: South Australian Premier's Award, for Readings from Ecclesiastes 1984: Government Biennial Literature Prize (South Australia), for Readings from Ecclesiastes 1988: Australian Bicentennial Literary Prize for Poetry 1991: NBC Banjo Awards, NBC Turnbull Fox Phillips Poetry Prize, shortlisted for This Goes with That 1998: ABC / ABA Bicentennial Literary Award, Poetry Australia Literary Award 2002: Robert Helpmann Award for Best Opera and Best New Australian Work for Batavia [13] 2002: Green Room Award for Special Creative Achievement for Batavia 2003: Colin Roderick Award, shortlisted for Three Dog Night 2004: Miles Franklin Award. Shortlisted for Three Dog Night 2004: FAW Christina Stead Award for Three Dog Night 2004: The Courier-Mail Book of the Year . Shortlisted for Three Dog Night 2004: Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. Shortlisted for Three Dog Night 2004: New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Shortlisted for Three Dog Night 2005: International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for Three Dog Night 2009: Prime Minister's Literary Awards. Shortlisted for Everything I Knew 2010: Order of Australia. (AM) Citation: "For service to literature as an author and poet, through arts administration, and to the community." Publications [ edit | edit source ] Poetry [ edit | edit source ] Readings from Ecclesiastes: Poems . Sydney & London: Angus & Robertson, 1982. This Goes with This . Crows Nest, NSW: ABC Books, 1988. This Goes with That: Selected Poems 1970–1990 . North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1991. After the Ball . Canberra, ACT: National Library of Australia, 1992. If, Then: Poems and Songs . Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1996. New Selected Poems . Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove, 2001. Tattered Joys . Warners Bay, NSW: Picaro Press, 2002. Novels [ edit | edit source ] Maestro . North Ryde, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1989; Sydney: Harper Perennial, 2004. Magpie (with Brian Matthews). Kent Town, SA: Wakefield Press, 1992. Honk If You are Jesus . Pymble, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1992. Wish . Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1995; Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2013. Keep it Simple, Stupid . Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins, 1996. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam: A novella with extensive reading notes. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins, 1999. Three Dog Night . Camberwell, Vic: Viking, 2003. Everything I Knew . Camberwell, Vic: Penguin, 2008. Short stories [ edit | edit source ] Archipelagoes: Zany, bizarre, and poignant short stories. London & Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1982. Zooing . Sydney & London: Angus & Robertson, 1986. Bleak Rooms: Stories . Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1988. Little Deaths . Pymble, NSW: Angus & Robertson, 1993. The List of All Answers: Collected short stories . Camberwell, Vic, & New York: Viking, 2004. Gravel . Camberwell, Vic: Penguin Group Australia, 2010. Non-fiction [ edit | edit source ] Navel-Gazing: Essays, half-truths, and Mystery Flights . Ringwood, Vic, & New York: Penguin Books, 1998. His Stupid Boyhood: A memoir . Melbourne, Vic: Penguin Group Australia, 2013. Edited [ edit | edit source ] True Blue? On being Australian . Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2008. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat . [14] Same diff: His Stupid Boyhood: A Memoir by Peter Goldsworthy. Peter Goldsworthy came to prominence in 1989 with his first novel, Maestro , a tale of adolescence and music set in steamy Darwin. Since then, he has made a name for himself with a series of elegant, stylish novels and short stories, and with spare, finely-honed verse. He is a perceptive and ironic chronicler of the ethical and psychological conundrums that beset the lives of middle-class, usually well-educated, and predominantly urban Australians. An active medical practitioner for many years, his interest in matters physiological and scientific has coloured at least two of his novels: Honk If You Are Jesus (1992), a fantasy about cloning Tasmanian Tigers and Jesus himself, and Wish (1995), a love story revolving around a gorilla who learns to communicate in sign language. The most significant aspect of Goldsworthy’s art, in both fiction and verse, is the tight control he exerts over his material. Anything redundant seems to have been rigorously excluded; his diction (particularly in his verse) is level, largely impersonal and free of rhetorical flourishes. Inevitably, therefore, the range of his writing is confined. He seems to shy away from strong emotions, from suffering and despair, and also from great joy and elation. In the fine novella Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam (1993), the potentially harrowing tale of a child’s death from leukaemia is told with tact and restraint. Admittedly, some readers found that restraint excessive, yet the absence of both melodrama and sentimentality enhances, in my opinion, the tale’s impact. With Goldsworthy less always seems to be more. His Stupid Boyhood is a memoir of the first eighteen years of Goldsworthy’s life and it shares several characteristics of his fiction. It also incorporates some striking poems, perhaps the best writing the book has to offer. Goldsworthy, who was born in 1951, spent the first years of his life in Minlaton, population 500, ‘multiple Tidy Town winner and self-styled Barley Capital of the World’, on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula. His parents were schoolteachers, although in accordance with the rigid public service regulations of the time, Mrs Goldsworthy had to retire after her marriage. Minlaton at that time, for all its tidiness, was a small dusty town lacking the conveniences city people had come to take for granted by then: running water, sewerage, efficient heating and refrigeration. The few cars in the town were usually clapped-out jalopies dating from well before the Second World War. Most needed a crank-handle to start. Mr Tonkins, a neighbour, owned a ‘mechanical brontosaur’ of that kind. Goldsworthy writes at the beginning of His Stupid Boyhood that, at the age of three, ‘watching the car being crank-started – and all the cranked cars to come – was my first love. In fact, watching cars being cranked was my first sexual love.’ Moreover, he remembers, the obsession with crank-handles lasted for several years. Then, ‘whatever the psychodrama of its origins, my particular fetish vanished before the age of ten.’ Here is one of the themes explored in this memoir: childhood erotic experiences – unrecognised at the time, of course – which nevertheless led to further sexual experimentation. ‘Only later, in adolescence,’ writes Goldsworthy, ‘did I come to realise that certain sensations, which I could now produce at will by other means, were not new – they were identical to those lost pleasures of infancy.’ By then, Minlaton had been left behind. The Goldsworthys led the typically itinerant life of schoolteachers employed by the state authorities. At the whim, it seemed, of city bureaucrats, they were ordered at short notice to up sticks and leave for another often isolated district. Sometimes fortune smiled on them, particularly for Goldsworthy’s long-suffering mother. For a while the family would enjoy the benefit of the mod-cons of the day – well-built houses, tap water, efficient cookers and ovens. Then the powers in Adelaide would shake the dice again and send the family off to another rickety house and to the travails of carting water and spluttering chip-heaters. One of their postings – a place where Mr and Mrs Goldsworthy persisted in their habit of enrolling the townspeople (and young Peter too) in their productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas – was to a place called Kadina. There the adolescent Peter was to undergo another variety of sexual experience. One weekend, Goldsworthy’s parents and his brother drove to the city, leaving young Peter behind with his best friend: the clean-cut, clean-living Hugh. Some little time earlier, the two adolescents had had a strange conversation about homosexuality. Goldsworthy insists that he had not caught his friend’s drift. Then, on that weekend the two boys spent alone in the Goldsworthys’ house, Hugh made a pass at Peter, insisting on a kiss, for the sake of friendship. ‘I always thought it silly,’ he announced, apropos of nothing, ‘that men aren’t allowed to show affection for each other.’ I nodded vaguely at the logic of this and kept on reading. ‘For instance, if men are close friends, why can’t they kiss each other? In France men kiss each other all the time.’ This sounded a bit sissy, but harmless enough, and a perfectly sound argument … Next time I glanced up he was sitting on the edge of my bed. ‘A goodnight kiss, for example.’ ‘If that’s what they want,’ I said, more cautiously, but confident it was still an abstract argument. And so it went on: Hugh cajoling Goldsworthy to kiss him on the mouth, the other resisting with bemusement, but apparently without alarm. At length, Goldsworthy relented: ‘It was the most chaste kiss I had ever given, including to my grandmothers, I hated it, but at least it shut him up.’ He had managed – ‘by sheer effort of will,’ he writes – to overcome his aversion, just as he had learnt how to overcome his aversion to cooked carrots. In His Stupid Boyhood , this episode is recounted in a casual, even perhaps off-hand way. Yet that evening with Hugh must have made a considerable impression on Goldsworthy – an impression he had perhaps attempted to brush aside with the comment about cooked carrots. In Everything I Knew , a novel published in 2008 (its title the reverse, in a way, of the title of this memoir), Goldsworthy transposed the incident to a town called Penola near the Victorian border, where the family had also lived for a time. Everything I Knew is the story of the fourteen-year-old Robbie Burns, the son of the town’s police sergeant. Much of what Robbie does mirrors the experiences recounted in this memoir. Robbie, too, likes to experiment in his father’s shed with dangerous chemicals, producing greater and lesser explosions and conflagrations, especially when manufacturing laughing-gas. Like the young Peter Goldsworthy, Robbie is a bit of a show-off at school, perhaps too eager to demonstrate his head for figures. And like the young Goldsworthy, he is the enthusiastic author of lurid science- fiction adventures. Unlike Goldsworthy, however – at least in terms of what His Stupid Boyhood reveals – Robbie is head-over-heels in love with his teacher, the aptly-named Miss Peach from Adelaide, who scandalises Penola with her city ways, smart clothes and Vespa scooter. Robbie’s infatuation with Miss Peach has terrible consequences for the young woman and also for Robbie’s best friend, Billy, whose family have moved south from a ‘mission’ in the north of the state. Robbie betrays his friend by letting him take the blame for breaking into the schoolteacher’s house while she is away from Penola. And that betrayal is connected, in an imprecise, essentially symbolic manner, to an episode in the police sergeant’s house when Robbie’s parents leave Penola to attend a police ball. Practically off his head with booze and chemical experiments, Robbie is in a near-comatose state when Billy arrives. Billy asks for a kiss. Robbie recoils, but Billy is not to be put off. He reminds Robbie of the time the previous Easter when they masturbated each other. Then he asks to see Robbie’s penis. ‘What’re you fucking afraid of, Robbie, You too chicken to show me? Chicken!’ I’m chicken about nothing. I roll onto my back and slide down my pants. Billy stares, mesmerised. ‘Can I kiss it?’ His words are so nonsensical he has to repeat them before I register any meaning at all. ‘Are you nuts? Why would you want to kiss a cock ? Kiss your own fucking cock!’ ‘I tried,’ he slurs. ‘I couldn’t reach.’ He rolls over on top of me. ‘Why can’t best friends kiss each other’s cocks? You let me pull it last time! Same diff. Let me suck it’ ‘Fuck off,’ I say, and at last find the strength to shove him away. Is this what really happened in Kadina, or is this, as seems more likely, an imaginative reworking of a much less dramatic, perhaps less troubling experience? This is not the only instance where His Stupid Self hints at the origins of episodes and preoccupations in Goldsworthy’s work. His account of the time his family spent in Darwin illuminates sections of Maestro . The fine poems that are scattered throughout the text find the sources of their imagery and concerns in this account of a fairly ordinary, largely uneventful childhood. Most absorbing are several episodes towards the end of the memoir which show the emergence of the poet and novelist during the years Goldsworthy spent as a medical student in Adelaide, a period more notable, perhaps, for his devotion to certain Eastern European poets than to Grey’s Anatomy . I hope that His Stupid Boyhood will be followed in time by a sequel. There, no doubt, we will find a fuller, more absorbing portrait of the artist as a not-so-young man. What such a book might resemble is hinted at in the opening and closing chapters of this memoir, in which the mature Goldsworthy muses on the implications of his recollections of his early life. One sentence on the first page struck me as significant and revealing: ‘This story is more about the getting of stupidity; the getting of wisdom would have to wait.’ I hope that if such an account of the getting of wisdom is to be written, Goldsworthy will manage to slacken a little the restraint and self-deprecating irony that inform this memoir of childhood. Restraint and irony are fine qualities that serve admirably the purposes of his fiction and verse. I wish, nevertheless, that he would lift the mask a little when addressing himself to the fundamentally confessional task of writing a memoir.